Columbus Foundation Fellowship Programs

As a fellow at the Charitable Pharmacy I’ve been working on a crowdfunding campaign in order to capture our volunteer base as donors. This has been a wonderful opportunity for me for research and career purposes.

Our volunteer base at the Charitable Pharmacy largely comes from Pharmacy students who have interned at the Pharmacy in order to get hours to graduate. Our Development Director wanted to put a focus on how to capture the people who have served through the pharmacy and were immersed in our mission to support the Pharmacy fiscally. In order to do this, she suggested a crowdfunding campaign.

The first part of this campaign required doing extensive research on Millennial giving and crowdfunding campaign. I found out that volunteerism is a unique to the Millennial generation. My further research showed that those who volunteer are more likely to give financially to an organization they have volunteered with. I also researched the unique and innovative ways nonprofits are engaging with Millennials in order to bring them in as donors. I was able to call and speak with other nonprofits about the way they run crowdfunding campaigns. It was a wonderful experience to call and speak candidly with non profits from all over Central Ohio. The thought that this specific group of donors are not financially established yet was a reoccurring thought, especially since I am also a student. Crowdfunding provides an innovative way to overcome this barrier, with large amounts of money raised from small donations from a large group of people.

I am now at the point where I am planning the campaign, step by step. We have set a specific goal that will help alleviate a specific need. This campaign has come to encompass a lot more than just the development department. I have sat down with Pharmacists and Qualifiers to understand the need within the pharmacy in order to create and execute the story. I am really looking forward to this innovative and creative step the Charitable Pharmacy is taking to capture and retain Millennial donors!

It has been a great start to the new year of 2016!

I can finally say that I have become very comfortable navigating through Raiser’s Edge!

The office has become very busy planning and preparing for the opening for The Furniture Bank’s new Thrift Store located at 2165 Morse Rd, Columbus, OH 43229 . Our new thrift store will be selling furniture, clothing, and appliances! Last Thursday Jan. 28, we had our first Hard Hat Open House at the Thrift Store which hosted many potential new board members!

On top of planning for the grand opening for the Thrift Store, I’ve been very busy with planning for our 1st Annual Bed Race! What is a bed race? All it takes it a team of 1 racer, 4 bed pushers, a bed frame, and a twin mattress! The race will take place on Goodale Avenue at Goodale Park in downtown Columbus.

For the Bed Race, I have been reaching out to local food trucks and vendors that I think would make a great “festival” addition to the Bed Race. For this outreach, I had to draft media sponsor emails, vendor emails,  and potential team recruitment emails. As of now I have one food truck confirmed and one team confirmed! I hope to book 3 food trucks and 4 teams by the end of this month! It’s been really fun working along side of Director of Development, Sarah Rooney, at the Furniture Bank. On top of gift management, I am now getting an insight on outreach and event planning as part of the development department!

This month I also started attending weekly management meetings where issues of HR, gift management, development, and other topics at the office are discussed with the management team. It’s nice to get an insight on how real staff meetings are run.

I’m looking forward to this next month and hope to draft a festival map, recruit more vendors, recruit more teams, and learn more about non profit development!

Hello all!

I hope everyone had an enjoyable holiday season!

At the end of 2015, Local Matters lease ended at their former Broad St office space, or rather, mansion-turned office, even though the new office space on Parsons across from Nationwide Childrens Hospital was not complete yet. This made an interesting start to my school year and trying to get into the swing of a new schedule, because for about two weeks there was no office to go to! The team was great about frequent communication and working remotely. I learned a lot about myself and my own motivation in those two weeks as well, mostly that I am not sure working at home will be something I’ll chose to do if given the option! I had a hard time staying at home working on things, and was much more efficient when working in the student union or a coffee shop. When we finally got into the new office (which was sooner than expected), it’s beautiful! There is still much work to be done to it, especially in the instructional kitchen which will be used for the classes Local Matters offers. However, the space is so open and bright and in a great location.

Currently, they have me very busy and working on many things. One of the ones that I’m most interested in is a ‘focus group’ of sorts for promoting their Seeding the Future campaign. I went through the social media pages Local Matters utilizes and identified a team of people who interact with it the most, by liking or commenting or sharing posts. Then, I created a ‘tool kit’ for the team to use to promote to their own social circles about the campaign. I’m also working on analyzing donor data from 2015, going person by person to see if they were a new donor, returning, if they upgraded or downgraded their donation. As someone who has always been a little bit of a math and stats nerd, I have really enjoyed seeing the trends of donors and it has been insightful to see that people will only donate $5 if they can, but it really goes so far! I’m excited to keep moving forward this semester and see how the Seeding the Future campaign turns out!

Best,

Haley Duff

Happy New Year! I have enjoyed the first few days in the office at Columbus Collegiate Academy (CCA). Some of the highlights include starting two new grants that would potentially help create a permanent space for alumni services at both the CCA- Main Street and CCA- Dana Avenue schools. This new space will help the USN alumni become more engaged with their alma mater, provide resources for college preparation, and hopefully host professional development workshops. In order to successfully complete these grants I have already been in communication with the COO, School Director, and the Alumni Service Coordinator.

Another project that I’m excited about is getting ready for the Launch Bash, which takes place this May. I am currently looking into sponsorship opportunities for this fundraising event. I’ve learned how sponsorship values are calculated so I am doing my best to break down the components of each USN sponsorship level. At times it can be difficult, but my supervisor has been helping me along the way.

Working at USN has been a great experience thus far. The positivity and teamwork in the office is super encouraging. I recently applied to Teach For America and if it weren’t for the inspirational people at United Schools Network I would not have thought about this possibility. Advancing education for kids in low-income communities has become a passion of mine and I’m fortunate to be a part of USN’s mission to prepare all students to achieve academic excellence and become citizens of integrity.

The month of December was a very exciting and busy time at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Columbus pertaining to all the end of the year work, all the decorating and gift wrapping, and the best part, the Holiday Parties!

Before the holidays, I spent time creating a gift acceptance policy draft. This required me to apply my research in a practical manner. Creating a gift acceptance policy is not any easy task, it consisted of frequent checking and correcting from Hilary. Before studying and actually working with these policies I didn’t realize how many different types of gifts have to be included. This includes but is not limited to gifts of cash, tangible personal property, intangible personal property, marketable securities, planned gifts, bequests, retirement plan beneficiary designations, charitable remainder trusts, charitable lead trusts, and life insurance policies and proceeds. It becomes very extensive because each gift type is accompanied with an individual policy and guidelines for administration.

I am very fortunate to have had an opportunity to attend a meeting with our Director of Development Hilary Blakemore, our CEO

Rebecca Asmo, a Board Member, and a representative from the Columbus Foundation to discuss fund options. The meeting comprised of a very enlightening and informative conversation. I was able to learn so much from listening to such intelligent people converse, and was even able to participate.

Also a few weeks prior I got to attend an AFP event at the Columbus Foundation getting to hear Kim Klein speak and also getting a great opportunity to network and meet professionals around the Columbus area.

I ended the month and semester of work with an amazing night at our Holiday Party. It was a very successful night with all the money raised for the Clubs! I got a chance to meet and get to know several different Board Members. My favorite part, I was also able to spend time with some kids from our South Side club and embarrass myself dancing with them! (Pictures included from the Holiday Party)

Taylor Weis

As I look back on the experiences I have had at my Fellowship site thus far, I look forward to what’s in store for the new year.

Over the past month, I have had the chance to continue to learn more about my organization. I was able to attend the office Christmas party that was hosted by the board members. Here I had the chance to meet some of the board members as well as some of the social workers who work in the office. Prior to this party I only knew the staff in the development office so this gave me the chance to hear from and learn about the organization from a different point of view. It was also nice to hear from the board members and learn a little about why and how they joined the board. Overall, I had a great time at the staff Christmas party and I am glad that I had the opportunity to attend.

I have also had the chance to see where my work has led. At the beginning of my Fellowship, I was working on editing and compiling a list of potential donors for our Spirit of Hope Gala. We sent a donation request to the businesses on our list and I am now beginning to see donations come in from these businesses. Seeing this was rewarding because I focused  so much time and attention on the list of prospects. I hope to continue to see many, many more donations come in from our list of prospective donors.

With the coming of the new year, means that the date of the Gala is continuing to draw closer. I hope to continue to learn and grow in my understanding of my organization and look forward to the opportunities to come. My time thus far has been rewarding and I cannot wait to see what the new year has in store for my organization.

Happy New Year!

My time at the Charitable Pharmacy has been nothing short of amazing. I continue to improve on my skills with the help of a great staff!  I have had the opportunity over the last month to help with events and organize a social media fundraising campaign.

Working with the development department at the Pharmacy as allowed me to see how much work goes into events. From picking up napkins to actually entertaining guests, the effort and attention to detail seeks to provide donors with an experience that truly shows our appreciation. This experience taught me the importance of showing our donors how much they mean to the organization, being able to demonstrate and explain what their gifts are going towards, and how they have made our community healthier. Being able to help in any way I can means that I can also show my appreciation for those who give to the Charitable Pharmacy.

As I mentioned before, one of my core responsibilities has been working with social media in order to keep followers up to date on the happenings at the Charitable Pharmacy. I was given the task of creating and executing a campaign for Giving Tuesday. Being able to critically think about the social media experience and what other’s are responsive to on social media was key to making this campaign a success.  I was able to be creative in the way we were making asks through social media. By using short phrases and highlighting the staff that dedicate their time to the organization, I was able to increase the amount of dollars we raised as well as the amount of donors. I was very happy about the success my skills brought to this opportunity.

My time at the Pharmacy has been a great success, but it does come with reflection in order to continue to achieve higher goals and develop my skills. The head of the development department continues to give great feedback on what I can continue to do better, but also what I’m doing well. As the new year begins, my goal is only to continue to do better as a fellow, as a college student, as a human being.

Hello There,

It’s already been one month into this wonderful new year, but I just thought I should recap on 2015.

December was the busiest month for the Furniture Bank all year! In the month of December, there was a huge influx of gifts that I had to record, organize, and acknowledge, on top of gathering up outreach material for our Spring Fundraising Event. I definitley admint that December was quiet a crazy work month.

Over Christmas break, I had the opportunity to work actual full 9 hour days at the Furniture Bank of Central Ohio, which gave me a real insight on real world work life. I got to experience rush hour traffic as well as the satisification of walking out of the office and crossing everything off of my to do list.

Here are some of the things that I worked on in the month of December:

• HUGE influx of gifts, acknowledments, and organization of gifts through Raiser’s Edge
• Drafting emails for recruiting teams, vendors, sponsors, and volutneers for our Bed Race to take place May 2016
• Organizing volunteer contact and attendance
• Managing social media
• Helping the Furniture Bank prepare for the opening of our NEW Furniture/Clothing/Appliances Thrift Store on Morse Road!

When you’re at work for only 4 hours a day, two times a week, it can be really hard to get everything on your to-do list completed. Time management is KEY on top of attending meetings on time and completing assignments on time.

I’m getting very excited about planning for The Furniture Bank of Central Ohio’s 1^st Annual Bed Race to take place May 21, 2016! I encourage everyone to stop by for some food, music, racing, and fun! Might as well make your own team while you’re at it!

Looking forward to a great 2016!Click here to learn more about the Bed Race!

My time at USN since my last blog post has been very exciting! First, I definitely feel like I’m becoming a lot closer to my co-workers in the development office. I’ve appreciated how everyone is happy to help each other. Additionally. I’ve been able to communicate easily with the Columbus Collegiate Academy (CCA) at Dana Avenue as I was wrapping up my grant application for a new playground at their campus.

In regards to the event planning for Launch Bash, which takes place on May 13, 2016, I was fortunate enough to participate in a very productive meeting with the Special Events Team. There is a lot of collaboration happening with sponsorships, raffle gift options, and so much more. I learned that there are a lot of little steps to take into consideration when planning such a large event and each step is very important.

I’ve been able to visit the CCA-Dana Ave. campus twice so far. The first time included watching a professional violinist perform for the students during their music class, which was definitely fun to watch! The second time included a meeting with the COO of USN and a representative from BSN Sports to talk about our options with a potential new playground. I was able to present what my grant application included and what I hoped to see at CCA-Dana Ave. in regards to the playground renovation. The couple of days after the meeting I wrapped up the grant application with the help of the amazing people at USN and my supervisor, Carmen has graciously agreed to tie up any loose ends before the deadline.

I’m looking forward to even more fun and exciting times at USN in 2016!

Month two is in the books and I am starting to get deeper into a few projects! The Zoo’s Philanthropy Team is in the midst of revising our donor recognition strategies and stewardship plans and I have been excited to be a part of this endeavor.

Over the next few weeks, I will be connecting with our peer zoos to learn more about their experiences with a number of different initiatives, specifically their various commemorative and tribute gift options. I have been fortunate to make connections with several leading Zoos and Aquariums across the country from San Diego to Saint Louis. The conversations with these Zoos are ongoing but are already leading to valuable insights regarding current best practices in donor recognition. I am looking forward to bringing this research to the table and collaborating with our philanthropy team to develop the best options for our Zoo moving forward.

Looking forward, I am eager to see how this work focusing on commemorative and tribute gifts will compliment my earlier work and help create comprehensive donor recognition and stewardship strategies for the Zoo moving forward.

My experience with the Zoo has also been further enhanced by the educational opportunities made available to me through the Columbus Foundation. This past week, I was able to attend three educational sessions hosted by the Association of Fundraising Professionals in Davis Hall at the Columbus Foundation. These events are always very comfortable and inviting given the Zoo’s philanthropy team’s significant presence within our professional community. Although the topics explored in these sessions were wide-ranging, I was particularly interested in the points about actionable steps that can be taken towards creating a culture of philanthropy. I believe the conversations around this topic will help me provide more thoughtful and valuable work for the duration of my Fellowship.