Columbus Foundation Fellowship Programs

This week has just flown by! I decided that I wanted to spend a little time in reflection this week about my Junior Docents and their journey over the last few weeks at the Pizzuti Collection. The Junior Docents were placed here through a partnership between the Central Ohio Workforce Investment Corporation (COWIC)’s S.O.A.R.hire program and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Columbus.Over 6000 local Columbus youths applied for 400 available work positions available in this program. These work positions are opportunities for the kids to gain some employable skills, work experience, and career exploration during their summer. 6 of these positions are here at the Pizzuti Collection and they are my Junior Docents! They are a fantastic group of young adults and I am so glad that I get to continue to work with and get to know over the course of this program.

A little bit about what we have been up to this summer….     

• The JDs have been participating in public speaking exercises to become more comfortable with speaking and presenting to groups of people.
• They have been researching and learning about the Collection, the artists, and the artworks that we have here currently as well as learning about the artists and pieces in our fall exhibition, Us Is Them.

• They have prepared and memorized “elevator speeches” to explain to guests who we are and what we do here at the Collection.
• They have been spending time in the galleries looking at the art and really learning how to connect themselves with the pieces and how to translate that to a tour group to encourage guests to connect with the works as well.
• The JDs have been learning about all the different roles that we play as a team here at the Collection, from operations, to registrar, to curating, and administrative positions to see the kinds of careers available in this field.
• Finally, we are continually working on building their Docent Binders, filling them with information about artists and pieces to help them prepare to assist on (and hopefully one day give full) tours of the galleries.

One of my favorite activities that we have done here is talk about the importance of art in the community. When asked what the importance of art is in the community, responses included:

“It’s visual: it doesn’t matter what language you speak”

“Gets everyone in the same space”

“Can draw attention to something to evoke change”

“Creates a common ground”

“Breaks down social barriers”

“Domino effect of positivity”

“Art can mirror society”

Now ,I certainly cannot take credit for these amazing answers. These are all responses from the kids.

We hear a lot in the nonprofit arts world “Well, what is the value of art?”, “Why do we need to fund art?” “Why does art matter?”. Here are your answers, straight from the mouths of those who directly benefit from art in their communities. This is why we need art in our communities, and the young adults in our community recognize that, but often, our elected officials and those in positions of power do not always realize this. It was exciting to hear yesterday that the Senate passed the ESEA initiative that kept arts and music as core subjects in our country’s definition of education…maybe they are starting to get it…

Anyway, I’ll leave my soap box for now. But I just wanted to take a moment and shout out the Junior Docents because they are absolutely flourishing! I could not be more proud of these kids this summer. They have worked so hard and it is definitely paying off for them.

Til next Time!

Jessie

What an awesome week and it’s not over yet!

Wednesday was probably one of my favorite days of the summer. We started off with a learning session at the Foundation. I always look forward to learning sessions because it’s a great time to reconnect with the other fellows and hear how their work is coming along. This week we had the distinct pleasure of hearing from Doug Kridler, the President and CEO of the Columbus Foundation. It was such a treat to hear about his life experience and his insight. I could tell from the short time we were able to spend with Doug that he is passionate about his work and passionate about people. He is committed to making Columbus a great place for all people to live and I think that makes him incredibly well-suited for the position he is in. After hearing from Doug, Jason Moore from Fulcrum Creatives came in and spoke about the significance of crafting your brand in a non-profit business. Branding is a challenge for all companies, but especially companies just starting out with their brand or trying to re-brand their organization. Jason offered a lot of valuable information about how companies can craft an effective brand (and it’s way more than just a hip logo). I was then able to share this information with my host site and I think it will improve the way we all think about Per Scholas.

After the learning session, fellow Bryn Webster and her host site invited us over for a delicious meal and a tour of ECDI. It was awesome. Shout out to En Place and J’s Pops because their food is delicious. I was just blown away by all that ECDI is doing, and doing well. The place is definitely one you should know about. One of the best parts of this summer has been the inside look at other non-profits in Columbus. From the chance to see Actor’s Theatre of Columbus perform in Schiller Park to an invitation to tour the Pizzuti Collection to the backstage pass of ECDI, I am getting to see a side of Columbus that I’ve never seen before.

Continually I am reminded of what a stellar opportunity I have been given through this fellowship and Wednesday was most definitely one of those days.

Much of the work I have done at Clean Fuels Ohio has been related to outreach — emailing and calling current and potential stakeholders trying to sell them on our signature program, Ohio Green Fleets. This process began in tedious fashion by cold-calling dozens of potential Green Fleet members, with not much response to show for my efforts. It’s understandable, really, considering that these people have heard from various employees at Clean Fuels Ohio in the past. I’m a fresh face and a new name and a cold-call to city officials and business owners from “Matt Shomo the new Program Assistant” doesn’t carry too much weight. However, as the 40 days and 40 nights of rain here in Columbus has cleared, so too has my bad luck.

Recently, the mass emails and cold-calls are resulting in tremendous feedback for our program. I am beginning to build my own network of stakeholders and it feels like all the work is finally paying off. Initially, I would simply send out invitations and information with little hope of garnering much response. But now, people interested in Ohio Green Fleets and Clean Fuels Ohio are using me as a contact and I am helping to facilitate new fleets into the Green Fleets program. I knew that patience would be essential for this project simply because the culminating event for Ohio Green Fleets doesn’t take place until late September. But now it seems that as the calendars turn towards the second half of summer, we are starting to appear on more people’s radars.

If there’s a life lesson to be learned through this experience, it’s the age-old adage that good things come to those who wait. In full disclosure, it was becoming extremely frustrating to spend hours trying to connect with people with nothing to show for it. But now that the Ohio Green Fleets program is picking up speed (pun, unintended) so is the quality of my interactions with the people involved. Here’s to many more emails and phone calls — hopefully this positive trend continues!

In my post last week, I focused on one of the greatest challenges that I have encountered during my fellowship: finding qualified teachers to fill open teaching positions. This week, I am going to concentrate on successes that are related to the work that I originally set out to do: developing a volunteer program. When I last provided a status update on the volunteer program during week two of the fellowship, I had just finished developing a volunteer manual and was planning to reach out to local universities, businesses, and volunteer posting sites to start attracting volunteers to the CELC. Although I had some time to begin getting the word out about volunteer opportunities, I have not had the chance to actually start bringing in volunteers, as filling job openings was a more pressing priority in recent weeks. However, now that the hiring process is calming down, I am finally getting back to the volunteer program, and in just a few days I have had a couple of major successes.

First, I have three volunteer interviews scheduled and one has already taken place. The person who I already interviewed is going to be the first volunteer in our new volunteer program, and she will be starting tomorrow. I conducted my first “volunteer screening interview” with her last week, and she will spend the rest of the summer and fall semester working about eight hours a week split evenly between helping with administrative tasks and assisting teachers in the classroom. Since she cannot work in the classroom until we get several documents back, we will be spending tomorrow completing the orientation that I developed a few weeks ago and working together to develop a recruitment plan to bring in children to one of our classrooms for the fall. That said, is anyone reading this looking for a four-star childcare center?  Anyway, if all goes well this week, we will have four volunteers working with our program in the near future.

In addition to individual volunteers, I have made some progress getting volunteer groups scheduled. First, Columbus Early Learning Centers is going to be a site for Community Commitment 2015. For those of you who don’t know, Community Commitment is a large, one-day community service outreach event hosted by Ohio State’s Pay-It-Forward that takes place at the beginning of the fall semester. The CELC should receive about 15-20 volunteers who will help reconfigure several of the workspaces within the building. In addition, I am in the process of forming a partnership with an Ohio State student leadership organization that will involve brining OSU students into each of our preschool classrooms once a week to work in small groups on basic literacy skills.

Over the past couple of days, I have finally seen many of my efforts to develop the volunteer program pay off. I am incredibly excited to see where the volunteer program goes during the final weeks of the fellowship and beyond this summer.

I have chosen a career in filmmaking. With this power, comes great responsibility.

The ups and downs of filmmaking are either very high or very low. A body of work can come together smoothly but rarely does it go “perfectly” from start to finish. The difference between a great film and a good film is how the director adjusts to the issues he/she is presented with. There will always be problems during production but there is always a solution to the problem. In some cases, I find that the problems I am presented with often directly lead to a better overall product. Mistakes and issues bring out the best (or worst) in a film director.

Let me apply this theory to my current project in shooting a video series for Habitat For Humanity MidOhio through The Columbus Foundation. When I first began my ten week experience in my new workplace, my first job was to figure out what videos I was going to create. I went around to every department head and spoke to them about certain ideas they wanted to pursue. I assured them that the tentative video ideas they were conjuring in their minds were completely realistic and that I was excited to get started. However, as always, I was presented with an issue.

When you shoot documentary style videos the main concern on a daily basis is scheduling interviews. It is important to contact people who will do a great job of telling the same story that you, as the director, have in mind. But once you have a list of all the people you like to interview and somehow collect their contact information, you must convince them to do a video interview. Believe it or not, even in the 21st century filled with new technological advancements everywhere you look, people absolutely HATE being on camera. So what begins as a list of 20 potential interviews is quickly narrowed down to 3 scheduled interviews. This is scary when you have only 10 short weeks to complete a series of films. In short I have received lots and lots of “no thanks” and “my schedule is too hectic”. My list of potential interviewees continues to get shorter and shorter as does my length of time to complete these videos. It is time for me to figure out a solution to this  problem. I have a short amount of time to adjust, regroup, and rewrite.

The good news is that I am still getting great interviews with people all around the city of Columbus including donors, families, and volunteers. The message that will come from the content I already have pulled together will be spectacular. But I still have lots of work to do. Where there is a will there is a way. Stay tuned for a great product.

Although I’ve been working for ECDI for almost five weeks now, up until yesterday I had yet to meet the often discussed founder of our organization, Inna Kinney. Although we had never met, her backstory and character are so integral to ECDI that I already felt like I knew her. There are many version of Inna that I’ve come to understand since being here. There’s Inna, the Russian Jewish refugee who immigrated to the U.S. with her family as a child. There’s Inna, the women who overcame language barriers and poverty in order to help other refugees with financial troubles through her first foundation, Jewish Family Services. Then there’s Inna, the enterprising visionary behind the ever-expanding ECDI organization, one of the largest SBA lenders in the country. The only version of Inna I had met prior to yesterday was Inna the CEO, a commanding presence over a conference call speaker who, despite surrounding herself with a capable team of leaders, still insisted on having the final say at almost every level of her organization. And finally, there’s Inna in person, a warm and passionate woman I have only recently started to get to know.

When Inna walked into the basement yesterday, I’m embarrassed to admit that I did not recognize her. She had been out of the office for much of the summer due to vacations and health issues, and when she was here most of her time was spent on the upper floors in meetings. There are many people from ECDI’s multiple departments and locations that I have yet to meet, so when a stranger walks into the basement I usually assume that they’re from the Cleveland office or maybe the lending department. When Inna stopped by my desk to introduce herself, I was completely unprepared for meeting the CEO and even more shocked by the fact that she already knew who I was. “Oh you’re Bryn! I’ve been hearing such good things about you from Tammy!” She exclaimed, quickly wrapping me a tight hug. After only knowing her through stories for so long, if felt sort of like I was being hugged a fictional character. As she rushed off to tend to more important matters, I was left to reconcile the character that I’d imagined over the past few weeks with the woman I had only just met for the first time. I think I like the real Inna Kinney even better than the legend.

Today I attended SEED Training, a financial literacy course which clients of ECDI must first taking before being able to qualify for one of our small business loans. As much as I do love research and writing for the Development Department, I really look forward to the occasional opportunities I get to interact with ECDI clients. Sitting in on trainings has not only been a great way to get to know the programs I’m researching and writing grants for, it’s also helped me stay passionate about what I’m doing. When you’re neck deep in data analysis or sitting in organizational meetings all week, it’s easy to forget why your work is important. For those of you who read my last post, I’ve been having a hard time with one of my projects, and sometimes it’s a little disheartening to find that what you want to be able to do just isn’t as doable as you think it should be. However, today I was reminded that it isn’t about me or what I want to do. It’s about doing whatever I can to help people like the ones in SEED training achieve their dreams and, in doing so, promote economic wellbeing in my community.
The participants in SEED had so much potential, it was truly inspiring. Not only have the ECDI clients I’ve met so far deeply passionate about their own businesses, they’re often more than willing to help others, even those in similar industries. Of those in attendance today, two women were interested in the soul-food business. One, Mrs. M, already had an established drive-thru and was looking to find more capital while the other, Ms. K, was hoping to open her own restaurant after years of working in food services. Although both women immediately realized that they would be competing for some of the same clients, I was shocked by the bond they formed with each other during class. “There’s plenty of market for both of us!” Mrs. M reassured her young competitor, “There’s a demand for what we do, don’t you worry about it!” Mrs. M then asked Ms. K if she was planning on offering seafood, which Mrs. M could not sell at her restaurant due to a food allergy. When Ms. K said she would be, Mrs. M immediately promised to send her own regulars over to Ms. K’s restaurant if they ever wanted for seafood. Ms. K said she would be happy to keep normal business hours and send late-night customers to Mrs. M, whose business is open 24/7. It was truly heartwarming to see these two women choose to help rather than hurt each other’s businesses, and as the session progressed many of the participants offered similar aid and advice to others in the class. It’s always important to be reminded that what I’ve been doing every day is in small part allowing connections to be formed between amazing people like these.

Recently, I’ve found it difficult to go into work in the mornings. This is no doubt mostly due to the fact that my daily bus commute has been quite rainy as of late, but it was more than that. Since turning in the Women’s Fund Letter of Intent a few weeks back, I’ve mainly been working on one major project that is both extremely promising but also very mentally taxing. To date, I’ve combed through every grant folder that ECDI has ever applied for and collated all the information available into a spreadsheet for later analysis. Oftentimes, the information I need is hidden in folders upon folders in unrelated sections of the drive. Sometimes, after hunting for a piece of information for over an hour, I just have to give up and accept that I won’t be able to find it. I don’t like the idea of analyzing incomplete data, it is going to make it difficult to draw any sort of useful conclusion at end of my project.
However, I’m still finding interesting trends the information that I can find. For example, unsolicited bank asks, which is when someone from an organization simply writes a letter to a bank asking for money out of the blue, is a fairly common and surprisingly effective practice in the non-profit sector. Most of the time, we don’t even get a response from the bank, and when they do provide funding, it’s almost never for the full amount that was requested. Scrolling through the multitudes of bank asks we’ve sent in over the years, most of which never even garnered a response, it looks like a colossal exercise in futility. However, given even the limited data I’m working with, it seems that I had underestimated the impact of this asks. Even though banks rarely will give the full amount requested, most will give you a small portion of what you ask for. In the past, we’ve gotten only about a third of the amount we’ve requested, but when you realize that this third amounted to well over half a million dollars, you realize that what seemed at first to be an exercise in futility is actually a calculated bet against reasonable odds. Given the way I’ve been feeling about my current data project, it was nice to find that sometimes even though you don’t get exactly what you want, you usually at least get something. And sometimes that something just happens to be half a million dollars.

This past week, Vineyard hosted an international conference that garnered attendees from all across the United States, as well as from dozens of countries around the globe. In all, over 2500 individuals attended the week long event, hailing from as close as across the street and as far as Chile and Kenya. Our typically quiet, spacious work place was overrun by excited conference-goers, conversing in a variety of languages, and shuffling in and out of didactic, uplifting sessions. The conference has been one of the coolest aspects of working at Vineyard this summer; not just because of the intrinsic “coolness” of a legitimate international conference, but also because I was able to witness much of the work behind the scenes that made the event possible. Everything from the planning of the sessions, to the organizing of host homes for the international commuters, to the reservation of food trucks and picnic benches for the lunch breaks was all meticulously planned by my co-workers who I share a work space with. That in itself, was inspiring.

Vineyard came alive last week. The center was ostensibly bursting at the seams, full of vivaciousness and anticipation, and it was infectious. There was a sort of electricity in the air, charging every task, no matter how menial or salient it formerly was, with a particular enthusiasm that undoubtedly augmented the work being done throughout the week. The conference is done, but it serves as another reason why I am so grateful to have been matched at Vineyard this summer.

I finished my Theme Parks, Etc. analysis and drew some possible conclusions as to why cash expenses increased in 2015.  I believe it can be attributed to wishes to go to major sporting events in the past year, such as the Superbowl and National Championship game.  Tickets are very expensive and we usually buy those outright.  I think aside from being able to explain financial changes from FY 14-15, it was very helpful for my future goal of creating instructions on how to analyze costs going forward.  I found a few ways we could restructure the way Wish Coordinator’s describe expenses in the notes section going forward that would help with cost analysis.

Last Friday, I took a break from my normal routine and helped to roll up some flyers.  We need to warn people living in the area of our walking path for Walk for Wishes that we’ll be making noise in their neighborhood for a few hours.  It was fun to hang out with the interns and Development Officers.  I was the Development Intern last year so we laughed about memories from last year.  For example, after my internship I received an email from my former boss with the subject line “We’re Thinking about Using this for our Facebook Banner”.  I opened it to find a picture of me standing around, munching on a doughnut, instead of an action shot of me volunteering, thanks photographers! Our Walk is coming up on and I encourage everyone to sign up! It’s fun AND you get to be a part of helping us to grant wishes.  I’ll be walking with a team and any of you are welcome to join it.

Last but not least, I was interview by my hometown newspaper! I’ll include the link below.  I took my time crafting my answers and passed them along to marketing to review. I was really flattered when they replied back that I “have done a great job of conveying our mission and what we try to accomplish, through your own words and viewpoint.  You have eloquently answered all the questions and I don’t really have anything concrete to add or change”.  It’s the first time I’ve ever been interviewed by a newspaper and I was so happy I was able to articulately talk about my fellowship and convey our mission well.

http://hfchronicle.com/article/2015/jul/04/kalin-o%E2%80%99connor%E2%80%99s-numbers-can-make-wishes-come-true-sick-kids