Columbus Foundation Fellowship Programs

This summer, I basically have the coolest job ever.  I get to make art, play with kids at summer camp, and learn what it takes for a non-profit museum to operate and function successfully in Columbus – what could be better?

My name is Marly Coldiron, and I am a graduate student working toward my Master’s degree in Arts Policy and Administration, with a specialization in Museum Administration and Education – also known as the world’s longest degree name! This summer, I am working with Ohio Designer Craftsman and the Ohio Craft Museum, which is both a membership and support program for Ohio artists and a museum that showcases fine craft from the state and around the world. You can learn about the amazing work they do by visiting their website. My main project will be working with the Young Masters summer camp and the Teen Summer workshops as a sort of logistical/operations manager, but I also get to design and teach my own art lessons, and assist with anything else the Education department (or anyone else!) can throw at me.

I spent the first part of the week going to orientation and meeting the other Fellows, getting settled, trying to remember everyone’s names (!!), getting supplies ready for camp, and beginning to plan my own lessons.  I have a giant Pinterest board going with all my lesson ideas and supply lists, and spent several hours digging through bins of supplies, organizing fabric scraps, and searching for foam craft stamps online (they’re surprisingly hard to find!).  Camp doesn’t start for a couple of weeks, so I have some time to get organized and to decide what I want to teach.

My desk and my Pinterest board of lesson ideas for Young Masters camp.

The big event this week is our table at the Columbus Arts Festival.  In the Hands-On Art area, children and their families can participate in art activities and make their own projects to take home.  At the Ohio Craft Museum table, I helped children make “wearable collages” by adding feathers, sequins, patterned paper, and other fun items to clear name badges.

Come make art with us!

Our presence at the festival is a great way to reach out the community and let people know what the Ohio Craft Museum has to offer.  Many people who stopped by had never heard of the museum before, so I was really excited that I could give them some information, a brochure or two, and a personal invitation to come visit the gallery.  And it was so great to see kids excited about making art!  All day I saw kids proudly wearing their collage badges, and showing off their other projects and masterpieces they created.

Kids making their collages to wear.

Volunteers and I will be manning the table all weekend, so if you are at the festival, stop by and say hello!  If this week is any indication of what the rest of the summer will be like, I know that I am in for an amazing experience!  Bring it on 🙂

The question. THE question. The question.
When you’re thirty it might be a marriage proposal, but when you’re eighteen, just having caught your thrown graduation cap, its, “What the hell am I going to do with my life?!”

It’s a scary concept. To think that steps we make -two years after we became legally certified to drive a car!- will forever shape your future…So when I went to college, I framed the question to myself a thousand different ways: What do I want to study for four years? How do I want to spend my time? Where do I want to work? What do I want from life? What’s going to make me happy?
Breaking it down didn’t make it simpler. Any way I looked at it, spending the best 8 hours of the day at work was depressing. “There’s not a great alternative to a job, though,” my logic went, “so I guess if I have to toil a third of my day away it better be for a pretty good reason.”

That is how I came to be a nonprofit nerd (I read blogs and books about donor cultivation…don’t’ judge) and ultimately a Columbus Foundation Fellow for Children’s Hunger Alliance.
Today I finished my first week as an intern for Children’s Hunger Alliance, a nonprofit that acts as a middleman between USDA funding for food and locations that have hungry children to feed. For most of the year, they’re facilitating breakfasts and after school school snacks, but when school is out, CHA works to provide healthy lunches and nutrition education for kids who might not get a nutritious meal anywhere else.

I can say at the end of my first week that CHA has proven to be everything I anticipated from a nonprofit. It’s pace is fast and the computers are slow, the employees are over tasked and probably underpaid, their passion is infinite and their greed is nonexistent. I get stiff sitting at my computer, but then I stand up and drive to a site. A four year old smiles and talks to me as she hula-hoops on a full stomach and her older sister (no more than 6) stays close by, watching her protectively. I don’t know where their parents are or what they would be doing if they weren’t here in this moment talking to me. And I don’t want to think about it, especially as the boys scuffle and strut about, straining to show their dominance in the only way they know how, and the older girls talk about who said who wants to fight who.

Another random child runs up to hug me on my way out. I don’t know her, but as I walk out knowing that my time at the computer leads to a meal, a smile, and a hug in a child’s day, I’m pretty sure I’ve answered the question.

People are the only things that matter, and the only things worth working for. I’m so fortunate that I get to spend my time on things that matter ❤

My first week as a member of the Columbus Foundation Summer Fellowship has been an exciting time! The orientation at the Foundation was much more enjoyable than I anticipated and my fellow Fellows were as nice and as fun as anyone could hope.

My beginning experience with FLOW was equally satisfying, I met Laura a member of the Board and Alice the Watershed Coordinator, they were very excited and had a long list of items for me to cover over the course of the summer. My first afternoon was mainly spent putting dates on my calendar and reading over different documents and initiatives of the organization.

On Tuesday, my first full day I was happy to accompany Alice down to the banks of the Olentangy near the Horseshoe. We met a high school summer animation class which was studying the flow of the river and wanted to know about the river now compared to when the Fifth Avenue dam was still in place. Their questions varied from wanting us to identify wildflowers, trees, birds, and turtles, to ones such as “what natural and manmade threats are facing the river?”

It was a great experience for me to help answer younger kids’ questions as well as to test my knowledge of wildflowers and other species. I also was greatly encouraged to see the development of the new wetlands beside the Olentangy and see that they were already attracting different species. I was also impressed by the use of living willow stakes to help secure the embankment and to protect it against erosion.

One of my first tasks was to examine the city parking ordinance and to look for ways to make it more environmentally friendly. Some easy suggestions revolve around the interpretations of the current wordings having to do with tree placement, and future suggestions include using more bioswales to deal with storm water. It is a real example of how positivism could make a real difference in the city and for the watershed.

Over the rest of the week I helped explore sites for the Anheuser-Busch volunteer cleanup site, participated in a science committee meeting, and began reading over the watershed action plan. I look forward to the next nine weeks and can’t wait to visit more of the watershed’s tributaries!

A great piece of artwork at RMHC!

My first week at the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Central Ohio has been one of the most exhausting and rewarding weeks of my life. I came into this fellowship with a driving passion for the arts and for the nonprofit sector; however I didn’t quite understand the clear impact that just one non-profit organization can make in a community. The Ronald McDonald House is the perfect example of a non-profit that continues to impact the lives of numerous families from around the world. RMHC is the one place in Columbus that acts as a ‘home-away-from-home’ for these families. The reason why this house can make such an impact is due to the countless volunteers that literally ‘run the house’. Approximately 250 housewarming volunteers donate their time to RMHC to make the house act as a full-service ‘hotel’ of sorts and to create a home-like environment. It is because of these volunteers that RMHC will soon become the world’s largest Ronald McDonald, housing the capabilities to comfortably fit 120 families.

The Columbus Foundation

I started my first week as a Summer Fellow at the Carriage House in the Columbus Foundation. This orientation session was a great way to meet the 10 other fellows and to become introduced with Dan Sharpe. Quickly after this session I headed over to the Ronald McDonald House over on 771 East Livingston to start my ten week residency!

I work with Kate Ziegler, the Volunteer Manager, who acts as the person who recruits, recognizes and retains the numerous RMHC volunteers. My main project that I will be working on during the next nine weeks is a Volunteer Stewardship Plan. This plan will hopefully turn the informal structures of recruiting, recognizing and retaining volunteers that are already in place, into a formal and organic structure that will streamline the entire volunteer management process.

RMHC is right across from Nationwide Children’s Hospital

A large part of what this plan will be based of the Donor Stewardship Plan that was just recently created by the Development Director, Angie Hartley. Most of my time spent during this first week has been talking with Angie about the creation of this plan and the processes found within it. Her input has been invaluable in my understanding of what a Stewardship plan should really look like. I have also met the ten other full-time staff members, each of whom explained their role at RMHC and how they might be affected by the Volunteer Stewardship Plan.

This is my new office at RMHC!

I am already extremely excited about creating this plan for RMHC, as I can see exactly how vital volunteers are for the success of the house. Hopefully, streamlining this process will allow the RMHC staff to consistently recognize volunteers that are doing a great job. I cannot wait to see what the next nine weeks have in store but I know that I will be learning so much about myself by helping to build up Columbus’ Home-Away-From-Home.

Eligible – Are you a college Junior, Senior, Graduate Student, or recent graduate that attended a Franklin County college or university, or graduated from a Franklin county high school?

Apply– Online by 2/7/14

Interview– Candidates will be selected by the host organizations for interviews in April.

Serve– The 10-week fellowship starts June 2 and ends Aug 8 2014.

In their own words!
A video highlighting the Summer Fellowship Program.

For the last four years, we’ve partnered with nonprofits that have served as host organizations for a Summer Fellow. Organizations design a full-time, meaningful work experience for the Summer Fellow—and receive a stipend for their operation and oversight of the 10-week program. 

Do you have a meaningful, challenging, and mission-related project that would be great for a Summer Fellow?

Please read about the expectations and requirements, and consider submitting an application by November 8, 2013.

In their own words!
A video highlighting the Summer Fellowship Program.

Today was my last day at Alvis House, and it feels so strange to be leaving. I spent forty hours a week for ten weeks in this office and got to know a lot of interesting, funny, intelligent, and genuinely caring people. Saying goodbye is always really hard; you’re stuck between, 1. Wanting to just hug everyone and tell them, again, how much you REALLY loved meeting them and getting to know them, honestly, and 2. Maintaining professionalism and avoiding over-doing it, to the point where it’s uncomfortable. Luckily, the people that I’ve worked with over the past ten weeks didn’t mind a bit of hugs and sappy goodbyes. They even threw me a little going-away party in the conference room, complete with cupcakes appropriately topped with plastic lambs (a reference to both my last name and the agricultural venture I’m taking on next).

Here’s the panicked mid-fellowship to-do list that I typed at the start of Week 6. Everything on the list has been completed and crossed off (except the writing of this very blog post and a few more goodbyes that need to be said), and that is something that felt like a momentous task when the list was compiled. However, a little bit of focus, planning, and self-imposed deadlines go a long way. All of the research from the summer has been compiled into one giant 220-slide PowerPoint presentation and will be accessible to people throughout Alvis House. I was able to meet with some of the department heads to discuss the implications, and it felt good to know that the information gathered will be helpful when moving forward with programming, etc.

Thank you Alvis House—especially my supervisor, Jennifer, as well as Gloria, April, Arlene, and Denise, the President and CEO—for the amazing experience! And thank you to the Columbus Foundation for the wonderful opportunity as well.

Today was the final closing luncheon for the 2013 Fellowship, and I have to say: it was amazing.

All of the Fellows had been giving each other updates on their projects and what they were experiencing at their organizations throughout the course of the summer, but it was awesome to see the final results and to hear about everyone’s accomplishments. We all worked in such a wide variety of tasks this summer: some ran summer camp activities and planned educational experiences, some helped small businesses get a foot in the door, some facilitated research and archived data, and some coordinated whole systems of volunteers. The Fellowship was a very interesting and insightful experience. My own experience at Alvis House was beyond wonderful in and of itself, but having a network of other Fellows working at other organizations at the same time was very eye-opening as well. I learned a lot about what Columbus has to offer, in terms of nonprofit work and organizations, for-profits and social enterprise, and of course all of the awesome recreational activities—events, restaurants, neighborhood haunts—that make this city unique.

Columbus has treated me very well over the past four years, and I’m so thrilled that I was able to get to know it as well as I have. Even though I am planning on traveling and moving around a bit over the next couple of years, I have a feeling that Columbus will always feel like home. I plan on coming back to visit every chance I get, if not settling down here permanently after I’ve wandered a bit.

So thank you to the Columbus Foundation, again, for the summer. Luckily, my Fellowship hasn’t ended just yet, so I will save my goodbyes to Alvis House for next week!