Columbus Foundation Fellowship Programs

My biggest goal this week is to track down a response from 42 organizations that don’t have financial information about their programs available from an online source.  I am calling them all in order to determine A) if they have any programs that are specifically for women or girls, and B) if they can estimate the total expenses of this program for me.

These 42 organizations make up about half of the complete list of non-profit entities which I identified as those which sponsor programs for women and girls in the central Ohio area.  The half of the list which I called is those organizations which only partially fund programs for women and girls, whereas the other half is organizations who solely support women and girls.

I began making calls equipped with a script that went something like a choose-your-own-adventure story.

They all began the same:

“Hi, my name is Caroline and I am a fellow at the Women’s Fund of Central Ohio.  I am doing a research project on programs that support women and girls in the central Ohio area.  Does your organization sponsor any programs that specifically target women or girls?”

And then, there were two options (not accounting for the “well, maybe” category that a handful of people opted for).

Option A: “Yea, we do. But I’m not the best person to talk to about that. Let me get someone for you.”

To which I responded excitedly, “Great! I would like to learn more about it. I am specifically interested in gauging the total expenses for the program because I am trying to assess the total of all dollars spent on programs for women and girls in the Columbus area and this program would be an important piece of that.”

Or, Option B: “No, I don’t think we have anything specifically for girls.  We have girls in our program, but nothing specific.”

To which I responded appreciatively anyway, “Oh alright. That answers my question. Thank you so much for your time. Have a good day!”

As you can assume, those who chose Option A were my favorites. And they got to continue their adventure.

Once I was speaking to the person most able to answer my questions about the organization’s programs and expenses, I learned about a lot of interesting initiatives.  It was superbly enjoyable to learn a little bit about programs that serve women and girls that were previously unknown to me.  And among those organizations that do have programs for women or girls, I have had good success so far in also getting a close estimate of the dollars put into the program.  So goes my adventure in research for the Women’s Fund of Central Ohio. I think it is going to have a pretty rewarding ending.

This past week was a fun-filled week for the kids at ETSS Camp! The kids learned about healthy breakfast options and discussed about the types of foods they eat at home. What concerned me the most was that many of the kids told me they ate cookies for breakfast! Cookies?! I had to sit down with the kids and explain to them the importance of eating healthy and saving those cookies for a dessert. 

I also wanted the kids to sample a healthy breakfast option, so I brought in yogurt with grapes and blueberries! The kids really enjoyed it and said they would try something like this at home. Success!  It was a great way to teach the kids about healthy breakfasts. I wanted the kids to sample and then come up with a healthy breakfast meal of their own. They had great ideas: oatmeal, whole-grain cereal, and smoothies- YUM!

This week’s gardening was a take home garden activity. The kids were able to choose their own seeds from a variety of seeds (lettuce, peppers, cantaloupe, and others) and plant it in their small pot. They learned about how to care for their plants and the importance of watering daily. I hope their plants grow tall and strong!

Next week, the kids are going to learn about fast food and the health risks associated with eating these greasy foods. They’ll also learn about ways to make healthier choices at fast food restaurants as well as easy healthy recipes they can try at home. We’ll finish the week off by trying some bananas and blueberry “ice cream”- blended frozen bananas and blueberries! It’s a great dessert for everyone!

What a great week! The kids made their vitamin books and shares them with their family! The vitamin book was a small paper book with vitamins A, B, C, D, E, and K on each page. I had the kids wrote down the benefits of each vitamin and draw pictures of foods rich in these vitamins. It was a great way for the kids to learn vitamins. I have kids come up to me during lunch now and tell me that the orange they had for lunch has vitamin C in it! They tried some “Vitamin Water” that I brought in, which is simply water with sliced lemons and oranges. Some of the kids wished it had sugar in it…but most of the kids really enjoyed the water! It’s a great alternative to soda and juice!

With gardening, the kids have been working hard at the garden pulling weeds and watering our plants. It’s great to see how devoted the kids are to the garden and how well they work together! I hope they continue to run the community garden next year.

It’s been a great experience working for ETSS. I love the kids and the work I do with them! They are all really interested in learning about nutrition and gardening. Every day I’m learning more about the Ethiopian and Somali culture-the language, food, and religion. It’s interesting to learn about different cultures and the types of foods they eat at home. Some of the Somali camp kids shared with me a bananas and rice dish that they frequently eat at home!

Yesterday, my coworker Brett turns to me and goes, “What’s the law that says everything that can go wrong, will go wrong?” I said that would be Murphy’s….

Turns out my week 5 reflected very much of Murphy’s insightful theory. If you’ve been following my blog you may know CCA West has moved locations or really I should say is in the process of moving locations. We officially have moved everything out of the Boys and Girls Club with the exception of our printers and copy machines (vitals recruitment tools) so almost everything is physically in our new location on Dana Ave! This really is great news because it means I can start showing families and students are new school. However there have been a couple bumps in the road. For one our new location isn’t set up with internet yet, which is makes it very difficult to get any work done there. There is Internet at the Boys and Girls Club, just a mile or so away, but there is no furniture and thus no where to work. Also the building doesn’t have air conditioning and tends to resemble a rainforest-like atmosphere by about 11am. Brett and I have everything we need at our Main St. campus but that is all the way on the east side of town and right now we are focusing

Needless to say, we were spread pretty thin this week and Murphy seemed to be lurking around every corner. Just one of Murphy’s many appearances was on Thursday morning. Brett and I were planning on printing letters for new and returning students that included a school calendar, orientation dates and other back to school announcements. In the midst of this we realized we didn’t have an excel spreadsheet listing all the returning school students address and we would need to manually enter it from the files at West. Then we got a call from DotCom the printer company telling us they’d be at BGC in an hour to move our printers to Dana. So I did the mail merge for letters and labels of just the new students and then Brett quickly headed over to BGC to use their Internet and printers before the movers came. Well the storm that happened Wednesday afternoon caused BGC’s power to be down so Brett wasn’t able to print the letters and the elevator wasn’t working so the printers couldn’t even be moved. This little fiasco was followed by several others and just to further complicate things almost all of the CCA staff was in DC for a conference so it just Brett and I fending for ourselves. But despite these minor set backs we did enroll 5 more students at West. We’ll count that as one win for week 5… I can only hope that Murphy won’t show his face this coming week.

Nikki

Inhabiting a dark corner of the Northside attic stood a file cabinet with the tantalizing labels “Historical Records” and “Agency Publications.” Alas, it was locked! My supervisors have been joking with me over the past few weeks that they have lots of keys, most of which are unidentified, opening unknown drawers, cabinets, and doors. There are even play keys to nothing accidentally mixed in from the teachers, who give them to their students to play. Twice now I have uncovered mysterious sets of keys, adding them to my supervisors’ growing collection.

And now here I was at Northside, wondering how I might unlock these tempting drawers without spending hours trying one hundred unmarked keys. Maybe I could try my lock picking skills with a bobby pin? Or break the lock with a heavy binder? I did have my toolkit with me, so maybe a hammer would do the trick? And then I remembered the basket of keys I had seen in the front office. Scurrying downstairs, hoping to avoid the bobby pin option (knowing it wouldn’t end well), I looked more closely at the key basket and discovered that some of the keys were in labeled envelopes. And praises!, the tantalizing file cabinet also happened to be labeled with a number, with a corresponding envelope containing a key. Turns out it was the correct key!

And opening these two drawers I found . . . a few items. You would think if someone took the time to label the file drawer, it would be brimming with a trove of documents and photos, but alas, this was not the case. The drawer did contain a large photo album with pictures from the 1950s-2000s, so that is quite a find and served to dispel some of my disappointment at the lack of annual reports (of which pretty much all from Northside are missing).

Most importantly, by figuring out the key situation at Northside, I can now officially say that I have gathered (fingers crossed) all the historical materials from both Northside and Eastside. And I didn’t need to practice my lock picking skills (yet!) in the process.

I’ve had a busy fifth week at LifeCare Alliance, and it’s hard to believe that today marks the halfway point of my summer fellowship.

This week, I’ve been drafting letters to send out to pet stores and veterinary offices in the Greater Columbus Area. It’s always helpful to make connections within the community, and we’re hoping that these letters will help yield volunteers, donations, and/or partnerships. I’ve also gained experience putting together descriptions of the three volunteer positions associated with the Pet Care program – Senior Pet Care Volunteer Coordinator, Pet Food Delivery Volunteer, and Pet Food Processing Volunteer.

On Tuesday of this week, I was given the opportunity to attend a lunch session hosted by the Association of Fundraising Professionals and the Grant Professionals Association. The theme of this lunch session was “Storytelling for Fundraisers: Telling an Engaging Story about Your Organization’s Work.”

My very official name tag from the lunch session!

After just graduating with an undergraduate degree in English, I was extremely excited to see what this session was all about. We heard four mini-lectures about storytelling as it applies to grant writing, my favorite being “Telling Your Story in a Grant Proposal.” This breakout session suggested writing a grant using the same literary techniques that you would employ when writing a piece of fiction; your proposal should have a hook, main characters (your clients), a “villain” (the problem), and a hero (your non-profit). It was an informative way to tie together my passion for English with my passion for non-profit work. This was also a great opportunity to network with other professionals in Columbus, and I ran into several other summer fellows while I was there!

In my last post, I brought up a point at the very end and said that I would speak on it the next time. Well that time has come, and so I bring you: What brought me here, why I am attracted to the nonprofit sector.

As someone with a Marketing degree working on an environmental scan for a non-profit organization, it is clear how many similarities exist between working at a for-profit and at a non-profit. In some respects, it’s the same exact thing. The marketing department has to consistently work on branding and catering messages to target audiences, diligently watching social media sites and other public forum vehicles to make sure that word-of-mouth advertising is positive and accurate. The finance team has to watch the budget and ensure that the marketing and development creatives are setting reasonable goals. Operations and quality assurance managers make sure that all of the small pieces of the organization are functioning according to standard and work to repair any broken cogs in the processes. Everyone is constantly in and out of meetings, numbers have to add up, and deadlines are very real. This fellowship has allowed me to apply the concepts that I learned in my business management classes more fully than I ever did in internships at for-profit organizations. In fact, one of Alvis House’s greatest strengths is its business orientation and focus on outcomes.

The difference between them, then, and what attracts me to non-profit work, is where your hard work goes and who it benefits. Being able to meet and interact with the people that are profiting from my forty hours each week makes my work feel more real, tangible, and direct. While many for-profit organizations do great things for society, I’ve always been sort of demotivated by the obscure, faceless corporate entity that seemed to be the direct beneficiary of my efforts. After a hard day, I would think, “But what was all of that really for?”, and not being able to come up with an answer would sometimes leave me apathetic towards work. Don’t get me wrong—I am not suggesting that working at a for-profit is pointless or unimportant. Quite the contrary, actually, as our society would fall apart if nobody was churning out profit and providing necessary products and services. But for me personally, the apparentness and directness of the relationship between effort exerted and societal benefit gives me a much stronger drive to keep chugging along. And I am very grateful to this fellowship experience for helping me to make this discovery!

This week has been an overall slow week for BizTown. Most of the staff is coming down from the craziness of the Fourth of July. My task for this week has been to find contacts for all of the local school districts and schools so that Junior Achievement can market BizTown for this coming school year.

This morning spiced up my week a bit, though. Today, I am going to write about my narrow escape from the law. On most mornings, I am the second or third person in the building and so by the time I arrive, the workday is already underway. This week though, we have several staff members either at national conferences or on vacation, and so I have been the first person in the office both yesterday and today.

I knew there was an alarm, and so yesterday I hung around outside the building for about fifteen minutes for the next person to arrive, just so that I would not set it off if I let myself in. I never had an alarm in my house growing up and so I have no knowledge of how security systems work.

She arrived and walked right on in. No flashing lights, no sirens. I followed, thinking in my head, ‘the alarm must just turn off at a certain time in the morning?’ What I did not know was after we parted ways, she went to disarm the alarm.

So this morning, I was the first one here again. I let myself in, as normal.

About twenty minutes later, I hear footsteps in the hallway. I turn around ready to greet my coworkers, and then I hear a walkie talkie buzz. That’s not normal, I thought. Leah, one of my coworkers rounds the corner followed by two police officers. My heart immediately sank – I knew immediately that I had set off the alarm. Fortunately, everyone had a good sense of humor – and no real harm was done.

Who knew that along with all that I am learning about non-profit organizations and curriculum development, I would also learn that I am terrible at breaking into buildings? I guess I am learning my strengths and weaknesses.

In other BizTown news, I wanted to revisit JA BizTown Summer Camp (click here to learn more about the camp experience). Here is a video showing the highlights of what was an awesome week:

To learn more about the impact of JA Biztown Summer Camp see: JA BizTown Summer Camp Pays Off in More Than One Way

Those of us who call Columbus our home don’t need to be told that we live in a great city.  But this blog post will give you a few more bragging points (to tide you over while we wait for football season to start).

Over the past few decades, the national network of philanthropic organizations which serve women and girls has expanded greatly.  Today, there are pillars of support for women and girls in nearly all metropolitan communities across the country.  Nearly all greater-urban areas are equipped with a branch of the United Way, a YWCA, a women’s health clinic, and a women’s fund.

My job for the summer has been to detail the profile of central Ohio’s non-profit organizations serving women and girls.  As I explore the multifarious array of non-profit entities which are engaged in this work, I am continually impressed by you, Columbus.  It seems that our city is teaming with people invested in enriching the lives of women and girls, and through them, our community as a whole.

Columbus is looking out for her women and girls, one more thing that makes this an outstanding place to live.  Here are some major investors in the potential of women and girls:

The Limited Brands Foundation, thanks to Lex and Abigail, focuses much of its philanthropic energy on the Columbus area.  Because much of the company’s success is due to women’s purchasing power, the Limited Foundation is committed to the health and empowerment of women and children.

Second, the United Way of Central Ohio has a chapter of the Women’s Leadership Council, not something that all United Ways have developed.   This group of committed, community-minded women works to provide educational and economic opportunities for women in need of support.

Finally, there is The Ohio State University, home to the leading breast cancer research hospital in the country.  Thanks to them, we know “There is no routine mammogram” and so much more about the prevention and treatment of breast cancer.

I would be remiss if I did not also mention my own organization, the Women’s Fund of Central Ohio, which provides significant support for organizations of all shapes and sizes looking to make an investment in women and girls in creative and effective ways.  We fund programs that increase economic self-sufficiency for women, encourage leadership for women, and develop lifeskills for girls. On top of all that, we empower women and men to make a significant difference in their community through philanthropy.  Along with the organizations listed above and many, many others, by transforming the lives of women and girls, we are driving social change.

Columbus, you are setting a great example.  Your commitment to your community is reflected in your commitment to enriching the lives of women and girls.

Way to go, Columbus.

Week Four of my fellowship has been a little chaotic, what with the move to our new location on Old Henderson Rd. The building is not quite finished, so there has been a significant delay in unpacking several rooms. The new building does look more modern and professional: it is split up into two parts – one for the administration offices and the other for programming. The programming section of the building is the side that is still under construction. With everything going on, it has been interesting to try to unpack and resume normal work. Even in the short time amount of time we have been here, the building has really started to come together. The office I share with the Clinical Program Asst. is also starting to take shape. The new office we share is spacious, bright, and warm. We are pretty happy with the new office and new furniture.

The new building is located by several Asian markets and bakeries, so I have had the opportunity to experience Japanese food and pastries, some pictures of which I have included below.

Most of my time has been spent unpacking, re-organizing, and trying to get back to a normal workflow. Unfortunately, since the building is not completely together, everyone’s ability to resume normal work projects has been delayed. Next week, I have a few meetings scheduled with community agencies on the west side to discuss offering a workshop type program at one of the agencies’ locations, so I am hoping that we are pretty much back on track by next week, and are moving forward with the west side project.

Luckily, we had great movers, and many of our regular volunteers stepped in to lend a hand in helping us unpack. It was a lot of work to pack everything up, but I think everyone likes to forget we actually have to unpack everything within a few days. In my opinion, I think unpacking is almost the worst part of moving. I think this is because people tend to unpack everything immediately to create some form of normality. I think everyone has been amazing during this process.