Columbus Foundation Fellowship Programs

This week at Zora’s House was a beautiful blend of connection, celebration, and critical reflection. I had the opportunity to attend the final game of the Zora’s House softball team, and what a team it is. Comprising staff members, current and past program participants, and donors, the team is a living, breathing example of the community that Zora’s House cultivates. Watching them cheer each other on, laugh through the innings, and show up for one another reminded me that belonging can be built anywhere, even on a ballfield.

Additionally, I attended a Zora’s House Happy Hour, where I met several members of the Leadership Fellows program. These casual, heartfelt conversations gave me a deeper appreciation for the stories and aspirations behind the data I’ve been helping to collect. Hearing how the programs have shaped their goals, confidence, and sense of purpose made everything feel even more personal.

In my ongoing work on Program Impact Assessments, I’m continuing a structured audit of Zora’s House’s four core programs: Leadership Fellows, Wealth Builders, the WoCO Market, and Membership. We’re using a mix of surveys and interviews to gather both qualitative and quantitative feedback from participants. I’ve also begun analyzing early results using the organization’s Logic Model to evaluate how well outcomes align with the intended goals of each program.

This week, I also assisted in refining some of our evaluation tools, making them more accessible, conversational, and reflective of the community-focused tone that Zora’s House is known for. As we synthesize findings, I’m working closely with staff to turn these insights into actionable recommendations that will help shape future programming.

From the field to the feedback forms, this week was a reminder that Zora’s House isn’t just creating programs, it’s building a culture. And I’m grateful to be learning how to measure impact without losing sight of the heart behind it.

Until next time,

Asia

Hello everyone!

I am finishing up my fourth week at the McConnell Arts Center (MAC)! This week has been a wonderful week as I have had many opportunities for learning and professional growth. Read on for some highlights from each day this week!

On Monday, I attended a virtual webinar through Nonprofit Learning Lab called “Leading for AI: The Three Mindsets for Thoughtful Implementation”. This webinar and its speaker encouraged participants, and their nonprofits, to approach AI as you would approach any experiment for a science fair, with a series of simple experiments, playfulness and curiosity, and messy discovery keeping in mind the various mindsets that can either encourage or block AI utilization. On this day, I also had the chance to meet with the MAC’s Executive Director and another colleague to talk about anything nonprofits. This was an opportunity for the ED to pour out all her knowledge from years of experience and for me to absorb that knowledge for myself and ask any questions. This is something that we are planning to do regularly, and I look forward to learning from her and getting to apply knowledge I have learned in previous nonprofit management classes. The last meeting of the day provided a time to ask last minute questions and to work out any kinks surrounding the final process of switching over the MAC’s booking and event management software.

On Tuesday, I attended a meeting in preparation for the MAC’s participation in the Columbus Book Festival where the MAC will be hosting a booth. We talked logistics and general information surrounding the festival and staff shifts for working our table. On this day, I also got to sit in and help (the Executive Director and the Development Coordinator) review, edit, and submit a final report for a grant that the MAC had previously been awarded for the MAC’s Cultural Connections series. Afterwards, I went with the Development Coordinator to La Chatelaine to start a catering order for an upcoming event called Farm to Fashion.

On Wednesday, I started my day at The Columbus Foundation where we had a very inspiring and thought-provoking discussion. We watched a TED Talk given by Gitte Frederiksen called “Great Leadership Is a Network, Not a Hierarchy” and we learned the importance of leading as a community and the power of asking questions, being vulnerable, and being kind. We also got to personally reflect and then talk about the following question: how do you intend to leverage your power, purpose, passion, and positioning to affect change in the areas of human activity you care about?

On Thursday, I attended a whole staff meeting. The first topic of discussion was the Worthington Arts Festival that occurred two weekends ago. We talked about what worked, what did not, and what we would want to change. It was great to hear everyone’s feedback, especially about the successes and the positive feedback we got from the community. On this day, I also started a project in which I was asked to do some research about a performing arts group that is having a hard time attracting people to their performances. I was asked to write up some information about the group’s upcoming performances and create some biographies for the performers that can be used to help promote the group and the programming they will do at the MAC.

Today, Friday, was a very full but very fun day! I got to attend an event hosted by The Columbus Foundation in which Giving USA presented their Annual Report on Philanthropy for 2024. I really enjoyed the opportunity to be in a room full of people passionate about nonprofit work while at the same time getting to review last year’s data and reflect on trends. Later in the afternoon, I also got to attend an Association for Fundraising Professionals Small Shop Meeting. The topic was Planned Giving and I learned a lot about bequests, endowments, trusts, etc.

Overall, I have had a very productive week, and I am so grateful for the opportunities I have been given to engage in the sector, network, and reflect on personal growth.

Talk to you soon!

Graci

Hi all,  

I cannot believe it is already Week 4 at ETSS. The Summer Youth Enrichment Program is in full swing. Most of my days are spent reaching out to companies, whether in person, on the phone, or through their email, to request donations for the Youth Summit. I also found several grants to apply for on behalf of ETSS’s Youth Out-of-School Time department, which we have been slowly working through.  

I’ve had a couple small fundraising wins this week. It’s always exciting to see results! The 2^nd & 7 Columbus Kids’ Book Bank has generously supplied over 600 books for the Youth Summit, which means that every kid will leave with a free book in hand!  

During this week’s Learning Session at the Columbus Foundation, Dr. Lomax asked us to lay out how we intend to use our power, passion, purpose, and positioning to effect change in the areas we care about. I thought about some of my strengths—I think that intellectual curiosity and pattern recognition are two of my biggest. I also considered what I care about—a difficult question to answer at 20, there’s no shortage of answers for many of us. I tend to think a lot about the impact of macro-level structures on human behavior and outcomes, so something policy-related seems apt. Dr. Lomax encouraged us to put aside other people’s expectations about our futures (in my case, the assumption that political science students must want to be politicians or lawyers, though I’m not ruling either out) and focus on our own interests.

My internship at ETSS has helped me discover a lot about my goals. I absolutely love the nonprofit environment. It is incredibly motivational, especially when you get to interact with the people your organization serves regularly and base your programs on their ideas and feedback. I’m learning so much about fundraising, marketing, and even working with children—all areas I was previously quite unfamiliar with. I am interested in seeing more of the program development and community partnership sides of ETSS as well.  

This week’s Friday field trip was to the Scioto Mile Fountain. The kids played in the splash pad, got pushed on swings, and explored the riverside trail. Talking to the students is always the highlight of my week!  

Until next week,  

Sanay  

Hi everyone! With the fourth week of the Fellowship coming to a close, the Center for Disability Empowerment is now just two weeks out from the 35th Anniversary Celebration of the Americans with Disabilities Act. As I suspected, the planning really picked up this week once Sue got back from vacation. We started finalizing some key aspects of the event, including the printed program and the catering decisions to the Columbus Museum of Art. This morning, we had another Planning Committee meeting for which I took notes. Although the CDE has by far taken on the largest responsibility for planning the event, it was still interesting to hear what other Planning Committee members have been working on behind the scenes. Each organization involved in the Planning Committee definitely has something unique and important to offer for the success of an event like this. 

This Wednesday, at the Columbus Foundation Fellows Learning Session, Dr. Lomax asked us to think about how we can leverage our power, purpose, passion and position to affect change in areas we care about. I have been trying to reflect on this over the past couple days and see how it may be applicable to my time at the CDE. I have always felt passionately that all people are valuable and deserve empathy. In a world where people tend to see the worst in others they don’t understand, I try to make an effort to understand and empathize with people different from me. Before this experience, I really did not have any personal connection or know anything about the disability community. I have already learned so much about the resilience and strength of the disability community, despite them being constantly excluded and misunderstood. I now know how much we have missed out by not affording the disabled community the power and voice that they have always deserved. The work at the CDE would not matter if not for those who are affected by the lived experience of a disability. 

On that note, I hope to continue to use my passion to empathize and share power with those around me at the Center for Disability Empowerment and work towards a common goal. 

Until next week, 

Rachael McCague 

Hi Everyone,

Week 4 at Huckleberry House has been filled with so exciting developments, the most anticipated being the arrival of our new Chief Executive Officer, Jennifer Sharma. Over the past few weeks, we’ve all been preparing for Jennifer’s arrival (and the reception held in her honor), so it’s great to finally have her here with us.

Also, in my humble opinion, I think the reception went very well! I know I personally really enjoyed speaking with some of the board members and community stakeholders who attended. (It’s always so fun to learn about the various ways people are connected to, or impacted by, a nonprofit like Huck House, which has had a long-standing and meaningful impact on the community.)

This week was also the release of Giving USA 2025: The Annual Report on Philanthropy, the most comprehensive and longest-running analysis of charitable giving in the United States. To learn about the report’s findings, the Advancement Team and I attended The Columbus Foundation’s Giving USA 2025 event. I’m happy to report that the report’s findings was quite positive, with total giving in 2024 increasing by 6.3% in current dollars and seven out of the nine sectors tracked experiencing growth even when adjusted for inflation. I and others found this news particularly encouraging, especially given what has been a financially challenging first half of 2025 for many nonprofits nationwide.

Lastly, amid all these developments, I made major headway on reaching out to our current Safe Place partners. While I still have many calls and emails to send, it’s so far been rewarding to connect with current partners and express our appreciation for their collaboration in helping youth in crisis.

Until next week,
Emoni

Welcome back everyone! Week 4 at Netcare Access and The Columbus Foundation were filled with fun social events, introspective questions, and lots of interesting mini projects. I feel like I have gotten the swing of things at Netcare and am really starting to know and enjoy my time with all the staff there.

I started this week off strong with a Columbus Foundation social event at the Columbus Commons. The other fellows and I gathered to watch Rick Ross and the Columbus Symphony, which was definitely an interesting collaboration of classical music and rap. It was an amazing experience to get to know the other fellows more personally especially since we are all placed at different sites.

On Wednesday, we spent our morning at The Columbus Foundation continuing our conversation on leadership. We watched a video about the importance of all individuals being a leader, while emphasizing the problems with hierarchical leadership. At the end of our session, Dr. Lomax asked us to dig deep and answer how we would leverage our power, passion, purpose, and more to make change. As someone extremely passionate about mental health, (specifically in adolescents) I found it easy to immediately answer how I wanted to change the world. But when I thought more about my other passion, music, I was stuck as to how I wanted to make an influence in that part of my life. Listening to the other fellows talk about their uncertainty with the future was extremely reassuring knowing that it is completely normal to not know what we want to do yet. This whole session was such an interesting topic, while also provoked some deeper thoughts.

This past week at Netcare consisted of many different projects. I got to write an article for our quarterly newsletter and focused a lot on collecting client testimonials for our campaign. I also made various social media posts like I have been doing and started reaching out to staff members for potential shadowing opportunities and coffee chats. 

Overall, this week has been extremely fun and engaging, and I am looking forward to more exciting things next week!

Best,

Anaika

Though this was a shorter week due to the Juneteenth holiday, I was still able to make meaningful progress on several ongoing projects at Zora’s House while continuing to deepen my understanding of the organization’s internal structure and long-term vision.

One of my main priorities this week was continuing to organize the Zora’s House library collection, which includes roughly 350 books authored primarily by women of color. As I work through the cataloging process, I’ve become increasingly focused on developing a library system that is not only functional now but also easy to maintain and use well beyond my internship. I’ve been researching classification options, labeling systems, and digital tools that would allow staff and members to easily browse, check out, and recommend books in the future. This process has helped me recognize the importance of sustainability in nonprofit work — systems need to be intuitive, low-maintenance, and adaptable so they can continue to serve the community effectively, regardless of staff turnover or capacity shifts.

In addition to the library, I began organizing the Zora’s House shared drive to support clearer internal documentation and easier access across programs. This behind-the-scenes work gave me greater appreciation for the operational backbone of a nonprofit: the digital systems, workflows, and shared knowledge that keep programs running efficiently.

I also had the opportunity to connect with various stakeholders, including program participants and community partners. Hearing about their work helped me understand how each person contributes to the broader ecosystem of Zora’s House. It reminded me that effective nonprofit leadership requires strong, trust-based relationships and communication across roles and sectors.

Even in a shortened week, my work reinforced a key insight: nonprofits thrive not just on visionary programming but on thoughtful infrastructure that supports long-term sustainability, accessibility, and inclusion. It’s meaningful to know that even after my internship ends, the tools and systems I’m helping to create will continue to serve this dynamic, community-rooted space.

Hello everybody! It is week 3 at Tewahedo Social Services, and planning for the Youth Summit is in full swing. I have been applying for in-kind donations left and right, trying to secure water, food, and other supplies for the day. I met with our Volunteer Coordinator Tilahun Tesfaye to finalize our volunteer roles and upload them to our signup platform, Bloomerang. I also found several grants that I think ETSS would be a strong candidate for, so my supervisor Sarah Huffman and I will meet next week to pull together our applications. I am excited to get a window into grant applications in the nonprofit world. 

ETSS’s Summer Youth Enrichment Program (SYEP) began this week, so the entire Youth Services department staff has been quite busy managing our 11 sites and putting out metaphorical fires. On Monday, we distributed school and cleaning supplies to all the sites. 

Friday was a whirlwind. I helped supervise a field trip to the Olentangy Caverns, using my somewhat rusty Spanish to translate for a group of third graders and their teacher. In the evening, I ran the face painting station at our annual World Refugee Day event at the YMCA. It was amazing to see how ETSS used the celebratory day, full of music, dances, food, and kids’ activities, to promote local resources to refugee families and distribute essential donations.

The Youth Summit will be similarly jam-packed with resources for our SYEP families. I created a flyer advertising free family entertainment like concerts at the Columbus Commons, the Wexner Center for the Arts, Kanopy streaming service through the Columbus Metropolitan Library, and Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. I am also working on sending the kids home with goodie bags full of books, school supplies, sports equipment, and other resources they might not normally have access to. 

Until next week,

Sanay

Week three at LifeCare Alliance was all about putting ideas into motion. After weeks of preparation, I officially launched my Customer Journey interviews with staff and volunteers in the Meals-on-Wheels (MOW) program. With the interview questions finalized and scheduling underway, I conducted my first official conversation with the Assistant Director of Nutrition Programs. It felt exciting to shift from planning to action, and hearing firsthand experiences from staff was a great reminder of why this work matters.

Much of my week was spent coordinating logistics, scheduling interviews, responding to staff and volunteer emails, booking interview spaces at the Harmon office, and updating the playback sheet format based on previous templates. I’m learning that in a project like this, thoughtful planning behind the scenes is just as important as the conversations themselves.

Beyond the Customer Journey project, I also began a second assignment focused on operational excellence which entails researching tools like Kaizen and Six Sigma to help LCA improve efficiency and client satisfaction. It’s been interesting to see how process improvement and human-centered design can go hand-in-hand, especially in nonprofit work where both relationships and systems matter.

A highlight of the week was attending a Lunch & Learn tabling event with David at the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority. We introduced residents to LCA’s Savor and Select meal delivery program, offered free samples, and ended the day having signed up four new clients. It gave me valuable insight into grassroots marketing and how important it is to build trust not only with potential clients, but also with the community members who support them, like building managers, case workers, and home aides.

Each conversation this week sparked new ideas. I’ve started thinking about how MOW might be better marketed in hospitals as an alternative to long-term rehab for patients returning home, and how programs like Meals-for-Kids could be adapted for senior living communities. I also considered how to improve the volunteer experience, perhaps through printed materials to hand out to friends, or a digital platform that tracks deliveries and recognizes long-time volunteers with tiered milestones.

Even with some minor tech-related difficulties, I felt this week marked a real turning point, turning research into results, and ideas into action.

Until next week,
Kat Jolley

Hi again! I just wrapped up Week 3 of my fellowship, and I’m really starting to feel connected to the creative direction we’re building for the 2025–2026 season.

This week, I began working on the first draft of the upcoming season subscription pamphlet. It’s exciting to lay the groundwork for a piece that will help shape how audiences first interact with the new season. From formatting ideas to language and visual flow, I’m thinking carefully about how to make this both informative and inviting. I’ve submitted my initial designs and am currently waiting for feedback and approval from board members before moving forward with the next steps.

I also met with Kimberly, one of the board members, to dive into marketing strategy and explore how we can effectively use Google Ads this season. Since OYO is currently transitioning into a new space, we talked about how this shift offers us more flexibility and planning time, especially as we move into July. We discussed ideas for a comprehensive campaign that speaks to both longtime supporters and new audiences, while also reflecting the evolving identity of the company.

Outside of meetings, I’ve been experimenting with Google Ads and researching its tools and starting to play around with campaign structures and audience targeting. It’s been eye-opening to learn how digital advertising can enhance visibility in such a targeted way, and I’m looking forward to testing what might work best for our unique programming.

Overall, this week was a blend of planning, building, and visioning forward. I’m feeling inspired by the creative trust I’ve been given and eager to keep shaping the voice and visuals for OYO’s upcoming season!