Columbus Foundation Fellowship Programs

Returning from an absence always presents its challenges. This week, my isolation period ended so I was able to get back to work and continue with my project of writing the program operations manual. I began my week by reevaluating the feedback I received during the conversations I held with full-time employees. I made note of what the main concerns were between sessions. Within any organization, confusion over hierarchy, decision-making authority, and the division of responsibility often emerges. As a growing organization adjusting to an ever changing world, a few employees mentioned this issue. 

To help support the operations of Local Matters, I began drafting the staffing section of the operations manual. The goal of this section is to provide clear information on what each person on the programming does and who a specific role reports to on the team. I attached a chart of the organization’s structure followed by a current staff directory. In my previous experiences, I have found that making contact information widely available makes organizational communication more effective. Moreover, outlining the hierarchy of the organization helps promote understanding of where a person’s role fits in with the mission. To further supplement this, I included a detailed description of each role on the programming team. I hope that this aspect of the manual will help address the feedback given by staff members. Next week, I will use research from a survey I developed to draft the next section of the manual. 

This week, I also attended another enriching Fellows Learning Session. The session analyzed concepts of leadership and helped build a greater understanding of careers in the non-profit sector. I enjoyed hearing from Mrs. Ruth Lomax on what a career in development entails and how this intersects with social justice. I am looking forward to the engaging conversations of these sessions next week.

My fourth week at ETSS was very busy, filled with lots of work but centered on two key categories. First was our fundraiser, & I’m happy to share that it was a success! Staff joined after their workday ended, friends and family came to show their support, and many guests donated to ETSS once they learned about our cause. Even fellow Gabriel Jackson came for a few drinks, talking with our CEO Dr. Seleshi about our mission, work, and future events- thank you for joining, Gabe! All of the staff at Seventh Son Brewing were so kind and willing to help us in any way, from set-up to tear-down. We were able to raise $70 from the bar alone, selling many t-shirts, sweatshirts, and tote bags at our table! Because this was our first in-person fundraiser post-pandemic, we didn’t know what to expect of our event. ETSS is happy with the results, but we’re also brainstorming ways to further spread our events and expand our reach. I can’t wait to see how we can grow these happy hour fundraisers (and any event in general) in the future.

The second focus of my week was centered on Evening of Promise. I have been reaching out to many companies with donation requests, whether that’s via email, a specific donation page, or phone call. While I continued to do that this week, I more specifically focused on finding restaurants and gathering their contact information into one Excel document. This master contact list was then shown to our Board. This was my first time meeting them and my first time sitting in on a Board meeting in general! They were all very kind, and it was great to hear their thoughts and opinions, not only about EOP donation requests, but about methods of spreading our message and expanding the overall impact of ETSS as well.

As part of my final social media plan, I must research many different aspects of social media accounts. There are three priorities. First, I have been exploring the possible directions in which we can use each social media account to provide the best experience and content for our targeted audiences. Concerning that goal, I hope to develop a Tik Tok targeted at spotlighting and recruiting teenagers. I have been researching the viability and promise of the organization using a third-party scheduler. This tool will allow the organization to preschedule posts and organize social media strategies. The last research priority for the week is seeing the options for boosting posts and running advertisements.

BGCCO has seven clubs in three different markets (Columbus, Marion, and Newark). Ellen, the Philanthropy Coordinator, is my travel buddy for visiting the sites; we have visited three sites together. This week we met Shay, Site Director for the Marion Club, and Maggie, the Marion Market Area Director. We learned about the unique partnerships and programming at the Marion Site. I joined Mallory, the Sponsored Programs Officer, to visit Newark(Louella Hodges Reese Clubhouse). I spent time learning about the history of Newark and the notable stakeholders in the community. Visiting the two farthest markets for the organization will allow me to understand their needs and stories better. I plan on revisiting each of the two sites for photography sessions.

During the fellow’s learning session, we had a guest speaker in Ruth Lomax, Managing Director of Development at City Year Columbus. She provided precious insight into fundraising and gave a detailed explanation of individualized donor cultivation/stewardship strategies. Dr. Mark Lomax, II led a fascinating discussion on power’s definition and societal implications. A book, The Four Agreements, was referenced, and the core messages have been thought-provoking. I thoroughly enjoyed this session.

This week I have spent a lot of time looking into small town politics to figure out how a city’s politicians, religious leaders, and businesses might react to the proposal of an anti-discrimination ordinance or a proposal to ban conversion therapy in the city. This has led to me spending a lot of time on Facebook, LinkedIn, and reading letters to the editor written in the local newspapers about the politicians. The politicians who have mascots are definitely my favorite flavor of local politicians.

              This week I also got to sit in during a meeting with someone who wanted to create the groundwork to get an anti-discrimination ordinance passed in their city. It was cool to sit in and see what all this work looks like from a concerned citizen. The meeting was fascinating, and I was blown away by both the person and my coworkers’ knowledge of this small town off the top of both of their heads.

              The biggest thing I have been working on this week is my mental health. Advocacy work can be draining, I’ve had conversations with different coworkers about burnout and mental health while working in this field and it has been good to know that I am not alone in this feeling. Equality really does care about your mental health and supports you from the organization as well as the people that make it up. With the SCOTUS decisions being released recently it has been hard recently.

              Equality has allowed me to push myself as much as I can, in trying new things, in going to new places in the state, and in new work. However, they also know when to support you and that is something I cannot express my appreciation for enough. I can’t believe we are already 4 weeks in because I have learned so much but feel like there is still so much for me to learn. Overall this week has been a great way to learn about the inner workings of small town Ohio.

Last weekend, Simply Living was at Comfest educating the community about sustainable living and was the only water refilling station at the festival. We were set up near the Peace Tent and engaged in a lot of constructive conversations.  However, we were set up near the edge of the festival opposite of where the majority of people entered from High Street. Those that stopped by our tent wanted to refill their water bottles or were genuinely interested in sustainability. After a couple people stopped to refill their bottles, I decided to start a conversation about Simply Living. The conversations I had at Comfest were valuable and helped encourage more sustainable living.

On Saturday, myself and the other interns at Simply Living gave a presentation in the Peace Tent. I introduced the Sustainable Business Directory while the others spoke about Solarise solar energy, fast fashion, environmental justice, and the Simply Living garden tour. The presentation had a great variety of topics and brought a good crowd that filled up the tent. Prior to the presentation, we were informed that there would be a projector for visual aid which ended up not being the case. For the majority of my portion of the presentation, I planned on discussing the directory and how to navigate the website. Despite not having any visual aid, we all improvised well and engaged the audience. Presenting about the Sustainable Business Directory was a great experience and gave me a chance to practice my presentation skills. 

The Sustainable Business Directory is progressing with about 340 businesses on the website. The “low hanging fruit” businesses, or the businesses that are already in Simply Living’s database, are almost all entered into the directory. Those businesses were easy because there was no need to reach out to see if they have sustainable practices. With the low hanging fruit businesses out of the way, finding other businesses will require more work but yield fewer listings. One small issue I have come across is that I forgot to cross reference some of the businesses in the directory. Meaning, if a particular business, such as City Folk’s Farm Shop, is a business member of the Columbus Greenspot Program, we need to note that in an effective way. It will not be hard to cross reference these businesses but rather time consuming. Regardless, the directory is progressing in the right direction. 

I believe that this past week has been the most conducive for my learning so far about the fundraising aspect of nonprofit functioning, which is incredibly important in almost every nonprofit. I have been working diligently on several of my ongoing projects at Ohio Humanities regarding donor stewardship and fundraising including the phone calls I have been making to donors and the touchpoint project I have been privately progressing. However, this week I also had the opportunity to learn more about the feats of fundraising from someone at the philanthropy group that is helping out Ohio Humanities with advancement as we are in acquisition mode, as well as from the wife of Dr. Lomax, Ruth Lomax. At the Fellows’ Learning Session on Wednesday, we got to hear from an experienced leader in the nonprofit industry about the significant impact of fundraising on a nonprofit’s capacity, how to approach prospective donors and what to do if anything goes wrong, and how to claim your own power in a way that is lucrative to your career and the strength of your nonprofit. I highly value what I learned from Ruth Lomax and Dr. Lomax and strongly believe that their guidance will help me in my future career in the nonprofit industry.

The office has been very quiet this week as several people from the already small Ohio Humanities staff are out for different reasons. However, this next coming week is going to be very busy in the best way possible as we will be in full force for getting ready for the Over-the-Rhine Film Festival, which is one week from today! We also are not working on Monday for the Fourth of July which will just make the last four weekdays more hectic. I am extremely excited for the opportunity to help with planning and attend this event in Cincinnati; it’s not something that I expected to be doing prior to the start of this Fellowship, which makes it that much more special.

My fourth week at the McConnell Arts Center primarily consisted of preparation for the Worthington Arts Festival, which took place the following weekend. As majority of the staff is relatively new, only our executive director had assisted in putting on the festival, making the process and preparation new to everyone else.

The week was spent helping out where I was needed, putting together bins for our booths, creating vendor label for the 110 artists who attended, and creating promotional material for the MAC to display throughout the festival. Friday, the day before the festival began, the MAC held our Preview Picnic, in which those who bought tickets could have dinner and view featured artists’ booths before the festival opened to the general public. I helped set up the Preview Picnic, then distributed guest dinners and booth sat for the artists while they ate.

When the festival began Saturday morning, I walked around to artist tents and passed out booth signs which had been made the previous week. I spent the beginning of the morning walking through the festival, bringing supplies to artists or MAC staff who needed them. I then sat at the MAC information booth, greeted festival attendees, and spent the day promoting the McConnell Arts Center and our upcoming programs. I spent the rest of the festival at the MAC tent and while there met many board members and volunteers, I loved to hear their stories and their passion for the McConnell Arts Center.

The festival went exceptionally well, as we had over ten thousand attendees. While at the information tent, I was able to promote our upcoming events and educate festival attendees on MAC programming and the impact we have within the Worthington and greater Columbus community.

Summer school officially started on Monday so this week has been a whirlwind of activity and excitement. We have three different divisions of students for our summer school program this year. The first one is our Foundations of Reading group with students entering kindergarten and first grade next year. I was able to sit in on a class to take pictures and get to know what the students were learning one day. 

Our second group is our Lower Division students who will be entering second through sixth grade next year. The final group is our Middle Division with students entering seventh through ninth grade next year. I enjoy meeting all of the students and getting to know them more. Another bonus is getting to meet the teachers and see them use our summer school theme of “Breaking the Code,” to teach our students. 

Our Middle Division students are reading the book “Chasing Vermeer” which is about two characters that solve clues to catch an art thief by using pentominoes. The students learned how to make their own pentominoes and use them to decode messages. 

The regular school year had ended before I started my fellowship so seeing students in the building is so nice and I enjoy it very much. Some events coming up will be our parent walk-through day, field day, and a ceremony to wrap up summer school at the end of July. Stay tuned to learn more about my fellowship as week five begins soon.

It has been a busy week. I have been reading research articles nonstop, interviewing partner organizations, and yesterday I was able to test out a new workplace meeting platform. I feel that my internship at the Siemer Institute has already been transformational. I enjoy the high expectations that my co-workers have for me because they align well with my expectations for myself. Rather than being micromanaged, I am in an environment where everyone has faith in my competence to do my assigned tasks and I am encouraged to seek help and ask questions. It’s hard to believe how quickly I have adapted to the roles and requirements for this position. In my last internship, an entire month was spent on my orientation alone. Yet here I am, 4 weeks into my fellowship, and expected to turn 80+ research papers and about 20 partner interviews into a 5-page report on best practices in 3 weeks. I will not be using all of those research articles, but they will make a great bibliography for reference later on.

Recently, I was able to pilot the website Zoho to see if it would be of use for the Siemer Institute. One of my tasks for this summer, which I had not begun due to unforeseen setbacks, was to implement a database of all Simer Institute partners, with descriptions of their projects and focus areas, so other partners would be able to connect with them. For example, if a non-profit in Oregon was interested in beginning a financial literacy group, they could use this database to find other groups that had already begun such a program and can communicate and exchange ideas in that way. I really enjoyed the look of the Zoho interface and I found it easy to use. I’ve presented the website to my supervisor as a viable option and I’m excited to see how I can bring our idea to life.

This week, I began my days at ARC with the ASPIRE program. As a reminder, the ASPIRE program is a program in which participants come to an ARC site in the mornings, then we all decide what we want to do with our day. The activities are community based, and can range from anything to going to Dave and Busters to heading to the craft store to browse.

This week, participants wanted to head to their community garden to tend to the vegetables that they had planted a little bit ago. It was a beautiful day to spend outside, so I headed to the gardens with an ARC employee and three participants. When we arrived, two of the participants helped us water and weed the garden plot, so that the plants could continue to grow. In the garden, there were tomato plants, cucumber plants, corn plants, and more. After some careful inspection, we found one tiny tomato that was sprouting!

After the garden, it was time to head back to the site for lunch, where we decided that we would go to a soap store and the park for the rest of the day. One might ask, “What is a soap store and where does someone find such a thing?”. I had the same question, but I was pleasantly surprised at what I found. We went to a small shop on 5th Ave called Glenn Avenue Soap Company. This shop makes essential oils, soaps, body butters, lip balms, and more. We spent some time browsing and smelling the different products, and one of the participants even convinced me to purchase some essential oils to try.

This visit to the ASPIRE program was my first time returning to a site with the same participants. With a group of only about 10 people– staff and participants included– I was a little worried I would be viewed as an outsider or “the new girl”. However, I was welcomed with open arms and smiles. When I arrived, I found that the participants remembered me and the things I had told them about my life. They were excited to see me again and catch up. One of the participants even told me that he was on “my campus” for the Special Olympics the previous weekend. It felt really nice to be so welcomed into their friendship circles they have at their site.

Additionally, I am continuing to work on launching the Next Chapter Book Club at ARC. While it is still in the beginning of the process, I am excited for this project to launch. There are still meetings to be had and trainings to be done, but it is incredibly exciting that I am helping to lead this entire campaign.

Overall, I find that my weeks at ARC keep getting better and better. Going to work is rewarding and fun, which is something I was pleasantly surprised to find. I never thought that I could grow up and genuinely find value through the work I do everyday.