Columbus Foundation Fellowship Programs

For the first time ever, I noticed a ROW ONE van patrolling the streets of Columbus this week. During orientation, we discussed this mobile crisis unit. The HR coordinator said that I, like him, likely never noticed the white Netcare vans prior to working here but now that I know what they are, I, like him, will see them everywhere. Coincidentally, I did not notice just one, but two vans this week. 

Though I know the ROW ONE program to be a spectacular program, it seemed all the more amazing after seeing them in action. The HR coordinator’s comment made me deeply think about all the positive contributions that community members make which go unnoticed or unrecognized by the community. These workers, like many in the nonprofit community, are not doing their jobs for some sort of fame, recognition, or wealth. Instead, they are doing their jobs, as they know how apparent the need is. 

With the ROW ONE staff in mind, I became all the more excited and motivated to work to make Netcare’s fall fundraiser, the Community Awards and Recognition Dinner, all the more special. This night is intended to recognize all the individuals whose work often goes unnoticed by the outside community but whose work makes Netcare’s mission possible.

In preparation for this event, I continued to work this week to collect in-kind donations. In addition, I worked on Netcare’s Grant Calendar, which is now almost complete! I also worked to complete a submission for the 2022 Community Giving Guide, and I updated the Donor Database. 

My boss was out of town this week, so I did most of my work remotely. I realized in the process how lucky I have been to be able to be vaccinated and at the office mostly full-time this summer. As a person who thrives on others’ energy, I have realized how much more effective of a worker I am when I am surrounded by others working towards similar goals. As a result, I am definitely looking forward to returning to the office soon. 

*For context to readers who do not know what these vans are:  ROW One vehicles are part of Netcare’s mobile intervention services. These vans with Netcare personnel go out to take publicly intoxicated individuals off the street and into shelter. Without Netcare, these clients would have likely ended up in a holding cell in jail. Instead, however, the ROW ONE staff transports these clients to providers such as drug and alcohol treatment centers, homeless shelters, community mental health centers, hospitals or Netcare Crisis Services.

Another week complete! This week, I’m excited to have finished up a few tasks that have been on my agenda since the beginning. Even though they are small tasks in the grand scheme of things, it feels good to hear positive feedback and feel that I have had an impact on the organization. As I’ve mentioned before, I was tasked with contacting homeowners residing on the tributary Fisher Run to see if FLOW can come out and take a look at the stream. The letters are all written and in the mail, so hopefully we hear back in the coming weeks! Another project I finished up this week was collecting data from a recent tree giveaway FLOW hosted in March. After sending out an email blast to all attendees, I was able to gather some information about neighborhoods served, types of trees received, and the survivability of the trees given out. My supervisor was excited to receive this information, so I’m happy I could make it happen!

Wednesday morning, I travelled to one of the many pollinator gardens we maintain called Hudson Prairie. It’s located right next to the Aldi off of Hudson, so you may have driven by it before! Recently, we have received a few emails about the litter and invasive species in the area, so I went to check it out. They were right! The prominent invasive species in the garden were Purple Crownvetch and Canadian Thistle. These species have to be removed or they may take over and choke out the native species. Unfortunately, the invasives were too widespread for me to get control of, so we’ve planned a volunteer event in August to remove them. This is a common way that FLOW decides where and when events are necessary!

This weekend, we have more workdays planned. The Slyh Run Bridge project is coming along, and we’ll be building the bridge this weekend! Working with FLOW has been exciting at every turn. I can see how the Board and volunteers are so passionate because the projects really draw you in. Once you see where a project started, you can’t help but stick it out to see how it ends. I can’t wait to see what next week brings! -Shelly

This week was all about building the Family Database. I was able to work on this crucial piece of data due to the decrease of campers. This is the 6th week of camp and things are starting to slow down at the Center. I am reminded that the Center is eerily quiet when there isn’t programming going on. The quiet is something I am experiencing when everyone leaves around 4 and I stay till 5ish.

With the quiet comes the ability to focus on projects. Projects that are fundamental to keep programming going. I am happy to be part of this process and be the first person to see/create the numbers and look at weekly commentary left behind by campers.
As far as social media goes, I am starting a new segment on the people behind the Martin de Porres Center. It has been fun to post about the Center itself but it’s even important to highlight the people that keep the Center going and function as its heart. As I become more and more comfortable with the Center I am saddened to think I only have three weeks remaining.

I have been learning transferable skills and ones that I can build on. This week I took a Gallup Strength Finders Test thanks to my program manager. The program manager is even trained to teach the assessment and its finding. She used to travel around the country presenting for a big corporation. Despite the pay and perks, she wouldn’t trade the non-profit world for anything. This reminded me of the different career paths my sibling and I took. My sibling and I have taken completely different routes and ones that contradict in values. We both recognize this and noted the comments our bosses make about their jobs. On my side, my bosses love working for the community whole on my sibling’s side they like paternity leave…..

Nevertheless, this week I was able to sit down with my boss and touch base on one of my personal goals of this fellowship, finding the right career path. I have concluded a couple of things but the biggest “discover” is that no matter the results I am finding a home in the non-profit world.

• This past week I was extremely fortunate enough to attend the board retreat for my organization. It was inspiring to see such strong women come together and come up with new ideas to make ROX thrive. I was able to talk to numerous women and hear about their careers. They shared what drew them to serve on the ROX board and their unique perspectives they bring to the table. I was able to ask a multitude of questions and get advice about my own career. It was truly amazing to see these women from all over the country come together for the good of girls. Their humbleness, intelligence, and independence was extremely encouraging. 
• This week, I was able to dive into some mini projects along with my other main projects. I met with the Director of Curriculum and Educational Programs to hear about the content taught in the ROX programs. We discussed how I could help review the curriculum to make sure it included inclusive language. I am also helping find more diverse materials facilitators could use for the ROX program. I am excited to dive into the curriculum and see where else I can help with program development.
• With Congressional Members out of session, I have found more contact info so that ROX can reach out to more congressional members when they are back in sessions. This week I found contacts for congressional members in the Women’s and Black Caucus’s. I will prepare materials to send out to these members to see how they could aid ROX. 
• Additionally, I researched information to find out how ROX could benefit from the Department of Education. I tried to identify resources that could help with funding and materials for ROX programs. I plan on meeting with a new member of ROX, a former superintendent, who has a lot of expertise in this field. Together, we will find more resources ROX could use to improve their programs. 

A significant portion of my fellowship has built up to this week! For weeks, my work with Hope Hollow has been heavily focused on designing our new website. At the start of the week, I had no knowledge of website design or WordPress (except for the basics, for the purposes of this blog). But, thanks to this fellowship and Hope Hollow, I now have a newfound skill that I never would have imagined having.

Up until this point, Hope Hollow’s website progress was completely reliant on the generosity of time and effort from volunteers. Early in the week, I was given a 2-hour tutorial on the basics of WordPress from a company that supports Hope Hollow and specializes in Marketing. As the person with the most time to dedicate to the development of the website, I took it upon myself to learn as much about WordPress, through trial and error, as possible.

Throughout my fellowship, I have been pushed outside of my comfort zone and forced to learn new skills. But, one of my greatest appreciations for my fellowship with Hope Hollow is that I have had a holistic and authentic experience. Non-profit work, especially for an organization with a small staff like Hope Hollow, requires multitasking and a willingness to learn new skills. From the onset of my fellowship, I have observed Hope Hollow’s co-founder, Kevin, always asking questions in an attempt to expand his knowledge. 

Truly serving the Hope Hollow community to the best of my abilities has required a lot of flexibility and a learners mindset, like Kevin’s.

Working on Hope Hollow’s website may not appear to directly benefit the patients that Hope Hollow serves, but upgrading our current website is essential to promoting Hope Hollow’s brand. While this week has been unexpected, it is an honor to be a part of the website design which will have a lasting impact for Hope Hollow.

For this week, my supervisor and I turned our focus a bit more towards the Women of Color Owned Summer Market. This is an annual tradition at Zora’s House, and is geared towards creating opportunities for women of color (WoC) to connect with other like-minded women and (for the vendors in particular) gain new customers. The application process for potential vendors had been open for a few weeks, and we received applications from a variety of businesses. We closed the applications on Monday, and were mostly focused on deciding which vendors would be a part of the Summer Market so that those decisions could be sent out as soon as possible. My supervisor wanted to hear my input about which vendors would be a good fit, and it was really cool to have the opportunity to be a part of the decision making process, especially since I’ve seen how excited everyone at Zora’s House is about this event. Due to the pandemic, there won’t be as many vendors allowed as in previous years, so having to choose a small number of vendors out of a big pool of cool businesses was a bit difficult. However, I liked having the opportunity to learn more about various WoC-owned small businesses in Columbus that I wouldn’t have heard of otherwise. Once we were finally able to choose, I emailed all of the organizations to let them know whether they were allowed to be vendors for the Summer Market. (For anyone interested in supporting WoC-owned and Black-owned businesses in Columbus, click here for a list of businesses.)

Regarding my other work with the employee and operations manuals, we are starting to move towards the drafting stage for those documents. Today, we completed the revision process of the employee manual with the Operations, Infrastructure, and Culture committee, and now I have all of their suggestions in order to create a fully revised version of the document. Although the document is relatively new (the founder of Zora’s House created this document in the past 1-2 years), there are still a significant amount of details that need to be expanded on, topics that need to be included, etc. This is because the document is intended to help carry Zora’s House through their expansion and transition into their new space in the next 5 years or so. With all of the suggestions, concerns, and revisions done with the committee, I feel confident that the revised document can help aid Zora’s House in their transition period, although I also need to consider my wording to ensure that they have the flexibility necessary during this period. I’m excited to be able to complete the first draft soon, and continue to move forward with this project.

It is almost Art Jury Day!! We on the art for life team have been super busy getting ready for our jury to meet and decide which pieces will make it into the auction (both the live and the silent). I wrote last week that we are at 125 submissions, and in just a week we are up to one hundred and fifty seven, with around twenty pieces still to come in before Tuesday. I don’t envy our jury’s job—they have to whittle that down to around 80-90 pieces total, with only 20-25 in the live auction. While they get ready to make those hard choices next week, I have gotten the fun task of looking at all of these artists work and creating a PowerPoint and binders for each juror.

I have genuinely enjoyed working on each artists biography, and working to edit their information. One of the major things that I have learned this summer is how thriving the visual arts scene is in Columbus, with a huge amount of professional artists that are willing to donate their work to raise money for Equitas Health. (I’m especially excited for next week when I can include some of their work once it has been announced that it has been accepted.)

As we head into the final weeks of the summer, I am ramping up to start our social media content for Facebook, with each of the artists’ work and biography showcased on our page.  I am so excited to see the event approaching and start to come together! Everyone that I’ve spoken with at our lead up events has been incredibly excited to (a) get out of their houses after COVID and (b) support Art for Life and our mission to promote LGBTQ inclusive healthcare and provide HIV/AIDS resources.

I feel like I say this every single week – but week 7 flew by! In development, it feels like you are always chasing the next submission deadline, and time moves by very quickly. This was especially the case this week, as I was able to work on an important county grant for youth programming. I think this is common knowledge, but government grants are MUCH more involved than private foundation grants. Regardless, I was happy for the challenge!

One of my favorite parts about writing grants is getting to read reports and research to inform my writing. This week I read Rise Together: A Blueprint for Reducing Poverty in Franklin County (https://commissioners.franklincountyohio.gov/COMM-website/media/Documents/FRANK-Report-1-10-Web-Ready-(Large)_1.pdf). The report explored racial inequities, areas of focus, and concrete action steps that can be taken to reduce poverty in Franklin County. My favorite section of the report, “Stakeholder Voices” detailed the steps the steering committee took to engage people currently experiencing poverty, as well as the people working to combat poverty in their neighborhoods. I would recommend reading this section to anyone that does not understand the challenges to overcoming poverty. 

I was not surprised to see that Central is already providing many of the services that were found in the recurring themes of the report: find ways to help people keep their safe and affordable housing (family stabilization, Village Central), incentivizing job growth in the neighborhoods that need it most (Academy for Community Entrepreneurs), Providing one-stop service to families experiencing crisis, and increasing the number of youth experiencing academic success (after-school & summer camp). Before starting my fellowship, I didn’t even know what a Settlement House was, and now I am such a strong proponent of the type of holistic support they provide.

This weekend I get to travel to Central’s 3rd Saturday Adventures Event to take some great pictures for marketing. Families will be bouldering at 5.Life Bloc Garten, and it should be lots of fun!

It is week 7 at the Art Museum!! It is amazing looking back when I just started and was very timid and unsure of the role that I would play in our staff! From that to now being offered a position to continue my adventures in working here. I couldn’t be happier in my decision to apply to be a part of the Columbus Foundation Fellows. 

This week at the museum was teen camp week, we had students from 12 years old to 18. This week was extra special because instead of me teaching any of the classes, I was able to be a part of the class. We had a few students who could not attend our leather making class and Phyllis offered me a spot in taking the class. I had never done any types of work using leathers so I of course jumped at the opportunity! In the end, it was one of the best artistic moments of my life. I made a crossbody purse. From pressing the imprints into the leather, to stitching the entire thing together. I would not trade this experience for anything!

Other than doing the class, this week involved a lot of prep work for the next 2 week of camp with the kids. I was able to get a lot done and we shouldn’t be too stressed for the remaining time of camp. I look forward to what the next 3 weeks bring!

This week was one of the most intense weeks I’ve experienced at City Year this summer. I had many more meetings and conversations regarding prospective donors, development at non-profits and interactions with our board.

One of the reasons that this week had an increase in meetings was that we officially hired a new Development Team manager. We had to catch her up on all things City Year and Development, so it was interesting for me to talk about City Year to someone newer to the organization than I am. Having another team member has been a joy, especially because she seems to fit in well with the organization and her questions already show how crucial her perspective will be for the organization as we move forward.

This week was also a busy time because our Kiwanis Regatta hosted a 12 hour challenge and I was tasked with getting the word out for this specific challenge. I was able to create social media asks via all our platforms and engaged with our board members to ask them directly to donate during the specific timeframe. Although we did receive an amazing turnout, we unfortunately lost the challenge. That did not sadden me too much, however, because I was able to get support from staff in hyping up the event. One of the ways they supported was letting me take a picture of a puppy named Hank:

Prospective research was another big conversation for this week, since the new fiscal year started and we have a high fundraising goal for this year. I am still fairly new at this part of the position, but it seems that I have approached it properly so far. Today, I spoke with one of the prospective research team members and he was able to give me so many resources on “high-brow stalking” (as he called it) in order to obtain as much information publicly available on potential donors. With these new tools, I hope to increase the depth of the scope of my work as a Development Summer Fellow in the remaining weeks.