After the excitement of filing for our 501c3 status last week, we got back to work this week on moving forward on our plans.
The property efforts are dominating most of the time now as we are getting close to putting the finishing touches on things. Aside from all the work going into that, there were a couple other things that are quite worth mentioning. The biggest of which was a meeting we had with Ball Brothers Foundation.
We can’t say enough great things about this organization. What we expected to be a brief, informal conversation about some of our directions, strategy, and plan turned out to be solid engagement from their very talented team. They offered us many recommendations and helped raise awareness of others in the community we can work with and talk to that weren’t on our radar. In addition, they went to the next step and made the introductions. We are certainly very fortunate to have this organization in our community so invested in helping make sure the right things happen to have the greatest impact. We send a huge thank you to Ball Brothers and their team.
We also met with Heather Williams who recently became the Program Manager for Building Better Neighborhoods at Ball State. We got to know what her challenges are in her new role and also learned of several ways in which we might be able to work with Ball State in the neighborhoods we are both trying to serve. Heather brought a lot of really good information and ideas to the table and we are looking forward to working with her and her program on our initiatives.
One of the great tips we received from the Ball Brothers meeting was the recommendation of a book written a few years ago now called “Begging for Change: The Dollars and Sense of Making Nonprofits Responsive, Efficient, and Rewarding for All” by Robert Egger who started the DC Central Kitchen and turned it into what is is today. After reading the book, I highly recommend it to all non profit organizations in the area. The thinking is practical, common sense, and brilliant on how to work together and achieve real change in a community and in the world. As a result of reading it, we will be articulating our priorities in a more clear way in order to communicate exactly how we will be pursuing our cause, how our clients will benefit from that, how the community will benefit as the clients benefit and how our constituencies will benefit from the community. This affects everything from your funding strategy to your spending strategy to your service strategy. It really is a good read and well worth the time.
That is the update for this week. We have our work cut out for us next week to finalize the property issue and re-articulate our priorities so keep your eye out for updates.
Thanks you for your continued support and spreading the word in the community!
