Darin and the Director of Senior Corps

Last night's event went off great. All of the speakers praised the value of volunteers and community service and got us all fired up.

Today I've been exposed to two valuable perspectives. First, I invited myself to a session on social networking tools for non-profits and then I attended a session specifically for Executive Directors of "sponsor" agencies. I'll start with that. Apparently some ED's and CEO's are put out that the Corporation for National and Coomunity service doesn't communicate with them (us) more directly and that their Program Directors have too much influence. I have a few thoughts on that. First I want CMCA's Foster Grandparent Director, Ann Gilchrist, to have influence with CNCA as she has all the experience and know-how. Second, she's been forcing me to stay engaged in FGP issues and would LIKE me to be more involved I think. Certainly I see now that I can be more involved in promoting and administering (but I'm not about to get in the way of managing) and will follow up with Ann when I return. Finally, I can't help but make comparisons to Head Start, Workforce Investment, CSBG, etc. They all want to tell us how to run our programs and organizations. Heck, the Head Start Reauthorization tells our BOARD how to operate. All the more reason to seriously and continuously pursue new resources from nongovernmental sources.

My morning session was presented by the Director for Community Affairs in the US for Google, and reps from MySpace, Salesforce.com, and VolunteerMatch. We learned about all kinds of free online services available to non-profits for use in fundraising, volunteer recruitment, administrative functions, etc. Google and Salesforce.com have free fundraising tools for online donations and donor tracking. Google suggests using the internet "cloud" for intranet and local server functions and collaboration tools that allow multiple users to edit a single document (instead of tracking multiple versions of a document as peopoe make revisions). The MySpace rep talked about "viral fundraising" where "friends" enable fundraising through "widgets" on their websites, blogs, and MySpace pages. They all pointed to the fact that 18-25 year olds are particular engaged in community building (or have a desire to do so) and are likely to be comfortable with a variety of online communities. Shouldn't we be giving them the opportunity to connect with us and our clients? Here's the real kicker. The following is an excerpt from Salesforce.com's annual report about the Family Service Agency of San Francisco's use of their tools, "one of the largest benefits has been for the agency's caseworkers who work directly with clients. Previously, caseworkers spent nearly 50 percent of their time on paperwork and reporting. Now, using Salesforce, they can access client records remotely, make case notes more quickly, and track client progress over time. The result of lessening the administrative burdens has allowed caseworkers to increase the time they spend with clients by more than 30 percent." Sounds like everything our funders' short sighted, controlled, data management systems haven't been able to deliver on.

Foster Grandparent Program

I'm in Atlanta for the National Conference on Volunteering and Service. I'm sitting here in the Georgia World Congress right next to Centennial Olympic Park and several things have jumped out at me already during this first day. 1) Atlanta is a cooler city than I realized, 2) the Corporation for National & Community Service knows how to put on a heckuva conference and 3) there's nothing "old" about the Senior Corps. I was skeptical about coming here since I'm filling in for Ann Gilchrist, our Foster Grandparent Program Director, but I have been seriously impressed. The hall is filled with the rhythms of a local volunteer bongo drum corp and we're getting ready to hear from Neil Bush, Congressman John Lewis, the director of the Peace Corps and more. I'll let you know how it goes later. Our Foster Grandparents Program is one of three Senior Corp programs sponsored by the Corporation for National and Community Service. The others are RSVP and the Senior Companion Program. Did you know there are nearly 30,000 FGP volunteers?! They served over 25 million hours of volunteer time and more than a quarter million children across the country. (Take note of the CNCS and Senior Corps websites for some of their technical aspects. They're full of widgets, RSS, and feed to social networking sites. I'm going to sneak in to a session about the use of these tools tomorrow morning. Expect to see me experimenting with this blog and the ShowMeAction website with these tools.)

Eat at FUDDRUCKERS May 16

Join us on May 16th!

Central Missouri Community Action is fighting to End Poverty here in Central Missouri and Fuddruckers has joined us in this effort by FORKIN’ IT OUT FOR A GREAT CAUSE. If you've never been to Fuddruckers, this is a great opportunity to try it out.

On May 16, 2008 Fuddruckers is holding a Benefit Night for Central Missouri Community Action to help End Poverty in Central Missouri. Download and bring this flyer to Fuddruckers on May 16, 2008 from 11:30am – 8:30pm and Fuddruckers will donate 10% of your total bill to Central Missouri Community Action. This is a fun and easy way to help End Poverty here in our community.

Fuddruckers is located at 1301 Grindstone Parkway in the Grindstone Plaza next Wal-Mart in Columbia, MO. Their phone number is 573-442-6484. For more information or questions about the Benefit Night at Fuddruckers contact Adam Tipton at (573) 443-8731 ext. 201.

Thank you for your support!

CMCA Leadership Team

The CMCA Leadership Team is made up of our program directors that are directly supervised by me. Specifically, the following staff are members of the Leadership Team:

Angela Hirsch – Community Services Director
Anita Sanderson – Finance Director
Chris Macy – IT Director
Dianna Moore – Economic Development Director
Joyce Davis – Employment and Training Director
Julie Kratzer – HR Director
Mernell King – Early Childhood Director

This team meets every first and third Tuesday of the month to discuss the CMCA’s progress and challenges, to work on our own professional development, to plan, and soon to work on the transformation plan implementation. At our last meeting we agreed to share highlights of our meetings with all staff in an effort to increase communication and give you a sense of where we are trying to go as an agency. I won’t share every detail of these meetings but I will give you a sense of the topics we are covering. If you are particularly interested in a topic, please follow up with your supervisor or the nearest leadership team member. We are trying to minimize discrepancies in the information you get so please let me know if you get any mixed messages. I’ll also post these notes to my blog to increase our transparency for a broader audience. I hope that having more information about our agency helps to empower and support your efforts so that when you take advantage of leadership opportunities at CMCA or in your community you have a fuller knowledge of our agency’s purpose.

Tuesday, May 6

The two main topics for discussion were the Family Development Credential and the agency Indirect Rate.

Members of the LT attended training in April to learn more about the Family Development Credential (FDC). This certification is a strength-based case management training course that challenges case managers to think more comprehensively about their caseload. CMCA tried to implement this credential several years ago but it was during the period of significant leadership turnover and it went basically unsupported until it fell apart. Now we have a team that is committed to implementing this credential at CMCA and will support its implementation. In June, 6 staff (3 Head Start, 2 county staff, and 1 staff from Employment and Training) will attend intensive training to prepare to deliver the course. FDC is a 90 clock hour course that will be conducted over the twelve month period starting in October. Participants will gain new case management skills that will give them more tools to help our clients define and attain their own success. Participants will build a portfolio throughout the course, be tested, and graded to achieve their certification. We are exploring options with MU to receive college credit from the Department of Human Development and Family Studies. We are also planning to make the training available to our community partners to support their case management capacity. During the first year we expect to certify only a small handful of our staff but as we build capacity more and more staff will be expected to participate. Eventually the Family Development Credential will be a required qualification for CMCA case workers.

Like most Community Action Agencies and other organizations with federal contracts, CMCA adheres to an Indirect Rate to pay for administrative costs. Each year we apply to a federal office in Dallas, Texas to get a determination of our rate based on actual administrative costs. At CMCA each program pays 15.2% of the cost of salaries and benefits into the “indirect pool” to pay for our administration. Our administration includes my salary, the HR and IT departments, and the entire accounting function of CMCA. Basically, the administration (paid out of the indirect pool) supports all agency wide functions to make sure employees are paid and have systems in place that enable you to do your work. Our administration is pretty lean as we currently operate at less than 7% of the agency’s overall budget. The discussion that ensued from Anita’s presentation on our indirect rate consisted of a consideration of how we will cost allocate cross-functional programmatic and administrative responsibilities as we begin to implement our transformation plan. Those answers will have to evolve as we get into that process because this is relatively unchartered territory!

Next LT meeting scheduled for May 20.

Bike, Walk, and Wheel Week

In an effort to prepare for full participation in Bike, Walk, and Wheel Week, and an ongoing commitment to reduce my carbon footprint, improve my health, save gas money, and be a role model for my son, I rode my bike to work today. Hayden asked why I was doing that as I rolled out of the driveway and I hollered over my shoulder, "To save the planet!" I love that he still thinks I'm a hero. :) As I was riding in, I thought about all the things CMCA is doing to model "green living." First, we have an informal, internal agreement that anything we build from this point forward will include elements of energy conservation and "green" strategies. From the transitional housing unit we are designing in Columbia to single family homes in Vandalia and everything in between, we're considering the materials we use, the facing of the facility, the "tightness" of the housing stock, and the carbon footprint. Our weatherization program itself is designed to create energy efficiency in an effort to decrease utility bills and increase the housing quality for the families we serve. When an eligible families applies, we do an energy audit to determine where repairs and renovation would have the most impact and then seal the home up based on those recommendations by replacing and caulking windows, fixing holes and leaks, adding insulation to floors, walls, and attics, etc. Savings generated from these efforts are nearly $350 per home (around 30% of their utility costs!) and return about $1.40 for every dollar we spend. We also partner with various volunteer groups to wrap water heaters and take minor steps to reduce energy use in senior housing and have an air conditioner replacement program with the City of Columbia to replace worn out, inefficient window units with Energy Star units. Our energy department is getting in the act too. While the idea is to help pay utility bills for low-income clients, we know that high utility rates are disproportionately effecting the poor. The most effective way to help folks to be self reliant is to help them decrease their utility bill (unfortunately the State only provides enough Weatherization funding to serve less than 1% of eligible households). Ironically, they are also the least likely to afford expensive CFLs so we're helping to provide these energy efficient bulbs to our clients. Do your part by pledging to change your own lightbulbs as part of our campaign to Change a Light, Change the World. Lastly, we're looking at our own habits. By turning off lights in unused spaces in our offices, recycling everything possible, and promoting constant thought about where to reduce energy consumption, CMCA is joining the ranks of organizations that have already made this a priority.

So back to my original subject, Bike, Walk, and Wheel Week is next week. Please consider signing up and committing to schedule more activity in your life. Here's a comment from Ian Thomas, Executive Director of the PedNet Coalition,

"The seventh annual Bike, Walk, and Wheel Week (BWWW) starts on Saturday, and we're hoping to break last year's record of 3,450 participants. If you can build some walking or biking into your schedule during the week of May 3-10, please go ahead and sign up at www.pednet.org or www.getaboutcolumbia.com. The kick-off event this Saturday (May 3) features the dedication of the new Flat Branch Park pedestrian bridge at 1:00 pm followed by welcoming comments from Mayor Hindman and Richard & Patty King (this year's BWWW honorary chairs), the Celebrity Bike-Car Challenge, the "Float your Boat" children's activity, Ironweed Bluegrass, ArtCycle, and $1 off admission to the YouZeum with your BWWW t-shirt. Friday, May 9 is Breakfast Stations Day when you can pick up a free breakfast at any of eleven locations around town if you're biking, walking, or wheeling. And if, in these times of increasing gas prices, you're thinking about giving bike commuting a try, check out the various classes on safe cycling, commuter tips, and basic bike maintenance."

Board Challenge

The CMCA board met last night and had some excellent discussion. Thanks to all who attended. The general theme for the evening revolved around our housing responsibilities, most of which fall under our first and third strategic commitments. 1. Engage the community to assure that all people have their basic needs met; and 3. Build community capacity to enhance economic and community assets. Some of the board members expressed some concern over our involvement in tax credit development deals. In a nutshell, the state of Missouri created the Missouri Housing Development Commission to support the development of affordable housing throughout the state. Developers apply for tax credits to fund their development, they sell those credits to syndicators (investors) that turn the credits into cash for the building project. The developers are required to have non-profit partners to keep the playing field level. That's where we come in. As non-profit partner we generally get some small portion of the developer fee (the profit from the development) and have the responsibility of certifying that the new development makes apartment units available to tenants with low-income and that rents constitute less than 30% of their household income. Generally there is a sense that developers are getting rich by taking advantage of these arrangements and that not enough of the tax credit dollars actually make it into the project itself. A couple of things come to mind when I hear that. First, without this arrangement I do not believe that we would see the development or rehabilitation of quality affordable housing in Missouri. If a developer can't make a profit, why would they do it? Also, the developers are the ones taking the risk. Their entire profit comes immediately after the completion of the building phase. Apartment rents are kept so low that there is little or no profit to be made managing them over the life of the structure, unlike market rate developments where the rent provides ongoing profit. Most importantly, the conclusion I have come to (and more importantly, that the board has endorsed), is that as a non-profit with commitments to provide affordable housing, WE should be in the driver's seat on these developments. If CMCA acts as the developer, the "profit" goes back into our programs and services to serve our communities even better. That leads me to the challenge the board presented last night. One of our directors attended the Community Action Capitol Development Enterprise conference with two of our staff and came back fired up about new opportunities and thinking outside of the box. She challenged us to follow through on our Transformation Plan (more to come on that) by generating revenue for the agency in all new ways. Federal funding for our programs has been stagnant or declining for years and we have to think differently about our revenue options if we take our mission seriously. I heard that message loud and clear and am excited to continue moving our organization in that direction.

The Great Funding Roller Coaster

Funding for community action agencies is like a roller coaster. Six months ago I was worried that we were going to use more than $300,000 in agency reserve funds to account for deficits in Workforce Investment Act (WIA) programs, Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), Community Services Block Grant (CSBG), Head Start, Weatherization, and Foster Grandparents. Today, I am confidant we will make it through the year with a balanced budget for the first time since I have been at CMCA. We have leveled the roller coaster through tireless advocacy, innovative and responsible management and budgeting, and a little bit of luck. Let me explain. Two of our programs experienced "rescissions" this year. Essentially that means our federal funders decided that they can't really afford the contracts we have in place. WIA experienced a rescission of more than $100,000 and Foster Grandparents experienced a $7,000 rescission. Our employment and training department was already spread thin by hiring freezes required by our contractor and ever increasing demands. We planned to maintain our current staffing and absorb the deficit from our CSBG reserves to see if funding is restored next year while seeking additional grants elsewhere in the meantime. Joyce Davis was relentless in her pursuit of additional funds and worked with Anita Sanderson and the Central Region Workforce Investment Board (CWIB) to restore the entire deficit last month. LIHEAP and CSBG were written as deficit budgets last year because there is just more work than we have staff to accomplish. In January and February however, Missouri granted more LIHEAP funds that both filled our staffing needs and compensated some of our CSBG staff who had been doing LIHEAP work. Angela Hirsch and Anita worked diligently to rework the budget with these changing parameters to live within our means. Head Start funding has been stagnant for years. The only increase we have seen in the last seven years has been a 1.5% cost of living increase that didn't even come close to catching up to all of our rising costs. During that time more of our teaching staff has earned degrees and national accountability measures have squeezed our budget tight. Mernell King is a brilliant manager that has been able to re-organize our Head Start structure (twice in the last two years) in a way that both makes our budget work and maintains a high level of quality. Significant grants have been written and awarded to her team for Healthy Smiles, Connect for Kids, and Fathers First, and more are on the way. The initiatives help to support our administrative costs and enhance the quality and comprehensiveness of our Head Start program and agency. Our Weatherization program (Wx) also experienced a budget hiccup that was just bad timing. The state changed one of its regulations about how we are funded and the end result was the $47,000 from a '07 contract with Ameren got lost in the shuffle. After going around and around with Ameren and the Department of Natural Resources (our Wx funder), Teresa House found a solution that everyone can agree on. It is not a perfect solution as we still feel like we are losing $47,000 but it won't hit us until next year when we can at least plan for it. The point of all of this is that this is no way to run an organization. Our state and federal governments are not supporting our programs consistently and I believe that we have to find revenue from different sources that at least give us some control over how much we get and how we use the funds. To that end, we continue to plan for fund raising strategies and social enterprises that will generate revenue we can use to plug holes in our grant budgets and ultimately move us closer to our mission of empowering individuals and families to achieve self-reliance.