Financial crises

Yesterday the price of oil jumped $5 per barrel. That means our "reprieve" from high gas prices is likely to end soon. I can't believe I even consider $3.39 per gallon for gas cheap, but I guess that's how they get us. A recent columnist in Newsweek reminded me that it's not cheap and that riding my bike to work is still a pretty good investment of my energy. Course soccer moms don't necessarily reflect the challenges of CMCA clients but truly there are alternatives to individual automobiles that pose solutions that all of us should consider. The bus system in Columbia seems to work for a lot of college students but I haven't heard a lot of praise from folks who are just trying to get to work on time. But it is something we can build on. Our more rural communities don't even have a kernel of a transportation system. Walking, biking, and carpooling seem to represent the best options for gasoline conservation at this point. But I digress. The NPR story that alerted me to the rise in the cost of oil also spouted off a litany of additional costs that we should expect to inflate. Primarily food, clothing, and just about anything one would use U.S. currency to purchase. Teri Roberts, CMCA Financial Education Coordinator, sent me this resource to help consider how to deal with these rising costs, avoid crises, and help our neighbors to deal with the crises they're already experiencing. It isn't much but we're all going to have to figure out how to get through this together.

Now that it's getting hot . . .

I just looked at how much of our LIHEAP funds are obligated so far this summer. LIHEAP is the funding source that provides energy assistance and crises assistance to help pay utility bills. The summer season started June 2 and we have just spent 80% of the funds we have available to get through September. From an administrative standpoint, we're using the money efficiently to spend down our allotment. From a human being, I'm really worried that it's just now getting really hot this summer and we aren't going to have any help available within a few weeks. We know that utility rates are going up and utility cutoffs are becoming more common but are ability to do anything about this is limited. Some in Congress are trying to help to deal with this crises with a quick bandaid of additional funds but even the recommended $120 million wouldn't take us but a few weeks further into the summer. I applaud Senator Collins and her 44 colleagues that are recommending this step and appreciate her interest in domestic spending. BUT, the real crises of poverty won't be addressed by pumping money into the system. As with most complicated problems, there are no quick fixes. Years of policy and denial have led us to our current reality, and longterm solutions that invest in preventive measures are the best hope for the generations that follow.

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."