In the discussion facilitated by Travis Blackwell, participants explored a “day in the life” of a person in poverty, and came to the conclusions that life in poverty is expensive, takes more time to accomplish tasks, and that the arithmetics of life don’t always add up!

With attention focused on unfolding crisis of the day, “the tyranny of the moment” robs people of future stories and commitment to education.

In the poverty environment, cars and public transportation are often unreliable, low wage jobs come and go, housing is crowded and expensive, time and energy go into caring for the sick, trying to get healthcare and other basic needs met, and interaction with the dominant culture is often demeaning and frustrating.

Participants found that the components of life in poverty are interlocking, with a crisis in one area creating a chain reaction that affects many others.  For example, when the car won’t start or the bus is late, people may miss appointments or be late to work.  This leads to losing jobs, which leads to losing housing, and starts the task of finding the next place to live.

People in poverty find different ways to survive, often by developing relationships of mutual reliance.  Family, friends, acquaintances give you a place to stay, food to eat, a ride to work, and provide childcare.  The importance of relationships in the poverty environment was acknowleged and building relationships was discussed as a strategy for working with people in poverty.

Participants found that people in poverty are indeed problem-solvers, but are forced to use reactive skills, not true choice, in order to survive.

This series of Shalom Zone discussions will continue on April 21 in the Pleasant Hill Shalom Zone.

P. O. Box 812,  Forsyth, Georgia  31029  (478) 994-7981 monroereadswithferst@gmail.com

Robins Federal Credit Union at Forsyth is on a mission to deliver better banking to everyone!  During its Customer Appreciation month in March, the Forsyth branch of Robins Federal Credit Union is donating $25 to Monroe County Family Connection for each account opened!

As part of the month-long event, Monroe County Family Connection and  Robins Federal Credit Union will host a financial literacy celebration on March 29^th, , from 4-6 pm at the Union Hill Community Resource Room.  Staff of Robins Federal Credit Union  conduct a workshop on financial literacy and offer free checking accounts and  savings accounts to residents.  The event will include a community cookout hosted by the Union Hill Baptist Church. 

What are Some of the Advantages of Credit Unions?

Customers are owners.

The executive management of any company must answer to its owners. With a publicly-traded banking institution, shareholders care about only one thing: making money. In these companies, management often makes decisions that benefit the shareholder but inconvenience the customer. Shareholders might be happy when a bank decides to charge a new fee to increase revenue (and as a result, the stock price), but those who use the bank’s services do not want additional fees.

With credit unions, the set of owners and the set of customers are one and the same. All decisions should benefit everyone.

Credit unions are non-profit.

Non-profit status means that more of the profits are shared with the owners/customers. That doesn’t mean that the institutions can’t earn a profit; any business needs to earn money to survive. The difference is that there isn’t a pressure to find ways to make money off the customers. Additionally, credit unions benefit from exemption from federal tax, and that saved expense help more of the unions’ revenue to be put to work.

There are fewer fees and higher savings rates.

As a result of the advantage listed so far, credit unions typically offer free accounts with no minimum balance requirements. Fees are generally absent from credit unions. Interest rates on savings, certificates of deposit, and some checking accounts often significantly exceed those offered by banks. In the same respect, interest charged for loans and credit are often lower. In fact, some credit unions are regulated such that the interest rate on loans and credit cards must not exceed a certain rate.

Monroe County Family Connection has completed its 2012 directory of Monroe County service providers!  Printed copies will be available soon, but you can access the digital version now:

Download the Monroe County Family Connection Resource Directory Here

Directory Compiled by Dawn Freelin of MCFC

Other directories are available on our Resource Directories page and more are being added.

Check back for updates!

 Number of Georgia Children Living in High-Poverty Areas Surges

“Children in high-poverty neighborhoods are more likely to lack access to quality education, medical care, and safe outdoor spaces,” said GaFCP Executive Director Gaye Smith. “The prosperity of our state and country is dependent on having a robust economy, with safe, thriving neighborhoods and opportunities for family economic success.”

According to the ACS, one out of four children in Georgia lives in poverty. The rate of child poverty in in this state has steadily increased during the past four years and is at its highest rate in 40 years. More than 613,000 of Georgia’s children lived in poverty in 2010.

The ACS data show that Atlanta has the fifth highest rate among the nation’s largest cities of children living in areas of concentrated poverty (43 percent). However, concentrated poverty is widespread throughout the state. Half of Georgia’s 159 counties have areas of concentrated poverty. Bibb, Bulloch, Chatham, Clarke, DeKalb, Fulton, and Muscogee counties have areas of concentrated poverty of 70 percent or higher.

Georgia Family Connection collaborative organizations are in every county working with local partners to address specific community needs related to improving outcomes for children and families. Two of those collaboratives are part of the highly competitive national U.S. Department of Education Promise Neighborhoods Initiative, which focuses efforts on areas of concentrated poverty. A Promise Neighborhood is a community of opportunity—centered on strong schools—that allows children to learn, grow, and succeed. Promise Neighborhoods wrap children in high-quality, coordinated health, social, community and educational support from cradle to college to career.

“Through the new, geographically focused approach, we are seeing culture change and a powerful new level of improvement,” said Tim Johnson, executive director of Athens/Clarke County Family Connection-Communities in Schools.

“Efforts to eradicate poverty often fail because we focus our strategies on only one cause of poverty—the behavior of the individual, rather than the root causes of poverty which include a lack of social capital, exploitation (i.e. predatory lenders and businesses), and political/economic strutcures” said Blackwell.

The national KIDS COUNT Data Snapshot on High-Poverty Communities, released today by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, includes the latest data for states and for the nation’s 50 largest cities. This information is available in the national KIDS COUNT Data Center (datacenter.kidscount.org).

For interactive statewide data, visit Georgia KIDS COUNT at gafcp.org/kidscount

For more information, please contact Travis Blackwell, Executive Director of Community Partnership at (478) 787-7542 or tblackwell@communitypartnershipinc.org 

  Listen to the podcast from Georgia Public Broadcasting:

Due to a Family Connection training taking place this week in Warner Robins, we will postpone our February Community Partnership meeting until March.  Stay posted for details.  We apologize for any inconvenmience this may cause.

I’ll admit it, I’ve been on a board fundraising kick lately in the blog (here and here). I just think that if your nonprofit is going to become more strategic and financially sustainable, you have to start from the beginning (or the top, as it were). In my last blog post I discussed how to overcome excuses for why a board member can’t bring money in the door. But the fact remains that a majority of people don’t like to (or simply won’t) ask for money.

The good news is that there are lots of other things board members can do to bring money in the door. And remember, if you are financing not fundraising your organization, your definition of “bringing money in the door” should be very broad.

Here are 9 things you could ask your fundraising-shy board members to do:

1. Help create or evaluate a business plan for an earned income venture. If you have business leaders or entrepreneurs on your board this would be a great use of their time and add tremendous value to your organization. If they can help you create a more profitable business, they are directly contributing to your organization’s bottom-line.

1. Advocate for government money. You may have a board member that can’t stand the idea of asking their friends for money, but they are well connected in city, county, state or federal government and could open doors to you for government contracts, grants, fee-for-service or other government monies.

 

2. Provide intelligence on prospects. If you have a board member that seems to know everyone in town, but for whatever reason refuses to ask any of them for money, they can still be incredibly useful. You may be getting ready to ask a prospective donor for $1,000, and this board member can tell you what that person has already given to, at what level, who else might know them and so on. When you make an ask, the more information you have going into it, the more successful you will be.

 

3. Set up a meeting with a prospective customer. If your nonprofit is engaged in an earned income venture, you probably always need help with new sales. If you have a board member who is part of, or connected to, the target customer(s) of your business, they could open doors to new customers. Or at the very least, they could help you think through your sales and marketing strategies and make them  more effective so that you can attract more customers.

 

4. Email, call or visit a donor just to say thanks. The stewardship of a gift is an often forgotten, but incredibly critical, part of the fundraising process. According to Penelope Burk’s annual donor survey, 84% of donors would give again if they were thanked in a timely way. And being thanked by a board member is a bonus. A donor who renews their gift to a nonprofit is providing more money for the organization.

 

5. Explain to a prospect why you serve. A board of directors is a group of volunteers who care so much about the mission of the organization that they are willing to donate their time (a precious resource) to the cause. As a donor, it is affirming to see that a volunteer is contributing time, but it is even more motivating to hear, in the board member’s own words, why they feel compelled to serve this organization. That story can be enough to convince someone to give.

 

6. Host a small gathering at your home. Over the course of a year, most people invite a gathering of friends and/or family into their home at least once. A board member could take a few minutes at their next dinner party, birthday celebration or Super Bowl feast to talk about something that is near and dear to their heart: the nonprofit on whose board they serve. They don’t have to ask people for money, but they could simply say, “If you’re interested in learning more, let me know.” And then the nonprofit’s staff could take it from there with those who are interested.

 

7. Recruit an in-kind service. If a board member could remove an expense line item from a nonprofit’s budget that would directly contribute to a stronger bottom-line. For example, if a board member works at an ad agency, could they convince their company to provide some pro-bono marketing services to their nonprofit? But keep in mind, these in-kind donations must be of value to the nonprofit and provide an offset to a direct cost that the nonprofit would otherwise have to bear.

 

8. Negotiate a lower price from a vendor. Do you have a board member with great negotiating skills (think of all of those lawyers on your board). Could they negotiate with your insurance providers, office space rental company, or printers, for a lower price? If so, that’s more money in the bank.

If you think of a board member’s “get” responsibilities in these much broader terms, then I find it difficult to imagine a board member who cannot bring money in the door. You just have to get strategic about how each individual board member can best contribute to the organization’s bottom-line.

Photo Credit: DeeganMarie

Related posts:

1. 7 Things Board Members Can Do To Raise More Money
2. Ways to Raise Money in a Recession
3. Financing Not Fundraising: Jump Start Your Board
4. Overcoming Board Fundraising Excuses
5. Financing Not Fundraising E-Book

The Pleasant Hill Shalon Zone hosted the second in its series of community workshops focusing on reducing obesity and related health issues. Mr. Haywood Simmons, a native of Macon, is the consultant and guest presenter throughout the series.  Now living in Madison WI, Mr. Simmons is a Former Football Athlete, Rose Bowl Champion, and Owner/Trainer at Phitness Plus.

Dr. Kendra Russell, Faculty at GCSU and Chair of the Pleasant Hill Shalom Zone's Health Committee

The focus of this workshop was healthy food choices and combinations. The major objective of this workshop was be to increase awareness of children and families about the benefits of  participating in lifelong healthy eating.  Mr. Simmons repeated his mantra several times:  “If it’s in a box, it not food!”  He went on to describe the benefits of natural and organic foods as fuel for the body and medicine for disease.  Mr. Simmons has a  “keep it real” presentation style and uses analogies  that people can relate to.

After a presentation by Mr. Simmons, participants enjoyed a healthy lunch and visited partner information booths.

First Choice Primary Care

Dr. and Mrs. Marshall of the Pleasant Hill Shalom Zone

Sarah Porter, Mercer MPH student, presented a directory of health resources for participants and held a raffle for a gift basket.

Ms. Marna Cooper, winner of the gift basket raffle!

Everybody got funky with DJ Chester Gibbs

Haywood Simmons and Travis Blackwell, Community Partnership