 Thank you everybody for joining our Zoom meeting with Executive Director's Chat. Today our topic is going to be the impact of collaboration, so I'm hoping that we'll hear from everybody all across the globe and we're here to share our stories of collaboration. And I want to share with you how you can engage today. If it's your first time, please mute your mic. I know that a lot of people sometimes come on, you don't know your mic is on, but make sure your mic is muted for the quality of the recording. If you would like to speak at any time, please use the raise your hand option and then we'll ask you to unmute yourself and then make your comment or ask you a question. If you need the closed caption, it is available. Just click at the bottom of your screen and turn on where you see the CC button located in your Zoom menu and then we'll have that turned on for you. I do have a couple of announcements before we get into the day's topic. I have mentioned this several times and we've gotten some people who say, hey, we're having a conference. We want to come to your conference. TechSoup wants to come to your conferences. If you need someone to come and share the greatness of TechSoup and what we have for nonprofits, make sure that you send an email to deniseferrattesdferrattetechsoup.org. Also, I would love for you to become a feature speaker. I know some people feel like I don't want to speak in front of people. It's not you giving a whole exhortation of anything. It's basically you sharing about your journey in the nonprofit world, some failures, some successes, whatever you want to share, but this is how we learn from each other. When you get the survey today, please put in the survey your contact information. Some people say, yes, I want to be a feature speaker, but no contact information. I did get a few last week, so thank you for those of you who did that. I'll be contacting you. Please put your contact information, name, website, email, how I can meet you, and even phone number if you'd like. And one last announcement. I don't know if you have seen this, but we have a newly launched part of TechSoup. It's called Quad. You're going to hear that name a lot around TechSoup now. It's community of people who are addressing some of the global press and issues. And again, it's a community. It's this own community within TechSoup. So you'll have separate webinars, tools, all kinds of things that are there. We're having meetings on every Friday. I don't know. I won't say every Friday. I'll put the link in the chat room. It's not every Friday. There are certain Fridays. There's only about, it's only about 30 minutes. Sometimes it lasts a little longer, but you'll learn a little more about Quad. You'll be able to ask questions. And it's called Feed More Tech Talks because most of the people that are in Quad now are people who will provide food in their community, whether it's through the church or a separate type of nonprofit. So we'll put the link in there. So now to go to today's topic, the impact of collaborations. Look right off the bat, before we even started, Chaplain, I don't know. What's your first name now, sir? What's your first name? Chaplain Tigg. Chaplain Tigg. Okay. Chaplain Tigg and I were already talking and he shared with me what he was doing. And immediately I started thinking of people that I know who are in the industry, in the film industry, that he can collaborate with. And I started sharing that information, then Coco jumped in and started sharing that information. So the impact of collaboration, let me say this. We cannot do anything in today's world without collaborating, period. We need each other, whether it's writing your grants, whether it's helping your community, we need each other. So I want to do something real quick. I want to launch a poll to find out how many of you are actually collaborating with one or more organizations. Take a moment and this is a yes or no question. Are you collaborating with one or more organization? I love, we got a lot of yeses. This is good. This is good. We're almost at 50%. This is very, very good. And so the ones that said no, I totally understand. Let me show you the results. I understand maybe you might be new. But the ones that said yes, would somebody take the time and use the raise your hand option to share who you're collaborating with and the impact it has made on your organization? Don't be shy. And if you can't reach the raise your hand button, you know, right away, please raise your hand. Good. I saw Don. Thank you, Don. Don, he knows the deal. Yeah, I was trying to find the button. I had too much. I was just raising my hand. So we have a nonprofit here in Sacramento, California that helps the homeless by taking up blessing backpacks to the homeless. And it's kind of our, it's been a grace of God that we've been able to do this since our son passed away. And so our collaboration is with our church with, I work at Sacramento State University. And so they actually, we have a lot of people that help us on that. So we have a lot of organizations, just small ones that just and big that help us with this part. We're launching a project next year that we're hoping to get a lot of collaboration with, which is going to be a huge project. So I just want to come here and see what, what I can learn from you guys today. I love it. And thanks for sharing. So I'm going to go in this order. Thank you. I see land and Christina and then Tim, then Kathleen and then Chaplin take and sister Joanne. So, land, would you unmute yourself and welcome. Hi there. My name is Lynn Williams. I'm based out of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, just suburbs of Philly. And I run a 501 C3 nonprofit that does career education and networking. So we run up to 40, 50 events a month online for people who are managing their careers. I'm actually speaking for TechSoup on June 21st. So I will put the link in for that and it is on LinkedIn for nonprofits. So here's my first information. And then when I dig out the link in just a hot minute, I will add that on. So thanks for having me here. I love it. And thank you for sharing. Thank you for what you do as well. All right, Christina, welcome. Good morning, everyone. I think being in a nonprofit sector, collaboration is very important, especially when you're really trying to meet the needs of community. There's so much work to be done and you can't do it all, right, especially if you're working in one area, you don't want to mission chase, right, doing the work that you do really well. And when you see issues come up or areas of need collaborating with other organizations to be able to provide that need. And so that has worked for us, but not only that, partnering with non-traditional forms of partners so that could be actual community members that could be residents, youth, faith leaders. You know, so, you know, that's has worked really well for us. And you have to have collaboration to be able to really meet the needs of community. Thank you for sharing that. That's so true. I see some people, Tim was next. I'm sorry, Tim, thank you. OK, Tim, we lost you. I'm right here. OK, OK, there you go. Sorry about that. I came to the realization when we started our organization, we feed people. When we start with food, because we know hunger interferes with healing. And prior to the pandemic, we were serving 42 families twice a month. And since the pandemic, we're serving upwards of 1500 families a month and three to 400 families a week. But what I realized is that it's more than food. Yeah. And so we were able to collaborate with a medical center and they did health fairs in the parking lot. We collaborated with a recovery program and we're able to feed their members on a regular basis because many of them they come with the clothes on their back and nothing else. So it's it's a matter of of me reaching out into the community and looking at what other services are available and then making those services available. I'm so impressed about the number of people that you feed every week. That's a lot of people. Yeah. And it's families. It's not just individuals, it's families. So it's. Wow. Yeah. Thank you for what you do. Thanks. OK, Kathleen. Hello, I'm Kathleen Forbes. I'm the director of programs and services for Echo, which is East Cooper Community Outreach. And we are located in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, which is just outside of Charleston. We've been in it in existence since 1989 and were founded right after Hurricane Hugo devastated the area. We have four main areas of service. We have a food pantry, a medical clinic, a dental clinic, a clothing closet, and then our general client navigation services. But actually, the whole point of our navigation team is to do our client intake process, but also provide referrals to other nonprofit organizations who do better at the things that we don't do. I've been in the nonprofit sector for a very long time. And I think that some of the maybe the weakness of nonprofits is that sometimes we try to be everything to everyone, and it's really, really important to be able to decide what you're going to offer and what you're good at, because there is another nonprofit who's offering something else. And to take that to the next level, we recently reached out to several nonprofits in our area and said, come learn about us. So during the month of April and May, we just sent out a sign up genius to all these different contacts at nonprofit organizations and said, come take a tour. Like, come learn about us. We want to learn about you. And it has been the easiest thing and the best thing. We are making connections. People are learning about us because we refer to them and they refer to us. And we want to make sure that it's easy and that we're not making clients, you know, run on a wild goose chase and say, hey, you can go over that this organization because we heard that they provide such and such service, we want to make it as easy as possible on our clients and give them the right information. So an hour long tour, we limited it to like six organizations at a time so that we can have conversation. And by the end of two months, over 60 people come through to learn about Echo and we've learned about them. That is amazing. Everything that you said, we could just close the webinar right now. Because you drop C's, you drop nuggas, you drop diamonds, you drop jewels. That was amazing. What you shared about you collaborating with other nonprofits, you can't do it by yourself. Having the open house where they can come and learn about you. That is amazing. You can do that for your funders as well. This this was that was good. Thank you for sharing that. Sure, thank you. Awesome. Awesome. OK, Chaplin T. Yeah, wow, that was that was fantastic. I I can plus just I keep plus one in plus one in that. And on that was really moving. Thank you so much for I mean, after having tragedy like that, it is quite a legacy to help others. You know, I we started our first nonprofit like 25 years ago. And we I was traveling across the country. We were doing a lot with X Games and bringing youth together. And we bring a lot of nonprofits all together for these events. And one of the things that consistently happened is we would have youth service organizations that were 15 minutes away from each other that had never met each other that didn't know that the other one existed. And so it just it really. It really reinforced the the need for us to work together and to reach out. We're so busy in our trenches working on the demographic that we're called to serve that sometimes we don't poke our head out of our hidey hole. And sometimes it's just so vital for us to poke our head out and say, who else is around me? And and just shed ego and reach out and find out who can I help? And you'll be amazed how many people want to help you to. Wow, that was a lot. I know the last word that caught me was shedding your ego. And that's what if you're not collaborating with anybody or you haven't started and you've been in existence for three to five years, maybe you have to put aside that ego and say, I need help. Because that's what collaboration is, is saying I need help, really. And we work together. That was thank you so much for sharing that. OK, y'all are taking me to church. You're taking me to college. You're sharing so much today. Thank you so much, Sister Joanne and welcome. Hi, everybody. I'm on the East Coast predominantly. I'm a retired school principal and during that 45 year period. You pick up hints of how to. Get people to help you and you to help people. Best thing I can tell you is make yourself known in your neighborhood. You could be right down the street and nobody knows what you do, because I don't know about you, but we don't have a six foot marquee that flashes what we need on it. Sometimes we're little holes in the wall, you know, don't be afraid to get out and shake some hands. Introduce yourself. Take advantage of all your places of worship. They all have bulletin boards. Free. Put it on. Some of them will offer to have you come in and speak to their communities. There are senior citizen gatherings. And just because you might deal with young people or something, senior citizens have family. It's making yourself known and what you do. Another thing is if somebody can't partner with you, they know somebody that can. That's another reason why you have to make it known. In other words, I'm here down the street. If I can ever do something for you, by the way, do you know anybody else that could be interested in what I do and to just drop a hint? What are they going to tell you? No. Doesn't know her. No, it doesn't. You go to the next one and the next one and the next one. Lastly, big hint in this day of electronic communication, beautiful, fast, but nothing beats a handwritten. Thank you. They hang it up. They look at it. It's concrete proof. It doesn't get lost in the email printouts. So, you know, a simple thing and have your information ready to hand out. Here's my card. It's something simple. And what you do, it's amazing. And promise yourself you're going to do a reach out every day. I'm either going to call, contact, write or visit one person, two persons. What does it take 20 minutes, half hour? Even when you stop and pick up your coffee at Starbucks. McDonald's, they all have something. You have to, it takes 20 minutes to get out there and say, hello. I'm right down the street. I'm over here. I'm over there. And you'd be surprised how fast people jump in when they know that what you do is for the good of other people. I can't begin to tell you that enough. My life was spent in inner city, multicultural, multilingual. They could use a lot of help. They got it, but I had to go and ask. Don't be afraid to ask. Don't. Thank you. Woo. Ah, OK. I told you, y'all, we're going to go to church today. But listen, Sister Joanne, you said so many things and all the speakers said so many things. So what I normally do, do this at the end. But right now, everybody put in the chat room. One thing that you've already learned, Sister Joanne, just said, make yourself known. Put in the chat room, something you've learned from Chaplin Tiggs, from Dawn, from Tim. Put in the chat room, something that you've already learned. And coordinator, I do see your hand. I want to see what other people are saying. One of their takeaways. And Sister Chaplin Tiggs, you got, you are wise. Sister Joanne, you are wise. Get out there and work. Army arm set, said. Geography doesn't have a limit to collaboration. Yes. And Robert, engage in your local community. Yes. Megan, foster that abundant mindset. Connect, connect, connect. Yes. Maria said, don't be afraid. I love that. I love that. This is great. Kara, our art maker space needs to say hi in person to our most. She's got a lot of things. Yeah. Go to our new mobile home tenets, go next door. Yeah. I just learned about emergent work. And we will be sending an email. Teresa said, Beverly said, talk to everyone. Michelle, get to know your neighbors. Joanne, I think this is how you pronounce your name. I apologize for saying it wrong. Have an open house. Yes. Yes. Yes. Larry, figure out ways to connect. Figure out ways to connect. John said, meet other groups or meet others for growth. Yes. I love that. This is great, you guys. Thank you so much. Coordinator, let us know who you really are. Welcome. Please unmute yourself. Yeah. Hi there. Well, it was really nice to listen to everyone. And I'm working with Border Charity. We are a small organization here, but then we collaborated with the National Peace Corps Association and they got their volunteers who have been serving many communities worldwide. So primarily they are addressing health and education issues. And they would come to us. And if they find any village that has a water issue or a sanitation problem. So that's where we are getting most of the projects. And we are putting them on our website. We respond to them and we get the things organized and do things for the people. And right now we have heard more than eight million people in more than 81 countries. Wow. That's a lot of people. Thank you for what you do and all the work you all have to put into it. Wow. So we've just heard from a lot of people on how they collaborate and the fact that they are collaborating. So I know several of you said that you are not collaborating. So would you like to ask someone here because this is this is a group. This we're we're in this together. Any questions for those of you who said no. And don't be shy. This is a safe place. This is a great place to learn. Go ahead, Larry. You're you're muted. There you go. Everybody on the founding director have now advocacy. We assist people through a myriad of crises. I mean, literally everything the mind can think of has come through our doors in the last 18 years. We've been based in Medford, Oregon, Southern Oregon for 16 of those 18 years. But because the service we offer is unique nationally and we've literally spent, pardon me, hundreds of hours researching that to see if there were other organizations with whom we could collaborate because they were doing the same thing. We found that there was nothing out there that was doing anything similar to what we're doing. And so I'm asking the question because we are finding that spreading from local to national is a very heavy lift, so to speak, that we are looking for groups with whom we can collaborate. And I put the question out there to the other members of the group here. How best to go about doing that? I mean, we found groups like the Red Cross, obviously, and it helps people through, helps people through emergencies and catheterities, but they simply don't respond. And so... Tell us what you do again. It was kind of muffled for me in the beginning. Tell us what your organization does. People call us when they're in some kind of life, disrupting, challenger crisis. And we found... An example. I'll give you an example that's going on right now. We have a man who was overcharged for rent for about six, seven years. And we... In the process of getting him that rent back, which we've now done, we found he's a disabled vet that his VA representative, Payee, who distributes money to him, was not acting in his best interest. So one of the things we're doing right now as a follow-up to what we did was to help this disabled vet replace that rep Payee. But we've... To answer your question, we've helped seniors get literally hundreds of thousands of dollars back, but they've been scammed. We've averted power shutoffs for closures, evictions. We helped the woman get out of a slave couple, a sex slave coat. She came into our office with a leather strap around her neck. We extricated her from that. Literally everything under the soap. We don't charge and we help people immediately. We've helped almost 10,000 people since inception. Actually, more than that, but including families. Thank you for sharing that. Now we have a better idea. So you do a lot of things. Anyone here? Say that again? The breadth is our strength and also the immediacy of our service. So did anybody hear something that you picked up and said, okay, we do something similar like that because as soon as you said it, I said it. Well, it sounds like you get in touch with the media, but I see you, go ahead, Mr. Special. All right, so we're a community art center officially, but what that really means is, well, people making friends. Like to how we've reduced what our mission actually is is people making friends. Now, so ours, we come in at a little bit of a different angle that you're dealing with directly with a crisis. We're often dealing in the non-crisis level on re-educating the public. But as far as how to collaborate, we collaborate with a lot of different organizations and most of those have started organically. We have not gone out intentionally to cultivate them, but they were people who came in and they said, hey, we like what you're doing. And usually we run on donations where we have a thrift store and that's how we fund our whole process. And so it's often, well, I have this resource and then as we get more resources, we actually get overwhelmed and the idea is to actually get rid of them as quick as possible, find somebody else. So some of these collaborations kind of happen, as I said, organically, but where you would look for collaborations is not in the same thing that you do, but in people who are doing different. If you've helped 10,000 people, then you have 100,000 connections through those people. And all of those people are connected in other ways. Going back, possibly in your history, you might reach out to the people who have you have successfully helped and say, please help us spread the word. One of the things we've really been looking at and focusing lately is that people need to be needed. So if you can ask them at your community that you have already helped for help and they have a way to give back to you, you'll generate more connections. Like I said, none of these have we tried to actively get. Now I'm going into a phase where I do expect that we are going to be actively addressing that. Our thrift store model has worked very well, but I know that we can do a whole lot more. So I am going to be starting to connect with people at the heads of organizations saying, this is what we need and actually we need some cash and can you help? But even then, Auretha, a few sessions back, we talked about that in that it's, you don't start with the cash that you want to ask for. You say, hey, we have something in common. Right, right. I work up to the cash. Yeah, thank you for sharing that, Larry. I hope you're able to pick up something. And a lot of people put some things in the chat room here. They put catch a fire, has a wealth of resources for a bi-monthly ED networking groups to have skill-based volunteer matches. Check out the organization. Their job is collaboration. It's called Gwynette Collaboration. It's similar to Monopoly chess game. So a lot of people put some suggestions in here, but I know that everyone is different. Larry, I know everyone is different. So I was hoping that you could get some nuggets from today. Anybody else have any comments or questions? I have a second poll that I want to launch real quick. This one, do you fundraise with other organizations? Cause this is a great way to collaborate and raise money too. A lot of times we want, you know, one of the EDs said to be a minasaur. It's all about me and like a dinosaur be old. So minasaur, me, me, me, me, me. But, you know, being open and collaborating is very important. So I see quite a few of you said that you do, but most people say that you do not. I'm going to end the poll. I think we've got 60s, almost 70% participation. So most of you say you do not fundraise for people. That's okay if you don't, but for those of you who do, we always start with the do. Those of you who don't, let's hear why. Feel free to share why. If you want to unmute your microphone, use the raise your hand options. And look, sometimes you just don't have time. It could be the time thing that you don't want to collaborate with anybody in fundraising. But I've seen it work in many ways. Michelle, hi, welcome. Hi, thank you, Aretha. So I'm in the boat that Sister Joanne mentioned a little bit ago, which struck me. Nobody's got a 10-foot sign or a six-foot sign blinking, here we are. And that's part of the reason we don't fundraise with others is because nobody knows who we are and because I am in a hidey hole, you know? And as hard as we've tried, we still haven't generated a lot of knowledge or awareness of our ministry. So I'm working on that. But I think that's a great step because I'd never thought about fundraising with others. So thank you. Yeah, yeah, you're welcome. I see a lot of people in the chat room are saying, they just haven't looked at it. And Coco said, I'm saying no, but there are shades of gray in that no. So yeah, I get it, I get it. Dawn says, I'm with Chapter 10, we haven't yet, but we're definitely planning to, very good. Toxy Turner said, we just haven't built the necessary relationship yet. Very key the word relationship because that's really what collaboration is all about, relationship. And one thing that Sister Joanne said was saying thank you. Sometimes when you've had that one connection with someone or an organization, writing a thank you note or sending pictures, you know, with a thank you on it or an email, I'm telling you, thank you goes a long way and then open up other doors as well. So keep that in mind. A lot of people are typing in the chat room. They wanna know, would love to know some approach. So those of you who do, oh, Terrence, I see your hand raised. Go ahead and unmute yourself. Awesome. We haven't collaborated, but I think that's in our future. And I can tell you, I'm in Santa Fe and I used to go to the executive directors learning circle. They'd have free every month to help us and help each other. And it was really beautiful, but they told us almost 10 years ago that if someone applies for a grant, say for 5,000 and someone else is applying for the same grant for 5,000 and someone else is collaborating for 10,000 between the two, they'll hands down, give it to the collaborators because they're trying to make, they wanna reward the collaborators and they're trying to teach everyone to collaborate. They've been doing that for 10 years. That's good to know, that's good to know. Just a reminder, this is being recorded and you will get the replay within 48 hours. And the New York council said they're fundraising with another org for the first time right now. They have different networks and missions, so the boards weren't afraid to share. I would love for you to share about that. And Tim, I see your hand raised. Go ahead and unmute yourself, please. Thank you. Yeah, you mentioned Quad at the beginning. And my question is, what we are experiencing in this meeting, is that similar to what you hope to accomplish with Quad? This is gonna be one of the things we'll call Quad. I can't tell you everything about Quad because Quad is not my baby, but this is one of the things. And say you all will focus just on food insecurity. I'm just giving an example. You're gonna have templates, you're gonna have so many other things and there's discounts, no admin fees on the products or software that TechSoup has. So that's one of the things that Quad is about. I would love if you join that feed more TechTalks, but yeah, this is one of the things, you have your own community. New York Council, Navy League, hi. Hi, thanks, Aretha. I'm Jess, I'm the executive director at the New York Council Navy League. And one project we had come up is something that Navy Leagues around the country typically do, so helping commission a new Navy ship. The ship happens to be named, or prospectively named the USS Cooperstown. So we looped in the baseball Hall of Fame up in Cooperstown. And we started doing some planning together and then we took the baby steps to, okay, let's do one promotional mailing, co-branded. And now we're realizing that it's just the power of combining our networks, which we have plenty of baseball fans among our constituents. They have plenty of supporters of the sea services in theirs, but no actual overlap until now, because now that we're able to get each other's messages across, we are doing some cross enrollment for other programs as well outside of the commissioning. But the fundraising is just, I think getting even stronger by automatically reaching a larger group and having two names on there. You know, kind of show that there's a community behind this event. I love it. And thank you for what you do. I'm retired Navy. Thank you so much. Oh, I hope you're a member of the Navy League near you. I am not. Don't embarrass me. Okay. Oh, thank you though. I appreciate your comments. Okay, Shannon, I see your hand and then I'm gonna go to some questions in the chat room. Hey, I'm Shannon Peterson out here in Seattle, Washington. I'm kind of a quasi executive director. And the reason I say that is because I'm on a board of directors and we are attempting to create a new 501C3 that is an offshoot of our religious organization, our church. Our church has shrunk to a point that it is unsustainable, but we also have moved into a quite an outreach position and wanting to build a multi-faith community center in our building because our building is larger than us at this point. So our goal is to create a nonprofit that is multi-faith, but also community driven. So my first reason for being on this call is to get ideas. My second reason is finding the best source to find a dynamic executive director that would be interested in helping us build a new nonprofit. We do have a few resources, but I feel like we don't have enough resources to get that information of how do you find a great executive director that wants to start a new nonprofit basically from the ground up with a somewhat different type of structure. We're in the middle of a neighborhood and it's like I said, it's a church. We're zoned as a church, so the kind of the legal structure has to stay that way, but we really want the nonprofit to run the building. So that's my first question. How do I find a great executive director or pool of executive directors or where do I start? And then my second part of being on this call is I'm doing career change and moving from my past career in inventory and retail to project management because I've been volunteering in nonprofits for the past 20 plus years and that's where my heart lies. So I'm studying project management starting to take on projects for nonprofits just as a contract worker. So if anybody needs any projects, I'd be happy to put my contact information in the chat and I can work with you. I have a lot of wide varying experiences to be able to offer to nonprofits. So I can hear in all of your voices executive directors are stretched thin and sometimes you just need a little extra help on the side. So kind of two-fold, sorry, just take so much time. No, no, no, were you a perfect, Shannon put your information in the chat room and Coco gave you some advice like the more you talk about what you need like in your community, in your circles about needing an executive director, the odds are you will probably find that person that you need. And of course, I'm sure your members will be telling everybody once you put up a job description that we're hiring and reach out to colleges, sister and your neighborhood first, obviously. So lots of some advice in here. I'm gonna go back to the question about collaboration here in the chat. I saw something that lives wrote, is it splitting fundraising? We hold a combined annual golf tournament and split the net proceeds 50-50. We informally try to divide the time commitment equally. So I love that. I love that advice and I love that you shared that y'all are doing that. Anybody else? This has been, I mean like, yo, this has been amazing. Yes, sister Joanne, go ahead. I wrote about it in the chat room but I wanna say it in case you don't get there. The National Neighborhood Night Out is the first Tuesday in August every year. It's usually an evening, afternoon, evening event. You register in your local area. I mean, I don't know, when I first got involved out in Western PA, it was free. You just had to register so they knew you were coming. You put up a table, you put out all your info, you get your people there surrounding and who comes to the neighborhood folks but meantime, you're going around looking at everybody else's table and making friends with people that are in the neighborhood. It's called the National Neighborhood Night Out. First Tuesday in August, usually they start registration mid-July. Fantastic free interaction. And some communities that have been doing it for a long time really get into it. I mean, they invite food vendors in. I mean, it's a night to meet people and get your word out. Okay, thank you. I love it. And I love how she was like, drop the mic. Okay, thank you, I'm done. I love, we have that in our neighborhood. Beverly, I see your hand raised. How are you? Good to see you again. You're still on mute. I mute myself. I have a nonprofit called Sowing Hope, Incorporated. And we provide blankets for foster children. And I've gotten myself into more things by talking about my sewing ministry being provider of blankets, because everybody's talking about food and supplies and everything for everybody else. And I thought, I got to speak up. I mean, I live in the Tampa Bay area and there's probably between eight and 10,000 foster children's between three counties. Hillsborough County a couple of years ago had more than 5,000 foster children in Hillsborough County which outdid what Miami did at that particular time. I mean, the Pasco and Hillsborough County are much smaller quantities wise, but these kids just absolutely, when you give them a blanket, you know, the shoes, the socks, the clothes and everything like that, they come and go because they wear out of them. They wear them out or they grow out of them, but the blanket is theirs to keep. And that goes with them for everywhere they go. And it's treasured, that's a treasure for them because when somebody's blanket gets lost, there's no peace in the household. That is so true. Beverly, thank you for sharing that. That is beautiful. And you're right down the road because I'm in Orlando. So we have to do coffee or tea or something soon. All right, Tim, I see your hand raised. Go ahead. Sure, this is for Beverly. There is an organization, a nonprofit that provides suitcases for the foster kids because many of the foster kids come into the families with plastic bags full of their stuff. And this kit that they provide, it's not just a suitcase. It has lots of different items in it. So I'm sorry, the name of the organization escapes me. I'm afflicted with some timers. I'm sorry. My group is Sowing Hope, but I give them to Eckerd Connects. And Eckerd Connects, just backed out of the foster children program and there's a new company coming in. I haven't met them yet, but they do provide tote bags or backpacks for the kids. They come in in garbage bags. They're clothes, everything they come in with and some of them come and some of the kids are taken from school and so they never don't even have a chance to get home. And so they just come with the clothes on their back and they provide clothes for the first week. And then there's another group called Clothes to Kids that provides clothes for the rest of the time. And then everybody gets a blanket. There you go. Thank you for sharing. Alexanderina, does that say that right? Yes, you do. You said it right correctly. Off the high. The reason I was, I put my hand up, I put no that we do not collaborate. And no, we don't fundraise. Probably because my organization is really, really tiny and it is not one where we're providing like a humanitarian service. We offer dance in our community. And it's very culturally related. So it's not something that we're the only one in our county that does what we do and it's free to most families that have low incomes. So not too many other places are offering that particular type of service. People offer after school programs, they offer sports, things like that, but not ethnic dance. So that's the part of the, that's really the reason. Fundraising, we've had people to have us come and dance for them as performing. And therefore, I don't know whether you consider that fundraising together. We come, we dance for you, you give us money. And we get a lot of in-kind services. So that's why I said, no, we don't. But then I'm wondering are those things that I'm telling you about the in-kind services, et cetera, or what you're considering collaboration? So yeah, not everybody needs to collaborate. And you gave a perfect example with your school, the dance school. So I don't see y'all needing other food banks to collaborate with. However, your fundraising, you always need money. So maybe there's ways that you can collaborate with. Like you said, the people who are inviting you to dance, make it a long-term collaboration. We come dance for you quarterly. You promote us. That's collaboration. Collaboration doesn't always mean like, you give me this, I give you that. It could just mean sharing. So, yeah. Okay, anybody else have any advice or anything for Aleksandrina? Sorry, Ms. Dixon. Drina's fine. Okay, Drina. I'll remember that next time. Go ahead, Tori. Hey guys, I'm Tori Pagrom. I'm the Director of Development and Strategic Partnerships for Christian County Library. We're a public library in Southwest Missouri. So I just want to put a shout out to public nonprofits. If those of you have not tried to connect with your local public library to figure out ways that you can work together and get the word out about what you do. So of course, a lot of them might put out flyers about your business, but my position in the library, we have engineered so that I am both the fundraiser, the grant writer and the person looking for new partnerships. So that is because a lot of people like to talk about money, but a lot of the kind of strategic partnership conversations I get into when I go visit other nonprofits or invite them into the library. Often that'll kind of spiral into joint programming things that we might do together. Maybe the library is putting together a resource guide for resources in the community for people who come into the library. For Adrina, we've had several nonprofits who have come in and we've set it up to do library programming with them. So for example, you could check with your library to see if they might even be able to fund either through a grant that they write with you to pay for you to come in to maybe teach some classes locally. And then we try to position those when we bring in nonprofits that do things as a way for them to be able to then recruit people who might be paid members later. So they can't have people pay there, but if it's sort of a free service or a volunteer service, they can by giving the free classes, they can kind of find new people to be members or new people to be participants. We've done that with like ESL classes. For example, a local university came and gave some free ESL classes and also have paid ESL classes and they can kind of recruit people who have that need through the platform of the library. We get a win because we're able to offer something for free to patrons. And if we need money to be able to pay them to come in to do that, then I'm right there to help write a grant and maybe we can write it with them and we can both get, maybe they can get some new supplies, new computers that they can then keep and use and we get something out of it too. So I would just encourage you to remember that public services, I mean, I think most local health departments also sometimes local schools, but especially libraries, I think all of you have probably heard, we're not just about books anymore. We're really looking to kind of curate people and ideas and resources in our communities as much as we can. So please reach out to us and think about that. Beverly also just to say, we have a group, a couple of groups that meet at the library, the hookers who are a rug hooking group and they make rugs for charity. So just remember too, that usually your public libraries do pretty routinely now offer free meeting space for meetings that you might have with other collaborators or if you have a small office space and you want to have a meeting with a client or someone like that, but we also have a group that makes blankets for cancer patients in a local hospital. And that is a collaboration where we have also had them do a program to teach patrons how to make those blankets and they've had them come in and then the blankets they make in the library program are given away, but then they're kind of recruiting new people to help them out. And of course we got some grant money to fund, paying them to be able to be the presenter for that. So look to your libraries, please. I think we're out there everywhere you are and we are trying to really hard to connect and be grounded and help you guys connect with each other, figure out ways to work together. And I'll say a lot of us are collaborating with businesses too or trying to. We had like a local pizza restaurant that let us set up a table to make new library cards for people and then gave 10% or actually 40% of the profits from that night once a month back to the library. So there are ways that you could probably do that too if you are a nonprofit, not just a library, talk to a local business that you think might be interested, see if they'll let you come in one night a month to talk about what you do and see if they might be willing to give you a little cut for that night if you help advertise their business too, assuming it's a business that you can agree with the philosophy of and whatnot. So just a shout out to the libraries, use us please. Yeah, thank you Tori and I'm telling you I concur with her 100% with the library. The library is a wealth of knowledge as we know growing up, but now as an adult, we can use them as well, especially for our nonprofit. So thank you so much. Andrew, would you put the link for Qua in the chat room for me, that would be great. I want to see if there's any other questions if not I'm gonna give you your time back. I'm gonna ask you to fill out the survey because I would love. There are so many of you that have so much information that you need to share with other nonprofits. I want you to be a featured speaker. So please fill out the survey, put your contact information, how I can reach out to you and I'll reach out to you and bring you on because we need you. Everybody here, we need each other. Today was about collaboration. And if you did not feel the impact from start to finish, then you will probably sleep. So wake up and let's go y'all, let's go. All right, so as I always close out all of my webinars, Tori did you want to say something? You're muted, you're muted sweetie. You are on mute. Okay, thank you. I just wanted to add that although we're not currently collaborating, the organization before I was with them for many years, it's an educational organization, but they were collaborating with the local Native American musicians and artists and poets. And we were the founder and board chair. He's been doing this since he was 17 years old, he's in his 70s now, but he was producing those performances in those music festivals, Native American music festivals and winning awards for them. And it's a beautiful way. Everything's opening up now, so to speak, but people are still being careful, but outdoors, music is international language. Thank you so much. Listen, while you're out there taking care of everybody else, please make time to take care of yourself. I'll see you next time on the next webinar everybody, bye.