 So I am excited to share with you that today's conversation for the nonprofit show will be with Paula Cullison and she will be sharing with us about the journey of a women's philanthropic group that she started. So more to dive into there. I'm excited, of course, and very grateful to have our presenting sponsors. Many of these companies have been there, they're here with us and with you since last March. So we're just extremely grateful to have their continued support, their investment, not just here on the nonprofit show, but literally everywhere that you are, because they are around the globe and they exist to help you do more good for your mission-driven goals. Just as Julia Patrick is and I am, so we are back and serving again as the co-host and I always love these days. I look forward to our conversation and today's conversation is going to be a big one. So again, welcome to you Paula and we are excited to have you join us. Well, thank you so much, Sharon and Julia. This is a wonderful opportunity for us to discuss the Arizona Women's Partnership. And thank you for all you're doing for the nonprofit community. Well, thank you. I mean, you know, I think Paula, what's really exciting for Jared and I is that each and every day we're coming up on our 350th episode. We get to interview people like you who've done really interesting things to continue to impact our communities, our nation and our planet. It is really an exciting and humbling thing to get to hear from people about how they're tackling their passions and their problems and making life better for all of us. So it's really an exciting thing. I first want to dig in and ask you when and how you got the idea to start this philanthropic group. What was the genesis of this? Well, Julia, well, as you know, I've been very involved with the nonprofit community for quite a while. And I realized that it was the smaller nonprofits who do such phenomenal work that are having the hardest time, not only generating funds through their events or their outreach to the community, but also getting publicity. And so I created the Arizona Women's Partnership as a way to provide grants to these small nonprofits that are in our case, obviously they're in Arizona. But I really believe that what I'm doing here can be replicated nationally and internationally with the same premise and the same idea. I think, yeah, that's so important to share. So we are lucky to have Paula in our community and to provide these resources. But even before we hit the live broadcast button, Paula, you were sharing about how so many of these organizations really have this global footprint of support. And so again, for those of you that are watching either live or recorded, you know, I want you to listen kind of with these ears of what Paula is doing with her group here. But chances are there is another group within your community that you could plug into and receive some support as well. And one of the things that we always like to highlight Julie and I, Paula, is that oftentimes nonprofit leaders are really timid to reach out to foundations or to found, you know, to grand tours. And so we really like to bring in this whole like human element. And I think you are a great person to help do that. Thank you so much, Jared. Not only do we we also reach out to funders and individuals to for donations, but we like to see ourselves as a resource to our grant recipients in terms of telling them about other possibilities. Because as you can probably guess, Julia and Jared, I'm inundated with emails from a number of nonprofit organizations and also agencies that provide funds. And so I kind of cull through them and I look for those that would respond to our grant recipients and then I send out the information. As a matter of fact, one of our latest volunteers is doing that. She's pulling together a database of possibilities for our grant recipients. So thank you for that. And also I like to encourage our grant recipients to coalesce with each other. You know, if one is doing a and B needs what is doing, I hook them up and it's been very, very beneficial. So, you know, I'm really interested in this. Let's start with your fundraising approaches because obviously in order to I shouldn't say obviously, but in order to give money away, you got to come up with the money. And so you have in the beginning really had to build this this nest egg with which to work. Correct. That is so correct. So thank you for the question, Julia. And it's the one that my husband asked me when I set up the nonprofit in 2002, how are you going to raise the money to give away. And I thought about it and it just so happens that coincidentally, I was involved with the chefs in this in the in the area. And I said to them we were doing a major fundraiser for a another nonprofit. And I said, you know, there's something wrong with this picture. There's 23 men here and one woman. Don't misunderstand me. I love working with you guys, but where are the women in your kitchen. And so they told me they were female pastry chefs. And so I said, I'm going to go home and go think about this and I'm going to come up with a fundraising idea. And you're going to send me the chefs. Well, we did and we called it getting our just desserts. And I found out from gourmet magazine that this was the largest female chef event. Wow, it states and maybe even the world and I thought to myself, what, how come women aren't being recognized for the work they're doing as chefs in this case they were pastry chefs. Well, in the meantime, I had a waiting list because we could only fit 24 in the ballroom that we used. I had a waiting list of other female chefs who wanted in. And I'm thinking to myself, wait a minute, the need is so great in the community that I've got to come up with another fundraising event. And so I created wine women and jazz as a way to showcase women who either were restaurant tours were sous chefs or did catering. And then we brought in the jazz component because I love jazz music. And so we featured all these jazz artists, Margot Reed, the late Margot Reed being our keynote and also Blais Lantana from K Jazz and Delphine Cortez. So those were our two main fundraisers you asked about that. And we did the wine women in jazz for 13 years. And because it was very labor intensive, in spite of the fact that we haven't a wonderful cache of volunteers, I decided to turn the getting our just desserts over to another charity. I did it for five years and we got a lot of recognition with the media was so responsive, I must say. And we got most of the female chefs on TV or the radio or in print. And so I'm very happy and grateful to the media for that. So all the money you raise goes out to these other applicant pool. Correct. I'm assuming right so you said you started in 2002. And it sounds like you have a great partner because his first question was, where's the money coming from. So what happened was that we're got out about what we were doing. And I received a phone call one day and I didn't know this fella. And he said, can you tell me something about the Arizona women's partnership and I said, Oh, we're a 501 C3 nonprofit philanthropic group. We award grants to small charities that help women and children at risk. And he said, okay, I'll send you a check. So I figured $100 is what we usually get. He sent $10,000 and he did the same thing the following year. So I called him I said, you know, I don't know you. And I'd like to get to know you. Let's have a cup of coffee. So we met for coffee and I invited him to sit on our grant review committee so he could see the process. And he pulled and that's usually at the house and I feed everybody so they come for lunch. And we review the grants. And he pulled me a sign he said, What about if I give you more money. And I was kind of so taken aback and I said, Well, why don't you just target one or two of our grant recipients and give the money to them. He said, No, I like your process. It's very thorough. You're very conscientious. And long story short, it was his maternal grandmother who had passed and asked that his money be used to help women and children. And there were three siblings and he was in Arizona so therefore I was the beneficiary of that. And a friend of mine, Dr. Sheila Kalangi, she was getting married and she and her husband Jeff Gibbs, he pulled me over at a reception for an art show that I was in. And he said, You know, we decided that we want to ask our guests to give the money to the Arizona women's partnership, we don't need any gifts. And I thought, Wow, that's incredible. So that was wonderful. Of course, we got to go to the wedding, which was really exciting. And then we have a couple who continue to do challenge grants for us. Ralph and Roxanne Martin. And the, I want to mention that the, it was the Violet M family foundation they gave us the most money from the inheritance. And the Martins have done so many matching grants for us. And they also sit on our grant review committee. So they understand, as I said, this is the, this will be our 20th year of doing this process. So, I can't imagine it's an easy process. So talk to us about the application, you know, just very briefly, like the application process, how many applicants have you been averaging and did that go up this last year. And how, you know, how you select these grantees. Okay, so very good question, Jared. I know, because I have applied for grants over the years, how difficult and arduous a process it is so and I know that these small grant recipients don't have much of a staff. They don't have the the wherewithal to pay someone to do grant writing for them. So I made the grant application as simple as possible. It's one page. And on the one page we state right up front, you're at this time your operating budget has to be under $450,000. So it's really a lot of money for nonprofits. You have to be a 501c3 based in Arizona the money has to stay in Arizona. You cannot be partisan, not political. You cannot be sectarian non religious so we don't give money to charities that are religiously affiliated. We do not give to school foundations because they have other venues to go through in order to garner the monies that they need. So it stated up front, then we asked basically the, you know, information on who they are where they're five, what year they got the 501c3 when it was granted. And then we asked for supplemental attachments. We want to know their mission statement we want to know that they're going to use the money wisely. And then we tell them, well of course we need the 990 the first two pages of the 990 it's pretty pretty straightforward and pretty simple. We're not asking them for supplements that anybody else wouldn't ask them for but we don't. Our process is not detailed, you know, in as much as it's pretty easy, the brochure and then we asked them I know that's a question you're going to be asking me, we asked them for a follow up report one or two pages, because there are so few of us doing all of this one or two pages as to how they use the money and what results that they received that particular year we also asked them on the grant application, what population they're serving and what's the breakdown and that's what we put on our huge Excel spreadsheet. Are they helping a Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic population refugees, you know, who are they helping and what percentages and what numbers do they help every year. So that's how we decide who's going to get the money. So you mentioned this is your 20th year. Tell us how much money you're able to award and how many grantees receive, you know, the, the acceptance letter I guess. So, this year, we did a little more than we usually, we picked 27 charities. We usually give grants to 15 to 20. But this year because of COVID and the need was so great. We hate to turn away people that qualify and any nonprofit that qualifies and the first year grant recipients get usually a smaller amount. So we want to see how that goes. The majority of our grant recipients are multi-year recipients. They've been with us. Some of them with us for over 10 years. As long as they meet the qualifications, as I mentioned, Jared, you know, having an operating budget of under 450,000, being in the black, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I would just want to give you an idea. This year, we have many, as I mentioned, many multi-year grant recipients. And I'm just going to give you the names. You can find them on our website, azwp.org. Okay. About care for the elderly. Achieving my purpose for underserved minority girls. Alice's Place Domestic Violence, Angel Heart Pajama Project for children in foster care. Another association for foster and adoptive parents. Arizona's for the protection of exploited children and adults because some of them turn 18 while they're in care. AZ Reach for teens providing clothing and school supplies. Billy's Place for grief counseling. All these poor kids. Constructing circles of peace. Domestic violence counseling in Nogales, Arizona. Control, Alt, Delete. Also domestic violence. Desert sounds performing arts. Giving music for these underserved children, mostly Hispanics in Mesa. Dignity house. Shelter for women who were sexually trafficked and now trying to re-enter society. A foster AZ. Again, a foster children are aging out of the system. They have nowhere to go. This particular nonprofit is providing a safety net for them, giving them funds for their apartments, et cetera. Grand Canyon Music Festival. Native American composers on the reservation. These youth. They're high school. Some of them are college kids. They're available. A Native American. They're either from the Salt River Pima Indian Reservation, Hopi or Navajo. Haven for family resource has been with us for over 10 years. Crisis counseling to Lake Havasu City, helping at risk teens providing food and supplies for these teens on the west side. Hopes crossing a re-entry program for girls and women who have been released from incarceration, trying to help them get jobs and re-enter society. Kids in focus providing photography as a way to show these children that they can view their world from a different lens, if you will. Laptops for learning. Computers for high school and college kids who are underserved live and learn Arizona. Again, underserved women breaking the cycle of poverty. 100 Angels. They were new this year. Services and medical assistance to immigrants. Pande Vida that provides social services in Chandler also for underserved women and minorities, and they have a garden now. So they're even feeding themselves. Somalia, the American United Council of Arizona, they provide help to a variety, maybe 12 or 15 refugee groups that are settled here in the valley. Unlimited potential providing ESL and GED programs for Hispanic women in South Phoenix. Welcome to America Project. Providing household furnishings to refugee families. The founder received a CNN Hero Award for this. Spinal cord injury, injured, excuse me, young people who need encouragement and physical therapy that they do. And finally, yes, for Navajo youth, providing leadership skills on the Navajo reservation, they've been with us for over 10 years. I just want to say that these nonprofits are working on shoestring budgets, providing phenomenal services. And as I say, this can be replicated nationally and internationally. You know, it's so interesting to see, I can kind of understand over your 20 years of service, Paula, that you have become a maven of information and connectivity. I mean, for so many of these organizations, I can see where they could link up and they could use, you know, combined programming, and it's a very, very interesting thing to look at. I'm curious to ask you how many people do you have working and you're all volunteers. Right. What does this look like for another community somewhere that might say, Yeah, we want to start and I'm going to use the word a giving circle or we want to start an organization. What is that journey been like. Okay, so first I want to finish answering Jared's question that we have given out over $500,000 since I started this. And the average grant is about 2000 sometimes we give three depends on how much money we get so we get and we give because as we mentioned, Julia, we're all volunteers. And so, how does this look and how, how, how did I find the ducks to put in a row to say, okay, Paula, we're quacking your way, and we're going to help you. And so some, some of the volunteers have stayed with me all these 20 years, but people come and go as you well know. So our grant review committee consists of usually 10 to 12. We had 16 it got a little unwieldy with 16 people 12 is a good number. So 12 people come together every year to do this. Okay. Hopefully, people continue to fund us. So that's the only way we can give out our grants. Okay, so since COVID, and I put my job offerings which are volunteer positions on volunteer match.org. And that has been a fabulous resource for me personally I've been with them since 2008. And so during COVID I put on, I think we had a six or seven different job opportunities to came to do videos. Two did social media, three wrote feature stories which we had published in local papers and then obviously they're all on our website. Our grant, our volunteers faces are on our website as well I want to give credit to everybody because without them I can't do any of this. And as I mentioned before one is helping me update our media database another one found the resources for our grant recipients to apply to, and thank God my daughter Pam was is technically savvy. She does all our database management she she's the queen of the Excel spreadsheet she helps us with the grant review she helps us fundraise etc etc etc. And so I don't think I left anybody out. They have been absolutely wonderful Jasmine is in graduate school right now she came to me through volunteer match at the beginning of the COVID scenario she had just graduated summa cum laude and now she's in graduate school. Who's our male chimp queen. So we send out the male chimp blast and she just sent out another one about this show. So I got a tremendous amount of response that people are watching so I want to say thank you and hi to all of our supporters are volunteers and our grant recipients so thank you for this. I really am. I love that this is very direct interface, you know it's homegrown I get the sense that when you your team is when they are reviewing these grants. There's a good chance that somebody at that kitchen table is going to know about this organization right I mean it seems to me that there's a lot of familiarity and I'm wondering do, does your team ever take tours or I mean do they engage further before this this happens or is it really more through those those grant application. It's well because you know sometimes we did and sometimes we don't but it's very difficult for people to do because they're all over the state. So we have visited and I say to someone if you're taking a trip to Prescott, could you visit a B and C, or if you know, so we have been doing that also Julia. We have invite we invite to representatives from each one of our grant recipients to come to our fundraisers, so that our donors can meet them. So if you ask them please don't solicit. You're here to have a good time and to thank our donors. And so we are having an opportunity. Next year so I like that question because I would love to do more I mean I have visited just about all of them personally but you know and I and I ask if people would like to visit here's the list and please feel free to contact them to thank them and we appreciate their work that they're doing in the community. But this last year, just before COVID. I had a an opportunity because I created an art show at the her burger called in celebration of women for the 100th anniversary of the women's right to vote. And since I did all this work and I created a jury, they said we would like to honor the Arizona women's partnership. Well, of course. Okay, so we were honored with a featured nonprofit. And the idea was that after the show ended we would take the show to the Arizona State Capitol Museum, which we couldn't do which we will hopefully do in March because March is the women's history month. And so the thinking that we were going to the Arizona State Capitol Museum I wrote a small grant for the reception. And I still have the money. And we were planning on and we will invite representatives from our grant recipients to come to the reception. Our donors will be there. And obviously the artists will be there and they will have a chance to interact in that regard so I think that's really a good question. This really a good question. The other, the other opportunity that we had I had a student at he was at the art Institute he needed an internship. So I said to him, you know what I really need is a video of the photographs that we have here is called faces of hope. They're the faces of the women and children who are helped with the grants we don't give money to individuals we give the money to the nonprofits and they provide the services. And so he said, okay, I'll do a video. And so this year we had the video updated. So I sent out a word to our newer grant recipients, please send us J pegs and we'll put together a newer video and the the the virtual volunteer she's going to school there. And so now that's on our website you can see faces of hope to but we still have the photography show so I break the photography show to the community colleges to ASU in the library Maricopa County Library was at the U of A medical education building for a while. And the idea is to inspire students to think about volunteering, not necessarily for the Arizona women's partnership, or maybe with for our grant recipients, but in general, because I think when you give back to society, you gain much more personally you know, so feel good. Everybody wins. It's so it's so great. I'm sure I think I interrupted you know I know I was just being mindful of our time and I know that we're close to wrapping up but I just wanted to make a comment Paula that is just really impressive that you started this organization in 2002. You know you shared with us kind of the journey of how you got started but I have really enjoyed learning how it has really a meshed and like just grown with the community and how you bring community members along and into the organization in some way shape or form. I think that's really cool because there's so many organizations, Julie and I talked there's 1.8 million nonprofits in the US. That's in the US right. And then we talk about how there's so many other you know very well deserved projects and people and there's just so much going on but it seems that you and the Arizona women's partnership have really figured out this blend and this marriage as it relates to the community and the community members so congratulations on all of your success. Well thank you for that. So I was doing an interview, I guess last month, and the fellow interviewing me Charlie Huero he said you know what you sound like a united way for small nonprofits. I didn't think you thought of it that way, but we're unique in that regard because Jared as you pointed out we're serving the community that actually exists on a budget of under 450,000. Most of our grant recipients have budgets of under 200,000. Well you know this has been great. I have to say personally I've been able to watch the trajectory of this organization it's been really great to see it grow. And this has really been a powerful opportunity for all of us to know what happens. What's the origination story of a lot of these types of organizations that we think we know, but what really goes on I think is a neat thing for so many of our viewers to learn about and to understand that, you know at the end of the day, it really is about the community and we hear this all the time Jared and I do, you know so many people are afraid about what that relationship looks like with the funder and so it was really great to hear from you Paula, how you all do this, and how you're moving forward so we are so excited that you would share your time with us today. We have on the screen and we have produced a little bit Paula's information so that you can check out their website and and look at some of their information learn more about their recipients. And if you are looking to do this in your own community what it might take, because really it's at the core of how we serve our communities, and especially those nonprofits that are small, and have smaller budgets. And we want to really make sure that we spend time thanking ourselves, which includes Jared ransom the nonprofit nerd, thank you Jared, we had a few little hiccups today as you see I come to you from my office and not the studio so thank you for rolling with that. And again we want to thank our presenting sponsors without you we would not be here having these discussions that teach us so much inspire us, and give us some great ideas for all of the nonprofits that we work with across the country so we do want to say thank you to all of these amazing companies. Jared another great episode been a lot of fun Paula thank you so so much. Thank you both so much. I mean this was such an honor. Thank you Julia, and thank you for all you did when you were at front doors you really highlighted the partnership then. And thank you Jared you're so sweet appreciate this very much. Well it's been a lot of fun as we like to end every day. We want to remind everyone to stay well. So you can do well. We'll see you everybody have a great day.