Springfield Business Journal_2021-01-25

12 · SBJ.NET JAN 18-24, 2021 Springfield Business Journal Editor Eric Olson discusses the nonprofit industry with Laura Farmer, executive director of Court Appointed Special Advocates of Southwest Missouri; Emily Givens, executive director of Lost & Found Grief Center; and Jason Hynson, executive director of Victory Mis- sion & Ministry. Eric Olson: What’s one word you would use to describe the nonprofit industry today? Emily Givens: I’ll say resilient. Laura Farmer: That was actually the word that first came to my mind, too, especially with the challenges in 2020. But I also immediately thought of adaptable because a lot of nonprofits had to shift into different modes of serving clients and delivering their services. Jason Hynson: Change. If you’re event driven at all in the nonprofit world, now you’ve got to change that. You’ve got to change how you serve. Victory Mission used this as a time to totally change a lot of things. I told our staff this is your one chance to blame it all on something that’s not you. [Laughs] Why’d you quit doing that? Oh, the pandemic! It just ruined every- thing. We may never be able to go back to live events. We’ll see. Olson: The year held so much change in so many organizations. What change had the most significant impact on your operations? Farmer: For us at CASA, before the stay-at-home order, we had about three days to shift our new volunteer training into a virtual format. I met with my staff, and we had a decision to make. We could either adapt really quickly and shift all of our training from in-person to a virtual format, which none of us was familiar with Zoom when this was going on, back in March of 2020. We had that decision to make: Are we going to adapt quickly and meet the needs of the children in foster care that we serve and continue to train and recruit new volunteers? Or are we going to wait this out and be behind the eight ball? Our staff chose to adapt quickly and to be flexible. As things continue to open back up, and who knows what 2021 will bring for us with the vaccines, we may continue to offer virtual training because our people have really connected with it. We had the best year in recruiting and training volunteers in 2020 even through a pandemic because people could fit the training into their sched- ule. They really enjoyed the virtual format. In 2019, when we were still do- ing all in-person training, we trained 81 new volunteers. And in 2020, doing all of our training virtually and doing a lot of recruit- ment over social media, we trained 89 new CASA volunteers. Givens: Because we provide grief support in a group format, it’s a real challenge for us to try to get that same connection within our families and trying to have them connect with one another over Zoom. It wasn’t the same. You’re talking about the very deep, very personal, very emotional subject of death. Shifting to the Zoom format was great at the time. As we got into it, we realized that less and less families were showing up to group vir- tually because it just was not as effec- tive. When we finally shifted back to in-person, our biggest change was you have to be 6 to 7 feet apart. We have to take your temperatures. You have to wear a mask. And when you’re trying to connect with people, again, on that personal, emotional level and all you can see is this [motions to eyes] and you can’t hear very well because you’re so spread out, that is a challenge. But it is so much better than doing it virtu- ally. About 5% of grief centers in the nation are in-person because they just haven’t figured out how to do it. We decided that we can make it work be- cause it’s important enough. Families who are not comfortable, we can meet them where they are virtually. Olson: How are you able to maintain in- person meetings? Givens: A lot of our rooms are not large enough for the amount of people that it needs to hold because of distancing guidelines. We are renting out hotel space. Taking the families to one of their conference centers and setting up chairs, it’s not as intimate as maybe one of our rooms here, but at least it can be in person and that’s all the families want. You lose a child, you need to be around other people who’ve lost a child because they’re the only other people who truly understand and get it. We found a couple of hotels who were gracious enough and we do pay them a small amount. Hynson: We got the call when the shut- down first started, we have 160 men that are living in this one room, so we essentially had to move 40 right away. We thought we’re going to have to dis- place them. The [Springfield-Greene County] Health Department was kind of pushing down. We basically just adapted. Instead of 40, we moved 26. We had an extra floor on our third floor, which displaced our women’s programming outreach center that we were doing, so we basically just pri- oritized. We took over classrooms, we moved bunk beds, we expanded out. We really didn’t know at first the com- plexity of the virus. We basically shut down all outreach. If you’re in shelter with us, we’re going to stop welcoming volunteers. How do you have relation- ships with people via Zoom if you’re supposed to build quality relation- ships? We started serving more meals because we served the men that were with us; we gave them two meals a day. They didn’t even have to leave the building. We just really invested heav- ily with the people we had and did less with the outreach. We kind of just kept shifting and pivoting and adding things back and seeing what worked. Silver linings Olson: With these operational changes, what’s going to stick? What are the silver linings? Givens: If we have to pivot again, we can. I hope we don’t have to ever pivot as much as we did. Our families are still being served and that’s No. 1. Hynson: We have a food pantry, and when we shifted that, one of our staff members said, “What if we do a mobile food pantry?” We shifted to the mobile and we got church partners to do it in their parking lot. We went from one location to six locations spread out throughout the city. It’s amazing because really at the heart, we want people to go into these church groups and have newfound community and to find a place where they can plug in and find some hope. That’s the whole goal of that church is to build a community in that neighborhood. Knowing that your team can do that, it’s like: What’s next? Farmer: We have learned a whole new set of skills this year. As we look ahead to 2021 or even beyond that, we will continue likely to do virtual trainings and support for our CASA volunteers. Our CASA volunteers who are serving our kids in foster care, they became re- ally creative in the way that they were connecting with kids. In 2020, we ac- tually started a new Fostering Futures program serving older youth in foster care. Our older youth in foster care NONPROFITS CHRISTINE TEMPLE Clockwise from top left: Laura Farmer, Eric Olson, Emily Givens and Jason Hynson If we have to pivot again, we can. I hope we don’t have to ever pivot as much as we did.” —Emily Givens Lost & Found Grief Center