“Am I The Write Fit?”
When I sat down for my interview with Betsey and Rechaud in August, I did not know what I wanted to do. I had been accepted into the Orlando Heart of the City Fellows program, a personal-spiritual development program for young adults entering the career field, but I was still in need of a year-long internship to be able to participate in the program. With a background in writing but no knowledge of the foster care system, I was initially interested in getting a job and not much more.
Throughout college I expected to enter a career path in which I would work primarily with words, so as I sat in the Commission 127 conference room, that was about all I had in mind. But throughout our conversation I began to realize that there was something bigger happening here, something richer and far more meaningful than just a job.
I could readily sense that along with being ambitious and business minded, the Bells were committed to walking by the Spirit, pursuing faithfulness for their organization. When I shared with them that I have two adopted siblings in my own family, it felt as though the Lord had placed a special blessing on my potential future with C127.
But Rechaud was not fully convinced yet. By the time I left that interview, he had given me a homework assignment. I was to write a newsletter story highlighting the momentous impact that care communities have in the challenging lives of foster families, using a recorded interview with a care community volunteer and a Facebook post from a foster mom.
I went home and worked on the story for hours that weekend, struggling to decode all of the terminology around advocates, care communities, FAMs, and etc. But I enjoyed myself! I felt the sense of fulfillment that comes with using your hard earned skills for a deeply meaningful purpose.
It has been 10 months since I started with C127 as an intern, and I am so grateful that Betsey and Rechaud decided to hire me and that I am able to continue my work with C127. The work that I have done and will keep doing with stories gives me a special and valuable perspective on the lives that are being changed through our work and yours. Crafting thoughtful and informative stories necessitates that I dive into the actual events, challenges, heartbreaks, and healing that takes place in the lives of our C127 Family members.
In preparing to write these stories, I have had wonderful opportunities to hear from foster parents firsthand about their journeys of caring for vulnerable kids in their homes; I have also gotten to talk with advocates and care community volunteers about their experiences caring for foster and adoptive families. Getting to have these immersive conversations has been an effective and quick way to gain an understanding of what C127 really does and why that matters in the lives of kids from hard places.
In addition to writing stories for newsletters and social media content, my role transitioned throughout the year into one that centered around grant writing. I learned that money does not grow on trees, even for nonprofits, and that applying for grants from foundations can grow into a key funding opportunity. Moving deeper into grant writing territory created both the need and the opportunity for me to learn this unique style of writing. I received coaching from Betsey and Cindi Kopleman, the former president of Shepherd’s Hope, an Orlando nonprofit that provides free healthcare to the uninsured. My learning process also entailed plenty of trial and error as I gained most of my understanding though just taking my best shot.
There were some significant hurdles that I had to overcome to become an effective grant writer. The first is that quite frankly, grant writing can be pretty boring. Especially coming from my experience with writing stories, grant proposals call for a much more technical style; the goal is generally to present hard data demonstrating the efficacy of your organization using concise literal language. To figure out how to write this way and still produce impactful work that tells a story, I had to learn to weave my passion and creativity into it.
Once I developed comfortability with the form, I began to feel the freedom to sparingly deploy emotional appeal, use numbers strategically, utilize elements of story, and even bend some of the traditional rules.Make it stand out
I also had to reckon with the reality that grant writing can feel a bit like playing the lottery. For each grant proposal, there is only a chance that it will be approved. This makes rejections discouraging because I may have spent days of weeks working on one proposal seemingly to no avail. Acceptance, however, carries a special weight; I get to see the dollars coming in to directly support the work we do, and these small triumphs make me eager to apply for more grants. For all of my challenges with writing grant proposals, it helps tremendously to keep myself grounded in the real effect of the work. To this end, my work with stories becomes invaluable. I have seen and heard for myself the impact of our work– the impact that my grant writing work is helping to fund.
Working at Commission 127 has taught me a great deal about community. The Bible draws a comparison in 1 Corinthians 12 between the body being made up of individual parts and the church being made up of individual people. Each has their own unique purpose but is nonetheless an integral part of the whole. In the same way, C127’s saying “not all are called to foster, but all are called to care” rightly depicts the way the foster care system should work. Not everyone is in a position to care for a vulnerable child in their home, but everyone can do something. The Family Advocacy Ministry model perfectly illustrates this reality. Those who are not in a place to foster or adopt can play a vital role in vulnerable kids’ lives through faithful volunteer work. Furthermore, I have had the privilege of being a part of a team that demonstrates loving community living even at work. All of these things make me grateful for my past and excited for my future at Commission 127.
Most grant giving foundations are not publicly advertised but rather made known by word of mouth and personal connections. Do you know any private family foundations or charitable organizations that you could connect us with?
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