- Yes, welcome. Come on in. In fact, you are the first agency up. So we are ready to get started if you
- are. Yeah. All right. We'll come on and have a seat. So I'm Courtney. I am the chairperson for the Jack
- Hopkins Social Services Grant Funding Committee this year. Everybody want to do a quick introduction?
- Hi, I'm Cameron. Also on the panel for this year.
- I'm Andy. I'm a council representative. And I'm Dave. Council. Eddie Riu, a committee representative.
- And joining us via Zoom is our other committee member. Hello, my name is Patrick, PM1. Well, thank you
- so much for being here. So we looked over the application, and we did just have a couple quick questions.
- Were you emailed those questions? OK, so you are prepared.
- Did you want us to run through those questions for you? Or did you have something prepared that you
- wanted to just start right off with? I had something prepared that included those questions. But if
- we want to start with those questions and then move on to other things, we can as well. Yeah. OK. Well,
- why don't we? You prepared something. So we'll go ahead and we'll let you get started with what you
- prepared. And then if we have any follow-up questions, we've got 15 minutes. OK. Sounds great. We know
- it's all yours. Go right ahead. And then can you hear me all right over Zoom? OK.
- Sounds great. Well to introduce myself, my name is Andrew Hodges. I am a member of Bloomington Cooperative
- Living. I've lived there since June and I'm the secretary of the organization.
- I moved to Bloomington about four years ago and graduated in December. I just now live in town, but
- I also work at Pantry 279. And so yeah, it's been a really amazing part of my life. It's part of the
- reason why I'm staying in Bloomington. My rent is affordable and there's a social community I can take
- part in because BCL exists. To introduce Bloomington Cooperative Living,
- We are a housing co-op. If you don't know what that is, that means that we are a nonprofit fair housing
- provider that is governed and operated by the tenants or members who live there. So we keep our rent
- cheap by managing our own properties. And we live communally, which means that we have social community.
- We make our
- cook together, we spend time together, it's a nice way to live. We have five houses in total, three
- of those are owned, two of those are rented. That makes up 75 units across those five houses. We're
- looking at acquiring another property over the summer, which we're hoping to renovate within the next
- year. That'll add 10 units on for the 2027 to 2028 lease year. BCL was founded
- two decades ago in 2007 by some college students. They wanted to live communally with one another. They
- figured that out. They figured out how to expand, get another house, how to buy some properties, how
- to get insurance, and keep on moving. So yeah, today I am going to propose or request $8,500 for digital
- outreach for BCL. This would be for the 2027 to 2028 membershipping season or lease year. And so this
- would be us spending this money
- March to May of 2027 to recruit members for the 2027 to 2028 lease year. Currently how outreach has
- worked at BCL is mainly through word of mouth, tabling, flyers, which has worked well for us thus far.
- You know BCL slowly expanded, slowly grew, slowly and also recruited new members to replace older members
- and so this has worked well for us thus far but we would like to
- improve our outreach and get to best practices. We are a fair housing provider and we want not only
- the low-income people that I know or the low-income people that other B-Sale members know, but all low-income
- people in Monroe County and Bloomington to know that cooperative housing is an option for them, that
- it is affordable, that they can live with other people socially, and that it can be dignified. Living
- in a cooperative housing, it provides people who rent
- the ability to control their housing just as people who own. So it really gives people an opportunity
- to live in a way with autonomy that they wouldn't be able to otherwise. And so
- As part of that request, we're requesting $2,000 for a website redesign. We currently have a website.
- It's functional, but we believe it could be a lot better. We would like it to be more accessible, more
- visually pleasing, and more functional so that if we did have digital ads, the place that people land is...
- works for them. We are then requesting $3,500 for social media ads during the 2027 membershipping season.
- So again, from March to May of 2027. This would be Meta and Google ads, and they would run for residents
- of Monroe County. We are then requesting $3,000 for social media ad management.
- These estimates came from a worker cooperative called comp.coop. comp.coop would do the website design,
- and then they referred us to another co-op called Cody that would do the social media ad management,
- and that would do the ad spend. Worker co-ops are just businesses that are owned by the workers who
- work there, so it's software developers who own their own company. We chose them because they align
- with our values, and because we are a housing cooperative, they are a worker cooperative, they give
- us a discount.
- We believe that having the social media ad management as part of the grant is really important.
- We do have a team, which I'll get into later, who does outreach for BCL. And they would be able to manage
- the social media ads if we did not get the funding for the social media ad management. But a big part
- of this proposal is increasing BCL's internal capacity. How BCL works is that our members own labor
- creates our capacity to do outreach, to develop, to expand, to maintain the organization.
- We are requesting funding for ad management so as not to sequester our current outreach labor, essentially.
- We would like to still be able to do flyering and tabling and all of that good stuff.
- To highlight the need in our community, as I'm sure you're aware, affordable housing is the most important
- issue in our community. According to the 2025 to 2029 consolidated plan, Bloomington needs 7,000 more
- affordable housing units for those between zero to 50% AMI. And Bloomington Cooperative Living and Co-op
- Housing is a small but growing solution to this issue. We are really one of the only people in town
- who are creating permanently
- deeply affordable housing in our community. BCL never plans to sell our properties. We are not exposed
- to market pressure. I don't have to worry about the housing market. If I continue to live in BCL, it's
- really an innovative solution to our issues. And we want more people to be aware that this is a solution
- and to take part in it. To discuss who would be implementing this project, it would be our membershipping team.
- One BCL member who is our membership coordinator, they lead the team. And then every house
- has a membershipper who handles outreach, who reviews applications, leads interviews for members to
- join, and then signs the leases. And so that membershipping team would either manage the social media
- ad management or would manage the ads themselves if we did not get the funding. This is a one-time ad spend.
- This does have many lasting impacts in our community and for BCL itself. As this is our first time doing
- digital ads, this would be a great help to help us just learn how to do this, how to make it effective.
- And this would decrease our vacancy rates, which thus increases our rental revenue, which could lead
- us to not have to rely on grant funding.
- in the future. And then if we receive the social media ad management, this could free up internal labor
- to develop further, to acquire new properties, and to expand affordable housing in Bloomington. Another
- big part of this is that we are trying to inform the public more about just what cooperative housing
- is in general. We are collaborative.
- collaborate with Avalon Community Land Trust, and we are supporting other independent co-op projects
- that are trying to start up. So this is not about BCL, this is about expanding the affordable housing
- stock more generally. And if we inform low income residents that co-op housing is an option and they
- choose to go with another organization, that's amazing. So that's another big part of this.
- The main ways that we are hoping to make our impact is through a few things. It is through reducing
- vacancy rates, though I would like to highlight, I think after discussing with some of the other board
- members, I don't want us to present ourselves as having an issue with vacancy. It's more just that,
- as I'm sure you are all aware, Bloomington is a revolving door. People move in and out. So it's always
- a battle every spring in order to recruit new members and to
- keep our rooms filled. We do keep our rooms filled.
- It is an issue. And then there's also the issue of when people break leases, rooms remain vacant, and
- this isn't the best use of our space. And so we would like to keep the vacancy rate to the minimum connected
- to that. We would like to establish a wait list. We know that there's enough demand in Bloomington for
- affordable housing that we should absolutely have a wait list. So that would help us minimize vacancy
- rates. And then for how to measure the impact of the digital ads themselves, we would measure these through
- three main statistics, the first being reach, so we could just report how many unique individuals saw
- our ads, and then add clicks, so how many of those individuals then got to our website, and then from
- there, how many people applied from our ads. That's all I have. Yeah, thank you. That was wonderful.
- That was very informative. Thank you. Does anybody have any questions for? Oh, go ahead. You go first.
- I just had a question.
- You said you'd like to see a wait list, or you'd like to see, and part of the idea of your grant is
- to bring more people to you. Just say you had a list. Is it just chronological? How would you decide?
- How would you determine the selection of candidates if you had more applicants than space? I think I
- would have to discuss with the other
- board members, as we are a collaborative organization. But I would imagine it would be chronological.
- That's how most other co-ops that I've seen do it. I don't think that it's a good idea for us to get
- into weighing different aspects of people's lives against each other. Again, we're a fair housing provider.
- And so I don't think that there's any specific piece of information about someone that would make us
- prioritize them. Yeah. So I was going to ask a similar question. So you don't have a tenant selection process.
- You're eligible, and then it goes chronological, is what you're saying. I would say, yes, we do. I don't
- know if this was understood, but we do have a selection process for people who can live in BCL. You
- have to apply and then do an interview to make sure that you would be a good fit for the people that
- you live with. But people could be on the wait list before interviewing.
- That might just be more logistic because I know that you mentioned reimbursement happening in 2027 for
- a portion of what you're budgeting for. Do we have to have everything, all reimbursements submitted
- by the end of the year? But is that something we have flexibility on? That's a good question. I'm pretty
- sure I got an extension until the end of March for the year, but not past March. Okay. I was gonna say,
- I do think it is supposed to be the end of the year.
- But an extension, that's good to know that that was a, happened once. Yeah, I've got an extension this
- past year, because contracting for the site took longer than what we wanted. Plus, government shut down
- some things like that. And so it's as simple as just needing to reach back out and take the request?
- There's a process. There's a process, but someone else did it for me, so I'm not sure. The only other
- question I had was I just had curiosity about
- some of the outreach that you've done on the ground that isn't digital and kind of like, it feels like
- the shift to digital is kind of a big one. So kind of understanding that more too. I would say flyering
- is one of the major things. It's just on campus and coffee shops, all that. And I do think that word
- of mouth is very strong amongst BCL. I mean, we're all very civically involved people because we live
- in a little democracy.
- send it out in all the group chats. And normally, that gets us a good amount of members. And then I
- think beyond that, there has been tabling in the past. But I think that that's been weaker in the past
- couple of years. But I know that the board members who are leading membership right now would really
- like to reinvigorate that. Yeah. My question is about the website. I wanted to know how much of the
- funding that you're looking towards revamping your website. And then my other question is about
- Once you have the website revamped, how will you maintain it after if you're given the funding?
- It was $2,000 for a website redesign. And we do have BCL members who I think are familiar with website
- maintenance. And so we've been able to maintain our website up to this point. And I don't believe we
- plan on having it
- having as many functions as to have pretty intensive maintenance. To be honest, we already are able
- to take applications, contact with people. And so there's not much beyond that, yeah. So pretty basic.
- It's really looking for that big overhaul. And then you can keep it going once you get that done. Any
- other questions? Yes. So when
- When the city gives, say, a tax abatement or some kind of economic development incentive to a firm,
- to a business, it matters to some folks in the community and some in city government, some policymakers,
- that those hired, or at least there'll be an effort
- demonstrated that those hired would be from Bloomington rather than brought in from other places. That
- makes a big difference to some of us. And so I'm kind of wondering the same thing. Is it an effort that
- is not focused at an existing local area population?
- Is there any, I mean you told Eddie a minute ago that there's really no criteria, right, once you apply.
- And that also goes for your history of residency. I'm sorry, what is the question? The question is,
- is there any effort to serve the locals first? Existing, existing local residents rather than someone
- who might read about this in,
- Because you're talking about the internet, right? And read about this in a remote location somewhere
- else that says, well, I'm going to come to Bloomington and take advantage of this and do this. Yeah.
- That's what I'm asking. Say no. We are very, I think a big part of why BCL is helpful is because we
- help retain young people. And so IU brings young people here, but we retain them. Because we have people
- have community, and it's affordable.
- we don't have anything that specifically prioritizes current Bloomington residents. Um, but I think
- that that's one of our strong points is that I think that this community has a really hard time retaining
- young people and this will keep them here. Okay. Did that answer your question? Yeah. All right.
- Thank you. Was there something about the people that we hire? Well, that was 15 minutes. I want to make
- sure that we're giving everybody,
- 15 minutes and not going over out of fairness. So I think we got everything answered. Thank you very
- much for coming in. Thank you. We really appreciate it. I thought you were grabbing his water bottle.
- It's going to cost you a water bottle. All right. Next up, we have Tandem Community Birth Center and
- Postpartum House. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you for being here. All right.
- Did you just want us to jump right in with the questions? How are you feeling? I have a prepared thing.
- Cool. All right. And so if it's OK, I'll read that. And I apologize. I'm going to stare at my phone
- to read it. But that's just how I'm going to process it. And then I'll be happy to answer any questions
- you have. So my name is Julie Duhon, and I'm the executive director of Tandem. And I want to share a
- quote from one of our recent postpartum house clients. She said,
- This place is a lifesaver. In past postpartum periods, the first few days were so difficult.
- Having a good, restful foundation has helped me have a chance at longer term, better mental health.
- Knowing I have a quiet and peaceful place I can go is worth more than gold. Tandem helps me bond and
- actually enjoy my baby. So Tandem is a thriving resource hub for families in our community. With our
- diaper program alone, we served
- over 900 unique children for more than 600 unique families last year. In our six years of existence,
- we have diligently been working to create a sustainable framework for our programs. This has included
- contracting with area employers, including Monroe County government.
- SCAP and Wonderlab to provide doula services to their employees and leveraging sliding skills for services
- for our self-pay clients so that when clients can't afford to pay, we're able to use that revenue to
- help cover the costs of providing services to those who can't. We are fortunate to receive substantial
- grant funding and to run several successful fundraisers each year. Unfortunately, most
- quote-unquote overhead costs are not covered by these grants and we use every dollar raised to run services
- that do not generate revenue. Some of the essential things we do at TANF that generate zero dollars
- in revenue include providing free community space for families to drop by Monday through Saturday. This
- space is heavily used by the community with hundreds of drop-in visits per month. We provide free car
- seat safety checks and when needed free car seats.
- access to free clothes and supplies, free transportation for families, deliveries of free cribs and
- high chairs, strollers, and more. Again and again, the families we serve tell us that our services and
- our work is lifesaving. Our doula services generate enough revenue to almost cover the costs of our
- doula staff.
- Our perinatal educational programs are self-sustaining through course fees, but do not contribute to
- the cost of our building rent or utilities. Our postpartum house launched in August 2025 and is serving
- clients in desperate need, but it needs time to build its client population before it can generate revenue
- at a scale that is able to offset rent and administrative costs. We do believe that it will build to
- that eventually, but it takes time. We nearly ran out of money in 2025 and contemplated bankruptcy.
- but through aggressive fundraising alongside reducing open hours and trimming every conceivable cost.
- We didn't buy print toner for months. We made it through. Money to pay rent and admin salaries is still
- often determined day by day and week by week. We know we're making a substantial impact in our community
- and in the lives of families whose children will benefit from Tandem's work for their entire lives.
- Sometimes service providers from other agencies come to visit us and tell us that they know a child
- they work with
- has been fully clothed by Tandem their entire lives. We've watched families grow through the births
- of multiple children and are so grateful to be a part of the fabric of the village that cares for and
- nurtures them. We've also supported families through unthinkable crises. We're incredibly humbled and
- honored to be a safe place for them to come and ask for help. We've helped families navigate through
- unsafe homes, abuse, legal concerns, food insecurity, and more.
- connecting them to partner agencies as needed and able to do this effectively because we have built
- a relationship of trust and safety with these families first. Our mental health support groups are sometimes
- the things that keep struggling new moms holding on. They are currently fully grant funded, but the
- grant does not cover rent, utilities, having a website or email system or payroll system. This week
- I learned of a high income and well-resourced client who factored tandem into her family's decision
- to move to Bloomington.
- All families need support. Because of Jack Hopkins, we're here serving the community. With your ongoing
- support, we will continue to be here. So thank you for believing in this work. Thank you. Anybody have
- any follow-up questions to that? I'll start, I guess. So it sounds like without this funding, there is
- a very strong chance that this is not sustainable. I just want to put that in tandem. Last year, every
- dollar we received is the reason we're here today. And I mean, I have budgeted for the full amount because
- I know it was an absurd ask, but I also don't know where the rest is coming for. And I know I will be
- fundraising throughout the year to make it happen. And tandem exists because we just
- We just keep believing that it will. And I will say that there's a lot of hope on the horizon
- for sustainability. And an interesting thing about Tandem is that we're not a structure that really
- exists anywhere else. There are pregnancy resource centers. There are diaper banks. There are doula
- groups. There is no postpartum house like ours that operates like ours does for anyone regardless of
- ability to pay. And there's very, very few centers like ours that are this wraparound third space
- sense community building and accessible to everyone. I think people, I think one of the most powerful
- things we do is make our services feel accessible to everyone of all income levels. So like a little
- anecdotal story I can tell you is that so we have a bunch of support groups and moms get to know each
- other and they start texting each other outside a group and they become friends and
- you know, when you have a support group or everybody in that group is low income, they're all limited
- resource. They all have limited resources and their ability to help each other is limited by that. But
- because our groups have these cross-social economic background, you know, individuals and families,
- we see things like, you know, one mom might help another mom with time.
- Right? Or with advice. I figured out how to get my kid to sleep and I'm going to teach you my newfound
- trick. Right? And then another mom might do what one of our moms in a support group did a couple weeks
- ago. She knew this mom needed a bunk bed for her older child. She ordered it and it showed up on her
- doorstep. And that mom's got a new bunk bed now. And we didn't have to provide that. And it was something,
- for that mom it was, sure, I can buy that bunk bed, that's fine. And so we're creating these
- incredibly powerful protective support networks. And when we see families come in and not only tell
- us like, I need help because of all these challenges in my life, but they come in and then three or
- four other Tandem clients come in behind them because they've texted them and said, I need help and
- I'm going to Tandem. And then they all come in and they all help each other and provide support and
- they use our space to provide support. They bring meals. That feels like we're building something
- Because parents outgrow tandem. Our clothing sizes only go to 5T. But I really feel like we're building
- a community for people that they're going to take for the rest of their lives and have for the rest
- of their lives. But I was trying to say what the hope is. So we've been working for the whole last year
- with the Ursa Institute. We have funding for our mental health groups that I talked about. And we're
- doing research. And I included some of the early stats that we've been getting from that research in
- our original grant application.
- And we just got accepted with our extended abstract to present at ASA, the American Sociologic, Sociologists.
- It's the sociologist people. They're all gonna be meeting in New York City in August. And our paper's
- been selected to be presented nationally at this conference.
- And then, and our research scientists who are working at the Earth State Institute are so excited. We've
- applied for Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funding for years and never gotten it, because we're just
- not, we're not a big enough organization. But this year, IU's Earth State Institute is gonna apply for
- Robert Wood Johnson for us, with us as their community collaborator. So like, maybe we won't get it
- this year, but now I feel like we have a chance. And now they're also watching for
- NIH grants to see if we can get it because we feel that we are fundamentally reinventing what it means
- to provide support to families and, or what I like to say, to reinvent the village because
- our, we fundamentally deconstructed it in our modern society and it's not sustainable and it's not healthy
- and it doesn't make sense for the long term for the adults in the families or for the children.
- Can I ask about your fundraising efforts? I'd like to hear just like what fundraising looks like, what
- you like it to look like in the future. Yeah, so this year we're working to develop a more robust sort
- of annual schedule of different fundraisers that pop up, but we've had our
- Previous board president had a lot of connections in the tattoo community, so we did a bunch of pop-up
- tattoo fundraisers throughout the last couple years. Last year when we were running out of money, I
- was coming up on my 40th birthday, and I went, gee, we're out of money. And I have to pay payroll, and
- I have to, we can't fail. And so I said, well, we're gonna launch the 404040 project, and it's raised
- $40,000 in 40 days for Julie's 40th birthday, and of course,
- Pregnancy is 40 weeks, so it all melded into the 40s. And so in 40 days, we raised $50,000 with a social
- media post every day, which was just me posting and posting and sending out letters and cold calling
- and cold emailing. And we did it. So we did that. But this year, we're going to be launching our first
- annual gala process. We've never done the gala scene, but it's going to be a tea party.
- And we're trying to make it family friendly. But yeah, so we do, we've done small scale fundraisers,
- some larger scale ones, but this gala will be our first really significant centralized fundraiser,
- I guess. But we also do trivia nights and dine and donates and you know, any way that we can scrape
- funds, I do. Yeah, in fact, we're just,
- So the donor database has been a combination of our QuickBooks database and our Mailchimp's database
- and Excel spreadsheets, but we're actually just launching with little green light to be more effectively
- centered with our donors. Any other questions for Tando? All good? I mean, mine's just a comment that
- I feel like are our biggest questions with any.
- unrestricted funding or operational funds are super hard to come by and that's always a really hard
- like case to make and I feel like
- my mind is eased by kind of like the story of hope you told. So I just wanted to say props to you. Thanks.
- I mean, I consider running a nonprofit to be like cliff jumping. I don't know if, Eddie, you relate
- to this. But you get a grant, and you commit to it, and you run with it, and you just have to believe.
- You jump off that cliff with that grant, and you're like, I'm going to do this, and I'm going to believe
- there's going to be funding on the other side. And it's worked so far. Sometimes just by hair.
- Thank you very much. We really appreciate it. And thank you for all you do. First, I thought she was
- implying, Eddie, that you were a cliff jumper. Then I realized you talked about running a nonprofit.
- Fortunately, I don't have to fundraise like Julie does. But high respect for the work that you do. You
- know that already from me, so. I like to.
- I'm HR, IT, finance, grant writing, and I clean the sewage bills. I don't have any staff I pay enough
- for that. Thank you. All right. Are you with Sober Mesa Foundation? No. OK. I think they're in the hallway.
- Oh, hi. Here we are. You are. Come on in. Hi. We're about four minutes early, but are you guys OK getting
- started four minutes early? Sure. Awesome. Should we sit here? Yes.
- Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for the opportunity. Well, we did have just some follow-up
- questions. I'm sure that you received them in an email. We've been a little bit relaxed with this. Do
- you want us to just kind of go through the questions with you? I don't know if you planned a presentation,
- if you had something you wanted to start, or if you just want us to dive into the questions. We weren't
- expecting a presentation. I don't want to stress you out.
- we haven't spoken with before to come so we can have face time with you as well. So a lot of that is
- like... So why don't we say something? Since our organization is new, I don't know if you have a chance
- to search and learn about us. If not, we probably will be better to explain what it's all about. And
- then we go to the questions. Oh, do you want the questions first? Well, yeah. Why don't you tell us
- a little bit about your organization since you've not applied to Jack Hopkins before. So we'd love to hear
- a little bit from your end. Can you hear me okay from this distance from the mic? Catherine, can you
- hear them okay? Yes, I can hear you well. Okay. Thank you. So my name is Robert Frew. This is Juan Carlos
- Arango. And we started Sobre Mesa Farm in 2013. And through that journey of getting the farm started,
- we realized that number one, we needed additional labor.
- And number two, that there was a real need for fresh organically grown produce in Bloomington and not
- specifically at the farmer's market. So we made a cognitive decision to never participate in that market
- downtown simply because there were already so many people that are providing similar products. Why did
- we need to compete with others? So our model has really been one that's engaged in
- bringing the community to our farm, opening it up, having people come there, do workshops, and learn
- about growing food, about growing community, inviting schools to come and do tours, hosting meetings
- for other entities, and having workshops, professional workshops for growers and producers.
- During that journey, as I mentioned, we realized that we needed to have additional labor because we
- could see that we were aging and so we had to have younger people help us. And both of us are linguists
- and work as interpreters. That's our off farm jobs. And so through that community, we decided, hey,
- why isn't it that we have people here
- who are from other cultures, speak different languages, and have an opportunity to engage in the farming,
- small-scale farming system in the United States. So that was the launching board for us reaching out
- to Exodus. And Exodus has partnered with us for the last, really, what, three or four years? Four years.
- Four years. We've trained a total of six refugees at our farm.
- Some of them have moved on to other projects, which we assisted them with. And we still have two refugees
- now that work with us. And so we came up with this idea that, hey, how can we help more people, people
- who don't have access to small-scale farming, or who perhaps don't feel comfortable to get into that
- or to learn about it,
- How do we create an atmosphere where they feel comfortable and want to come? So we were looking for
- a site in Bloomington for a while, which needed to be an urban location because many people who are
- more marginalized do not have vehicles. They didn't have the means to get back and forth to our farm
- to learn there. So we waited for the opportunity, which presented itself when IU Campus Farm gave up
- its location.
- And so we leased the farm and we started the project really this year. And we are now in the throes
- of it. We have everything tilled. We're doing partial cover crops. We already have things in the ground.
- We have our potato seed potato cutting this coming week. And we have other lots of other crops and seeds that were
- looking to get and to be able to plant there. So it's sort of a multi-pronged approach. We wanted to
- first be able to share this idea about how do you start up a micro business in growing food in Bloomington.
- And we have a lot of background and experience now, I think, in doing that. We host a market at our
- farm, and we've also
- been helping some of the pantries locally with excess produce. So we decided that we would create a
- foundation to be able to have access to grants, which we formally did not as a for-profit farm. And
- through those grants and through sponsorships and collaboration with other like-minded entities
- in Bloomington, such as Soil and Water Conservation District,
- Purdue Extension through urban soil and water and through National Resource Conservation Service, NRCS,
- that we would sort of gather all of these entities behind us and collaborate with them and how we could
- use a mutual space for educating the community in Bloomington in many different ways.
- So that was the idea behind it. It's now just sort of taking off. We're having meetings with Soil and
- Water. We're having meetings with IU because they also want to be able to do research projects and provide
- support for us at the farm with marketing and other things that perhaps people could do, either internships
- or some sort of research. So we really wanted to spread our fingers out a little bit.
- and see if we can get as many people as possible to support us. We also have Duke Energy, which jumped
- on very quickly. That was really a great accomplishment, I think. Normally you have to work so hard
- to get someone to support your project, and it wasn't like that with Duke. And then we came into the
- project with seed money from Farm Aid.
- We were one of the featured farms in 2023 when it was in Indianapolis. And through those relationships
- ongoing, we have been able to really get the organization, the foundation up and going with initial
- funding. And am I forgetting any other partners or sponsors that have helped us? No, Marble Seeds. Marble
- Seed also, which used to be called Moses.
- I don't know if Dave, you're familiar with it? Okay. So Moses, formerly called Moses, it's the largest
- organization in the Midwest that supports organic farmers. And so they've changed their name now to
- Marvel Seed. And they are partnering with us this summer in June to present a workshop here in Bloomington
- at the new Daisy Garten Community Farm. And
- I think it will sort of be a regional attraction. There's not often that they're here in Indiana, so
- it'll be a chance for a lot of small-scale farmers to be able to come and attend the training. It's
- an all-day training. And then we have workshops on soil and water conservation. We're doing workshops
- on seeding, transplanting, caring for crops,
- We have approximately 10 participants now who went through vetting and through an application process.
- So we made sure that they were serious about getting involved. And anything else on that? I think that's
- pretty good, the general idea of what we are doing or trying to do here. Yeah. So we have been volunteers
- in Bloomington. We came to Bloomington as volunteers, and through that is why we moved here.
- So we came to work with the Center for Sustainable Living. We were living in Brown County and driving
- back and forth several times a week. And we were volunteering through a program that the Center for
- Sustainable Living had supported, which was called Backyard Habitat. And so through Lucille Bertuccio
- and through others there at the Center for Sustainable Living, we got very much involved in helping
- churches and businesses and schools put in backyard habitats in Bloomington.
- We did that for 12 years. And so after that, and we got Bloomington certified as one of the 26 backyard
- habitat cities in the United States. We got a proclamation from the mayor and all that. So we said,
- hey, we need to do something else now. And so that was the farm, and now we're on to the foundation.
- Wonderful. So that's our story. Thank you for that. That's really helpful.
- really inspiring to hear and exciting. Does anybody have any questions? No? I'm curious about, do you
- have the entire farm to work? Yes. Or really? I think it's almost eight acres, I think. Yeah, eight.
- With book houses and kids. Two. Two that are laying here. Fantastic. And the woods, which is going to
- be, I'm very excited about that because there are so many issues you probably know.
- And RCA now is covering that in one of the practices to restore woods with problems. So it's a three-year
- project. So we want to have those woods back and thriving. That's what we hope. It's terrific. Yeah.
- So what are you growing? Right now, so the project, because we want to have people from different cultures
- and cultures.
- We want to provide what mostly everybody wants here. But we hope they will bring their own seeds. And
- that will be a good and exciting thing for Bloomington, because we have seen similar organizations with
- similar programs in other part of the country. We visited Louisville, and we were amazed of the variety
- of food they provide.
- So it would be good for women to experience all the taste and experience. Yeah, we visited other projects
- in Louisville, three projects that were similar. And then also when we went to Marble Seed Conference,
- Juan Carlos is one of the mentors for part of a project through Marble Seed.
- And we talked with other projects there that were from various parts of the Midwest, Iowa, Wisconsin,
- Minnesota. And we kind of extracted from them different components so that we weren't trying to reinvent
- the wheel here. And we had the farming part solid. We knew how to do that. But we needed to understand
- why is it that people who are immigrants, refugees, and others
- Why would they want to come to this piece of land to grow food and be a part of a learning process,
- an educational experience? And what we really came to was that people want to have a sense of community
- and family. And so many of them were bringing their families to the projects. It wasn't just one individual farming.
- And that once they started there, they really connected with that land and they wanted to return every
- year. So, and that is our goal. We want this to be an ongoing project. And I like the idea of having
- families there on site and it's such a walkable place. It's really just ideal. There's thousands of
- people that can walk there from the apartments around there.
- And I think once we get started and they see people out there working, that more people will want to
- come. And so the basic model is that, I mentioned micro business earlier, so part of our goal was that
- we would help many of them to be able to develop a CSA model. This is basically the thing that most
- of the farmers
- and small-scale do in Bloomington, particularly those that are at farmers markets. They have a side
- hustle that's called the CSA and some of them are even probably picking up at the farmers market. So
- we want to teach them how to do that and many of them already have a ready-made clientele through their
- churches who have already supported a lot of the immigrants and the refugees and then
- typical means like what we have had to do reaching out. And then we want to teach them about how to
- manage a market stand on site at the new farm and how to learn to grow food in this climate,
- which is really, I think, a challenge. They may have some skills already from their previous country
- that they're from, but they need to sort of adapt those skills to this climate here.
- And we want to give them more opportunities how to take care of bees. We have three hives there now
- at the farm. And to really sort of incorporate into their personal belief system the importance
- of environmental stewardship. That's just core to who we are at our farm and to Sobermesa Foundation.
- That's one of our main goals is to be very good stewards of the land and to help people understand the
- importance of sustainability and resilience. Wonderful. Well, thank you very much for coming in. I mean,
- that's 15 minutes. Any last quick questions or everybody good? All right. Thank you very much. It was
- very nice to meet you and thank you for all that you do.
- Next we have the Hendricks County Child Advocacy Center doing business at Suzy's place. Is that you?
- Come on in. Hi. Nice to see you. Either will do. You're good. Okay. Hi. Thanks for joining us. Thanks
- for having me. I'm Kathy Stoll. I may not be who you were expecting today. The person who was going
- to be here today has a fever and didn't think she would
- want to share that with all of you. So I'm here in Hurstead. I'm actually new to Suzy's Place. This
- is my third week. But I actually served on the board for several years. So I have a lot of background
- information about Suzy's Place and what we do and what we mean to the communities that we serve. So
- I'm happy to be here. Wonderful. Well, let's see. So we just invited a handful of
- organizations who we had some follow-up questions to that we thought were probably easier to do face-to-face
- rather than over email where the back and forths can get confusing. So we had, I believe in the invitation,
- we had sent you, oh, we just had one question that it looks like. So really the question was, why do
- you need this operational funding now? So can you just kind of expand on that for us a little bit and
- walk us through that?
- So it really is, and the way it was described in the application, it's a bridge. It's not a way we're
- looking for, we're looking for Jack Hopkins to fund people for an extended period of time. It really
- is sort of a one time bridge. We have a number of pots of money that fund our people in operations.
- One of the primary funds that supports this direct service
- providers, so the forensic interviewers and the advocates, is a federal pot of money called, it's referred
- to as VOCA, it's Victims of Crime Act. So that's where a big portion of that funding source for those
- positions come. That federal pot of dollars
- is getting smaller and smaller and smaller as there continues to be a lot of pull and draw down from
- that funding. So we've been advised to confidently expect across the board that next round of VOCA funding
- is going to be about a 40% cut. Right? That's the face we all made. So the organization has been really
- ramping up
- the other side of our fundraising capabilities to really do the work to try to rebalance that dependence
- right on those government sources of funding. That's why I'm here. That's why I'm new to the organization.
- I'm grant funded from other sources for the most part for now, but I need to get busy and be good at
- this job to make myself self-sustaining and really grow our capacity to
- cultivate donors and just become more independent. But we're just in this really funky period of time
- right now where we know this cut is coming. We know that we've got the building blocks in place to do
- good things, probably 27 and beyond, right? But we don't want to put ourselves in a position where we're
- going to think about how do we cut services to kids in the meantime.
- And so that's the background for this ask for this point in time. So you kind of dipped your toe into
- like my follow-up question there, which I hate this follow-up question, but it's an important one to
- know, so don't read anything into it. But you know, what does happen if you don't get this money? You
- mentioned cut services. Yeah, we'll have to make some hard decisions. I think the, and they all feel
- like worst case scenario, right?
- Anytime we take people out of this, we're really in that sort of first responder package of people that
- are talking to kids who have been victimized by crime. Our partners in that work are DCS and law enforcement
- and prosecutors. It's a critical piece of that investigatory process to get kids justice and then on
- the path to healing. We're critical. That work is critical and the services that we provide are critical.
- We would have to look at
- there are some positions that will be opened by some natural attrition. We've got some stay-at-home
- moms who want to be stay-at-home moms. So the first thing you need to look at is do we not backfill
- that, right, for now? That's hard, right? It's not letting someone go, which is probably worst, worst
- case scenario, right? But it stretches the existing team. We have three locations. We have the location
- here in Bloomington.
- We have a center in Avon and we have a center in Terre Haute. So we would be able to continue to provide
- services running those team members between the three locations. We do a bit of that now, but people
- have a home base. And the demand for the care these forensic interviewers and advocates provide isn't
- going away. But our supply of people to do that work would be less.
- And that's hard on everybody. It's hard on the team, it's hard on kids. Our team is available 24-7 when
- something acute is going on with a kid and police or DCS thinks they need to be talked to right now
- and it's two o'clock in the morning. Our team that's on call comes in at two o'clock in the morning
- and handles that interview. If you start reducing the number of people who are able to do that work
- when the phone rings,
- Right? The timeline extends. So that's the terrible answer. That's the terrible answer to the question.
- To the terrible question. To the terrible question. Yeah. Absolutely. Anybody else have any questions?
- I have one, maybe two. So worst-case scenario, you don't receive these funds or partial funding. Are
- you saying that you would lose the home base in Bloomington?
- No, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is we would have to make people noble, right? Of the
- three centers, and I love them all equally, Bloomington is my favorite. The team here is invested with
- some furnishings in that center. We've had great partnerships, so we actually offer medical services
- to kids in that building as well.
- It's really the best example of the full wraparound service that a child advocacy center can and should
- provide to kids under one roof. We would just, the math just divides the people, right, to have to spread
- out. Okay, thank you. Yeah. Well, forgive me if this isn't somewhere in the materials, the application
- materials, and you've already brought this up,
- in a form that I missed. But do you have any structural form, any formal relationship with Monroe County
- CASA at all, or is there just no room for overlap? So it's a great question. And I don't know the answer
- definitively other than the CASA support comes further down the journey for the child through the criminal
- justice system. We're really at the front.
- Perhaps before there's been an arrest or a charge or any of that stuff, we're in those early moments
- when we're having that initial conversation with the child victim. A safe place for them to tell their
- story and be heard doesn't always result in a criminal case that comes from that, where that child would
- then at some point along the way intersect with CASA. It's confusing because the words are the same, but it's
- It's two separate pieces of the journey. Yeah. Thank you. Did anybody else have any follow-up questions?
- No? All right. Well, I think you gave us a very great explanation, helped us understand a little better.
- So thank you very much for coming in. My pleasure. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. I hope you didn't
- have to come from one of the farther flung. Did you have an autograph?
- I am mobile. I am a nomad across all three all the time. So you're always traveling. Yeah. So I could
- always throw somebody in my car and bring them down here at 2 o'clock in the morning. Well, thank you
- for all that you do. And thank you for being here. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right.
- Next up, we have Kesem at Indiana University. Did I say it right? You yelled at me last time. I didn't yell.
- But I was closer this time, I said it. It was not Casey Kasem. Kasem. Kasem. Kasem. I was right.
- All right. I'm just messing with you. Do we have anybody here from Kasem? We are a few minutes early,
- actually, with them. We have eight more minutes. Since we know that Silver Linings isn't going to be
- here at 730, maybe we can invite some Hill Development Corporation to present at 730.
- That'd be great. So that way they can get out of here. That's the one I have to leave the room for.
- OK, got it. It works out great. No, that works out really well. I'm done here early because I'm nervous,
- and I've never done this. So I said to everybody, are you ready? Great. We'll be very nice, I promise.
- Hi. Hi, I'm Pesham. I know we're a little bit earlier. No, perfect. We are ready for you. We've been
- running a few minutes early, so that's great that you guys are here. Thank you. Come on in. Right here is good.
- We'll try to be nice. It's a very cute logo. I like it. This is Carl. He's our caterpillar. Carl. Yes.
- Very cute. All right, so we'll just go ahead and get started. Before we get started, tell us your camp
- nicknames. I'm Atlas. I'm Awesomeness. I came up with that when I was nine.
- OK, I'm going to have to hear back stories to those after you guys do the hard work. Of course. OK,
- so I'm Mary or Atlas. And I'm Jonathan or Awesomeness. And we're the development coordinators for KESEM
- at Indiana University. So we kind of handle all things fundraising. We apply for grants throughout the
- year. We facilitate individual fundraising with our members. Anything else to add?
- Yeah, we organize like very regular fundraisers. We usually have one or two smaller fundraisers a month.
- And then we'll have usually larger fundraisers quarterly. Uh, one example is giving Tuesday. We typically
- do a 24 hour fundraiser. We'll have a room and it's all mostly peer to peer. So most of our volunteers
- will reach out to their local networks.
- This also includes things like professors, friends at the university. And then pretty regularly we'll
- also engage in like canning, which is just going around locally and getting donations at just university
- events, things like that. And then we also have Make the Magic, which is our spring fundraising gala.
- We'll typically invite a lot of community members and we'll auction off items that were donated to us.
- So yeah. So then a little bit about what KESEM is. It's a national organization with chapters at colleges
- across the country. I believe there's about over 100 chapters. And we are one of three in Indiana. We
- serve 130 kids across the state and 10 who live in Monroe County. And what we do is we put on year-round
- support. We have year-round support for kids affected by a parent's cancer. And our flagship program is two
- We have two one-week sessions of summer camp. All of that's completely free of cost to our camper families.
- So the summer camp, and then we have spring and fall friends and family days where people can come out,
- see their camp friends, catch up. We'll usually do a day at camp with field day games. And then we'll
- send out birthday cards and care packages throughout the year to just help foster a community.
- Do you want to add? Yeah, we also provide bereavement support included in that. If a camper has a parent
- who passes away, then we'll usually provide them with a little bit more year-round care. That might
- involve sending them an extra care package. Or in the past, we've had some counselors attend a funeral
- to be there for the student or the camper. So that's all included free of charge. Yeah.
- And then a little bit about our finances next. So we, all of the money that we raise goes completely
- towards the camp. All of the money is raised either by our volunteers, our counselors, or through grants
- and other similar funding sources. Right now, our break even point is just over $100,000 a year, like 105,000.
- Our biggest expense is programming. About 62,000 of that goes to securing our campsite, paying for meals
- at camp, snacks, travel, that kind of thing associated with camp. And then 2,000 goes to program supplies.
- So first aid supplies, our camp t-shirts that all the campers get every summer, other events we do, and then
- Our next biggest expense of about $6,000 is the stipend that we have for nurses and mental
- health professionals at camp. We are required to have at least one mental health professional per week.
- And we usually try and have at least two. And then we're required to have two nurses. And the mental
- health professionals are really there just to, as college students, we can't handle every conversation.
- capable of doing that. So they're there to be an extra ear. And then also if things need to be escalated
- to our nationals or dealt with by a professional, they'll take over with that. And then nurses to do
- meds, make sure everyone's safe. We have some crazy activities, so they're definitely passing out band-aids
- quite a bit. And with that professional staff, all of our camp counselors, all of our camp directors
- are volunteers.
- The only paid staff are our nurses and our health and wellness team. We also have camp advisors who
- are counselors from another chapter who serve as a liaison between our chapter nationals. They're also
- volunteer position. So the vast majority of our funds do go directly towards supporting campers. We
- spend about
- $13,000 a year directly applied towards our technology, our chapter fees. That goes towards supporting
- Nationals as well, since Nationals provides a lot of support to our chapter. So KESEM is also rated
- a four-star 99% charity by Charity Navigator. That's the highest grade available to a charity, and that's
- for KESEM National as a whole.
- And that grid typically reflects a very high transparency, very efficient fundraising as well, and low
- administrative costs. So with all of this, I think the number that's really important is $500, which
- is what it costs to send one child to camp and then also offer year-on-support to them. So we're asking
- for $5,000 to fully cover the yearly costs for the 10 Monroe County campers.
- and kind of just breaking down that $500 a little bit more. And this is, it's not a perfect science,
- because not everything is broken down per camper in our master budget. But lodging and meals at camp
- cost about $275 per camper, about $50 for our mental health professionals and nurses. Year-round support
- in our friends and family days is about $25.
- Camp shirts and tie-dye, $15. Snacks and alternative meals. We have peanut butter and jelly for kids
- who might not like what the cafeteria's selling. We also have alternate things for campers with dietary
- concerns. That's about $10. And then the rest we had as miscellaneous expenses, which is $125. But that
- includes camper family recruitment, so going out to events to try and recruit more camper families.
- Art supplies, we do a lot of crafts. Friendship bracelets is a staple of our camp.
- You can, like during any activity, you can see at least like 10 kids sitting down in a circle making
- friendship races. It's the cutest thing ever. Need-based assistance. So when we say that our camp is
- completely free of cost to the campers and their families, we mean completely free of cost. So if they
- need reimbursement for transportation to get out to the camp, if they need clothing, if they need bedding,
- if they need toiletries, literally anything that they need, if they reach out to us, we will reimburse
- them for that. We want to make sure that everybody who needs Kessam
- is able to get to custom. Miscellaneous expenses also covers like first aid supplies, transportation
- reimbursement, we do like gas cards, that type of things. We have warm welcomes, which is like a little
- care package we send leading up to camp where we announce the dress update themes and like the packing
- list and it has little activities corresponding with all of that. We have fidget toys, which are really
- important during our empowerment ceremony that we'll talk about.
- a little bit later and then supplies for a messy Olympics and like our graduation stalls for the campers
- who are graduating that kind of thing. So a typical day at camp in the morning they'll wake up right
- around seven and then they'll go to breakfast and then right after every breakfast and every dinner
- they participate in song circle. This is just your typical like regular summer camp songs but it also
- provides like a time for
- one physical activity because it's very helpful, especially in the afternoon, to have them do their
- song circle before nap time, as well as it's a good time for them to get to know each other and to bond.
- And then after that, we'll transition to a morning activity. This might be something like going down
- to the lake to go swimming, or it might be a high ropes course.
- Or it might be some team building activities or a craft. And then they'll transition to lunch. We follow
- this pretty closely with rest hour. So this rest hour is incredibly important for them, especially with
- the heavy nature of the camp and how that can be sometimes stressful. It really helps for them to be
- able to decompress. I can speak to that as a former camper myself.
- It's more or less just a decompression time and a time. And it's also a bonding point. But they'll transition
- to an afternoon activity. One of the big afternoon activities that we'll do about, I think, the third
- day of camp usually, it's called empowerment. So our empowerment ceremony is kind of the focus of camp.
- This provides each camper a time to share their stories with cancer since each camper
- has been directly impacted or has a parent who has been directly impacted by cancer. And this also includes
- like we'll have a parent remembrance ceremony for campers who have lost a parent. They can do a small
- craft and they can share their story with cancer. However, that may be some campers know more than others,
- especially like older campers may know a lot more about their parents treatment and younger campers
- might have a very naive view of it.
- And it's really helpful for all of them to be able to share how they feel. And we also, when
- we do empowerment, we do, well, for the whole camp, it's kind of split into what we call the TLP, Teen
- Leadership Program, and then the littles. So ages six through 13, they have their own empowerment. And
- then 14 through 18 has their own so that they can kind of be catered towards just the maturity levels
- of the kids and keep it in a smaller group, so to keep just things appropriate.
- Yeah. Um, and with that we provide warm and fuzzies, which is essentially like oftentimes they'll have,
- maybe we'll provide a small stuffed animal and those like, um, we mentioned fidget toys earlier. Those
- help a lot of the kids. Um, a lot of the kids like focus and like kind of decompress and de-stress.
- And, um, oftentimes that's kind of the focus of the week. Kids share as much or as little as they want to. Um,
- Another important activity that we do at the end of the week, it's our yearly messy Olympics. It's mostly
- just a paint war, but it's a very great way to decompress. We usually do that the day after empowerment.
- So we follow a pretty heavy day by a very light, very messy day. And after empowerment, we follow that
- with our empower hour. It's more or less a free hour, but we also, we work with a local service dog
- organization.
- they'll bring in therapy dogs and that definitely helps our campers. And then at the end of the night,
- we always do a cabin chat. So we do this at the end of every night, but it's, you've got your typical
- camp questions. It might be if you could, if you had to eat your way out of a room, what food would
- you choose? Or, but then,
- typically closer towards empowerment, we can delve deeper into like the heavier questions. They might
- want to do a small pre-empowerment where they can share their story in a smaller group or just ask questions
- to each other. So that's all a really important part of processing appearance cancers to be able to
- share your experience, but also hear from others and to bond over that shared experience.
- And we also have just a few pictures and I can turn it around. I'll show you guys next. So we have like,
- this is our graduation, just a little dance party. And that's our big camp photo. We have two weeks
- of camp. And then here's some more activities. These are our nurses. We couldn't do it without them.
- And just, we have like the lake, some music. We have lots of musically gifted campers. It's our messy
- Olympics up here and some therapy dogs.
- It's just a small bag that has a small candle in it. And then this is pictures. These are the service
- dogs from our empowerment ceremony. This is our messy Olympics. And these are our professional staff
- right there. I wish you guys had a camp for adults, too. I think it would be beneficial for many adults,
- too. So any questions? Any questions? No?
- Oh, yes. You said something about earlier a thought about some money being required to secure securing
- a camp or a camp break. But isn't the camp in a permanent location in Bartholomew County? Isn't that?
- No. So I believe I've been with Kesma at IU for the last three years. He did speak to where the camp has been.
- more long-term since we've been a camper. But the last couple of years we've been at Happy Hollows Children
- Camp in Nashville. And then this year we're going to have one week there and one week at Camp Indicoso,
- which is, I don't know what county, but it's like 30 minutes, not even south from here. But we just,
- Typically, it'll be a camp that they have their own summer camp programs. And then either when they're
- done running their own summer camps, we'll rent it out for a week. And then their staff will still be
- on to be working in the kitchen, help provide activities, and facilitate all of that. But we don't have
- our own permanent campsite. Any other questions?
- So we have an application that they fill out online, but I Can you speak? Yeah, so these are these campers
- like we Will usually do kind of public like recruitment events. Most campers are recruited
- through word-of-mouth that's how I was essentially recruited through a mutual friend at my elementary
- school and
- So I can't fully speak as to the selection process, but we typically have very few, if any, waitlisted
- campers. And it's open to any child who has a parent or caregiver who's been affected by cancer. So
- if they have a grandparent who's their primary caretaker. Or if they're in foster care. Or if they're
- in foster care due to having lost a parent to cancer, they're open.
- to or they're like able to be accepted. I believe the only reason a child would be waitlisted is purely
- just for financial reasons if we didn't have the funding to cover them. But as far as I know, I can't
- speak to if any camper has been waitlisted. I don't remember. We could. We have another
- group of coordinators or outreach coordinators who deal with the camper families more directly. So we
- could also reach out to them and then get an answer to you like in the next day or two. Thank you. I
- don't have any other questions. Anybody else? Well, we had not
- had application from you before, so we wanted to have you guys come in and tell us a little bit about
- your organization. So you guys were really informative. Thank you. Every time I thought of a question,
- you answered it. So awesome. Thank you very much for being here. And thank you for everything that you
- guys do. We really appreciate it. All right. Super. We are moving right along. It's awesome. Thank you.
- You too. Do you want to come up in?
- You're next. And you can recuse yourself. Thank you. Well, thanks for being here and for all your patience
- and hearing everybody out. I hope it helped. It did, actually. Oh, good. And honestly, I have a lot
- of respect for you guys. There are a lot of great things that you've had to hear about. And this is
- just a small slice of all the applications. I had thought about that.
- Yeah, I thought I was nervous. Well, welcome. Thank you. My name is Ruckus Harris. I work for the Bloomington
- Housing Authority. I've worked there for the past couple years now. I started as a receptionist at the
- front desk and I had worked there like back in 05 as a Section 8 caseworker. So I've come back to social
- work post-pandemically and so
- The program that I'm really proud of that kind of got me started and one of the reasons I took on the
- position as Ross coordinator was the grocery shuttle. Especially at the time, I know Chales Market just
- opened up on 11th Street, but prior to that gas station opening back up, the low income housing was
- a food desert. There was no place. And then at the same time that market was closed, there was the Kroger
- downtown had all the
- construction going around it. So a lot of our residents, that was their grocery store they went to,
- and that added like a whole block of walking. So for our elderly, our physically challenged residents,
- that was a big problem. And luckily we had the grocery shuttle to kind of help people get food. I was
- through a grant with the Bloomington Health Foundation at first. When I had got the program, it actually hadn't
- had much traction yet. It was a great idea. Someone was like, we need a way for people to get food.
- But no one had actually ever, I think, taken anybody to the grocery store. And realized how many people
- can you take? Where are you going to put your groceries when you pick them up? How many people at one
- time? How long are you going to give them a shop? What are you going to do when someone takes two hours
- when they said they'd only take one hour? Things like that. So I had a lot of logistics to figure out.
- And by working with a lot of the residents, um, and just being a single mom of four for 20 years, I
- kind of already had a lot of like, wait, I know how to do this. Um, and it's been going great. Uh,
- the lease, however, for the shuttle is up in September. And so I've been tasked with figuring out what
- we're going to do. Uh, I've talked to Curry auto and they're willing, they are willing, uh,
- The 24,000 is to secure buying the vehicle that we had been previously leasing because that changes
- a like, um, expense into an asset. And this is a, this is the, I've done a lot with as the resident
- coordinator, um, for the housing authority now, and this is the program I am most
- proud of that I see actually make a difference in low-income housing. Not being able to get groceries,
- or only being able to get what you can carry changes your diet. It changes your entire schedule. I know
- lots of elderly who haven't eaten potatoes, because they didn't want to just buy one, but they can't
- carry a 10-pound bag for four blocks. So occasionally they would buy one, but it's just not
- the best fiscally responsible way to buy potatoes. And that's just one example. Yeah, exactly. A gallon
- of milk is not doable. There's a lot of ways. And just the weather, too. So I have a lot of residents
- now. I've been able to build this program, and they rely on it.
- They can plan their meals by it. A lot of folks have met each other because they go grocery shopping
- together now. So it's actually created community in a place where there's a lot of poverty trauma and
- keeps people from getting to know one another, getting to know their neighbors. They want to stay to
- themselves. That way they're under the radar, the less attention brought to them means less
- danger of losing housing. It's one of the problems I have run across when trying to create community.
- And so I love this program because it's one of the easy, like I don't have to try very hard. When people
- shop together, they talk together, they get to know each other. I brought, we're actually gonna be featured
- in the Bloomington Health Foundation newsletter. So I brought an article that was written about the program.
- I didn't know if I should bring anything. I know you guys had questions, and I asked my boss, do I answer
- those questions in an email? And he said yes, so I answered those questions in an email, but I can answer
- them again here in person. And I also have some pictures of our shuttle in the residence shop. A couple
- of them, anyway. That's me and my assistant, Lowell, who helps with the program. That's the inquiry? Yep.
- uh, was hired on the van that was used was, uh, I don't know, like the old, um, church buses. And I
- can see why someone thought that was a good idea because you can feel it. A lot of people in a church
- bus, but the bench seats are this wide. And so you and your groceries and a bunch of like, it wasn't,
- working really well. So I went to Curry and I told him I was like, I need, and it's hard to get up into
- one of those vans. So there was a couple of my residents who I had bought a step stool and some extra
- handles and it still made me nervous. So I told Curry I needed something where an elderly person could
- sit down into and me not being nervous the whole time. And these old Pacificas have the, or not old,
- these Pacificas have the scoop in the back
- where you can like, it dips down so you can fit groceries down in there. So they don't roll all over
- the van on everybody. So then, yeah, one of the questions that we had was, is this price that you have
- listed? Like, is this like contracted with Curry already? Are they like locked into that price? Apparently.
- Okay. I have asked, you know, as like, so would you guys be willing to like, wiggle?
- And we haven't got a response yet. We don't know if that's a kind no or if behind the scenes they're
- trying to figure out if they could do anything for us. But we have asked very nicely. But my concern
- is when you are ready to purchase it, they're not going to go. Oh, but now it went up $5,000. I think
- that's more the concern. What, a car dealer do that? No, we actually have a really...
- Worked with us really well, and I really doubt that they would do that to us. They're just as proud
- of their name on this van, because I know their name's on it too. And they really seem to understand
- what it meant for the community. So I don't think they would do that. Hell yes. Yeah. They sent me an
- email. I do have an email in writing where it says that price. I don't know how that's. I have it in
- writing. Yeah, I have it in writing.
- It's down to the penny, too. Yeah, exactly, yeah. Can I have a look at that? Oh, yeah. Did anybody have
- any questions? No, I loved your sentiment of when people shop together, they talk together, like those
- little pieces of community building we all think about. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Anybody else? It's like that
- new trend of, you know, instead of going to get a drink or coffee with your friends, go do errands with
- your friends.
- Yeah. I do have residents who's, cause we run it three days a week now, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.
- I had to like figure out scheduling. Cause at first I was taking a group of people and then waiting
- for them and then coming, dropping them off and picking up more people. But I got tired of waiting in
- parking lots. So I was like, wait a minute while they're in there, I could go pick someone else up.
- That took a little bit more coordination, but it worked out because if someone actually does need two
- hours, I will take you with the first trip of people.
- And then I'll come back, pick someone else. You don't have to come back on the trip where I come back.
- You can wait, because then I'll pick those people up from the first trip, take them home, and then bring
- more people to the store. And they usually come home on the trip where those people would come home.
- So that way, I can maximize. It doesn't always work. And there have been, like, we have so, you know,
- most people have cell phones. There have been a couple of times I've been like, I will be there in 10
- minutes. But most of the time, I've never had anyone. They're like, no, the bus would take
- an hour. Sounds like a big game of Tetris. Yeah. Getting everything. And you have to figure out what,
- because closer to the day that people receive their food stamps, they are going to get way more groceries.
- So there's a couple of times I've had to be like, maybe just you by yourself, because I know that it's
- stock up day. Yeah. And we've also tried to, we've had some,
- once we've taken people to the farmers market. I've really tried to get more interest in that too.
- But again, we've been doing this for a couple years. So it's honestly just getting people to take it
- and trust it as a service was a lot of my challenge at first. And so how do you find riders? How do
- you connect with the people who need these rides?
- I'm in a great position because I work for the Bloomington Housing Authority, resident service coordinator.
- So I know who needs the services. And if someone's having a hard time, I'm who they would come to. So
- it's like, oh, I know what to do for that. That makes sense. Yeah. Even so, though, it still took the
- poverty trauma means that people don't trust things. They don't want to get used to taking
- a ride to the store that is gonna stop in a few weeks or someone's not gonna, you know, they're gonna
- lose interest or the program will end if that's how. And they also need to hear from other people that
- it works well, that it's not very intrusive, that you're able to get your groceries, stuff like that.
- So once I got word out that I was doing a good job and I changed the signage on the van to say grocery shuttle,
- in big letters because on the church bus man, it said like opportunity in motion, which is a great sentiment,
- but nobody know what that knew what that man was for. So by putting grocery shuttle on there like, oh,
- we have a grocery shuttle service. Yes, we do. Give us a call. So we've got a few people just because
- they saw us going through the neighborhood and dropping off neighbors. A few people when their car breaks down.
- they'll get ahold of us because like, Hey, my car broke down and be out of the shop, but can you take
- me to the store next week? And we've done that too. So that's kind of, it's really nice. It keeps an
- inconvenience from turning into like something that's devastating. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. All right.
- Any other questions? Okay. Well, thank you so much for coming in. We really appreciate.
- hearing from you in person, and thank you for all that you do. Thank you. All right. I appreciate your
- time. Of course. Thank you. Hopefully that was much more painless than you were envisioning. Yeah, I'm
- going to shake out the nerves. That was painless. Oh. There you go. All right, thanks. Eddie, you can
- come on back in whenever you're ready. I know we're a little bit early for you, but do you want to?
- I'd love to. You feeling good about going early? All right. We're cruising through. Home. Yes, exactly.
- Well, come on up and have a seat.
- and join us. So let's see. Well, my book is connected to my keys. There we go. Little tangle there.
- Yeah. I do everything on pen and paper. I just think it's always going to be that way. You know what?
- I carry a notebook around too and I often go back to it. Okay. Well, welcome. Thank you for
- me in. So I'm kind of explaining off and on throughout the night that we just invited a handful to come
- back rather than doing the typical like long night of presentations. There were just some applications
- that we had follow up questions to that some we sent out with a quick email because we're like it's
- a quick answer. They don't need to come in. But then others we were like we want to give you the opportunity
- to maybe explain it a little bit better than maybe an email could. Right.
- For sure. I think this is really good, especially for the second question. Wonderful. Awesome. Well,
- thank you for being here. So I don't know if you just want to go ahead and dive right in, if you want
- us to ask you the questions. Well, in my first paragraph, it says that, so. Beautiful. All right. Take
- it away. Hello. My name is Katie Norris. I'm the founder and executive director of Hotels for Homeless,
- also known as Hotels for Hope and H for H.
- First of all, I want to thank everybody in the room. I kind of thought it would be like before, so I
- wanted to thank all the other people, too. So thank you, all people who are not here. You guys rock.
- Doing great, thanks. We'll put that out into the universe, see if they feel that wherever they're at
- on their way home. So I want to make sure that I answer all the questions that the Jack Hopkins committee
- has about this project and our program. So please feel free to stop me at any time for questions or
- clarification. I'm not going to be offended if someone's like, hey,
- Hold on. Okay. So we were asked what amount of the residents served by this project will be Bloomington
- residents. The answer is all of them. A hundred percent. We do provide services to people who are not
- in Bloomington or not Bloomington residents, but all of those served by this project will be Bloomington
- residents. We were asked if we are abiding by the heading home plan.
- The answer is absolutely yes. And I will elaborate on that here a little bit. We were asked if we are
- collaborating with agencies who are abiding by the Heading Home Plan, and if so, who?
- Yes, we are collaborating with agencies who are abiding by the Heading Home Plan. I am not personally
- aware of all of the other agencies abiding by this plan, but I will elaborate on who we are collaborating
- with currently. And we are always open to making new connections with other agencies. I believe the
- more that we work together, the more we can help. So I have personally collaborated with eight
- individual heading home employees on a variety of things. We've taken multiple referrals and provided
- shelter from heading home outreach workers. We have referred almost all, if not all of our clients to
- heading home caseworkers, depending on which one is the best fit for the family or individuals.
- For example, some of our clients we provide casework for, but we do not provide hotel services for.
- So they just need referred to like Sarah, who does the prevention to get their rent paid.
- Some of our clients need referred to Rebecca at New Hope for help with application fees and bus tickets,
- but same thing. We've already referred them to New Hope. They don't, you know, or they are still at
- their house just waiting to get like evicted or something like that. So they just go to her. Um, and
- then others need street outreach through like Mandy and then the other ones, I've not really referred
- anybody to them, but they refer a lot of people to me. Um, mostly I think it's cause they're doing outreach.
- So it might just be because they're with the people. So they refer them to me, but I'm not really sure
- why I would refer them to them. But if there's a reason that I should, then I'm happy to. Other agencies
- that we collaborate with are Department of Child Services, Bloomington Police Department. I just wrote
- down ones we took referrals from for like the last couple of months. So if I miss somebody, I'm sorry.
- Bloomington Police Department, Department of Child Services, the Strides Center, probation, parole,
- public defender's office.
- Friends Place, Wheeler Mission, Indiana Coalition for Women Against Domestic Violence, Middleway House,
- the Shalom Center, Community Kitchen, Pantry 279, Bloomington Fire Department, Fanneker Center, Monroe
- County School Corporation, Boys and Girls Club, My Sister's Closet, Indiana Recovery Alliance, Tandem,
- Healing Hands, Ireland Home Base Services, Bloomington Severe Emergency Winter Shelter, clearly, CenterStone,
- New Leaf New Life, Hannah House, South Central Community Action Program,
- Perry Township, Trustee Bloomington, Township Trustee, Health Net, Humane Association, Oxford House,
- Malibu House, Amethyst House, Bloomington Hospital, Areoton Aging, St. Vincent de Paul, and a variety
- of other churches and patient substance use treatments facilities. I assume most of them are also on
- that plan, but I don't know because I don't ask them. We were asked, this is the one that was important,
- I think, for me to come in.
- Why are you requesting funding per person over funding per hotel room? The answer to this question is,
- we are not. I believe that there was a misunderstanding when our application was read. Our application
- reads, verbatim, 18,000 will be used for 225 emergency shelter stays for up to 75 people. The price
- we pay for a hotel room with one bed in it is $80.
- 18,000 divided by 80 is 225. That's how I came up with that number. 225 divided by 75 is three. So this
- means that if we had $18,000, we would be able to provide an absolute bare minimum of 75 people with
- three nights of shelter. The reason I use those numbers is because I know for a fact that with that
- amount of money, I can provide that amount of people with that amount of shelter. However,
- as in past years, I plan to do my very best to blow your minds with just how many more people we can
- provide shelter with more, can provide with more shelter with those funds provided to us. I don't wanna
- give numbers because I wanna be able to say, hey, I'm gonna do this with this amount. I'm gonna come
- back and no matter what happens, end of the world, we never help one family. We only help individuals
- and we only use one type of room. We've helped that many people. Does that make sense? We're gonna help.
- a lot more people than that. And we're gonna provide more shelters, but I can't give you numbers because
- then what if I can't, you know what I'm saying? Everything changes every day. It's one day you have
- a family of eight, the next day you have a family of six, the next day you have a family of three. So
- I can predict that amount for that many people for that night. Go ahead. So just to clarify, sorry.
- So those 75 people, maybe they come with a family of four, you're saying, right? Absolutely. That's
- what you mean by the 75 people
- Absolutely. And then in parentheses, possibly in their families. So, I mean, 75 individual human beings.
- Right. Okay. Yeah. And then, okay, not plus their families, but 75. 75. Their families are included
- in that 75. Yeah, so if we have a mom, a dad, a daughter, and a son, that's four. Right, that's four.
- 75 minus four equals then you're left with 69 left. Yep. Got it. Okay. Yep. Okay. 70. Oh my gosh, my
- math is so bad. 71. For example, we can put two people in a room for $80 if they share a bed. We can
- put up to four people in a room with two beds for only $15 more.
- We also are currently working with six Airbnb locations. We have two three-bedroom houses, two two-bedroom
- houses, and two one-bedroom apartment condo things. Both of those have a pull-out couch. Some accept
- pets and some are handicap accessible. All of them are significantly less expensive than a hotel room
- with one bed. We also own a
- Do you guys want to know prices for these? Does that matter? I almost wrote that out, but I was like,
- I don't want to waste their time. I didn't think so either. Okay. Thank you. We also own a camper that
- sleeps up to five with electricity, heat, AC, microwave, and mini fridge.
- We are able to park it at state parks for also less than the hotel room where those using it for shelter
- have access to showers, indoor bathrooms, a camp store with necessities. We're able to provide transportation
- to and from town for medical, legal, and housing appointments. We are also able to drop off food and
- material support and pick up and drop off laundry. This is a great resource for those in recovery to
- have everything they need while avoiding people, places, and things that trigger substance abuse disorders
- and relapse.
- As for the heading home plan, I don't know if you guys can have this up and looking at it, but I just
- went one by one goal strategy objective all the way through. So, um, as for the heading home plan goes,
- we always have and always will follow the housing first strategy. That is the core of what we do.
- Goal one strategy number one, we relentlessly advocate for those in need in our community and for objectives
- two and three we clearly use hotel rooms, build long lasting partnerships with hotel owners Airbnb owners,
- campers and RVs are a step towards tiny homes and our Tommy's trailers program is just that.
- as described, affordable alternative housing solutions. We have worked hard to build relationships with
- multiple mobile home community managers to negotiate deals for those we help to own their own trailer
- homes, bypass and negotiate barriers, including previous evictions, criminal records, and income
- requirements. Once our clients own their mobile homes, that their lot rent and utilities are long-term
- affordable housing solutions. That's what that is. For strategy number two,
- We have already and will continue to convince landlords and property managers to take our clients housing
- vouchers and make our own landlord risk mitigation agreements. We have been successful with both of
- these multiple times with landlords, managements and clients. We even have a landlord that started taking
- section eight because of us. She then bought a house just to use for section eight for us. And we plan
- to continue to do this on a much larger scale.
- For strategy three, we provide intensive individualized casework, including unlimited aftercare for
- our clients where we often use early intervention and connect those we serve with a variety of community
- resources and even do our own fundraising to prevent evictions for those we have previously successfully
- housed and those who seek our services just for that situation.
- We also personally provide free court advocacy services and have helped with multiple mediation in court
- cases to prevent or overturn evictions. We also offer that, that's my favorite thing to do in the whole
- world, just throwing that out there. We do that for everybody for criminal stuff too. This is the only
- civil thing I do is the stuff, but we do all criminal stuff. Literally my favorite thing to do. For
- strategy number four, we help enroll everyone we serve in Medicaid and if they don't already have it
- and help those
- who do have it navigate keeping it. We provide coordination and transportation for any and all health
- services needed and work closely with IU Health and Centerstone. We also provide 24-7-365 crisis intervention
- for our clients with mental and physical health conditions. For goal number two, strategy number one,
- we use case management to support rapid rehousing to keep homelessness as brief as possible. We use
- outreach to prioritize individuals experiencing street homelessness.
- Strategy three, we use warm handoffs to and from other agencies. We are literally here today seeking
- funding for full-time case management services. I'm gonna check that one right off. Strategy number
- four, we always have and always will prioritize children, those aging out of foster homes,
- domestic violence, and those suffering from and overcoming substance use disorder. Strategy number five,
- we send all of our clients to agencies like Salome,
- coordinated entry and assessment, although they do another one with heading home on their own now, which
- is really cool. I don't know if you guys know that or not. I didn't know that. It was a surprise. Goal
- number three. Strategy number one. We connect our clients with Work One and Search for employment
- opportunities. We make our own connections with employers in the community to hire our clients. We provide
- transportation to employment as
- possible, connect our clients with resources for bus tickets and are working on Kirk's Cars program
- to provide stable, reliable transportation of their own. Works great. I've done it personally. We're
- working it into H4H. Helps a lot when people have their own cars and they can get to their own appointments
- and do their own things. We connect our clients with Bill Ferry and Amy Kelso to apply for disability.
- We work with certificate and training programs. We help with job placement.
- We help find and attain suitable child care or child care vouchers, and we use my sister's closet,
- new length, new life, and healing hands for work appropriate clothing. For strategy number two, we always
- have and always will support recently homeless individuals with substance use disorder. We help connect
- and transport those to detox centers, 28-day programs, PHP aftercare, sober transitional housing, and
- we use the Stride Center as needed. We provide casework before, during, and after treatment.
- I think that's from top to bottom how we follow the Heading Home Plan. Sorry about that. I just want
- to make sure we covered it all. Got it all there. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah. That's very comprehensive.
- Did I clear up that second question, which I'm not sure how that one got in there? Any other questions?
- I think we're very thorough. Yes. Thank you. I tried to go like step by step. Yeah, I appreciate the
- detail. That's very helpful.
- don't remember the conversation around that other question, so. It was just why did we, because in the
- past years when we've got it, which it helps us so much, so even if we don't get any pennies from you
- guys, just know you guys have helped our program more than any other single thing. The Trailblazer Award.
- You guys are touching them. But you guys, because you did it more than one year, have helped. You guys
- are our favorite one.
- So thank you for what you've done in the past and hopefully what you'll be doing in the future. But
- in the past, yeah. In the past, it was always by hotel room. And then the question was, why is it by
- person? And the answer was, it's not. I don't know if I just wrote it weird or it just came up. But
- the answer was, we're not. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you for clearing that up. And thank you very
- much for being here. We're good? No other questions, right?
- Okay, well thank you for all that you do. Really appreciate you coming on in. Have a great evening.
- Welcome, thank you for joining us. All right. So we were just inviting in applicants that either had
- not applied to us before, just so we could get a little face-to-face, learn a little bit more about
- what you guys are doing, or if we had questions that were just maybe a little
- Too much for over email, right? Needed some better face-to-face explanation rather than a lot of back
- and forth over email. So yeah, welcome. Basically, we just really ideally wanted you to try to explain
- the setup to us a little bit. It's a little bit of a unique application and a unique setup. So we were
- hoping to understand it a bit better. So I'm Eric Coyne. I'm the chancellor out at Ivy Tech. Thanks.
- Appreciate it. You guys are here like 8 o'clock. I was on the BZA before.
- I very much appreciate what you guys are doing, so thank you. Sam Udeck may be running in here shortly.
- We had like the 815, 830 slot, so he may be coming in here in a few minutes to help out, too. Oh,
- there he is. All right, perfect. Sam Udeck. So we have a food pantry at Ivy Tech, and that essentially
- is what the request is.
- is to help us further that. We have a partnership now with the Hoosier Hills Food Bank, and we're trying
- to grow. We're seeing much greater need for and use of our food pantry. And so we're trying to grow
- it and add some refrigeration, add some freezer space, and really just more longer lasting. And that'll
- allow us to offer some more longer lasting products for our students.
- About 40% of our students are Bloomington residents. And then the rest come from around the region.
- The ones that aren't Bloomington residents are going to tend to be online students. So we tend to draw
- the majority of our in-person students, as you can imagine, would be from pretty close to Bloomington,
- Monroe County. Pretty close. Thank you for explaining that a little more, Chris.
- Did anybody have any other questions? Oh, sorry. You go ahead. I was just interested in just knowing
- where you procure your items. And when you get your refrigeration, where will you get those refrigerated
- items from? And who currently funds your operation? So we currently have a couple refrigeration units
- already. We just purchased a brand new
- commercial freezer in February, I believe it was. So the food pantry started out two years ago, two
- or three years ago, as like a shelf in the student living center. And it's now occupied about a 10 by
- 30 room. So there's a couple of refrigeration units that, they're similar to like a cooler you'd see
- in a grocery store or a convenience store, larger commercial ones. And then there's one large commercial
- freezer. So we're actually able to,
- offer frozen products now, the rest is shelving for dry goods, non-perishables. Last year it absorbed
- something like 85 to 100 students with most of them having dependents. The first semester we had I think
- 85 parents and a total of like 350 people served because they had children in the home and at this point
- we're at a thousand people served with over three hundred and
- I think 335 students. So the use has exploded as the capacity has exploded. And what has been made clear
- to us is anytime we add capacity, anytime we add more refrigeration, more shelving, and expand
- the partnership, it gets used. The need is larger than the supply right now. It's presently being funded,
- I think, almost exclusively by the Ivy Tech Foundation. I think one of the questions the committee had
- was, why didn't you use the foundation? We do.
- The foundation committed something like $12,000 to supporting the food pantry this year. A lot of that
- went to purchasing that refrigeration and that commercial freezer that was paid for by something called
- the Circle of Ivy Grant. It's an internal grant funded by a committee of women donors who put together
- a pool of about $20,000 to $22,000 a year to fund different projects on individual campuses.
- And then through separate employee and donor funds, the foundation also committed something like $6,500
- over the course of the year. So that's all gone toward expanding that. Our partnership with Hoosier
- Hills is through the Feeding America program that operates through Hoosier Hills. So a lot of the sourcing
- is now happening through Hoosier Hills Food Bank for produce, dry goods, that kind of thing that they
- readily have available. We are now registered as a food bank with Hoosier Hills as a community food
- bank. We're on the Feeding America website as a community food bank.
- We're supposed to be, I don't know if we're there yet, so don't quit that portion. The rest of the sourcing
- is coming from the same place anybody else commercially buys food. We're trying to work out a way to
- purchase through like Gordon Food Services, like wholesalers or grocery supply. Otherwise, it's largely
- coming from Aldi right now, but that's tax. There's no sales tax on that, and there's a bulk discount
- on a bunch of the different items.
- We're trying to make the sourcing more affordable. Hoosier Hills partnership has been a huge deal for
- that. And over the next two years, there is hopefully a move to increasingly affordable sourcing so
- we can expand the offering for students. And I think that covers all of your questions. Did I catch
- everything? Good. Great. Awesome. Anybody else have any other follow-up questions? Yes. So it seems
- like there's a potential. And forgive me if this was in the application that I didn't see.
- It seems like there's a great potential to combine this service with service learning and with high-tech
- students working in the program. That is happening. That is happening. That is happening. Right now,
- the food pantry is open three days a week for eight hours. There's a plan by next year to expand it
- to at least five days a week. And that is going to be staffed not exclusively, but pretty heavily by
- student learners who are already in those
- Public service education programs are where it's relevant to their field. They're connected through
- the student life office. So they staff the desk. They help people with whatever intake forms they need
- to handle. They help folks go through the pantry. There are nutrition plans that come with the Feeding
- America partnership. So it kind of helps you balance out what you're taking to make sure you have enough
- of one thing or the other. And students are pretty heavily involved in that as folks come through. And
- the plan through student success and student life is to expand their involvement in the food pantry
- for the next couple years.
- Thank you. Yeah. I had a question just related to, and you referenced SB1, the 12% campus reduction
- that we're all struggling with press award. I didn't know. How is that impacting your roles functionality
- specifically? Or are you seeing the impacts of that within the food bank? What is that looking like?
- So overall, the college took about a 10%-ish cut.
- By the time it got to us, it was probably 7%, 8% overall. We had a reduction in forest last spring to
- make sure we had a balanced budget. So pretty much everything is operating relatively bare bones. This
- will be the second. This will be the first. I've been there. Friday will be my three year anniversary.
- My first spring, the second spring, this will be my first spring where we don't have a riff, which is great.
- And so, you know, the budget is balanced, but the cut last spring was really tough. It's like laying
- down to all the things. Correct, yeah. It's one of the things that sort of pushed the pantry into turning
- towards student volunteers in the first place, but now that's sort of converted into getting students
- like practical learning experiences, they volunteer in the pantry. So it's a hard thing that's been
- converted into an opportunity and the functionality for the pantry itself is actually expanding.
- Yeah. And then we were just, you know, the foundation and relying on grants. Yeah. Yeah. We're just
- kind of grinding it out as we go. Any possibility of sourcing from local farms? We'd love to. Yeah.
- We have to figure out a way to make that practicable for them and practicable for us. Because right
- now we don't have refrigerated transportation. We have coolers and smaller refrigeration that fit in
- the service fans we already have. But part of the requirement with
- Hoosier Hills and Feeding America is anything perishable, especially meats. Proteins that you take out
- of the food bank have to be loaded into refrigeration. So mobile refrigeration is part of the long-term
- funding concern. Folks that are either selling through farmers markets or their local growers, if they
- can make produce more affordable for us, and it's something that they would like to do, we would absolutely
- love to have that conversation with them. Yeah, I think.
- It could work. I mean, I realize there's a logistic. It's easier to just go to one source. But maybe
- if they were to make a delivery and give you the same, match the price with California. With delivery
- and a price match, honestly, it would probably be more practical for us. And we're really trying to
- diversify the food sourcing. Because if you have a price increase and you only have one source, it increases
- your costs across the board. So if you can start to make that more dynamic source thing, it makes more sense.
- for keeping the pantry going. You see the team come out with the ginormous Aldi bags. When they make
- their run, they've got all these carts set up, and they've got all these big Aldi bags. Yeah, especially
- for baby formula and all these really, really option right now. We're providing a lot of postnatal early
- supplies for folks in the same sort of space. And they've got to remember to bring their big Aldi bags,
- because otherwise,
- Yeah, the team. They don't get the bags. When we go out, yeah, we get it. Yeah, we've been on the reusable
- game for a while. Did anybody else have any other follow-up questions, anything? Clarifications? More
- just thoughts related to the partnership piece, but we just heard from Tandem earlier that does all
- of the postnatal services related to those things. So they might be a cool partner for an offer already.
- And then we heard from Sober Mesa Farm earlier as well, and they're very interested in
- They farm specifically to give away food to the fisheries. So definitely recommend reaching out. Absolutely.
- Thank you. Sober Mesa. Oh, Sober Mesa. Yeah. Cool. Thank you. All right. Thank you guys so much. Really
- appreciate you coming in and sharing more about the project and answering our questions. Thank you for
- all you guys are doing. Yeah, great. Appreciate it.
- Hi, come on in. Are you with my sister's classmates? Come on in. We actually are ready early for you
- if you're ready to go. Of course we are. We just didn't want to disturb anybody.
- I appreciate that thoughtfulness. The other room that we usually meet in is all dark, and I was panicked
- a little bit thinking I'm in the wrong building completely. Oh, I'm sorry. So I want to just make sure
- that I'm turning off my phone for you guys. Let's see. There you go.
- Well welcome, yeah, have a seat, make yourself comfortable. So really we just reached out to a handful
- of applications that we thought, we had a lot of follow-up questions for several applications. Some
- of them were like super simple, just a real quick email like yes or no. Some of them we felt we owed
- you guys the opportunity to maybe give us a little more in-depth answer that might be easier in person
- rather than over email. So that's why we
- Invited you today. All right. Well, thank you so much. Am I close enough to your microphone for you?
- All right. Okay. Well My name is Sandy Keller. I'm the founder and executive director of my sister's
- closet I've been doing this work as of March 15th for 28 years and
- And we have had the honor of serving all kinds of vulnerable populations in our community, many of whom
- are extremely low income, most of them zero to 30% AMI. The majority of them are women single headed
- households who are raising kids or who would like to be able to be in a situation to get their kids
- back because in their current circumstances they cannot do that. So other
- family members might be raising their children or they might be in foster care. The majority of women
- that we are working with are trying to find work to be able to sustain their families. They generally
- have a history of holding down jobs, but they have a commonality of
- often working seasonal low-end jobs. Many times they are juggling more than one job at the same time
- and often working 60 plus hours a week to be able to get the same wages that they might be getting if
- they were getting a higher paid job with benefits. And so our thought is that we try to be able to put
- these women into better paying jobs with benefits so that they can not only
- be better mothers in the way that they are patterning success for their children and allowing them to
- be in programming that helps them, you know, become better adults and better citizens but also to be able to
- have them spend more time with their kids so that they are leading more rewarding lives themselves,
- so that their story isn't always one that they are struggling with. And before I answer many of your
- other questions, I just want to say that I have been
- before this committee many times. And this is the very first time we have been able to say we are asking
- for money for capital funding for a building of our own. And I am so excited that we get to be able
- to be here and say this right now. It's really very exciting for us to finally be able to do this. The
- number of the residents that we serve with this project
- We gave the amount of 900 individuals who come in no matter what for services for my sister's closet
- even if they do not have a voucher. Ones who are coming in with vouchers. Last year we had 252 clients
- come in. We do believe at this new location we will be getting more requests just because of our proximity
- and you know to
- shared services, partner agencies, because we are on a bus line and we're just in cross traffic where
- you'd be more visible and it'll be more obvious.
- because of our conspicuousness that we will be there for people. We are going to be setting up the boutique
- at the current location, which is a self-funding arm of the mission, which pays about 80% of our services.
- We're hoping at the new location, it will be able to do more than that. But we will be building another
- building right beside this, which will be our client services building. It will have its own entrance
- for clients, which we do not have right now, which will be very, very important
- for them to be able to come in with ensuring a certain amount of dignity, that they are being treated
- with incredible respect. Not that they are not getting that respect now and being treated well when
- they come in, but they might be coming in when they may have been sleeping outside or they just had
- something traumatic happen like they were assaulted and to walk into a room where women are smiling
- and chatting and shopping just isn't
- the right vibe for that. And so we don't want to discourage women for coming in. This is a way for us
- to mitigate our current circumstances to be able to provide for that. And we're very excited about that.
- So yes, we will be able to expand and reach more residents with our services and we feel that the money
- that we are asking for to pay for our HVAC for this new building will just do nothing but provide
- 20 to 30 years of comfort for the people inside and that will allow us to serve people in a way again
- that is going to help them succeed in the best way possible. Not just the clients we're serving,
- our staff, our volunteers and all the residents coming in. We have had traffic estimates given to us
- and while our current location
- not with the one lane right now because of the construction, but we believe that 11,000 people come
- through our doors at my sister's closet.
- far more than that drive by at this new location, which is at a cross street of West Second and Patterson,
- we believe that we will possibly see 38,000 come through our doors. And those will be people that will
- be able to hear about our services. They will be able to hear about all the wonderful things going on
- in Bloomington and support us with their donations and shopping dollars. And so because of that, we
- feel that we will be able to expand the number of workshops that we provide for the community and just
- overall higher level of quality of service and a continuum of service. Women come in, they do not come
- in just for one appointment generally. Usually they come in for a number of appointments beyond their
- intake and any clothes they might need immediately for an interview that they may possibly have lined
- up by themselves or a caseworker.
- They have very limited education. Maybe they don't even have a GED. They left high school because of
- a pregnancy, because, you know, they were very transit as a family. Possibly, you know, for one reason
- or another, they did not complete.
- high school, we try to move them into other services that can help them with a Core 40, a GED, but we
- try to concentrate on that Core 40. We want to be able to get them in some type of certification or
- technical training. College, as we know, isn't for everybody, but we do want them to be more hireable.
- That is not just presenting yourself in an interview. That is building your resume with job skills,
- with trainings, and things that make you look like
- you are more of a candidate for someone to hire. We try very hard to remarket a woman with not just
- her self-esteem and how she feels about herself and how she feels other people might think of her and
- whether or not they are judging her. We want to change
- what that looks like so that we build that up so that she feels extremely good about who she is as a
- human being. Then we work on the self-confidence so that she feels like she actually is looking at a
- job and her skill sets and her education are going to be the better match.
- for it, so if given the fact that we might have 20 women or men combined looking for the same job, given
- their education and experience, the way that we are working with a woman to prepare her to talk about
- herself professionally, the way that we are sending her out into the world dressed professionally, the
- way we are teaching her how to look professional on paper,
- Our candidate generally gets hired every single time. There just really isn't competition when one of
- our clients is going in with competition for somebody else that just simply isn't as prepared. And we
- feel that that's why after six weeks, when they have come to us, they are able to say that they have
- found a better paying job. And we have had over 4,000 women come through my sister's closet to date and
- We're just very, very grateful that they've, you know, trusted us enough to help them through, but they
- don't need to have continuous service again and again and again. They need some resources. They need
- some advocacy.
- to see a mentoring, they need a little bit of help with tools and training. And after that, they're
- able to be self-sufficient and continue to do better on their own. And so that is our biggest goal with
- what we see our role in the community and how we are helping over 50 other organizations with their
- clients. So we have several shared clients, and they are coming from all different types of circumstances
- imaginable.
- So many of them, about 50% are coming from some type of addiction where they are trying to move past.
- Possibly been incarcerated at one time where they have felonies Many of them are in as I said before
- either at a homeless or near homeless situation Because they may have left a situation that was dangerous.
- Maybe domestic violence. Maybe they've been displaced this year Especially it seems and last year we
- are seeing more women come just because they just can't work hard enough to put food on the table there it is
- they're trying, they're working hard, and they are just finding it more and more difficult just to do
- what they are doing and put food on the table. We had an experience that we talked about through a video
- at our recent gala in February, which is an example of one of the clients that we helped. She had been
- working three jobs. She had two children married, but her husband was not able to work because he was
- has some type of a disability and she just decided that enough is enough. She's been doing this too
- long, too hard, and she can't do it anymore. She asked for a voucher to my sister's closet and went from five
- $15.85 an hour to $26 an hour. She has recently reported her second raise to us, and she was supposed
- to be at our dinner theater event talking about her experience, but they had asked her to go take over
- an office in Indianapolis, so she spent that weekend moving and gave her regrets.
- But we're just, you know, very proud of her and she is an example that we hear, you know, a lot. We
- have a wonderful job because we see people at their worst, but we also get to see them at their best
- when they are celebrating their success and they're sharing it.
- So I would love to answer any questions about why we need an HVAC system, but I think that might be
- obvious. It's an old, well it's a building that's 22 years old and the HVAC is actually for commercial
- purposes and so we have a small office in the center and then on each side there are two very large, very
- whole drafty garage base. And it does have forced heat coming in, but it's not set up for comfort. It's
- set for the garage doors to be up quite a bit. And that doesn't work out really well for what we want
- to have in mind. Yeah, do you have any questions at all? We'd be so grateful for anything that you could do.
- We have told you we were doing certain fundraisers, and we have been doing them. We just finished our
- dinner theater event, which was celebrating the works of Maya Angelou. It was just a wonderful, successful
- event. Our three VIP women were Valerie Houghton Motley, we had Sylvia McNair, and we had Liz Mitchell.
- They're just slouches. All of them were just horrible up there. They were just really funny, and everybody loved
- be around them and we just had several that was one of our community collaborations between the Bloomington
- Symphony Orchestra and My Sister's Closet. We've got another collaboration May 22nd and 23rd at Sycamore
- Farms and that is with Garnish Catering in town who is helping us do a fine jewelry event and we will be just
- showing off all their wonderful drink mixes and their fabulous hors d'oeuvres. And of course, we will
- be trying to sell jewelry at my sister's closet and make that a lot of fun. And we've got other ones
- that we're trying to get through the door. But we are not giving up. We're going to wear people out
- with fundraising and try to get them to help us. It is. It is.
- It's good. You know, everybody asks what we're going to do if our lease ends July 7th. That is on everybody's
- mind. We only have about three, four, five different media people ask for interviews a week. Everybody
- seems to want to know what's going on.
- as well as several community members that seem very concerned and partner agencies wondering if their
- vouchers are gonna be good. I just wanna ensure you that we are working very hard with community partners
- that have helped us in the past, like Norman Deckard, he reached out to us yesterday. We are talking
- to Simon Moll about some of the spaces that they've got out there and they might possibly be able to
- help us out in a bigger way than what we imagined. We have a GoFundMe,
- page up that will be on our website and on the internet very soon asking people to help us with a pop-up
- sale. The things to structure that at the new
- building so we could raise up those garage doors during the summer. And we will just try to bring in
- sales to pay for the mortgage and get people used to coming to that building. And that will also give
- us an opportunity to give them tours and just show them plans of what the building's use is going to
- look like. We're just very excited. We're just very, very excited. And it is.
- It is for us. We've been waiting a long time to be able to say that we're doing this. Well,
- congrats on that. Thank you. I hope it all goes well. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah, I mean,
- that's a lot. You guys have a lot going on. Definitely. You definitely do. Any questions? I'm just curious,
- do the nature of the building or timing or whatever, be able to apply for the solar energy efficiency
- lighting grants through the city of Bloomington?
- with the seal grants? I know those were put in front of me. I don't know that we did. When were they
- due? We should have applied for those. I think the application for the energy audit was about a month
- ago. I'm not sure where it's at. SCAP applied for seal grants. Right. No, that is. We should have applied
- for those. It's a $10,000 match. So if it's still available, it's something to look at. Yes. OK.
- Okay, we'll put, we'll definitely look into that. Thank you. Are you using a local contractor to do
- the HVAC? Yes, yes. Yes, that will be our objective. And we want to be able to share any work possible
- within the Bloomington community with Bloomington residents. Yeah. Great. Okay. Last chance.
- The motivation, the primary motivation to get a building, get a space. Was it more the idea
- of the independence of having your own space? Or did you like run crunch the numbers and find that you'd
- be able to put more back in terms of what you bring in, in terms of funding, into services?
- by having your own space as compared to paying a lease. So do you run the numbers and come up with something?
- Or is it just an idea? Absolutely. All those things, actually. Because rental prices are getting higher.
- They are not getting lower. I mean, I'm a landlord myself.
- I own my building and I do not have a mortgage, then I am going to be able to control that part of our
- sustainability as an organization. And we have all these people who are contractors that already step
- up and maintain our current leased building for us that is not in our lease. So with our pest control
- and our lawn care and our, you know, we're finding a trash control person if anyone's listening.
- You know, but we, you know, we have different people who
- routinely help us out with different things and we're able to levy that along with the fact that we
- would no longer have to pay a lease. Right now the current lease that we've got
- is $52,000 a year. The mortgage is higher than that, but if we're able to get that mortgage paid off,
- then we're able to pay for someone to replace me or have a store manager or someone who does client
- services, you know, full time that we are able to keep them going, almost like you would expect to pay
- that have the interest of an endowment, take care of something without having to pay for that.
- Absolutely. It is a huge win for us. It's a very good question. But we know that because of the way
- this is located, we're just going to be able to be seen more, especially as you go west of town, west
- of downtown, we're going to be able to be around populations with our demographics that are more likely
- going to be able to use us, that are going to have a need for us. And I believe we're just going to
- be able to help more women.
- and not necessarily just women. Men come in too sometimes, but we really want to be able to serve as many
- you know, people as we can. If we are able to design the space the way that we envision, then we can
- certainly have more training on site, you know, and not just for the women, but we do a lot of mentoring
- with kids and we, you know, and kids are a big part of the programming at my sister's closet for women
- who are clients and women who are wanting to create some type of an opportunity for their kids to
- build a resume we have a mother daughter mentoring program where you come in for like two daughters
- with your daughter at a time and you're working together and you're both earning you know that credibility
- and that reliability and that you know professionalness that you're wanting to have you know that you
- understand but you are also earning buying points at my sister's closet so the kids and the moms really
- like that we we know how to
- you know, pull people in a little bit. But you had actually three questions. You know, you asked about
- whether or not this would help us serve more people, whether or not this would make us more sustainable
- as an organization. But there was something else that you had mentioned, correct? Well, I wondered if
- it was more just the idea that a person might have for having their own space they control.
- regardless of whether in the long run the economics are significantly different. I was wondering if
- basically... I really do believe they will be because we have
- We just have wonderful people in this community who offer the mow lawns or pick up trash or just,
- you know, be there for us because they think that we possibly need it. And they're doing that for us
- at our current location they've already made overtures saying they're going to do a force at our next location.
- They only take care of HVAC. We are already taking care of electrical needs and landscaping and stuff
- like that. So I don't feel like we don't have the capacity to do this on our own. I think we're surrounded
- by people that know how to do this, and they believe in what we're doing, and they're there to help.
- Thank you. Yeah, of course.
- Well, thank you so much for coming in. We really appreciate it. Thanks for answering our questions and
- for everything that you do. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Okay, guys. All right. Have a good evening.
- All right. And that was our last group to hear from for tonight. So I officially call this meeting to an end.