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.