I call this meeting to order June 2nd, Jack Hopkins Social Service Grant Committee. I just distracted
myself with my own to-do list in my book here. Our debrief session. So how'd it go, everybody? Any thoughts?
So should we start from the beginning?
beginning of the process and walk through? Or does anybody just have thoughts off the top of their head?
I mean, the rubric was the only thing that kind of gave us fits, right? And I think we just need to
tighten up scoring for next year for either for us or for whoever else kind of takes over. But other
than that, when we went over the rubric and Catherine's stuff was written over, right? That was problematic. It was.
Other than that, I think it went pretty well. Yeah, I feel like most of our pains were just because
there wasn't a staff. That's what I think that rubric, most of the rubric stuff came from. So I think
that was just unfortunate timing. I mean, I want to say I really, I think that the support that we did
have everybody chipped in, you know, the fellows, the interns, clerk's office,
Larry and even you guys all, everybody just jumping in and trying to save the day. That was remarkable.
It was really, really, really helpful and crucial. So thank you everybody. What did you think about
the new application this year? Like how it was very different format, different layout than previous
years? Digesting it as a committee, I thought that was great because it was a lot more
I mean, pages upon pages of stuff. So I thought that was an improvement. I think as it relates to our
rubric, it was fantastic because all the most 98% of the information we needed was there super accessible.
Yeah. I found the budgets really hard to access and kind of annoying that you had to click onto something
else, right? I mean, there was one budget that I'm not sure
I can't remember whose it was, but I didn't discover until the final hour that I couldn't see, didn't
have access to their budget, which I feel like that was another thing. If we had had the OG staff that
was in there, they would have known things that didn't work before we got to it. But I just feel like
you could make one change to that form, which has a summary line for budget or something. In the past,
we used to get that information. It was like, what would you
can you get without funding? And then it's sort of like, yeah, but where is the natural place to cut?
So we could see that in the summary. I think they could pretty easily add that to the form, I think,
would be helpful. Just at the top level, so you can sort of see the summary of the budget. And then
we can dig down or something like that. This was also an annoying nitpicky thing. And maybe I had the
view wrong. But we're not being able to see which application
You were clicking on, it was annoying having to go through and be like, okay, is this the right one?
It took a while to figure out that you could export them all. It was still a mess. Yeah. Sorry.
I write slow. Yeah, I feel like something that would be nice is if next year
we were able to have staff or one of the fellows or whatever download all of that data and then clean
it up for us and then share it all to us in a spreadsheet, then I feel like that would mitigate some
of those issues too. The system's kind of a pain. I know that Aria had done a lot of work putting stuff
into the spreadsheet for us, but it wasn't everything that we needed for the rubric, but it was a really
tremendous
to start getting us started. I'm really happy with the new application. I think Kari did a great job
getting that put together for us and it's so much easier than digging through, you're right, because
it was sheets and sheets of papers that we were scrolling through constantly to try to get
all the information we needed to grade them. I'm guessing that it was easier for applicants because
it seemed like for the most part the majority of them were hitting
a lot of things we were asking for as opposed to a couple years ago where it seemed like applications
were incomplete because they misunderstood the application. I'm just inferring, but we had some incomplete
stuff that just didn't make sense why it was incomplete as opposed to this year. I think there's some
things from last year's feedback that we never really tried or even talked about really.
whether last year we had all recommended exploring the idea of having a bipartite fund, where we basically
have a fund for big asks and then a fund for more specific things or something like that, or where we
came up with a set of high-level targets that we were going to prioritize for this year. I do think
that's worth including again in the report, because I do think those are some ideas that are
you know, worth us exploring. And I also think the idea of figuring out how to combine, whether with
CDBG processes or with whatever the county's Sophia Travis processes, I still think it's just an area
that we need to do something about. Yeah. I was just about to ask,
something, and it's gone. Sorry. It happens. This wasn't it, I don't think. But what about how we held
the follow-ups with those that we asked coming in? Do we still think that's the way to go?
unfairly bias us against the people who came in versus the people who we didn't ask in. I don't think
so because someone who came in didn't get funded. So that, I think that was helpful to us. I don't think
it was necessarily a bias. You know, Ysak didn't make it in person to that one and it was probably a
recipient that I wanted to ask questions but the
They answered the questions that were given to them, but that opened up more questions, but I didn't
think it was fair for me to grill them on things that they may have been unprepared for. So I'm not
sure how to open that up to make it fair. And they ended up getting partially funded, I think, very
generously.
But I think that what we're doing is OK. So just thinking about it, this was a thought that I had that
I think is worth us developing, which is perhaps there's an interface between our rubric, the application,
and the interviews, and then our responsibility.
perhaps we're being a little bit too, I don't know, I'm gonna say this as I'm just thinking out loud,
so don't hold me to the exact words, but to the spirit of it. Is it worth us thinking about the fact
that if we're having a lot of people that we need to do interviews with in the first place, in the past
the interviews served the function which was give people more time on the mic, it was sort of an expo
if you will.
If we're moving away from that and towards a evaluative purpose to your question about fairness, if
we're having to ask for interviews, is that failure stronger? But is that like a failure of us as evaluators?
Or is it a failure of our application system? Or is it a failure of the people who are applying? And
the answer, I think, changes
what we're doing with interviews, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. And I think that I've come at
it from the perspective of it being a failure of those applying, in essence, that I'm like, I want to
give you every possible chance to answer all the questions that we need answered so that we can evaluate
you correctly. But there's a possibility that it's more like we don't know enough about these organizations
or something like that. And that's why we're having to ask, sometimes some of the questions we're asking
are kind of basic.
Or there's a possibility the way we're evaluating them in the first place, like that our rubric is missing
something that ends up creating a disadvantage for particular applicants because whatever we're looking
for is not clearly aligned with what we're asking for on the application. I saw it as a mixture of both.
You know at times it was a failure on their part to communicate clearly, but at times I think it was
a failure on maybe our part to understand their organization or to You know because for example We made
a rule right at the very get-go if they have not applied to us before we're inviting them in Yeah, I
do think you know to your point about
while there was one that didn't get funding at all. I think there were a couple of them that actually
their presentation, not many, but there were a couple where it did actually dissuade me from maybe granting
as much as I might have taken. Oh, I see this a little more clearly now. I don't know that I think this
is as important. But maybe my argument is that interview should be a somewhat neutral thing. How so?
Well, like, they shouldn't sway us this way or that way. They should be things that are being used for
clarifying. And, you know, and again, I mean... But the act of clarifying will sway us. Right, but if
we're using a rubric, then swaying shouldn't be part of the conversation. So that then gets me back
to the point of, like, we still need to... You know, again, I think it's awesome that we're starting
to use a rubric. I think the way we're using a rubric is very useful in the sense that it gives us sort
of a common
comparator, so I think that that's one of the reasons why our meetings go well and smoothly because
we're all starting from the same place and then we can discuss and change each other's minds and adding
that human element I think is tremendous. But I just wonder if that gives evidence to the fact that
we want to tighten a little bit what the rubric is. I don't know. You mentioned earlier about small
grants versus large grants and having
two separate, but maybe we should look at, I mean, I'm not sure, like off the top of my head, there
were a number of new folks, right? Maybe we should be dividing the grants from people who applied traditional
organizations, and then brand new, innovative, blah, blah, blah, right? Or people who haven't applied
for a while, and then kind of gives them a playing field that might be more level for those newer folks,
versus the organizations that have demonstrated need and success in their field. So just a thought.
Wait, in that breakdown, do you feel like the newer ones are less likely to get funded? No. Because
I don't feel like that influences our decision as much. I think in some grant settings it does, but
I feel like we're really great about not looking at longevity as like,
I think we are, but you know, like he's talking about part of the interview process was bringing in
new people, introducing themselves, talking about a new project or something. It might give
more justification to how we conduct the interview process. Like one where people are showcasing new
things, right? Yeah, and then of course there could be a second interview process for people who need
to clarify
on some things because their application was confusing or unclear or whatever. That kind of touches
on something that I felt like was a tension point for me this year, which was we talk about not wanting
to be relied on as a funding source for the same things year to year. But we do have certain groups
that are literally applying for the same thing every year to your point.
What do, and it doesn't mean those needs don't matter, but we do kind of like, try to discourage that
in our eligibility requirements. I just don't know where that line is. Like, I guess it's a point for
like, technically we need to. Maybe we should change our eligibility requirements because the needs
of the community seem to be greater, and probably data will show that. So, you know,
good job organization, A, who applies every year, they're going through funding changes and they're
serving more people. I don't know if we can really say that we want to discourage funding those folks
because they're still helping a lot of people and if they don't get that funding, then they help less
people, right? I think that's the hard part about the demographic.
of like recipients or applicants that we're serving is that across the board, like maybe that operational
funding piece doesn't matter as much. Like we're not looking at like arts organizations, you know, where
they feel like the argument's different. I wonder, okay, so like being super provocative and excuse
me, like knowingly being provocative. But like, if you thought of the, I mean, and for context and for
the record, you know, Councilman Morello and I have both
advocated, I think Councilmember Daley has as well, for increasing this fund to a million dollars, for
example. I think that our needs, you know, far away, you know, and I think we could do more transformative
things, et cetera. Okay, but being provocative, if you look at the types of things we're funding, to
your point, versus what we could do as a city
towards a lot of these issues with $500,000. So just with this one example, we're having these discussions
through the Heading Home initiative of basically funding for one year unsheltered homeless people, people
experiencing homelessness who are also unsheltered, for giving them a year of housing that's funded.
That would cost about $500,000, right? And so might we address
the types of issues sort of as a collective in a way that we're not really doing by giving 27 organizations
$5,000. It's just those needs wouldn't disappear just because there was like. But my point is that a
lot of them are recurring needs, right? But that's like,
big on the assumption side too. Yeah, of course, right. And then also there are fewer voices in the
room making the decision about not part of funding versus organizations that are interfacing every day
and like, no. Yes. It was my pushback. I see what you were saying too.
But the reason I'm being provocative, I don't hold that view. I'm just being provocative in the sense
that as to triangulate on your point about do we want to have a tighter bridge where you say, actually,
no, if you've applied for this before, we're not going to do this, that to me veers in that direction
of we're going to make the decisions on
you know, on what impact is or what, in a way that I don't know if I feel totally comfortable. And that
policy felt like it was more rooted in not wanting organizations to gain independence on the funding,
and less about like, oh, we're doing the same thing, where I feel like I personally don't have a problem
because I, because operational funding is so hard to come by that, like, that I think that it's super
important that they, like, I think that's really valuable that we are a source of operational funding.
And so it doesn't bother me that it's a recurring piece outside of that one conflicting part in the
eligibility requirements that I think we should like, like I'm not saying we get more stringent as much
as like maybe like mix that part, you know. Just because we are seeing recurring needs, they're telling
us what they need and we have to trust them to know what they need. I will say that. I'm sorry, Dave,
did you have something?
discussion, I don't want to necessarily interrupt, but I wanted to comment on a couple of things that
were said. So do you want to just continue for a minute? No, no. You're part of this conversation. It's
unfortunate that we forgot that the Zoom was on. Thank you for your honesty, Eddie. With everything
that's been said, I would say that the applications were really helpful this time around.
Regarding the follow-ups, I think they're really useful to kind of drill down. I think that we should
continue it as an option. It's like, I mean, I'm not sure I agree with thinking of them as a failure
necessarily. Or is it more just a means to understand the organization or the needs of the organization?
Because obviously some are self-evident.
because they're, you know, they're well-established organizations. They come back and they, you know,
we know about them and we know their needs. Others, new organizations, so it's entirely clear exactly
what they need and for what reason. And as Eddie said, I don't think it really biases because we didn't
fund, at least one of the organizations I think that came in, you know, to elucidate more of their,
of their needs. I did want to say that the rubric, the rubrics I found a little challenging just simply
because it seemed I was, maybe it's me, I was over-inflating the scores. So it didn't really discern
between the different applicants so well. But you know, it's good to have that comparator certainly.
And then lastly, I just wanted to say that it's like back to what you said,
You know, I'd like to, clearly the need is out there in the community and we're not needing it entirely.
I mean, I think we do a pretty good job. I think this group has done a really good job. And Courtney,
I think you did a fantastic job chairing. Absolutely. Thank you. Your organization, you know, because
this is really kind of a tough group, you know, to kind of, you know, get through it, get through it all.
You know, I think at the council level, I think we ought to be at least thinking of Jack Hopkins raising
the amount every year. Looking at it almost like an employee salary. Because the inflation cost over
just over the last few years has cut what we're allotted, about 10%. It's being cut and eroded just
because of inflation. So we ought to at least keep up with inflation.
And therefore, look at it as like a COLA increase for the Jackery every year in the budget. I think
you consider that. So anyway, great discussion. Thanks, everybody. That's all I got. Thanks, David.
Thank you, Dan. I have one more provocation on this thread, which is, and this is, I think, building
off of something that Cam and I have said the last couple of years.
on this thought of like increasing the amount, seeing the needs, impact, et cetera, we've tried a little
bit to get people to coordinate. For example, when they do homelessness, we're like, are you doing the
heading home plan or like whatever, right? We have things of that nature that we've attempted that.
But what if you took an approach where you basically said, you know what? We are going to fund one thing
relevant to homelessness
And whether that's a collaborative thing or an individual thing, and it can be up to $100,000 or something
like that, where we actually push people to, because of the fact that we have a lot of overlapping needs,
I do find it interesting that, just to think of last year, because it's an offensive example, where
it's like you have two organizations that basically want to do
things with horses and recovery or something like that. And it's great. That's a fantastic approach.
Wonderful. But then we end up basically comparing the two of them and then evaluating those in relation
to each other when would it be better for us to say we're going to consider these in some type
of complementary way? Is there some way to sort of actually, and the comment that I'm provoking here
is we've talked about
I always find it really interesting how few collaborative applications we get. And I don't know, especially
because people couldn't do a collaborative and another. I mean, we had two this year. I was going to
say, this was our lowest year. Yes. And last year we had four. So we always get such a small amount
of collaborative applications. And so I don't know if that's a...
Outcome that we want to work towards trying to in again. I was being provocative I'm not necessarily
saying the way you do that is say we only gonna do one thing for homelessness So work together and ask
us something But maybe maybe there's something like that that we should be thinking about as a committee
Well, just kind of there are a couple threads there but one of them so silver linings and I'm on their
board they applied this year and I was like not I
in that process at all until I got a panic message from the ED at the last minute and was like, I got
into the system. But we had talked about a collaborative project with MCHA and Silver Linings and how
that would be more powerful than we're leveraging funds for a similar cause, blah, blah, blah. But a
lot of it was the timing of when I knew about Jack Hopkins, obviously, but so it doesn't
This example is kind of a poor one, but I almost wonder if the runway leading up to the application
period, if that was longer, it would provide, I think, more time for innovation and collaboration if
we were able to get that in front of them.
earlier? Because we could start as soon as we have the budget allocation. Like as soon as council votes
on the budget in September, right? I mean, is that right? When do we vote on budget? I think do we finalize
it in October? But we do the first vote. But basically we could have our first Jack Hopkins meeting
then, you know, like where you start organizing and, you know, starting to reach out to organizations and
telling people that it will be open at this time. There's a lot of things we could do early on. I will
say that collaborations should be happening before Jack Hopkins. Well, there's that too. I run a big
organization, right? So maybe my experience is different from others, but I'm reaching out, my team's
reaching out to individual organizations and saying, hey, there's
a property that we share or there's something that we can do and we wanna work together on something.
And then maybe Jack Hopkins comes around and we apply for something, right? So I think that, I don't
think Jack Hopkins should be the incentive to collaborate. I think maybe that's something that the nonprofit
network, I mean, there's a nonprofit alliance or something that carry brings people together. Maybe
we should be coming together
as organizations to speed date. I mean, yeah, that would be amazing. But the counter to that is that
using the example of homelessness, we know that a lot of these organizations are collaborating. So why
aren't they applying for knock it out at the park? Probably because they don't have the bandwidth. Like
I said, I run a big organization. But then they're all playing individually. It still takes more work
to collaborate. Collaborating and working on a project is difficult.
What we could do is, in the rubric, just flat out say, don't differentiate collaborative projects and
individual projects, and just give, get five more points for being a collaborative project. So you get
bumped to the top. That's what I was gonna say, do we want to prioritize? I mean, I think that would
be a way where people are like, hey, I'm gonna call, so what I'm just gonna call NCHA right on the phone
and say, let's just work on that. But then it does end up being the incentive. So to use that, like.
I'm fine with the incentive.
I just think that, but I just don't, I just think that if, like saying, hey, Jack Hopkins, we put the
money out there, why don't you collaborate? We'll see what happens. But if we flat out say, hey, you
get five points for a collaboration, like you don't even have to. Is there a moral hazard there that
I just think it's clever? I was gonna say that gets tricky, though, if it's not a great collaborative
project. Well, if it's not, well, yeah. Kind of like forcing themselves into it. Well, I mean, or if
it's just something that we're like,
this isn't the best use of our funds. Maybe five points isn't the right amount of point. But just like
weighting it. Yeah, the merit of the project still needs to. Well, there's another part of this phenomenon
though, which is that people are doing a collaborative project and they don't apply as a collaborative
project. So they'll in their description be like, oh, we're working with this group and this group and
this group. And that'll just be like,
But we're asking for the money. That's why I had originally built community partnerships into the first
draft of the rubric last year because we were seeing so much of that and it felt like worth acknowledging
like they don't have a formal collaboration, but they are collaborating. Maybe it's a headache. I mean,
it might be a headache for an organization to say, hey, we'll apply for the money and we'll work with
you versus like, hey, let's apply for the money.
split it up and say, hey, you know, your organization gets XML. I mean, we do a lot of that, and then
we end up subgranting. But like, also, I feel like something that wasn't like we took that community
partnerships question out of the rubric, but I still think it's important for this reason, too, because
I feel like even if it's not a formal collaborative project, if that's a question we add to the application,
then and they're talking about like,
exactly who they're working with on the specific thing they're asking for money for, then I feel like
they do get, they can get bonus points on a version of the rubric that includes that as something that
we care about. And it wouldn't be a bonus, it would just be like points that they get, you know? I do,
so my take on the rubric, you know, I had a lot of, last year when we did the rubric, I felt that there
was a few areas that were really,
subjective, where I was kind of interpreting them maybe different than Cam would, and Esau was interpreting
it differently. We all had our own different interpretations. And I think that was ultimately okay,
because it still helped us get to where we wanted to make our recommendations. But I still felt a little
uneasy about that last year.
We tightened it up this year. I think that really helped. I think we can go a little further with the
rubric, too. We neglected the scoring, tightened up our criteria, but then forgot about updating the
scoring. But yeah, I mean, every year, they all do come within a very small range within each other.
It does help to see my priorities then, to see how it all kind of comes together. But yeah, it should
lead us, I think, a little bit further than it does.
and really kind of set some of them further apart than they do. So I would love to relook at that rubric,
and then yeah, think about things like putting the collaborative elements on there. Well, and I nerd
out about this right now anyway, because I taught grant writing this past spring, and at the end, I
had them all write applications for social service organizations, and then they had to, they were divided
into four seven-pupil panels, and they had the same rubric that they worked from, and they all interpreted
those things differently, which was okay. Like it wasn't necessarily like no rubric is gonna be perfect,
but it wasn't necessarily like a flaw in the rubric. We developed it together as a class. It was like
more just like we're all gonna see things differently no matter what. No rubric is ever gonna be neutral.
Like I think anytime we're bringing it to the table for conversation that it is doing its job, I guess.
And like it's more just like I think maybe the eligibility cutoff of like we want this amount of impact
to be demonstrated
for them to be even considered, like that binary almost. I just think it's really hard, like a rubric
is just gonna look different and be interpreted differently always based on. Yeah, so that's why I don't
wanna like, I don't know, wring my hands over it too much, because like I said, it really did, I think,
help each of us at least kind of get that base priority to be like, okay, now I have a better,
organizing of the grants and now I can go through an order from like top to bottom or bottom to top
or whatever. Like I see, you know, they're lined up a little bit more. That's kind of how I feel about
it too. Any other areas that we haven't mentioned? This, I'm not even proposing this as much as just like one
offered up as a point of discussion. I've been in a couple other grant panel processes and something
that happened for those they had I mean there were more applications but it was like everyone like was
assigned like a chunk of the applications that they did a deep dive on versus being responsible for
deep diving on all of them and so like a subset of us would be responsible for doing like a
17 and then there would be multiple that did the same 17 but then like another group would do another
17 and then whenever the discussion period came it was like Like we all are familiar like you're responsible
for coming to the table familiar with the applications so that way like you can have the discussion
but some people in the group know
like these applications inside and out and can like contribute to the discussion. Some of those questions
that come up that maybe we feel like we have to call them in later. And it's like buried somewhere deep
in our application. I love that. So like maybe something to consider. You've become a subject expert
on a couple. Yeah. So you can really kind of present to. Because I feel like that's the part that gets
hard is there's so many, so much content to go through. Yeah. And so I just wonder if like that's something
that would be helpful. I like that idea. So one.
You know, there are several categories that seem to come up that we find in what is food insecurities,
a lot of housing instability stuff, which would include homelessness, children's stuff, right? Therapy,
CASA, Boys and Girls Club. You know, you mentioned arts, but we didn't have
I don't think we had anything with arts in there. Is Jack Hopkins arts? No, we don't fund arts. We don't
fund arts. But I feel like the conversation gets different whenever you're like, it's not a basic need
being that, you know. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So maybe we should think about saying, hey, you know, I agree
with Dave that, you know, if we can increase Jack Hopkins, that's great. But say we're playing $500,000,
then we can say that,
$100,000 goes to child welfare. $100,000 goes to food insecurities. And if one category doesn't have
as many applicants, then it gets split between the other categories. And then we fund accordingly. That
would play into, hey, we can have a few people deep dive on a subsection of applicants. But it makes
sense, right? All the housing insecurity folks can
take a deep dive on that, food insecurity, as opposed to like, hey, just take one through five, and
then I'll take the next five or whatever. Right, read them up by topic. Yeah. And you may be able, if
you do it that way, if people cycle off of here, you can bring in a food insecurity expert in on this,
so that way they can take the deep dive on that section. You can bring in someone who is a child therapist,
to go into, hey, why is having a court appointed special advocate important? This makes a lot of sense
in a lot of ways, right? Yeah. I don't know, though. I think it's hard to anticipate what the needs
are going to be. It seems like we hit a lot of these categories. Yes, but the distribution of them.
And so then it becomes arbitrary. You end up defaulting back.
A third of our thing is homelessness. We'll get that many requests. And so you can't say, well, five
requests is the minimum before it gets redistributed because you might have five people all asking for
$100,000. So it just puts us back in this essentially you're reducing the fund because people have less
of a space to move around in. I also feel like,
I also feel like based on how things are going economically, like to your point, I think we do know,
like for the most part, but I do think like the asks, even within the types of organizations that are
requesting funds, the asks are looking different, like thinking about like Susie's place and like these
places that lost funding, federal funding this past year, and like things that like we don't know until
they tell us, but that need, like those are big asks.
that they had that maybe, like, we wouldn't have the funds to fund if we were, like, breaking up our
fund into something smaller because we would be like, okay, we're used to only getting, like, $50,000
worth of asks for youth services organizations or something, but, like, Suzy's Place asks for, like,
whatever, $40,000 or whatever. Maybe we need to put a soft cap on what people can ask for again. We
have to talk about that, which is, like,
You sort of say this is the whole amount and then the expected amount of rewards because that gives
somebody a sort of idea of your average, what you expect to give out. That's something we could communicate
a little bit better. A lot of these organizations that ask for a big amount of money, the actual project
description was, they broke it down.
a lot of them did, but still there's a lot of vagueness in there. But I think it's been the other way
because I think our problem has actually been on the other side and this is what I'll call the tandem
problem, the same thing with New Hope for Families, where they'll apply for $5,000 and then tell us
that they have this
$50,000 deficit when they come to the presentation, we'll be like, why did you apply for more? And we
have to sort of tell them, no, we would have considered you for $50,000. And so I do think that some,
which isn't to say that we are saying we're going to give all of our awards this amount. Or it's just
a saying, in general, we expect to give 20 awards at $20,000. So it puts people in the right ballpark
or something like that.
Also, I just wonder like how because Jack Hopkins has been around so long and this of these organizations
have been applying for so long if in like certain years like it was like an all-or-nothing approach
to funding that then they were like oh shoot like I would rather apply for less and get less than apply
for more and not get anything kind of deal like if that's ever been like at the way that like the It's
hard when it changes every year. Yeah. Yeah, so it's like yeah, that's why I love the idea of us starting
to message
early so that before they do the application, they know really what expectations are for that year so
that they can look at that and start thinking about, okay, how are we going to then match? They've told
us what they're looking for. They told us what we need to do. I think if we do a better job at communicating
earlier, that gives them more time to kind of get their cards right.
And I think now that we know this online system works and is more accessible, this is something else
I noticed just from another state grant panel that I was on, is that in each question, they had it really
broken down really specifically what they were looking for. And so I think that could help us too with
that kind of a dilemma of bringing them in is giving them more definition of what we want their answer
to look like.
to like tailor it to the information we feel like we need. Because actually that is funny and I feel
like you might have said this earlier, but that is funny in the same way that we look at like lasting
impact or whatever, all of us think about it differently when they're answering that question, they're
thinking, they're all thinking about it differently too. Yeah, that's true. All right. We covered a lot.
Any last thoughts? Any other new can of worms we want to open up? Yeah, I've got a can. I knew someone
would. I want to talk about food for a minute, but growing food. We only had one applicant this time
that was proposing funding for food. And I thought it was a good applicant because they were not only
uh, producing food that they were teaching how to grow. Yeah. And I think that's a, that's a wonderful
thing. It's a great skill that people can learn, especially kids for self-reliance and you know, plus
they get nutrition. Um, anyway, I, you know, I'm surprised we only have one applicant. Um, maybe we
have more next year, but that's going to compete with other needs that are going to be probably continual.
Maybe greater, as was said with the federal government shedding it to locals, local government. And
maybe this is another argument for more funding. Yes. Because I think that it's, I'd like to see that
happen. I think that there are communities where, like in Detroit, where communities, they're growing
food in the neighborhood.
And they're helping to, there's so many benefits for it. I don't need to go into all the benefits from
that. But I'd like to see that happen here. And I think it could really take off. But then again, we
have a lot of other needs. And we were talking about different categories. But this is another category
that's sort of, maybe we haven't seen it very much in the past. But maybe it will grow.
Just that comment. I also just wanted to say, I learn so much from this group every time I participate.
And I just want to thank everybody for their collective knowledge adding to the group group. Because
I really learn a lot in the process. And I also wanted to thank Sophia for being there and her help.
Always. Definitely. Yeah.
Thank you, Dave. You brought up some good points. I mean, I agree. I think we're in a... I want more
money for this. Yeah, I think we're in a period right now where we know we're going to keep getting
more and more need, right? And it's the unexpected fluctuations are coming up probably more than any
other period like in the Jack Hopkins era, at least in the past many years. So I think we do need to
Look for more money and be more nimble, right? And recognize we're gonna have a lot more ask, I think,
and need. I wonder what studies about this exist, like projecting what this is gonna look like, because
I don't even think we've gotten to the point where we're truly seeing the impact of federal cuts yet.
And I feel like that is what we're gonna start seeing next year and like in the subsequent years. And
I wonder if there are like any, if anyone has done like projections on. I don't know, but with state
cuts too, on top of all of it.
with SB1, there's going to be just a lot of tightening of belts and a lot more pain, unfortunately.
I had one more application thing that I just wanted to put on the radar. This was like the e-verify.
I think there were a lot of groups that didn't end up getting the e-verify through, but since we didn't
have like CARI
looking at that stuff, it didn't end up mattering. I think that's really hard. From what I heard from
Rachel, the executive director of Silver Linings, who dropped out because she couldn't get e-verified
because it's an organization without a staff. It's super, that's a really, really hard, if there's another
way that we can go back to having them submit their IRS paperwork or something, I feel like that would
be way better than e-verify for the future. Yeah, that was,
A pain point, as some may say, for sure. I mean, I want to just give some thank yous for this whole,
this is my favorite committee, this is my favorite part of city council, hands down, like in general.
So I'm so grateful to be able to be part of it. Thank you all for your patience with me as I chaired
this time, because we had really bad timing with losing all of our staff. So I went into a huge panic.
I did not think we were going to pull this off. And because of Sophia's help and Larry's help and our
interns and our fellows and then you guys, everybody just carrying everything. I think everybody pitched
in remarkably. And I think I said this at the beginning, but I am very grateful and relieved that we
pulled it off. But thank you to everybody. And I'm about to adjourn unless anybody wants to say anything.
Just thank you again, Courtney, for being our fearless leader. I love working with you guys. This has
been such a great experience for the past few years. So, meeting adjourned. Thank you.