"HUNGRY, ANYTHING HELPS"

Cardboard signs abound on many corners in Portland, Oregon. And behind them are invisible people. Some profit handsomely, some take turns working shifts, and many are exploited.  Handing people money rarely solves a problem. The best way to help is to financially support local pantries, shelters, and churches that are set up to serve the public or volunteer your time.

This is an update on consulting work with a church in S.E. Portland. Their initial goal was to launch a community pantry in a diverse neighborhood with higher than average food insecurity.

After nearly a year of probono work, it has been well worth the small investment of time.

The pantry team has doubled in size, and added several community partners. The pantry served 12 families in January. Growth has steadily increased and in the month of September, the pantry served 73 families.

This group is mirroring Jesus's words to feed the hungry. Hunger is what happens when a person doesn't have enough to eat. And it begins to impact a child in school, or a parent at work.

Food insecurity refers to a long list of problems that contribute to hunger-job loss, no high school diploma, loss of housing, no affordable child care and more.

Addressing food insecurity requires building relationships, identifying needs, assessing readiness, community partnerships, financial resources and a huge core of trained volunteers. 

Pantries offer emergency assistance, and give families time to improve their financial circumstances to prevent food insecurity as a way of life.

.

What Is Success?

Businesses and nonprofits have one thing in common. Both are run by people. By design we as people have limited time and resources. Therefore we must prioritize our time. For the last three months this writer has been learning the specifics of government contracting.  It is no elusive, but it does require knowledge of practical elements in order to achieve success.

What is success? And who determines who or which business is successful. Often the determination is made by the numbers on the balance sheet. There are however other measures of success: fulfillment, number of people served, impact if the business or nonprofit ceased to exist.

Our business is about people, bringing value to those we serve and personal enjoyment. We come from a belief that if doing what you do well, or are called to do will in turn be profitable. Therefore, recent curricula was developed for a three part nonprofit course. Following that design we turned to our love of gardening, nature, people, education, and sustainability and designed a comprehensive course on gardening, soil building, handicap access that can be taught to groups, in a classroom, apartment, church or other nonprofit setting etc. and lastly, a community action course for churches that wish to become naturally engaged by serving on behalf of and along side community partners.

Neighorhood Sharing-Part 2

The last post focused on sharing kitchens, food preservation equipment, trucks and more. This post will explain how businesses can play a role in this model and why it is important. We live in a neighborhood with a savvy business man. He figured out it was profitable to donate $40.00 to the neighborhood association for each sale from neighbors. In turn, the neighborhood association hand delivers his flyer with the neighborhood newsletter to every home in the neighborhood. For him that is cheap advertizing and he is doing his part to support the local neighborhood. Neighborhood sharing is about reciprocity and community. Sharing can come in the form of labor, equipment, information, professional services or resources. Resources may include a children's clothing, toy or furniture exchange. This helps families provide for the need of growing children. Local gardeners may decide on seed, plant or produce swap. By doing this they cut their own cost and may contribute extra produce to help local neighbors, teach gardening to local school children or at the neighborhood community center. Trading services such as child or elder care. lawn care or house keeping services can help households improve their cash flow. A mechanic may trade for a massage or a dentist may trade for lawn care. The relationship aspect is the most important element of resource sharing, however it can also help residents, churches and businesses cut costs. A church can offer space to a scouting group in exchange for periodic building improvements such as installing a water feature, prayer garden or outdoor seating. A business can offer volunteers to help staff neighborhood events such as parades, festivals or set up and take down for a farmer's market. They may also permit access for additional parking. Event organizers can help promote local businesses by listing them as event partners, or vendor space at events.

Neighborhood Safety-Part 2

Our first post in this series was on encouraging businesses to work with crime prevention and the local neighborhood by encouraging employees to volunteer with residents to add extra patrols and communicate suspicious activities to police. This post focuses on providing resources to help with social needs within neighborhoods. There is a plethora of social service agencies in Portland. Most are overloaded with requests. Many homeless persons or vagrants are down and out. Some make their living at begging. Those with legitimate needs may not have access to transportation to access available services. Some avoid social services due to bad experiences, a criminal history, substance abuse or mental health problems. Businesses with some financial means can help by funding a neighborhood-based informal drop-in day center. Businesses with meager resources can help by providing sack lunches, coffee, board games, decks of cards, tangible resources such as toiletries or new socks. Rather than donating these to a social service agency with no way to ensure a benefit to the neighborhood, consider working with the neighborhood association, local churches, and businesses to bring resources to those in the neighborhood. A day center may provide sack lunches, and repeated relational contacts. Rather than referring homeless persons elsewhere, work with partner organizations to help provide stabilization to those known to live in or frequent the area. To encourage repeat participation tie provision of tangible resources such as a bus ticket or pair of socks to one per visit. Keep statistics on the number of sack lunches or other services provided to communicate the value. Keep copious notes to see if there are fewer street beggars or if crime diminishes by providing homeless persons a safe place in the neighborhood.

Disaster Planning: Immediately After

Disasters happen on a scale. That scale may be personal, location-specific such as a neighborhood, school or grocery store. It may also be city-wide, regional, national or international. The bottom line is we are directly impacted, perferally impacted or outside the impact zone and able to help others. After evacuating or shethering in place, it's time to do a safety check. Assess immediate safety of the current location. This is called situational awareness. Are there any structural weaknesses or vulnerablities that might affect the location. If so, what are some safer options? Make sure everyone is out of harms way if it is safe to do so. Choose an incident commander if possible. Is there anyone with a safety background. If not, is there an engineer, home builder or administrator that can fill the role? Organize teams but do not put yourself or others at risk. Perform light search and rescue, firstaid, CPR, psychological firstaid, offer to care for children or the elderly only if these functions are within the scope of your training. For those who are not specifically trained, there is still much to do. Here are five things you can do immediately after a disaster. Collect information. Does anyone have a missing family member, friend, neighbor or pet? Do they have a picture or can they give a decription or other pertinent information that would help search and rescue locate them? What resources are available to meet immediate needs? What knowledge, skills, abilities, equipment or facilities do people have or have access to?

Twelve Steps to Help Churches Prepare for a Disaster-part 3

Blogger is still malfunctioning, so we are using HTML which causes some loss of formatting. Part 1 in this series covered steps 1-4. Part 2 covered parts 5-8. This final post covers steps 9-12. If your church would like to know how to prepare, serve others or serve in a coordinated response contact us at hamiltondarnallllc@gmail.com to schedule training in the Portland area. 9. Have a safety officer or a resource sharing agreement with access to a safety officer to inform resources (volunteers) of any potential hazards, and procedures to prevent injury or illness including the proper use of personal protection equipment in compliance with OSHA or WISHA standards. 10. Have a public information officer (PIO) or a resource sharing agreement with access to a public information officer. The role of a PIO is to be the designated media spokesperson. There is no way to prepare for every conceivable disaster or event. 11. Offer encouragement, resources and accountability to help all church members to get out of debt and live mortgage free as soon as feasible, and to develop sufficient financial resilience to stay out of debt. 12. Build financial reserves at church to serve others more efficiently in the event of a disaster.

Resilience: Financial Education at Work. Part 1

Employers have a moral responsibilty to help employees develop financial resilience. How many employees, and co-workers are stifled with personal debt? This series will address three common situations that quickly affect employee resilience: personal debt,  physical or mental health problems including substance abuse and elder or child care costs. Here are some good guidelines to help individuals manage debt.

Always pay cash if possible unless the debt provides a clear and distinct tax benefit or leverages the employee into a better financial situation within 12 months. Avoid get rich schemes. If dept is already a problem, sharply cut discretionary expenses, and allocate the savings to pay off debt. Repay debts using one of two strategies: pay the debt with the highest interest rate or pay the smallest debt first. The rationale for the latter is to free up extra money to accelerate payment on another debt. Accelarate payments on one debt at a time to reduce the number of outstanding debts. Employers can provide access to publications about the financial cost of debt and resources or post simple signs. Here is one example:

Ten Financial Warning Signs
Payday or other high interest loans
Gambing and lottery tickets
Not tithing or giving to charity
Paying the minimum payment
High debt to income ratio
Borrowing money to pay off loans
Late or deferred payments
Running low on cash between paydays
No emergency fund
Not contributing toward retirement

It isn't enough to identify warning signs, employers may gather useful information to help educate employees, allow employees to organize and share ideas on cutting costs, avoiding common pitfalls, and explain what they are doing to overcome challenges. Invite speakers to come and talk about bartering, micro enterprise, money management, or lessons learned or how they achieved their financial goals.

Urban Solutions: Ministry, Math and Melissa Data

The last post was on Urban Solutions: Creating Strategic Ministry Partnerships. If you have read our mission and vision statement, you already understand that our focus is on helping small businesses, churches and other nonprofits improve their capacity to serve others. Our premise is that employees and members must improve their own resilience in order to improve sustainability. We cannot afford to operate in isolation. Instead we need to transition to a model of healthy interdependence.

So let’s breathe some life into this by understanding the big picture. Once church leadership teams help their members understand how to implement this simple concept in their neighborhood, the steps are repeatable. Try to imagine this. Oregon has 36 counties, 471 zip codes and 1,349 profiles on populated areas. In the City of Portland alone there are over 1,200 Christian churches. By building on the work of the US Postal Service, internet maps and databases, coordination and measuring outcomes at the neighborhood is both realistic and necessary. Here is an example of what how to bring this idea down to the neighborhood level.

First, figure out which of neighborhoods are in your zip code. Then find a map of the neighborhood and identify your location on the neighborhood map. The last step is to dentify several homes and make a commitment to develop some level of relationship with someone in each household. Since that represents such a diverse area, divide the neighborhood into ten sections with the goal of developing a relationship with at least one person in each of the ten sections. If this seems like a daunting task, enlist the help of ministry partners by using entering "nonprofit organization lookup". Melissa Data allows users to enter a zip code to identify all nonprofits within that zip code. This allows church leadership teams to build strategic partnerships closest to them and build out thir resource list in concentric circles.

Urban Solutions: Creating Strategic Ministry Partnerships

Working with ministry partners requires a healthy infrastructure. 1. First, know how to find ministry partners, learn what they are doing and how to support them. Second, map where the resources are, be willing to share information, and cooperate with each other by lending material resources, manpower or expertise so all members are equipped for ministry. Third, recreation and leisure opportunities need to be extended to attendees of other churches and to the community. Finally, work with partners to create a seamless response to persons in neighborhood. No organization can do that without communication and cooperation.

There are many ways you can serve your neighbors within existing structures.

One way is to encourage members to serve the neighborhood association president. This role puts members in direct contact with the City, and other neighborhood association presidents which provides an instant network. Most neighborhood associations have a newsletter. Members may become a conduit of information that helps link neighbors to vital resources? Other members can serve on the Board of the neighborhood association.

Start an awareness campaign and enlist members to serve on a neighborhood watch team or become a block captain. This provides the opportunity to develop relationships with every person on the block and with the neighborhood police officer. Block captains meet with each other and this puts members in contact with someone on every block served within the neighborhood.

A third way to serve is through CERT which stands for Citizen Emergency Response Team. CERT training is offered free or at a nominal cost through some local fire departments or county emergency management offices. This allows members to become part of a network to serve your neighbors in times of disaster. Neighbors are defined as any person or organization in your neighborhood including schools, churches and care facilities. In some cities, CERT is called NET which stands for Neighborhood Emergency Team.

Churches, faith-based organizations and businesses and individuals can all play a role by setting up agreements to serve neighbors in times of need. 

CERT team sizes up the situation




Cribbing and Shoring Practice at CERT training



Tribute to Smoke Jumpers in Arizona

They gave their lives sacrificially to protect others' lives, property and possessions.
Families have lost sons, husbands, fathers, brothers and nephews. God bless them and their families as fellow Americans surround them not only during this difficult time, but in the years to come.

This is a recap of a YouCaring, under our resource tab. YouCaring is a free fundraising site to help with costs associated with funeral expenses, disaster recovery and a lot more. Please help spread the word.

Humane Work Environments Part 4

The first three parts in this series introduced the concept of a culture of honor. The last recommendation in this series is Resource Management. Resources refer to people, equipment or facilities. In a humane environment people are highly nurtured. They have adequate resources to perform the requirements of their job. Many school district budgets do not provide enough funding for classroom teachers to have access to resources to teach the children. In fact, many teachers pay hundreds of dollars each school year to have the needed resources. And in some school districts overcrowding is a problem. Some fire departments are operating with older, less efficient equipment. In addition, many fire stations would come down in a major earthquake rendering the contents useless and perhaps causing injuries. Lastly, some people work in factories or industrial settings with inadequate heating and cooling, or poor air circulation. Even churches may have asbestos, lead paint or use toxic automatic air fresheners. Humane employers do what is right even when not is required by legal or industry standards. In a culture of honor employees are treated with respect. It is not honorable to expect employees to subsidize the employer's needs, but it is honorable to provide resources and working conditions that bring out the best in employees.

Earthquake or Health Crisis?

Three day ktis are old news. New recommendations vary. In recent disasters help was weeks away for some. Common sense goes a long way.

If your small business or organization closed the doors who would be affected? For how long? How long can your entity tolerate a payroll distruption? How long can vendors carry you without payment? Preparedness is not an event. It is a continuous process which requires evaluation and improvement.  The chances of a major earthquake in our region is high, but will it happen next week or in ten years? Rather than rolling the dice, consider the benefits of preparedness. Think of preparedness like low cost insurance against a structural fire, decline in business, lay offs. Now extend this to a personal level. Most entities have had co-workers or volunteers who have experienced a personal crisis. In a healthy workplace colleages rally around the affected person and offer support and resources. Resilient employees and volunteers are like leaven which rises and permeates the small business or organizational environment. If something adverse happened today, would your entity bounce or thunk? If cash is tight, focus on things that are free or very low cost, but don't delay. Take a look at our Resource page for more information.

Three Lessons for New Businesses and Nonprofits

1. Plans must be dynamic to be useful. They must adapt to changing conditions. Plans don't have to be complicated to be useful. Operating a business or nonprofit without a plan is like driving without a destination. Some routes may take more time, but there can be practical reasons for taking another route. The important lessons are to avoid getting lost, running out of resources or getting there after the party is over.

2. Keeping goals small and achievable builds confidence. There is nothing wrong with lofty goals or high ideals. Getting from A to B is like playing the piano. Before you become a concert pianist, you have to learn middle C. The goal may be Carnegie hall, but milstones are necessary to measure progress to get from A to B.

3. Think of an evaluation process like breathing. It is an ongoing process. Without breath systems deteriorate rapidly. Evaluations can be simple. They start with understanding the big picture, setting achievable and measureable goals and completing them within a prescribed time frame. It is often helpful to implement plans in stages. Failure to meet a goal on tme does not usually doom a business or nonprofit. It provides an opportunity to learn and make realistic adjustments.

When business owners or visionaries of nonprofits get discouraged it may be due to a lack of vision or resources. If progress is slow or there is a setback it is often because the entity got too far off track before making corrections.

The psychology of business is similar to losing weight. Having a temporary setback does not have to lead to a downward spiral. Left unchecked small problems can lead to a free fall. The remedy is to evaluate progress frequently and make small corrections to keep plans on track. Even small successes are worth celebrating. Whether it is a kind word of affirmation, a monthly meeting or an annual event, recognize teams, volunteers, vendors and anyone else who played a role in the success.

Making Every Dollar Count

Making Every Dollar Count
This is a basic workshop aimed at helping nonprofit organizations leverage every type of resource. Nonprofits often lack finances and manpower to fulfill their mission effectively which can lead to discouragement. Learn how to find compatible partners, and negotiate simple resource sharing agreements. Project work groups allow small nonprofits to become stakeholders in larger projects by working together. In this workshop you will discover ways to improve your  organization's capacity by learning abou the following concepts:
 

• What Are Resource Sharing Agreements and Why Do They Matter?
• Understanding the Value of  Strategic Alliances
• How to Design and Manage a Project Work Group