I have been trying to figure out how to put a donate button linked to the Community House Network endowment account, and as soon as I put a link up, the Foundations Group with whom I have been working sent me some forms to fill out.
The form is for the State of Illinois that requires all charities "be registered for Charitable Solicitation prior to soliciting or fundraising in the state, adding a ""Donate Now"" button to the organization's website, or even accepting a donation other than those used for start up expenses." This kind of stuff makes me lose my marbles. I don't know why I can do research on pretty much any topic, write articles, analyze data, but when it comes to legalese I go bananas. Nothing makes sense. This situation was more difficult because the form was being uncooperative. Needless to say, I deleted my donate button until I can figure it out. The Open House was small but a powerful experience. I will have to share more later, once I have figured out how to check the correct boxes for the State of Illinois! Wish me luck.
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I have been getting ready for our open house this weekend. It was supposed to be a big fund raiser, but things go a lot more slowly in 3D reality than in my stream of consciousness mental world of imagination.
However, things are moving along. We have recovery meetings five days a week at the Community House. The Art Garage is in full swing, and we have invited Kelly Beal, with her beautiful heart-centered non-profit to join us once a month with youth activities focused on kindness at the Community House. We have been filling up our lecture series slowly with conversations with heart-centered leaders. We started a workshop series called "Already Leading". Finally, we finished our first course in our series of personal development courses, and had our first session of course #2. How to Be Creative and Live a Spectacular Life. What we have not done is get the Shop Co-Op up and running. Part of the problem is that it is harder than you may think to find contractors who are not so busy that they have time to do their own family affairs, let alone come mentor kids. I thought I had found my partners, but they work more than I do! So much for that. My imagination can create scenarios about how things are going to get done that don't necessarily pan out. Yesterday, I sat in my own frustration at the "failure" to get done what I wanted to do, I decided to take the advice of Lakshmi, whom I interviewed this week for our If I Knew Then series. One take away that stuck with me, was "Don't be afraid to ask." I began sending texts, I didn't even know what I was asking for, so I just sent the note "I need a friend." Friends called, and texted, and some showed up on my doorstep. Then we got into action. And, voila! The garage came down. Magical. Spontaneous. And just what my spirit needed in a moment of wanting to give up. I love living a creative, spontaneous life. It adds an element of fun to everything, but can also be frustrating for those who like linear, planned things. I do need to have some of those linear types on board since they help me remember to dot the i's and cross the t's. Hint-hint linear types... So come one, come all. We welcome you to the fun of bringing forth a beautiful world of loving community! Today I am so grateful that I have help in this process. My brain is very non-linear, and it doesn't follow instructions well. I am great for coming up with ideas, but less great when trying to follow someone else's lead.
So I need to get my financials in order and when trying to find a CPA on April 15th proved to be incredibly difficult, I can't imagine why, I decided I had better complete the paperwork for getting the tax exempt status. Luckily I didn't have to do much more than scroll through the application completed by the Foundation Group, and thank goodness, because even just scrolling through was making my head spin. So it is done and done, and hopefully it won't take four years to get approved like it did for Kelly. Big LOVE to her and her passion! Now I am ready for a nap. The past few weeks have been busy and exciting. I had interesting connections made with a couple different groups in Peoria. Janice Zagardo, of Creative Stitches Workshop is an incredible connector. She suggested I look at the projects at River City Labs. Finally, I was connected by a student from the course I am teaching at ISU to Kelly Deal, founder of Keegan's Krew
This connection was a powerful one. What a meeting of minds. The importance of spreading kindness in the world and supporting youth to develop a positive, healthy self-image, are such critical elements of our programming at the Community House and Art Garage. The goal now is to see where our goals align enough to create meaningful programming together. How can we support each other? I have a process that I use in project development that includes a process oriented conversational approach to defining the issues and moving into solution one step at a time. I like to use this process with my students at ISU. Sometimes they get it, sometimes, not so much. As students we are usually given strict frameworks, follow those, and then hand in a final product. This approach fails to allow for input from all of the context of the participants. When starting a plan, the goal is to begin with a vision. The vision of loving, caring community is at the forefront of much of the programming at the Community House. Because Keegan's Krew has such a similar vision, one of a caring a kind world, we have a beautiful starting point. The second step is to see what is already in place. In our formational documents, we have a project called, "Heart at Home". It was actually developed for the Peoria school district, but never was enacted. I adopted it for our Community, but it still has an element of being unformed. What if we adopted this to be part of the shared vision of our two organizations. The past week I started working with this idea with Kelly, and I believe we are on to something. It seems we have the chance for a beautiful collaboration. More to come... I am filling out my schedule of events, and it will soon be getting very busy. April is the start of the Art Garage. This was the seminal project which inspired the Community House Network. This year our opening will be both of the Art Garage, and the Shop Co-Op which will host the First Apprentice program as well as other activities designed to promote training in the trades. I have often spoken to the power of creativity to transform people's lives. The trades have just as much power to transform not just individual's lives, but whole neighborhoods.
My neighborhood was built by people who worked in the trades and built their own houses. The Chrysalis House was built by a plumber, and has a bunch of incredible details. When people build their own houses they care about those things. So I live in a neighborhood with houses that were built with such care, and so many are now in complete neglect or disrepair. It is not a matter of not caring, but not having the know-how, or money to pay someone else to do it. This can leave people somewhat helpless. When people know how to fix their own properties, they can customize them to their hearts desire. What a difference it would make if we could have more home-ownership and a greater knowledge base in the trades so that home-owners could create and take care of the house of their dreams. Besides just the Art Garage, we have a new project starting in April, The First Apprentice. This is a project-based youth centered program designed to teach kids some of the basic skills of the trades while giving them a chance to build small, fun projects. Our session project to be held on April 10th will be hosted by no other than Ed Boley, of Boley Tools. He will teach the kids to make Antler Lamps. Now that is a cool project. I will have to let you know how it turns out. Things are moving along, and I am starting be discover some of the incredible resources available to the Community House Network. It seems that there are many corporations that are happy to participate in donating goods to a community non-profit. So far each of the building supply stores we contacted, had things in place to allow them to donate materials for good causes. I am excited because up to this point I have been paying out of pocket for all of the art materials and building supplies we have used at the Art Garage. I am so grateful to Dayna Crocker for helping me realize that help and kindness abounds.
This March we are starting our lecture series called "If I Knew Then". Rather than lectures, these will be more like interviews in an open forum where small business owners will share about their experiences opening up a business. I was sharing this idea with a friend Theresa Bloom who as it turns out works for an organization affiliated with Bradley University, ILSBDC, supporting small business start-ups. Here is a link to register for their services https://ilsbdc.ecenterdirect.com/info I am curious to know more, and when I registered for their services, I saw that their upcoming informational support meeting was to be hosted exactly during the hours of our monthly open board meeting. Well why not? So I have put on the agenda that we as a board attend the meeting. I hope everyone can make it. What a great way to expand our circle of knowledge. I am grateful for those who are participating and helping realize this dream. My hope is that by sharing some of these resources and experiences, others will have an easier road ahead. I know how much I appreciate those who have shown up thus far to help direct me. Prayer for the day: May I always remain open and teachable. When I first designed the Community House Network it included in the foundational documents a women's recovery house, "The Chrysalis House". My first steps towards formalizing the project involved a conversation with Peoria based SCORE. Now that I am more in the swing of things with this process, I should look more into what SCORE does in the community of small business entrepreneurialism. Although they got me started and gave me some great ideas, they were limited in their ability to help me with the documents and other fine details I needed to understand about becoming a NFP.
Through their guidance, I created an initial business plan. It included all the spaces: The Center for Creative Learning at 800 W. Thrush, The Art Garage (800 W. Thrush - Rear), The Community House (2223 N. Sheridan Rd), The Shop Co-Op (2225 N. Sheridan - Rear) AND The Chrysalis House (2225 N. Sheridan). During our conversation around the plan, I had concerns about including the recovery home. I still planned to do it, but I thought I would keep it separate from the NFP. The primary reasons for that was to keep it private, and also because I intended to charge women to stay there. I was afraid the stream of revenue would cause problems for me. Well, now that I am in full swing, I see that the Chrysalis House needs to be brought back as a part of the picture. Reasons for making the Chrysalis House part of the CHN: 1. Can collect donations to support activities for the house. 2. Can put the house itself in the name of the foundation. 3. Can allow women who are jobless more time to get on their feet, and stay without rent. 4. Can use some of our fundraising to make repairs in the Chrysalis House. The women are already participating in the activities of the CHN. I hope they will be big members of the network when they graduate! I am reading Peter Block's book called Community: The Structure of Belonging. It is very inspiring.
He talks about bringing all people into participation, especially those who may otherwise be invisible parts of our society. I have some neighbors, who I doubt you would call invisible. Nonetheless, they are pretty non-traditional and they are a big part of this project. Their enthusiasm is contagious, especially Melody. Yesterday we had our third board meeting. It was great to be able to share some of the emerging programming. Afterwards, Melody and I sat around in the Community House and sang songs. https://photos.app.goo.gl/5GfFwW7brqiwXFgF7 It was so fun. It is important that while we are doing the good work of starting up a project we remember to stop and smell the roses, and of course sing about them too. I am thrilled to see this project taking form. I still haven't completed all the paperwork for the IRS, but in some ways I am glad that things are going slowly since new ideas are being added to the mix. This is exactly as I would like. The community is participating by bringing their own gifts and vision to the table, and I am ready to put it in the pot!
What a wonderful feeling. I knew we would have recovery meetings, but now I am having people making suggestions as to what types of meetings they would like. I knew we would have hands on activities focused on entrepreneurialism, but I didn't know I would have people making suggestions for activities, and even new populations to work with. I knew we would support entrepreneurialism, but I didn't realize how ready people are for the opportunity to step onto the path of realizing their passion. Also donations of goods and new ideas for adult parent-child classes are being suggested and added. All of this is going in the final IRS application, so as I said, I am grateful that the process has been slow. It has given it time to become what is is meant to be. I also started a creativity challenge for the new year. Each day I am writing one song, one poem and doing one drawing. I struggle with poetry, but the daily practice has produced some interesting results. Here is one from the other day. Becoming Wrapped tightly inside there is something of worth but it can't be accessed yet. Drop the hammer, and throw away the chisel No matter how many bangs of the hammer it can't be accessed yet. The opening of a rosebud happens with the gentle rays of the sun. If you like the idea of a creativity challenge, I hope you will join us for our course. How to Be Creative and Live a Spectacular Life It is almost the New Year, and I cannot even describe how excited I am imagining what will come next. I realized I need to have help. Volunteers are great, but they are also rather unreliable. It is necessary to pay people.
Yesterday we did a preparation for our New Year's event and walked through the first course offering Strengthening the Core. The short practice exercises were extremely powerful! I discovered a few threads lingering in my formerly robe of self-doubt, fear and self-sabotage. The beautiful design of the course is that the final focus is stepping out of those old patterns. I was able to ask myself what would I do if I knew I couldn't be wrong? One thing was to spend money, and be generous. The fear of money, or lack of it, is a terrible hinderance to stepping out into our dreams. I have put money aside to start-up this project, though, and I believe it is about time I dipped into the til and let it flow. I have decided to hire an Assistant Director of the Community House, and a Director of Youth Programming. I feel so much better just saying it. What a relief to have a team of people who share my vision and who have the time and willingness to commit to the project. |
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December 2023
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