One thing that I personally am going to have to get over is that I've always been reluctant to ask for charity because I feel that it confuses the public about the value of people with disabilities. For the last 4 years, CLI has been able to afford our operations based on our own income. That all changed in March when Ohio shut down. CLI is only paid for the exact services that we deliver. In March, April & May, we were only able to earn about 10% of what we spent. Now in June, we're up to about 30%. But, the reality is that CLI is running out cash quite a lot quicker than it is starting to trickle back in. I feel like one of the restaurant marquis that reads "EAT HERE, WE NEED THE MONEY". It takes a surprising amount of money to keep CLI afloat. As of this week, we have laid off 7 full-time staff and 7 part-time staff. I don't know that we can afford to get smaller and still be able to deliver meaningful services. The best solution for CLI is to figure out what we do now to support as many people in this new normal so that we can get our income back up to sustainable levels.
As someone who does a lot of construction projects, I can tell you that sometimes you have to make the tools you have on hand do the job. Don't be shy about telling us what you want. We might not be able to get you back in the workshop, but just maybe we can help you build a custom program that suits you almost as well.
Thanks to those of you who joined me for last week's Zoom Weekly Update. I'll get better, although clearly video is not my friend.
Starting this week we are changing the weekly scheduled Zoom Weekly Update to be on Tuesday evenings at 6pm. Hopefully this will work a little better for peoples' schedules. The links are in this newsletter and also at www.CLIsupports.com.
That's all I have for this week. Wash your hands!
