WOMEN TRANSFORMING SONOMA COUNTY THROUGH COLLECTIVE PHILANTHROPY | APRIL 2021 | ISSUE 43 |
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Announcing our Community Grant Recipients for 2021! |
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Membership - Let's Keep the Momentum Going! |
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Looking for a way to showcase Impact 100 Redwood Circle to a potential new member? Bring guests to these three events:
ED TALK - Dr. Claudia Luke of the SSU Center for Environmental Inquiry, Thursday, April 22 at noon. Dr. Luke will speak to environmental issues in our community and focus on water quality and homelessness. Register your guest and yourself here.
Spotlight on the Intersection of Business and Philanthropy - Tuesday, May 4 at 4:30 p.m. Featured speaker is Collette Michaud, Founder & CEO of the Children's Museum of Sonoma County. Register your guest and yourself here.
Spring Membership Meeting, Thursday, May 13 at 4:30 p.m. - This will showcase our 2021 Community Grants Recipients and have an update on our Values Task Force. Register your guest and yourself here.
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Busting Bias - Inspiring Conversations for Change |
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“Reframing” is a powerful tool in counseling because it creates an opening - an opportunity for change, growth and solutions often buried in negativity. Shifting from “I’ll never learn this!” to “This is harder than I thought and will take me longer” is neutral and more hopeful. “Why did this happen?” can also be “Wow, there’s some big learning here!”
Reframing is part of the new Impact 100 Redwood Circle Inspirational Conversations about Change group starting April 28th. What new perspectives can offer epiphanies for shifting our practice?
We are convinced that inhibiting discussions about class and ethnicity can be reframed as collegial explorations and growth.
The first sessions facilitated by Suzy and Jan were rewarding, and identified two goals:
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Pursuing personal journeys of self-exploration, exploring our knowledge, beliefs, and biases (conscious and unconscious) with respect to white privilege, racial injustice, inequality and disparities.
- Discovering best practices in grantmaking, membership recruitment and diversity. What are key actions to dismantle bias and enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion within Impact 100?
What's next?
The Busting Bias sub-committee invites the first 20 people for six, weekly, 90-minute virtual sessions on Wednesdays, April 28th-June 2nd. A doodle poll will determine the best common time of day. Resources will be videos, historical prompts, book chapters, and perhaps a guest presenter. We will ZOOM both together and in break-out groups.
Please email Robin Warren to register or for more information.
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Next ED TALK - Dr. Claudia Luke
On April 22 at 12:00 noon, the Education Committee will host Dr. Claudia Luke, Director of SSU Center for Environmental Inquiry and SSU Sustainability Programs Director
In keeping with the theme of resilience for our talks this year, our April ED TALK will focus on Environmental Resiliency. We are delighted to welcome as our speaker, Claudia Luke, PhD., the director for The Center of Environmental Inquiry at Sonoma State University.
Currently, she and her students are researching homelessness and water quality. With the help of local nonprofits, they are collecting data to help determine the water quality in riparian areas to improve the quality of life for those homeless affected.
Join us to hear Dr. Claudia Luke elaborate on this very interesting project. Also, learn how local businesses and nonprofits work with her and her students to seek creative solutions to our environmental challenges. She will reflect on ways we can improve our responses to environmental matters to help support resiliency. Register here.
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Sharing Her Story - Sara Zeff Geber |
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Sara Zeff Geber’s academic life took her from college dropout to PhD; her career path morphed from flight attendant to college instructor to organization and leadership development to nationally recognized expert on “solo aging.” Clearly, she knows a thing or two about reinvention.
Sara had a “great childhood” in Berkeley where the question in her family wasn’t “IF I’d go to college, but where.” After a year at University of Colorado, which was “not radical enough” for a Berkeley girl, and two years at the University of California at Davis, she dropped out to sample life on a commune in Hawaii. “A year of that was enough,” she laughs, although the 21st century version of communal living (co-housing) is a current interest of hers.
Life took “a radical U turn” when she became a flight attendant, a job she enjoyed that would literally take her “all over the world” until she decided it was time to get back to the books. She picked up a bachelor’s degree in psychology from West Chester University and earned a Master’s Degree at Colorado University. Married and living in Colorado, Sara was able to meld her academic credentials with her experience as a flight attendant. “There was a junior college near us that had a travel and airline career program. They hired me and that’s where I discovered my love of teaching adults,” she says.
After divorce and relocation back to northern California, Sara landed a job in the human resources department at Lockheed where she taught leadership and communication skills. She loved the work and gradually developed contacts that allowed her to work on her own, contracting for training work with large companies at home, in Asia and in Europe. “There was a lot of travel but I loved it,” she says.
She scaled back the travel after marrying second husband Chuck and earning a PhD in Counseling and Human Behavior. For fun and a change of pace, the couple relocated to Hawaii for three years. While Chuck did some engineering consulting, Sara worked as a real estate agent on the Big Island.
Back on the mainland in 2007, Sara resumed her contract training work with clients who were now aging baby boomers “more interested in their retirement plans than their company strategic plans.” Intrigued, she pivoted once more to gerontology and retirement coaching, eventually focusing on the unique challenges faced by “solo agers,” childless seniors.
She and Chuck relocated to Sonoma County in 2015. With her book, “Retirement Planning for Solo Agers” in the final stages of editing, Sara and Chuck lost their home to the Tubbs Fire in 2017. Now the reinvention skills that had served her professional life so well would be needed to overcome the “mental anguish” in her personal life as well. “It was hard; we lost everything except the dog.”
The book proved to be good therapy and was well received when it was published in 2018, leading Sara to speaking engagements and writing for Forbes.com to this day.
Her Berkeley-bred interest in community service naturally led her to Impact 100 Redwood Circle. And now that she’s slowing down a bit, she’s considering another reinvention in the future, this one outside of academics and career: “I’d like to be more hands on with volunteer work.”
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Spotlight on the Intersection of Business and Philanthropy |
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Collette Michaud, Founder & CEO
Children's Museum of Sonoma County
Tuesday, May 4 at 4:30 p.m.
Join us on Tuesday, May 4 at 4:30 p.m. for the final event of our series - Spotlight on the Intersection of Business and Philanthropy.
Our featured speaker is Collette Michaud, Founder & CEO of Children's Museum of Sonoma County (CMOSC). Learn how she applied 15 years of experience in the software and entertainment industry to founding a nonprofit dedicated to serving our community.
Collette worked in software design as a project leader, game designer, art manager and animator for more than 15 years. She was a key innovator and manager for LucasArts Entertainment Company and helped launch Lucas Learning in 1996, a children’s entertainment software company. During her tenure at Lucas Learning, Collette worked with teachers, scientists, and young children to create award-winning educational software products.
In 2001, Collette left the software industry to raise her two sons, Russell and Ian. Having children opened her eyes to the need for hands-on experiential learning -- outside of the computer. In 2005, when her sons were four and six years old and with no funding, she founded the nonprofit, Children’s Museum of Sonoma County, out of the back of her Honda minivan. For the past sixteen years, the Children’s Museum has been a labor of love for her as she has gone from Founder to CEO. Creating an imaginative and interactive place where children and adults learn in the best way possible – through the power of play – is her passion.
In 2016, CMOSC was voted “Best Place in the World for Children that is not a Playground” by the online Landscape Architecture network. For the past 22 years, she has lived in Petaluma with her husband Steve Purcell, two sons, and dog, Lucy.
This is a virtual event. A dvance registration is required for members and guests. Register here.
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Annual Spring Membership Meeting
Date: Thursday, May 13
Time: 4:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.
Our next General Member Meeting will take place via ZOOM on Thursday, May 13, 2021 from 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Two main topics are on the agenda:
The Community Grants Committee will highlight the 8 deserving non-profits that were awarded the 2021 Community Grants. It will no doubt be a rewarding experience to hear about the amazing programs that are supported by our Community Grants.
Following this presentation, the Values Task Force will report on member feedback shared in the February Meeting breakout groups. These insights will help clarify our members’ most important shared values as a philanthropic organization.
Guests are welcome to attend the meeting, but must be registered individually to receive the ZOOM link. Advance registration is required. Members and their guests can register here.
Please contact the Events Committee with any questions. Thank you for continuing to remain engaged during the ongoing COVID-19 restrictions. We all look forward to holding in-person events just as soon as restrictions allow and members are comfortable.
NOTE! Want to join a very fun committee? - The Events Committee could use some additional helpers! If you are interested, please email Jennifer Girvin.
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Impact Grant Kickoff Info Session
Thursday, May 20
4:30 - 5:30 p.m.
The Impact Grant Committee invites all new and veteran members to our 2021 Impact Grant Nomination Kickoff Session on Thursday, May 20 from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m.
We are excited to have two guest presenters, Alegria De La Cruz, Director, Office of Equity - County of Sonoma and Lisa Correno, President and CEO of United Way of the Wine Country. They will be addressing how we might improve equity issues in our county when considering nominations for our $100,000 grant.
Following their presentation, the Impact Grant Committee will walk you through the nomination guidelines and steps involved in our grant making process.
This is a virtual event. Guests are welcome. Advance registration is required. Register here.
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VOICES
2016 Impact Grant Recipient - (Our First)
Our very first $100,000 Impact grant was awarded to VOICES, a youth-led organization serving primarily foster youth who have aged out of the system. The money was used to hire a “Youth Navigator” who assisted clients in housing, education and job support. Five years later they still have the Youth Navigator and the education advocate and the program we funded continues.
VOICES drop-in center has been open and meeting the needs of young people during the pandemic. The primary requests have been around food and food access. Food donations may be dropped off Tuesday-Friday from 12-4pm at the VOICES Sonoma location on Mendocino Ave.
Questions? Contact VOICES staff at (707) 579-4327. For more information about VOICES visit VOICES-Sonoma.
Food For Thought
2017 Impact Grant Recipient
Our 2017 grant financed the Food as Medicine or the Vital Nutrition program that tests whether people with chronic diseases became healthier when provided a diet of good healthy choices. The results gave credibility to their program, opened up the opportunity to participate in other studies, and allowed them to form partnerships with other organizations.
Bags of love is another program that emerged from our grant. Homeless people who are released from hospitalization often have no way to provide healthy food for themselves. Bags of love provides medically tailored meals for these folks to speed their recovery.
Since COVID, Food for Thought has been unique in providing a social as well as a nutritional program by offering in person lunches to their clients. That had to be curtailed during the pandemic. Many of their volunteers had to quit. They brought in five more paid staff. Sonoma County asked them to modify their service plan to serve whole families who had to isolate at home instead of medically needy individuals.
In 2020 they served more than 3000 individuals. Pre COVID, they had 22 delivery routes, now they have 35 and 39 routes a week with 5-10 clients per route. Some families receive up to 15 bags of food per week.
Food for Thought has several fund raising activities. Food is expensive. Visit their web site to find activities that might interest you. Upcoming FFT's Garden Plant Start Sale: April 17 & 18.
Catholic Charities
2018 Impact Grant Recipient
Since winning the Impact 100 Redwood Circle $100,000 grant in 2018, 12 local families were settled into apartments, had childcare, and have able to maintain that stability long term.
Currently there are 58 children in 32 family units being assisted. In the last year 850 people were housed amongst all of Catholic Charities’ housing. Caritas Village is in the process of being built, with 128 more one- and two-bedroom units. It will include a family support center, a homeless services center, Nightingale Services for hospital discharged persons in need of support, and a community clinic.
Most importantly, Catholic Charities has established a new Education Hub for onsite distanced learning of 9 children at a time during the pandemic. Volunteers are needed for the Hub. You can sign up through their website at SR Charities.
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