2022 Week 3: Non-profit Management
Genesis Aire | Public Justice Center
It’s a bit difficult to describe a typical day of work at the Public Justice Center since everyday looks a bit different. My supervisors informed me that I was able to work on my own schedule. I could choose to wake up early or stay up late doing my assignments, whichever I preferred. At the beginning of the week, I like to write down my weekly agenda with my Zoom/Teams meetings, in person meetings, observations at court, and my current assignments. I typically wake up around nine am, check my work laptop for any emails from my supervisor, then I plan my morning around the meetings for the day. Typically I like to get my workout out of the way early on in the day, so I either go for a walk around Roland Park or go to the Rec Center. By the time I get back, it’s usually around noon, so I prepare some lunch before working on an assignment. My first week I created an infographic about a new inclusionary housing bill. This week I got two separate assignments, one in the Housing project and another in the Workplace Justice Project. I’m currently trying to figure out how to balance them both. The first two weeks, I had various Orientation Zoom calls interspersed throughout the week from different projects working within the PJC. It was nice to meet the various attorneys and people involved in the organizations as well as the diversity of roles they play.
Days that I go to the office look a lot different. When I have to go to the PJC, I usually wake up much earlier, around seven. I get ready for the day, prep my bag with my notebook and my work laptop, then head over to Busboys for the Circulator stop. After getting on the purple line, I take it for about twenty five minutes before getting off at my stop at Fayette street. Then I walk a couple of blocks to the PJC, sign in at the front desk, and then head to the twelfth floor. The PJC is mostly empty during the day. I’m not familaried with everyone’s work schedule, but the times I’ve been at the office there are usually only a handful of people there. Most people chose to work remotely, save for the Housing Project. I was informed by one of the paralegals that my desk happens to be in the more empty part of the office, so there is a group that comes in more often, but they happen to be at the other end. For that reason, I usually prefer to work remotely if I can, especially since the other interns also work remotely. However, I have enjoyed observing at Rent Court and attending the press conference. At rent court, I was able to watch my supervisor in action as he represented two of his clients. I also talked to him afterwards, debriefed what went on, asked some clarifying questions and got more information about one of the cases he’s currently working on. At the press conference the following week, I met a couple of folks working with Baltimore Renter’s United (BRU) and was able to talk to them about the history of Baltimore. I suppose I’m balancing the excitement of building personal connections with the flexibility of working remotely. I’m glad that I have a lot of freedom to do both.
Rebecca Baxter | Corner Team, Inc.
This week was the final week of prep before Corner Team’s summer camp starts next Tuesday. We finalized lesson plans and got the gym set up. We also had training/orientation with the Rise Up, Ride Out program that Corner Team is a part of. This is essentially a partnership between Corner Team and two other organizations, Mission Fit and Byke Collective. The kids in that program will be coming to our camp twice a week, and then be working with the other organizations on other days. I really enjoyed the orientation we did with the people from these organizations – everyone seemed extremely upbeat and passionate about the program that they were running. There was really great energy and it made a meeting that could have been pretty boring a lot more fun. Being around invested and passionate people like this has shown me that whatever I decide to do with my life, I want to be around people who are passionate about whatever they are doing.
I’ve also been dealing with a bit of imposter syndrome this week as we get close to the start of the camp. I’ve never taught full lessons that I’ve created to anyone and I’ve never taught the amount of middle and high schoolers I’ll be teaching. Because of this, I don’t really have any experiences to draw on except my own experiences as a student, which may not be the same as the kids I’m interacting with. Also, most of the people I’m working with are teachers during the year, which is great if I need help but also makes me question whether I should be there since I don’t have as much teaching experience. I think that the best thing to do in this situation is to remind myself that I’m not going to be perfect, that I am definitely going to mess up this summer, and that’s okay. As long as I am coming from a place of genuinely wanting to support and teach the kids in the camp, the rest should fall into place. I think if I also try to lean on my co-workers with more teaching experience when it feels like there is a problem I can’t solve, that will also make the summer go smoother.
Ayla Frost | Station North Tool Library
My days at the Tool Library have generally been quite variable, so there really is no typical day at the tool library. That being said, I really like this prompt, so I’ll give it a shot. I usually arrive at the Tool Library around 10 am on my bike. Often I am the first one there, so I’ll unlock the doors, disable the alarms, turn on the lights, etc. while trying to keep my kickstand-less bike upright. If I am not the first one there, there may be contractors working in the tool library, artists using the freight elevator, or occasionally my coworkers Jenn and Jessa. I’ll get set up in the classroom, turn on the AC, and get make a checklist of things I want to do for the day. Every Monday, Jessa will go through a variety of tasks, meetings, and things to focus on for the week. Usually, I will get started on one of the things on the list – this could be emailing members back, writing a quick description for the event I am working on, doing a small task like adding a link to the website, or, when I don’t know what to do, working on maps using Tool Library data, which has been an ongoing task for me. When Jessa and Jenn arrive, the energy is lively. Someone always has a coffee cup in their hand and there is always stuff to catch up about. We’ll all sit in the classroom, chatting and discussing things we need to do. Jessa and Jenn may come up with other random things that need to be done today, like organizing the scrap wood for a shipment that is coming in later or designing a sign to keep the wood shop organized. At this point, it is about 1 pm, and I realize I am extremely hungry, so I tell them I’m taking lunch. If it’s cool outside, I might sit outside in the vacant space next to the library. Jessa and Jenn never seem to be hungry as early as I am, but sometimes they’ll eat with me. After lunch, we might have a meeting where I’ll sit in – with a prospective volunteer, a community partner, or one time, a reporter. After the meeting, I’ll finish up whatever task I was working on in the morning. I might feel like I’ve run out of things to do (/want to stand up and get moving) so I’ll ask Jenn if she needs help setting up for class. Sometimes this looks like sweeping and vacuuming, sometimes this means gathering materials. If I’m lucky I’ll get a quick lesson from Jenn about how to use a certain machine, how to identify different types of wood, or practice karate-chopping wood in hald. It’s about 4:45/5 now, and Tool Library volunteers may be streaming in, setting up to man the library or teach a class. I often will get caught in a conversation and won’t leave until 5:15. The bike ride home is always brutal.
Neal Lim | Baltimore Urban Baseball Association
This past week, our printer that we got the previous week stopped working. We replaced ink cartridges and rebooted the printer, but nothing was printing. We needed to print out various workout routines to give the athletes, sign-in sheets, and receipts for reimbursement, so we drove to a local UPS to print these items. When we got there, however, the line of customers was so long that we decided to go back and print the required items at home before coming back to work the next day.
The next day, I brought the receipts I printed at home to the office. We were going to submit the receipts to the South Baltimore Gateway Partnership for reimbursement. As I was reviewing the instructions for submission, I learned that I needed to find our organization’s grant ID issued by the Partnership in order to properly file the draw request form. I asked my boss for the grant ID, but even after ten minutes of searching through his email inbox and files, he couldn’t find it.
This was on Thursday, and we planned for the reimbursement of these receipts to be submitted by Friday so that they could be processed and we would be reimbursed by late next week. I reached out to the Partnership asking for help, but by the end of the day, no one had gotten back to me with our grant ID or instructions for retrieving it.
Early Friday morning, I got a text from my boss that he was feeling sick, so he needed me to fill in for him that day. That was the first time I manned the facility by myself, so I had to learn exactly how my boss wanted me to open, operate, and eventually close down the facility. By the early afternoon, the South Baltimore Gateway Partnership still had not gotten back to me about our grant ID, so I followed up with them and sadly informed my boss that we wouldn’t be able to submit our receipts as we had planned.
This week was slightly disappointing, but my experiences taught me to roll with all the unexpected setbacks and disappointments that come with operating a nonprofit. Here’s to another hopefully better week!
Amira Rady | Fusion Partnerships
Being in the office has been an incredible experience. It is one thing to work on projects on my own, but I love to come together with the staff and work on projects or just chat. I was speaking to someone in the office yesterday, and he mentioned how incredible it is that my supervisor has so much experience; I completely agree. Candice is incredible–she has a lot of experience in the nonprofit realm and has a wealth of knowledge to offer to anyone willing to listen in. I tend to go the office in person when Candice is in–we find this makes office days productive so we can work on projects together.
My typical work day usually tends to be what I make it–I love the flexibility that I have when it comes to deciding how to divide my time between projects. My Tuesdays usually start with staff meetings; something I love about Fusion is that we open every meeting with a “gathering.” A gathering is an opening question used to start up some fun conversation in the group. One of our gatherings this week was “Would you rather win an Olympic Medal, a Tony, or a Nobel Peace Prize?” Another was “Have you ever had a missed connection?” I love that these questions can be lighthearted or deeper depending on what energy the group is giving off that morning. This has really allowed me to feel welcomed and integrated into the staff.
Outside of meeting times, most of my projects are collaborations with the Partner Engagement Coordinators; each of them is incredibly knowledgeable in their own focus area, so getting to work on different projects with each of them really makes their different strengths visible. With one PEC, I am working on updating our event calendar and starting to attend and photograph events–in fact, I think we will be going to the Waterfront Festival this weekend! With another PEC, I am helping to gather resources to form a database for partners; so far, I have found lots of grant information as well as a few legal resources, but we’re just getting started. With yet another PEC, I am working on implementing an internal/external communication platform for Fusion using Discord; it is a learning curve, but I love being able to experiment with it.
Each member of the Fusion team recognizes each other’s assets and use that to perform as efficiently as possible; I am looking forward to what the coming weeks hold for us.
Jane Slaughter | Impact Hub
This week at Impact Hub felt much slower than my previous two weeks working at the Hub, which was a nice change of pace. Following our June 24th Small Business Mini Summit, I primarily worked on writing articles for the Hub’s Medium blog that reflect upon the event. I really enjoyed this work, as it has been a long time since I have written anything in a journalistic style, and I really appreciate the feedback I received from my supervisor and my co-workers. This week has also made me think a lot about space, and how the Impact Hub space is such a great resource for so many entrepreneurs and Small business owners in Baltimore. This was particularly apparent as I listened to and watched testimonies from small business owners that participated in Impact Hub’s Empower Program. While participants continually raved about the tangible skills that the program taught them, within the Empower panel it was evident that the strongest benefit of the program was the positive space for growth that the program provided. One panelist continually emphasized how this program taught her how important self care was in business. In the panel, she said, “We forget about ourselves in business, we really do. But, it starts with us taking care of ourselves first.” Her statement made me think how that is true in all scopes of life. You cannot care for others unless you are caring for yourself, and this has been one lesson I have had a hard time reinforcing for myself lately, so it was very good to hear it from a source close to the Impact Hub team. As a result I have begun trying to be much more intentional about the space I make for my own self reflection and care following any particularly stressful days.