Philanthropy Today
Philanthropy Today
ECM at K-State on the GMCF Community Hour Show Show Episode - 207
ECM at K-State creates an inclusive campus community through student-driven programming and a mission of "all humans welcome, no strings attached." The organization fosters belonging while addressing important topics like sustainability, community building, and inclusive dining.
• Friday Real Food Lunches provide vegan, gluten-free meals for 20-30 students weekly
• Student-driven programming allows participants to create the community events they want to see
• Retreats focus on practical sustainability actions like creating bee watering stations and native seed bombs
• ECM building at 904 Sunset Avenue serves as both event space and open study area for students
• Organization's flexible structure accommodates changing student populations and interests
• Board involvement provides valuable nonprofit leadership experience and deeper community connection
Want to get involved? Visit ECM at KSU on social media, stop by the building at 904 Sunset Avenue, or check out their website at ecmatkstate.org to sign up for their monthly newsletter with upcoming events.
Philanthropy Today is brought to you by the Greater Manhattan Community Foundation. In this episode we feature a recently broadcast segment of the GMCF Community Hour, as heard on NewsRadio KMAN. We return with the GMCF Community Hour here on NewsRadio KMAN. Good morning, it's 1022. I'm Dave Lewis, and joining us in the program is no stranger to those that are affiliated with the Community Foundation in any way, shape or form. Mckenna Eilert is here. You are the GMCF, you know, for transparency purposes, the marketing director.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, is that the appropriate title for you here at GMCF?
Speaker 2:I think technically it's director of marketing.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't get the preposition in there.
Speaker 2:Yes, so sorry, yeah, it's very specific.
Speaker 1:Director of marketing.
Speaker 2:Is that what?
Speaker 1:your business card says yes, it does. Okay, all right, good.
Speaker 2:And online and stuff like that. So if you look me up, that's what it says.
Speaker 1:Okay but you handle a lot of things, including the scheduling of this show. But you also are working with a group called ECM, which we're going to talk about. That today, yeah.
Speaker 2:No, and ECM. It stands for Ecumenical Campus Ministry and technically ours is ECM at K-State because there is an ECM at KU and they're the same kind of organization just at different campuses. So I mean the K-State one is obviously better, because K-State is better.
Speaker 1:Always.
Speaker 2:No stranger to that. But yeah, I am the board president for the ECM board and it's been quite an interesting learning experience. I've never been one. I had never been on a nonprofit board before. I'm not a stranger to nonprofits, but never been on a board and then I became the president and it has been a wild ride as ECM goes through things and I'm learning literally everything firsthand. Um, and I feel like I am now prepared for any sort of nonprofit board that I am ever on Now.
Speaker 1:you just opened yourself up to a lot of invitations.
Speaker 2:Well, I I don't know about uh invitations but um maybe when, when I get off this board, I might look into more, but this one's that I'll just settle with one for now. Okay, all right, but yeah that's good.
Speaker 1:Well, congratulations, you know, and that's one of the things when I first moved here in in 91, um, I met Lori Bishop, you know, through the work I did at the radio station and and, uh, she asked me to become a part of the RSVP, then now Flint Hills Volunteer Center board of directors and, you know, and that was a great start, it was a great start to get me involved in, you know, understanding the nonprofit world and how things work, and eventually I became president of the board and you know, and served in that capacity for a couple of years and it was a there was a seismic change in what they were doing during that time and Lori, of course, you know, is a driving force behind it. And you know, I've always been thankful for that first opportunity to get involved because it really builds your community net worth and your engagement, not so much just in the nonprofit world, but you know, you have, I think, a greater vested interest in the betterment of the community when you are involved in a nonprofit.
Speaker 2:Definitely and it kind of gives a better perspective of what you know, what they do every day, what they're kind of involved in and things like that. Like you know, I've always been involved in nonprofit Obviously I've worked for GMCF but another kind of level of understanding of you know the the process that nonprofits go through and things like that, so definitely a deeper respect for everybody in the nonprofit field of what they do and you know how hard they work.
Speaker 1:So Were you involved in ECM when you were a student?
Speaker 2:I was. Yeah, I started in 2021 was when I first went to like a real food lunch event and from there I just kind of attended everything that they had going on the retreats. The real food lunch, they had some like gardening events and some book studies and things like that and I personally loved the community and I loved the things that they were hosting and it was very open to. If there's something that isn't happening at ECM and you want to help make it happen, you know, reach out, start planning and kind of make it your own. It's not so much a you can only go to the things that they have. It's what do you want, what do the students want, which I really appreciated, because some of the stuff that I wanted to see on campus wasn't there, so I could go to ECM and kind of involve myself there and with other K-State students as well.
Speaker 2:But one of my favorite events is the Real Food Lunch that we host on Fridays. Every semester we start those up and currently we have a really great RFL coordinator. Her name is Campbell and she cooks every week a different meal for the real food lunch and they're always so delicious. So the premise of real food lunch is that it's vegan and gluten-free, so it includes everybody. So if you have those kind of allergies, you're more than welcome to come join us and there will be food for you and you don't have to worry about, you know, feeling like burden, like a burden or anything like that. Like we want to make sure everybody's included and I am not vegan or gluten-free and it it's amazing food, like it is delicious. Campbell does such a good job. I wouldn't even know that those, those were a thing Like she finds the best stuff.
Speaker 1:Don't feel like you're missing out.
Speaker 2:No, not at all, and I never feel like she does a really good job of incorporating, like other kinds of proteins and being super healthy about it, so you're not missing out on a certain food group. So you feel unsatisfied when you leave, which is honestly amazing to me, because you know everybody's like well, I need some sort of protein with my meal and I'm like well, there's other sources of protein. But you know, you learn while you're at real food lunch, because you start eating it and then she starts talking about it and, um, it's just an amazing event in my opinion, and you can stop by and pick up food. You don't have to stay if you've got like class or something like that. Um and, but it's just a cute little community. We all sit down and have lunch on Fridays and chat and then we go off and do our own thing, go back to class, I go back to work, stuff like that.
Speaker 1:So I really appreciate it, organization that really has no boundaries or or guidelines as to what your belief system is or what your, your sexuality, gender issues, whatever the case may be.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely. We, um, our mission statement is all humans welcome, no strings attached. Welcome, no strings attached. So come as you are, you're accepted, we're very open. If there's a lot of our students in our community who have questions and things like that and this is a place where you can ask those questions and nobody's going to, you know, make you feel bad, make you feel uncomfortable.
Speaker 1:It's a safe place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's, it's so safe and it's so just. It's like it's comfortable being there. Everybody understands each other and, yeah, you don't have to worry about feeling like you don't fit in.
Speaker 1:Do you have an idea of how many students participate in ECM activities?
Speaker 2:You know, it kind of ebbs and flows with the seasons of K-State because as we have graduating seniors and then we have incoming freshmen, it's just an adjustment each year. So I would say like on a usual basis, we have anywhere from like 20 to 30 students who join us for RFL on those Fridays during the semester. And it I say 20 to 30, they're not the same Every time. We've got new students who come. Maybe somebody can only come one Friday, but then they come to other events. But I would say that's about, and honestly that's about as many people as we can serve with our space. So it's good that it hasn't gotten too much bigger than that at the moment. And then for like retreats and stuff, we have anywhere from usually like five to 15 students join us for these retreats, which it makes it a lot more like meaningful and more of a community based learning experience, which makes it just so much easier to connect with each other. And, like for other events, they're very up to who's excited and the event resonates with them.
Speaker 2:So a while ago we did a book study and there were four of us who did it because we were all interested in this one book and we wanted to get together every other Sunday and talk about it. We were all interested in this one book and we wanted to get together every other Sunday and talk about it. And, um, that was the perfect amount of people in my opinion, because once you get more than that, it becomes difficult to plan. Nobody's able to get together and then it kind of just falls apart. You know, um, but it's, it's whatever the students want. If they want to read a book and talk about it, they get together and they do it themselves, and the ECM building's available for them and we'll buy them all the books. That's the kind of situation. So there's always programs going on and ECM. We want to provide the things that you need for those programs and then let the students do what they would like to do.
Speaker 1:We got about five minutes to talk about the spring sustainability retreat. Yeah, it goes fast in here. You should know that. Yeah, I forgot it's been a while since I've been in here. I know Spring sustainability retreat.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah. So I hosted our spring sustainability retreat this year and it was so fun. We usually have two retreats each year, one in the spring and one in the fall, and this year the spring one was in Manhattan and we held it at the ECM building, and part of our theme this year was pollinate change. Small actions create big impact. So basically what we talked about what you can do, just as yourself, in your own daily life, to promote the well-being of our butterflies and our bees. So one thing that we heavily touched on was basically the availability of water for bees and butterflies, and through that we created bee watering stations. So it's essentially a terracotta pot upside down with a saucer on top.
Speaker 2:We spent some time painting it, talking about the importance of it and allowing our native bees and butterflies to thrive in this environment that we continue to change and not have be beneficial for them, and that was a super fun event.
Speaker 2:Everybody had a great time painting these and filling them with rocks, so that way they can kind of put some water in it, and they can the bees and butterflies can drink from them. And then another thing that we did was seed bombs, and it's essentially just, you know, blended up paper soaked in water and native Kansas seeds, and we did that in the morning and that was a fun little relaxing thing while we talked about you know what we were going to do with the seed bombs. Where were we going to put them? Um, we're going to put them in the ECM garden. We're going to throw them out the window when we're driving to Kansas City, so that way, when it rains next, there'll be native Kansas wildflowers growing on the side of the road type situation. And it was just. It was kind of great to see students having the opportunity to be creative in almost like chaotic good you know, like they got excited.
Speaker 1:How can individuals get involved in ECM?
Speaker 2:So we're on Facebook and Instagram I believe it's ECM at KSU is our handles. Our website is ECM at kstateorg and we also have a newsletter that goes out monthly with the events that are happening and just updates on ECM in general. If you go to our website and scroll to the bottom, you could sign up for that and we also just the building 904 Sunset Avenue you can stop in. It's usually open for students to study in and stuff like that, so you might meet some friends while you're there and we always like post flyers on the doors and stuff of the events that are happening. So if you want to stop by and just look there and yeah, if you want to stop by, our last RFL of the semester is on Friday, so that's from noon to 1.30. And we just meet at the ECM building, sit down, have some food and hang out, so you can join us there.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining us and congrats on getting involved in a non-profit from a volunteer perspective.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's been great. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:It's the GMCF Community Hour. Jim Chinette's going to be joining us next. He's with Manhattan Area Tech College and always excited to hear what he's got to say, because there's some great things happening there. This is the GMCF Community Hour. You can always find out more about the work that is done here within the foundation on our website. Always find out more about the work that is done here within the foundation on our website, mcfksorg. Oh and, by the way, if you want to check out the leaderboard on Grow Green Match Day, growgreenmanhattancom has all those details Back on K-Man in a moment with Jim.