Ashley Siferd Butler, Director of Competitive Grants for East Tennessee Foundation (ETF) and Sandi Vidal, President of Community Strategies and Initiatives for the Central Florida Foundation join the podcast to discuss ProNet. In addition to learning more about ProNet, the conversation focuses on the work of each foundation, special skills, remote work and birdwatching.
Mentions Include:
Ashley Siferd Butler
Sandi Vidal
Central Florida Foundation
East Tennessee Foundation
ProNet
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Books, Podcast and Music recommendations
Bird Note
Silo
Killers of the Flower Moon, The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
Events/Learning Opportunities
List of All upcoming conferences
KACF Executive Director posting - deadline June 28th
Music
Thanks to Andy Eppler for our intro Music
Thanks to David Cutter Music for "Float Away
Ashley Siferd Butler, Director of Competitive Grants for East Tennessee Foundation (ETF) and Sandi Vidal, President of Community Strategies and Initiatives for the Central Florida Foundation join the podcast to discuss ProNet. In addition to learning more about ProNet, the conversation focuses on the work of each foundation, special skills, remote work and birdwatching.
Mentions Include:
Ashley Siferd Butler
Sandi Vidal
Central Florida Foundation
East Tennessee Foundation
ProNet
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Books, Podcast and Music recommendations
Bird Note
Silo
Killers of the Flower Moon, The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
Events/Learning Opportunities
List of All upcoming conferences
KACF Executive Director posting - deadline June 28th
Music
Thanks to Andy Eppler for our intro Music
Thanks to David Cutter Music for "Float Away
Hello and welcome into Emergency F News and Information on topics that shape the community foundation world. I'm your host, eric Ozempa. Well, today we have a double threat here. We have Sandy Vidal and Ashley Seyford Butler coming in to talk about ProNet, which is pretty exciting because we get to learn all about ProNet And I do want to do justice to their bios here. So Ashley Seyford Butler joined East Tennessee Foundation, etf in June of 2017 as the program assistant and now serves as the director of competitive grants. She's responsible for all aspects of the foundation's competitive grant making, including field of interest and affiliate funds and its 25 county service area. Today, ashley's professional life has revolved around service and the nonprofit sector. Prior to joining ETF, ashley worked in various roles for cancer support community East Tennessee and served as an international volunteer with the name I'm not going to get, so, ashley, if you could do it in such a wonderful Spanish, i'd appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Nuestros pequeños hermanos.
Speaker 1:And what did no estros do, or?
Speaker 2:does So. it's a network of nine homes in nine different Latin American and Caribbean countries and they serve as a home for orphaned and abandoned youth, and now, in the years since I've worked with them, they've expanded their mission. So they do a lot of community outreach, health services for families in the areas and offer on site school for kids in the community who have families but just want to attend school at a higher level.
Speaker 1:And did you do this during college afterward before?
Speaker 2:you got to ETF I presume Okay. Yeah, after college for 14 months.
Speaker 1:Wow, amazing, amazing work. You graduated from the University of Tennessee, knoxville with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication and a minor in Spanish. What did you want to do? What would you hope to do?
Speaker 2:Ever since my 11th grade advanced English class, i wrote an essay about wanting to help people, and I didn't know what that looked like, i just knew I wanted to be a helper and I've always just been in the nonprofit world of volunteering and things like that. So I eventually landed at the Community Foundation.
Speaker 1:Nice, okay, yeah, i think that the backgrounds of many come from liberal arts in the community foundation world. I'm always surprised, though. I rented somebody who doesn't really have a unique path, if you will, to the community foundation world. You volunteered with Horse Haven of Tennessee for 15 years. You are a 200-hour certified yoga teacher and you're working on finishing your 300-hour training. Tell us about that. How did you come to yoga?
Speaker 2:I actually started with my job previously at Cancer Support Community East Tennessee, so they are a nonprofit that provides holistic services as part of the overall psychosocial model of care for individuals with cancer and their family members support care providers, everyone And one of the classes offered was a gentle yoga class and as a team member I was encouraged to attend as much as I could, just to get a feel for what we offer, so I could better help folks figure out what they wanted to attend.
Speaker 2:So I went to yoga class and really enjoyed it and then a year later picked up a membership at a local studio in Knoxville and was there for a few years and then did their 200-hour teacher training and then really loved that and then wanted to deepen my practice. So I did a 300-hour all online training with Susanna Barkataki and her overall mission is to decolonize the practice of yoga and bring it back to its roots and honor the roots of where the practice comes from, and it's just a huge deep dive into the philosophy and the history And so, yeah, that's kind of all of that in a nutshell, and I enjoy teaching for fun on the side and get to practice myself.
Speaker 1:Awesome. I would say that you have. You've gone from kind of what we would consider kind of a basic understanding of yoga to a deeper appreciation, it sounds like through your journey. That's awesome, That's really cool. And then finally I don't want to step on this one, because this is pretty amazing, sue, you work for ETF remotely and it's not like you're down the street remotely, you're across the country remotely. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Speaker 2:Yes. So I think, as a lot of us experienced, at the start of the pandemic in March 2020, all of East Tennessee Foundation went full-time remote and my husband was offered a seasonal job working for Devil's Tower National Monument in Wyoming. And so I said, hey, we're all remote, how about I do this for a few months from another state? And so it kind of started there and then we came back to the East Tennessee area And then my husband was offered a permanent job, also back out at Devil's Tower National Monument, and so kept doing it. And so, yeah, i've been working full-time remote for ETF since May of last year, so May of 2022.
Speaker 2:And the unique team member who's two different times two times ends away and four times a year I fly in and try to time my meetings Big things, grant panel meetings, annual meetings, things like that. So, yeah, it's an interesting challenge when you always have to train your brain, for if it's a 9 am meeting in Eastern time, it's 7 am here in Mountain. So just the logistics of it all, but I think it works out really well and I get to stay a part of this really great team and connect it to the area as far away as I am.
Speaker 1:That is actually really amazing, I have to say. as a fully remote community foundation, as we are the organization that I work for, It was really fascinating to find out that a program person could actually live and work in Wyoming and service an organization that's in East Tennessee. That's pretty neat. Can I ask you before, Sandy? I apologize, we're gonna definitely get to you, so don't worry about it. But can I ask you one more thing Any surprises, challenges about the remote work?
Speaker 2:Definitely there's that disconnect from being five steps away from someone in the office and being able to get up and have a conversation with someone versus I generally cold call a lot of my coworkers or check their calendar first. And there's sometimes those missed opportunities with meeting an organization in person versus a phone call or a Zoom call, which are both great and lovely. But I do enjoy and miss that in person touch every now and then. But so that's the biggest challenge is just knowing I'm part of the team. But being remote, essentially full time for most of the years, can get a little lonely sometimes, but that's why I do enjoy those trips back to the office and being able to be there with everyone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, i understand and appreciate that. So it's the longest you're getting out and you certainly are in a beautiful place in the country, so that's pretty cool too. That makes it a little easier, i suppose. All right, sandy? Sandy Vidal serves as vice president of the Community Strategies and Initiatives for the Central Florida Foundation. Within her role, the Foundation, sandy works in a variety of initiatives, including sustainable development goals, sdgs, poverty alleviation, social justice and the staff liaison for the 100 Women's Strong Giving Circle. You're a graduate of the University of Miami School of Business, with a degree in business administration. What did you want to do with business?
Speaker 3:Really I wanted to be an epidemiologist and work for the CDC, but I just thought along the way that maybe that wasn't the right career for me. I still have a very intense interest in diseases and healthcare in general and actually run a really great healthcare work group. But in business where I ended up was in human resources. I had a lot of interest in the classes that I took around how the Japanese did their human resources And then when I graduated from college I ended up going down a human resource path and really enjoyed recruiting and just the training aspects of human resource kind of fell into nonprofit from there.
Speaker 1:I should connect you with my friend who works at the CDC. You can talk about protein chains and all these other things that I don't understand whenever I talk about them. Did you study biology and switch to business, or did you just always have a sense of science too as well, as well as business administration?
Speaker 3:I started out actually as a chemistry major. I had a fantastic high school chemistry teacher that just really prompted my interest in that. My dad just retired this year at 85 from being a doctor for many, many years with a focus on hypertension and kidney diseases, And my uncle was a doctor, my brother-in-law is a doctor, Long line of people in science. My mom was a medical technologist, So just a lot of the healthcare pieces I think were really interested in me And just the genetics now really interest me a whole lot. I do a lot with my family tree. I've been doing my tree, my brother-in-law and my husband's tree for the last 20 years.
Speaker 1:Wow, okay, fascinating. You also have 15 years in nonprofit leadership and over 20 years of business management experience. You have a passion for public speaking, advocating for solutions to complex social issues. You're a local Jefferson Award winner for volunteerism and currently serves as the nominating chair for the League of Women Voters of Orange County, as an advisor for the Health Equity Advisory for the East Orange Regional Planning Council and on Mayor Dyer's Multicultural Board. Sounds like you're really busy. Can you give us a tidbit of advocating for solutions to complex social issues? How are you stepping into that?
Speaker 3:Well, the way that I'm stepping into that is really through the lens of the sustainable development goals. I actually have the privilege of running a national and international cohort on the Council on Foundation platform for an SDG peer group, which is fantastic, but we started on that journey in 2018, really looking at how could we compare our grants up against the sustainable development goals, how could we create a dashboard for the community that would tell us are we actually going in the right direction? and then creating some impact funds? And so what I did was really kind of take a step back and say you know the sustainable development goals. There's 17 of them. They were established back in 2015. Yes, and they're really focused on kind of what I call the 17 ways to solve world peace. So everything from the goal of no poverty to gender equality, to peace, justice, social institutions. But I've just really always looked at things from the perspective of how do we actually move things forward, like we spend a lot of money and a lot of time on problems and nothing changes. And so really looking at how do we move things forward, and what I love about the sustainable development goals is there's goals and there's targets for those goals, and then there's indicators that let you know are you going in the right direction? I also love data, so that's really helpful, but both quantitative and qualitative. The quantitative, the numbers, part qualitative what's really happening on the street, kind of voices from the crowd But really it's for me about trying to answer the questions of you know is what the data is telling us correct and who's accountable for the results.
Speaker 3:So just an example that I talk about sometimes in our community is we do a community health needs assessment every three years. It's required And in 2016, which is the first one that I spent some time looking at, our number two health issue was obesity, number three was diabetes, number four was childhood obesity And number five was cardiac. In 2019, they were the exact same things. Number one changed over those years, but now we were 5% worse. So if those are our priorities And we're supposed to be focused on changing the trajectory of them, then why are they worse? And then even more complicated is who's actually accountable, for you know, whether or not I have diabetes or I'm obese. Is it me, is it my doctor, is it the hospital, is it the government for permitting a dunk in donuts on every corner? You know, i mean it's really hard to say.
Speaker 3:So I just love the analytical part, the looking at the data and then working together as a community around those issues to try to look at what can we do right away, what are the longer term system change needs And then what are the things that are going to require policy change in order to happen.
Speaker 1:I love your analysis of that. So we can have a side conversation later, But now we must do the duty that we're here to do. Well, actually we're going to have a little bit more fun too as well. But I just want to ask you do you have any recommendations of podcasts, music, any TV It doesn't have to be all deep and introspective about the community foundation world But or do you have a secret skill? So I think we already know that Ashley is a yoga aficionado and does really well, But Sandy, do you have any recommendations regarding music podcast special skill?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I watch such a variety of different things. It's kind of crazy. right now I'm watching Silo, which I'm finding to be fascinating And last night left me an alert, so I'm just really hoping that the main character is still alive after last night's episode.
Speaker 1:Spoiler alert. Yeah, ok, go ahead.
Speaker 3:Well, i'm not going into the details, but I listen to a variety of things, from political on both sides because I really want to know what's going on everywhere To my music choices are kind of crazy. I have put my staff off a little bit when they got into my car and had found me listening to country music and just didn't peg me for that. But when I was 16, 17, started driving, i had an AM radio in my car. So my choices were news, spanish and country music. So I am a long term country music listener.
Speaker 1:It's funny. Ashley, go ahead. I'm sorry, sandy, go ahead.
Speaker 3:My secret skill is I can fill a dry erase board with ideas like nobody's business.
Speaker 1:That is a great secret skill. Secret skill, All right, awesome. I love that dry erase board. Well, if we need that, we will definitely be calling, That's for sure. Ashley podcast, music, book recommendation secret skill.
Speaker 2:So I love listening to Bird Note. It's about a one to three minute daily podcast. It could be on a specific type of bird bird behavior. They also incorporate a lot of art, so someone one time came on and read their poetry that involves birds. I don't know. I, like many folks, probably picked up a new hobby at the start of COVID And I love watching birds. I'm a bird nerd. So Bird Note is great because it gives you that little micro dose And so I like to listen to that every morning. And I love listening to NPRs up first, because sometimes I can't just turn on the radio and listen locally, so I like to at least get the highlights of the day. Music I think I'm like Sandy, i'm all over the place. I think, if I had to narrow it down, i think on repeat, i've had the Head in the Heart's Newest album, every Shade of Blue, going back and forth. And what am I reading right now? Killers of the Flower Move, the Story of the Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Gran.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, the movie's coming out soon.
Speaker 2:The movie's coming out. I know it sounds like oh, I just picked up the book because of the movie, but it's been on my list for years and I finally was able to buy a physical copy of it, because I've been waiting for a while to get it. The E version and the holds on the five E copies are 20 weeks out, So I said I think I just need to buy it.
Speaker 1:Don't buckle up and buy it, yeah.
Speaker 2:Buckle up and buy it. So that's what I did, yeah.
Speaker 1:Nobody's throwing any shade just because the movie's coming out and it just happened to be. So, yeah, nobody's throwing any shade about that, all right, so we're going to pivot over to your community. So, sandy, tell us briefly about your community. What do you really like? What are you proud of?
Speaker 3:Well, i live in the Central Florida community. I've been in Orlando for over 30 years, so really what I love about the community is it's so welcoming. People can come in who have lived out of state or in other areas of Florida and start to network right into our groups and just be welcomed and accepted. We're also very diverse and we really work hard to be inclusive, and I think that's something that's really special about the community. It seemed for a long time like nobody was from here, like I grew up in Miami and moved to Orlando many years ago, but now we're starting to see the generation stay, which is wonderful. And then, of course, we have Disney World and Universal Studios and SeaWorld, so lots of theme parks as well as a lot of wonderful nature. We have Wakaiva and other places that you can hang out in nature.
Speaker 1:Nice. And then, how big is your catchment area? I mean, obviously it's Orlando, but how big is the population that you served? Do you know?
Speaker 3:I think the total population of Orlando or the metro Orlando area is 2.6 million.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah You might be making that up, but No, we're not going to hold you to it, so we don't really report on facts here. So it's all good. All right, ashley, do you want to describe kind of your remote community as well as your Tennessee community?
Speaker 2:Sure, so real quick with the remote community. So Sundance, sundance. It's at 4,750 feet of elevation So it's generally cooler, gets more snow than the surrounding northeast area. About a half an hour from the South Dakota state line, maybe 45 minutes from the Montana state line. It's very big out here. It can take a half hour on the interstate to get to the next town. And I used to measure before when I lived inside Devil's Tower National Monument. We used to jokingly say that we were an hour from Taco Bell and an hour from a good grocery store. But now, now I'm only half an hour from a good grocery store. I shouldn't say good from a large grocery store.
Speaker 2:So, Sundance is a really small, tight-knit community. Population according to the sign when you enter town 1,032. Sure, it's gone up a smidge since the last census but still working on building community here since we just recently moved into our house. In January And winter was brutal, to say the least. I think over a two-day period we got a foot and a half of snow, so that was an adventure.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness. Yeah, i hope to say. I've lived in Colorado for 50 years and I've never seen a winter or a spring like this. So if ours was bad, yours was really bad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, i was going to say if we're just going down the line. I'm sure You know, when I was a kid I lived in Iceland for two years And when you're a kid, snow is way more fun than when you're an adult. You have to shovel your own sidewalk.
Speaker 1:That is true. That is true, All right. Well, tell us about Tennessee And East Tennessee is located. Is it Nashville or is it somewhere else?
Speaker 2:Sorry, So if you had to pick, so Memphis is west, nashville is middle and Knoxville is east Tennessee.
Speaker 2:Knoxville Kind of like the big hubs. So I grew up 20 minutes south in Knoxville, tennessee, in a town called Lenore City, loudoun County, lococo, and we go from city to mountain to holler fairly quickly depending on which direction you go. So it's geographically stunning, beautiful, there's always something to do, there's outdoor activities Every county. We've got Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Obed Scenic and Wild River. A lot of state parks. Tennessee is really wonderful about their state parks and the access to them In terms of population size. I was trying to look it up I couldn't tell you.
Speaker 1:No worries, no worries.
Speaker 2:The greater Knoxville metropolitan area is nine counties And so the ETF serves 25. So it's at least a few hundred thousand Nowhere near Sandy's Scope in Orlando. But it was a great place to grow up. For the first 10 years of my life we lived all over the US, but if you ask me today where are you from, i say I'm from Tennessee because I've lived there most of my life at this point. And just a great community. The adage if you needed someone to give the shirt off, they're back to you. Like it really is just people helping people. It was a great place to grow up.
Speaker 1:And the West is a little different, isn't it? As far as that goes? As far as I think, people are still very friendly, but it is maybe a bit different in that respect. And then, finally, before we get into pro-net, any challenges you want to make our listeners aware of in your communities Where you serve. What are those challenges, sandy, if you want to go first?
Speaker 3:In our community. I think housing and transportation by far are biggest challenges. We do not have a very interconnected transportation system. There is no mass transit. We have a train called Sunrail but it only goes from the east to the west, which feels like the north to the south the way that it's structured. But it only runs during business hours and a little bit after, up till maybe eight o'clock at night I think. My husband and I walk every night and we're right on the Sunrail track So it runs, i think, around eight o'clock every night, but it doesn't run on the weekends at all.
Speaker 3:So you can only get to 1 percent of the jobs in the central Florida area if you don't have transportation. You can take the bus, but that's going to be a long, long ride. So I would say that's amongst the top issues. And then just the housing is really difficult because, one, the prices are going up a lot because people come in. We have 1,500 people a week move into Orlando. So people come from other states where the cost of living was higher and they will pay way too much for our house and that's driven our housing costs up dramatically. And then just with that kind of population coming in, we just have to order to supply.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and Ashley.
Speaker 2:So we've recently made the news as a state for our third grade retention policy and that shocked a lot of folks. So I think education is something that we're working on as a state and hopefully reevaluating that law. There are a lot of surprise third graders in their families. So education, and then we have pockets of extreme poverty and, to echo Sandy, housing costs are extreme. I think I saw a couple of months ago that the rental market in Knoxville is higher than a lot of other cities, and Knoxville is a big town, but it's certainly no Orlando or Denver or anything like that.
Speaker 2:And transportation as well, if we're talking about the social determinants of health or drivers of health, if you don't have a car to get to your job, then you don't have income and you can't pay your bills, you can't feed yourself, you can't buy the medicine that you need to live. So if you are fortunate and live in a certain part of Knox County, you have access to the CAT bus system, but pretty much outside of that county there's really you could pay a small fee for the. I can't remember. I can see the bus in my head, but the buses that can help take you to doctor's appointments at least. But so transportation is a huge thing if you don't have your own functioning vehicle. So a lot going on, but a lot of good people are working towards solutions, long solutions, Absolutely Well, and we just happen to have two of them right here working on solutions.
Speaker 1:So thank you very much for all the work you do. Let's talk about pro net. So I can't remember. we had email conversations off air and somebody was going to tell me about the history or tell our listeners about the history. I can't remember who that was. It's Ashley. All right, Ashley, you're up.
Speaker 2:That's me, so I can start with what I know. I know pro net is quite a bit older than when I joined. Of course, i joined officially in 2021, but pro net has been around for a good decade plus. I don't. I was looking for the actual year, the frowning year, and I could not find that, but it basically is the genesis of.
Speaker 2:You know there's ad net and there's comma, but what? what was, what was working or doing? you know efforts and things like that for for program based initiatives and staff members at community foundations. So pro net stands for program network And we serve program officers, grant folks, scholarship folks, anyone and everyone in between who addresses those needs at their respective community foundations. So that started and in connection with the council on foundations, quite a while ago, and I would assume I don't know a lot about that comma, but the parallels between what those groups do for their respective folks and what we do for program. And so it's it's it's bringing together Another Community foundation employees, staff members what have you who work with our grants, in our scholarships, and our students and our nonprofit partners. And you know what are our best practices and learning from one another. And so that's the genesis of of pro net.
Speaker 1:In a nutshell, And then, what are the services that pro net offers to program people at community foundations?
Speaker 3:I can answer that.
Speaker 1:Thanks, Sammy.
Speaker 3:Basically what pro net does is we have a. We have an online peer network which gives people an opportunity to ask questions to get answers. There's also a repository of different forms. So, if you're looking for policies on due diligence, we recently we've been talking about hate policies and looking at you know how do we make decisions about our grants When a donor advised fund holder is looking at an organization that maybe has a track record of violence or discrimination against different populations And there's a whole lot of big can of worms around that. But we do have some sample policies and things like that.
Speaker 3:We also do bi-monthly webinars. So we just completed one on the value based philanthropy. Before that we did one on trust based philanthropy and participatory grant making. So, really, looking at what are the things that a program officer maybe doing at their foundation And how do we talk about those things, give new ideas, best practices and just expose them to things that other foundations are doing, because, being in a community foundation, you're probably the only one in your community doing what you do And you may have a series of you know people in your foundation who are doing the same thing. They may have different portfolios, but it can get a little bit lonely when you're looking for ideas, and so having that network of program officers out there that are doing some of the things similar jobs is really helpful.
Speaker 1:Nice. And so then, in addition to some of the resources you offer, do you do a conference or do you join in with I know you were obviously with the council, you had a presence, the council foundations conference here recently in Denver.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we have in the past done our own conferences. We've been part of CF United, which has included ad, net and comma, actually with a speaker on two sessions for the one that was in Vegas around disaster philanthropy because we've done a lot around that in Orlando. But we are potentially looking at putting together a conference either next year or the year after, in response to a lot of people really asking us about putting together some information and just having that. Peer networking is, i think, really important.
Speaker 1:And it's a yeah, i think it's great to get people together in the same kind of context. How many members do you all have?
Speaker 3:You know that number.
Speaker 2:I think last meeting that we had, we had over 50 community foundation members. With your membership, unlimited staff can have an online account in presence At minimum 50 foundations, but probably a few 100 to 200 individuals.
Speaker 1:Yeah, nice Is your sweet spot. Larger foundations, medium, small, it doesn't matter, i'm just curious.
Speaker 3:It really doesn't matter, because I think it's more focused on the position than it is on the size of the foundation, because you can be in a huge foundation and just have a portfolio that's focused on one thing, or even if you have a peer group within your foundation, it may still be good to bring in new ideas. Like I, spend a lot of time researching best practices and other things, so being able to get ideas from different program officers is great. We also have a presence on social media. We have a newsletter, and so listening to and talking about and seeing what are other people granting for, what are the problems they're trying to solve, what are some of the cool programs that they have gotten behind, is really a lot of fun. We have a grant of the month that we look at, and so there's been some really cool grants that people do around arts and culture and other things that I think are really fascinating to learn about.
Speaker 1:Actually, that's really great. I love the idea of the peer sharing and peer learning. That's really pretty cool, so that's awesome. So then give us the pitch How much does it cost? And you kind of talked about the context of the value and the offerings that you have, but so how much does it cost and how do people get involved? We're into shameless plugs here, so tell us the website or whatever.
Speaker 2:So a membership for the community foundation is $250 a year And that, like I said, gives you unlimited staff access. So I think East Tennessee Foundation has four folks who take advantage of our membership. I don't know, sandy, about you all, but $250 for a year And then we renew every year And that gives you unlimited access to the forum, to the document kind of warehouse Sandy was referring to sample policy documents, sample letters, things like that, and the webinars, which Sandy is our rock star webinar planner, and all things And content, and so that gives you access to all of that And, more importantly, i think, the peer support and that ability to network and to develop relationships with folks who are doing the same thing as you are at a bigger, smaller foundation East Coast, west Coast, you know, all over the place so we can all come together collectively and learn from one another, and I know I've learned a few things since my time being a member. So that's my short elevator pitch. I don't know, sandy, you want to add on to that anything extra?
Speaker 3:Yeah, i think when you, when you look at what it costs to join member groups, $250 is a bargain, and so I would encourage people to think about that, especially as a whole foundation. My department is a mighty group of two me and community investment officer. We are in the process of hiring a third person, so I'm kind of excited about that who I think getting plugged into pro net would be great. Our website is just pro net CF for community foundations. We're focused on community foundationsorg, so again, it's pro net CForg And we recently updated our website.
Speaker 3:We as board members did a retreat in Dallas a little over a year ago and sat down and really thought about the value of pro net and how we could bring some good content and have divided our board into some committees and actually kind of taken the leadership role and prompts us along. But I am working on, as you mentioned, the web webinar content. We have one coming up in August and then I'll actually be hosting one in October on using the theory of change, and so we'll actually do an interactive session using a jam board type thing to be able to go through and do a theory of change exercise, and I think it'll be fun And for those people who are really looking at how do we solve problems, how do we think about our current state, where we are and where we really want to be, and using the theory of change is a great way to really look at and start your grant strategy.
Speaker 1:Well, and watch out everybody. She has that secret skill of the whiteboard. So yeah she's going to fill that jam board pretty quickly, I imagine.
Speaker 3:Yeah, i have four of them. In the room I'm in right now I have four dry rice boards One of them has. We at the foundation have five different focus areas that are based on the SDGs, mapped to the social determinants of health, and we call them thrive areas. And so I have all of the different ways that I think we can solve world peace in our community all over my dry rice boards And one other question.
Speaker 1:No, go ahead. I'm sorry, Sandy.
Speaker 3:I was going to say it's just a great way to unload everything. That's absolutely.
Speaker 1:I find, you know, I still use a legal pad actually to organize my thoughts, even though I've tried to get rid of that And I don't know anything else. So I've got sticky notes and then I have to like reduce those to a legal pad. That's really annoying, but I'm working on it. I'm taking shots and injections to maybe get rid of that habit. So what? can you actually join in on the webinars and other opportunities if you're not a member?
Speaker 3:Do you have?
Speaker 1:opportunities for that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you can. It's a $50 fee and as many members from the foundation as you want can join, and if somebody joins in a webinar and decides they want to join pro net, then I believe it's just the additional $200.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that would make sense. Good, anything, i haven't asked you about pro nets or your lives or your community foundations that you just like to interject before I let you go for the day.
Speaker 3:What I would say is just, it's what you make of it. You know, with any organization that you get involved with, the more you plug in, the more you're going to get out of it, and we are looking to expand the board, and so if there's people who are interested in leadership positions with an organization like ours, we'd be interested in talking to them about that.
Speaker 1:Excellent, and actually it looks like you were about to say something.
Speaker 2:I was just going to say ditto everything Sandy said, especially the board expansion. We would love to grow and to work with more folks and be represented. Foundation size states. You know all of that, so if you're interested, we'd love to talk to you more about that.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. It has been an absolute delight to talk with you both today, but I know you've got lots to do So I will let you go. But again, once again, it's pro net CForg Correct is the website Fantastic. Encourage everybody to check out the website and Ashley and Sandy have a wonderful day. Thanks so much for joining me.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 1:All right, everyone. I would do want to pivot over to a little bit of news. So real quickly. I do want to make the announcement that the Kansas Association of Community Foundations is searching for an executive director And if you are interested in applying, or if you can spread the word about that, you just go to KansasCFSorg to look more about the listing itself And you can get more information about the job and position. I'm a little biased. I'm on the board of KACF and I have to say it's a pretty cool position, so I would encourage people to apply. Goodness, what a wonderful show today. So Sandy actually asked us today to talk about pro net. As always, we thank Andy Epler and David Cutter for our music. Find us wherever you find. Your pod content, thoughts on a guest, your feedback for the show Reach out to us at emergencyf at gmailcom. Thank you so much for joining. Have a great week.