Tell us about your experience in development and what led to your role as development director Spokane Valley Partners. I spent 34 years working for Big Brothers Big Sisters, 32 of those years directing the agency. After retiring in 2006 I went back to work for Spokane Valley Partners in the spring of 2007. The Development Director’s job at SVP is that of a one person shop. I handle donation entry, and thank yous, I write grants, and lead two annual special events. In addition I am responsible for three newsletters and the annual report.
Tell us about your work and what you have been focusing on this year.
Besides the previous duties, I secured endowment start up funds and we just opened the Spokane Valley Partners Endowment Fund at Inland Northwest Community Foundation. That led to a special mailing to begin to grow the fund to a level that can impact our annual operations.
How does Spokane Valley Partners benefit the Greater Spokane Community? We serve the low income needs of residents living east of Havana Street to the Idaho border. In 2010 we provided emergency food (defined as four days of food) for 12,407 households (37,063 people) 1,235,472 pounds of food was distributed. Free clothing was given to 28,942 people. Working with the WIC clinic in our building we distributed 87 complete baby layettes to low income mothers to be as referred from WIC. We sent 737 children back to school with a backpack and grade appropriate school supplies, $68,834 in emergency assistance was distributed to 812 households, and we averaged 77 protective payee clients monthly. Also we served as the Valley’s Coats 4 Kids outlet.
How do you stay inspired? Staying inspired isn’t hard, Wednesday is our public food distribution day, and we can handle about 10 households processing through the food bank at a time. We hand out sequential numbers beginning at 10:00am but the people line up starting at shortly after 8:00am to get their tickets. Seeing that motivates me weekly. We are a small staff 8.5 FTEs and we rely heavily on volunteers, in 2010 we received 27,416 hours of volunteer support (equal to 13.2 FTESs). Watching us turn a cash budget of $544,000 into nearly $3,000,000 in programs and services, is also a motivating factor.
What else can you tell us? ' Married to Debi for 39.5 years, raised three children, and am currently enjoying nine grand children. As a Volunteer Big Brother I mentored three different boys over a total of 21 years, the most recent match ended when my little brother graduated from Lewis & Clark HS this past June, he is now attending EWU
