Hello everyone and welcome. This is Melissa Arma with the Stock Swoosh Revealing Tea. This actually moved way bigger than I thought it would. This probably does continue tomorrow. You could be in this as a swing tray, the stock is lower. It broke really early this morning and we were looking at the other stock but then when I pushed back I thought, I don't know if this is going to hold and then it did and then I called it again in the room and then I called to play in it in the afternoon. So you really could have done this three times today. So here's the morning draw. First we were pushed back and for a short time it was green but it held. Held and looked good. It could have shorted it again here. Now going over and looking here, this was a really, really tight, tight, tight entry that fell all day and I called this to the room with the market falling right here. See this? Boom. And the targets were 32.25 and 32. It got to 32.25. It literally ran out of day. If it would not have, we wouldn't have closed at four o'clock, in fact this exact bar, well it hit 21 as a low right into four but no one should be in a trade at the end of the day but the point is I'm saying if we wouldn't have closed at four this would have went to 32. Could have even broke 32. So I wouldn't be surprised if this fell again tomorrow. Really nice trading. What was so nice about this was what? The entry. The entry and the risk to reward. So this is something I'm going to talk about more in the webinar next week on Monday. Risk to reward is important to trade and that is really how you make money and you have to know the targets but you also have to watch what you're up. There also was a secondary place to add in this here. Again it was into the price but you could have been more aggressive and added here and got the push. This was extremely weak. This ended up surprising me. I've got to be honest with you. It was way weaker than I thought but it was very obvious and at one point today that it was going to go and then when the market fell to you of course this helped this too. So volume in here very good. You can see it right there. Tea looks lower. This was a news gap. Sometimes things got for news. Sometimes earnings. Sometimes whatever. Lots of different reasons. But this was a news one today. So nice play today for everybody that did it whether you did the two in the morning or the one in the afternoon. Email me at melissa at the stockswush.com if you'd like more information on how to make money trade trading. Have a good day everyone.


The governor's from Nigeria's South East region, having named the second Niger bridge after President Bahamad Gwari, speaking at the virtual inauguration of the bridge, Hope Uzodemath, a governor of Imor State, despite the South East not voting for him, Wahari fulfilled the promise he made to the geopolitical zone. Reacting to the naming of the bridge, Tolu Gulsi, a special assistant to the president on digital new media said the South East governors agreed to name the new bridge after the president as Mohamed Gwari's second Niger bridge. On December 15, 2022, the federal government opened the second Niger bridge for use in order to ease traffic in the South East during the festive season. On May 15, the bridge was fully opened to motorists while some finishing touches like lane markings were ongoing. In a statement on Monday, Fermi Addation, our president, spoke sped and said, Bahari is expected to commission seven legacy projects, including the second Niger bridge. I know that boy remember you, Bahamad Gwari, as so many other nations, Nigeria today, with the naming of the second bridge, Niger bridge after President Mohamed Gwari, he is a hero for me and indeed the people of South East. It is a pleasure, overjoyed today in the South East that we have come to take good for one of them and they may go under that and that is the second Niger bridge.


Freedom! Today I wanted to talk to you about Gigi or our game reviewing program. On the dashboard, if you haven't done so yet, be sure to check that out. Today, the reason I wanted to talk to you was so that I could talk about some of the things coming on to the dashboard in that program. This month is the month of mobile. Many of you have requested that we do things for mobile gamers and those who enjoy doing that style of content. So here it is, by request from you. First thing I wanted to talk about is a game called Way Out, which is a puzzle game based on like Japanese stuff. And if you are familiar with Japan and the internet, you know it's got to be good or at least really, we'll just say interesting. Next up we have Angry Fly, which is somewhat similar to Flappy Bird, except it comes with like a full story mode. And if you, as a reviewer, produce a review, you get a level 11 character. You also get cash shop codes and all kinds of other cool stuff. Be sure to check this one out if you're into mobile gaming and you've been doing it long enough to remember what Flappy Bird is. Speaking of remembering, I got something else for you.  Tamagotchis were like little digital pets that you carried around in your pocket before we got smartphones. Which was a really long time ago. I'm a dinosaur, but this next game that I'm talking about is called My Talking Teddy. Now My Talking Teddy is somewhat like that where you've got a digital pet, you've got to keep alive and feed and snuggle and cuddle. And I don't know, maybe I'm making up the snuggling and cuddling, but you'll never know unless you review this title. So make sure to go into your Freedom Dashboard, check out these three new titles that you requested.  You then get yourself some form of code or other information like how to download, how to get this perk. And then you produce the review. After that, you then upload that to your channel and give us the link on the same page in the dashboard. So you do have to report back and let us know about your review so we can tell the developers, hey, look what an awesome job our partners are doing. Anyways, till next time, don't forget to like, subscribe and do all those things that make us love our jobs. Also, be awesome to yourself and amazing to each other. Bye Freedom Family. Anyways, thanks for watching.


I'm so excited. I always love when GrantStation is here and today we're going to be talking about integrating 2023. Can you believe it trends into your non-profits? So we're going to learn all about the latest trend so you can take advantage of the grant seeking. My name is Areeba Simons. I'm the Webinar producer here and I know you're very familiar how to engage today. But just in case you're not, if you need to use the closed caption, go ahead and tap on that CC button. Please put your courses in the Q&A and we're going to answer your questions at the end. We are recording this. You will get all the slides and the replay within 48 hours of this presentation. I got one quick announcement to make on February 13. We're having a special webinar from datacommons.org. They're going to show you how you can use public data to share stories about your non-profits so you can make the most impact. And of course we have the GrantStation sale that's going to happen. You're going to save $600 on GrantStation. You're going to learn more about that throughout the webinar. I'm going to pop a link in the chat, especially start February 14th and 15th, and you can click on that link to get a reminder. I'm going to move out of the way and turn it over to Alice. She is the president of GrantStation and we also had Cindy Adams here. She is the founder of GrantStation. So welcome, ladies, and thank you for being here. Well, thank you, Aretha, and welcome everybody. I think I'll have you, there we go, have you on share your screen and I will share our presentation here. So I'm really excited to have you all here to talk about what's kind of going on in 2023 with GrantMakers and what we're seeing is trends in the field so that you can incorporate this information into your strategies. So like Aretha said, we have a large crowd. We've got a huge packed agenda. So I'm going to turn it over to Cindy really quick so that she can talk about how you can kind of get the most out of this webinar. So take it away, Cindy. Thanks, Alice. Thanks, Alice. And thanks, Aretha, for the introductions. And hello, everyone. I really appreciate you're taking the time to join us today. I am just a name because my internet is very, very slow and I live in a very remote area of southern New Mexico and the internet here is, the word I guess is dicey. Yeah, dicey word. Anyway, thank you for joining us today. And I suggest today that you just let the the information that we present because it's going to be a lot. Just let it flow over you, maybe make a note over here, there is something, you know, sparks a specific idea regarding the work that you're doing. But in general, just sort of sit back and absorb the information we're presenting. And as mentioned earlier, you'll receive this slide. So you can reference those and kind of refresh your mind as you go forward. And keep in mind that these trends aren't comprehensive. I mean, obviously, and we have left out some of the existing trends, such as racial justice, racial equity, which is a very live and moving trend. But you're going to find that we're going to reference it throughout these other trends, because it's being absorbed. It's actually actually a cultural shift, and we'll talk about that. But it's being absorbed in many, many other trends. So just be aware that that we're going to be hitting on a lot of different trends, and that some of these trends encompass other trends that are happening now there. Especially in leadership development, you'll see that leadership development really takes in many, many other trends. Excellent. Thanks, Cindy. So that's good advice. And so, as you guys can see, we do have Aretha behind the scenes, who can answer any of your tech soups, specific questions. And we have David Gates from Grant Station, who can also answer any Grant Station specific questions. But like Aretha said, feel free to put those questions in the Q&A, and we will have those answered at the end of the presentation. So we do have a busy agenda, like we mentioned. And so what we're going to do is start talking about Grant Maker trends in two areas, in the area of interest that Grant Makers are really looking to support. And then we're going to touch on some of the different ways that Grant Makers will support you through their types of support. And through those, there's more than what we'll talk about, but we will talk about general operating support. And we will talk about capacity building funds, because I know that those are probably the more common ones that you all will be looking for. So we will provide you with information on kind of how funders are defining these things, and how with a lot of different examples that will sprinkle in, and then also how you can weave this information into your grant proposals to increase your chance of success. At the very end, we're just going to touch on some of the tools that Grant Station has, and then provide you with information to how you can get more information on our tools, and other tech soup tools, and the promotion that we've been talking about. And you know, Alice, it would be great. It would be great if as we go through the trends, if everyone could note a project that they need funding for, and then ask us how we might integrate one or more of these trends into those requests. Anyway, okay, Alice, I'm ready. Let's rock and roll. Perfect. So we're going to talk about these trends that are here. I'm not going to read them all to you because we're going to go through them one by one. But kind of how funders, like I said, are looking to support these types of efforts. We'll go through them one by one. But like Cindy has already said, they also can connect in a lot of different ways. So kind of as we go through, you'll see how some of the information kind of connects to some of these other trends. And again, how you can look at this information and include it in your applications. So we're going to start with building movements.  But is it really the case? It doesn't have to be big giant movements like Black Lives Matter or working with the UN sustainability goals. It can also be smaller community based movements that you're looking towards of just taking back your your neighborhood or your streets and making them safer, or helping bikers get bike lanes, you know, on the streets for safety and things like that. So they can be, you know, rather large, or they can also be smaller, just community based. But really the trend and the key here is that grant makers are really interested in those movements when you can demonstrate that they're creating that local change. And so there's a couple of ways that you can do this. One is by kind of tagging on to other movements that you see going on in your community. Or you can create your own movement, which doesn't sound really easy. So I'm going to make Cindy ask Cindy to do the hard part of giving us examples of how we would do that on a local level. Sure, sure, I'll take that on, I'll take that challenge. But first, before we before I give you an example, and I will give you an example, you guys, but the first let me just sort of clarify that there are really two types of movements that your organization might take on. And the names for them are really reformative. One is a reformative social movement. And the other is what they call revolutionary movements. So there are really two distinct types of movements. And there's others as well.  And a reformative social movement is really mainly what we're talking about today, you're seeking to change the social structure. So if you're, you're targeting in, you know, oftentimes you're targeting an entire population when you're doing some kind of reformative social movement. And that might just be a neighborhood, or it might be a larger community, you know, a state or a country, right? And that's a movement. And I was part of the environmental movement in the 70s and 80s in Alaska, and much of our funding for the work we did came from the National Funders, recognizing that this was a real movement that was happening in that state. And then there's this other type of movement, which is a revolutionary movement. And that seeks to change every aspect of a society in a very dramatic way. That's why it's called revolutionary. And that and a good example of that is really the the civil rights movement. And if you guys want towards the end, if you think you're working on building a movement, you can ask me sort of the stages of what a movement what goes into movement, I can share that with you as well. So just put that in the back of your mind. But getting into that example that that Alice, you asked me to share. Let's say you live in a rural area, and you're trying to form a farmers market to get residents of that area to eat more nutritionally and live healthier lives, you know, strengthen the local economy, that kind of thing. One way to build a movement and to demonstrate to the funder that the support they offer will allow you to launch this movement, or to build on to a movement you've already launched is to really identify or bring in key collaborative partners. And that in this case, it could be a set of, you know, farmers, it could be a local, I don't know, garden club, maybe a few nurseries, you know, businesses, maybe the Chamber of Commerce and perhaps even the regional clinic since nutrition is important part of this whole thing. You just need to get thereby in and build your proposal partially, partially on the strength, strength of this collaboration that you pulled together, right, that will focus on this local change. Then in your proposal, you can develop a simple, nothing, nothing too elaborate. It doesn't have to be pages and pages, but you know, sort of a simple outreach plan for each of these partners. So you don't want to dismiss the partners, you want to demonstrate how they will be involved in this movement, how they're going to take part as one of your partners. Now, this is just a piece of an overall request, obviously asking the funder to support the development of the farmer's market, but it can be a very, very key ingredient. And I really like Sydney that you added that because, you know, funders really do want to see that you have that plan of action and not kind of just the platitudes of we're going to do this. And they really want to see it.  And then also time that together with what you're talking about with all those different partners is really also demonstrating their commitment to the process.  So lots around there and we're going to see this kind of some of these things through some of our other topics as well. So the second area that we're going to talk about is in developing leaders. And so grant makers are, you know, really eager to develop new leaders that again truly reflect what's going what communities they are serving. So kind of the days of, you know, having your target population simply as, you know, one member on your board or having one listening session where you have your committees or your advocates talking about what's needed, that we they really want to see those that you're serving involved in that and developing those leaders. And, you know, that can be tricky, depending on on what, you know, your your what you've been doing in the past, because you might find that you need to engage new leaders and you've never done that before.  And I'm going to I like how I can do these hard questions to Cindy, because she's the smart one here. Yeah, it seems like there's a little bit of gap here, though, that that, you know, funders will pay for that development of those leaders. But if you've never done it before, how do you identify them, Cindy, to include in your requests? Huh? Well, I agree, Alice, I think there is a bit of a gap here, a gap in logic when it comes to this kind of the leadership development. I think if you've already identified a set of leaders that you'd like to, you know, provide leadership training to that's great. That's great. But be sure and note in your proposals how you identified them, how you figured out who you were going to put into this leadership training, you know, program that you're developing, you know, whatever it is. You know, what was the process you used?  How did we come up with these folks? Then you may want to consider, you know, really taking a step back and perhaps going through a more methodical process, identifying individuals or groups of individuals that need training. So for example, let's say you live in a in an urban area and you know you need, I don't know, more elected officials to represent the underrepresented populations of this area, you could write into your proposals a methodology for how you will recruit the individuals from this underrepresented community. And and of course these days it's always smart to include both face to face trainings and recruitments, as well as online training and recruitment. So just keep that in mind too. But it's it's smart, smart, smart, you guys to to include and have a methodology for identifying these potential new leaders. And I think Cindy, that really does tie into like what we were just speaking about, where funders want to see, you know, what steps you're taking. Again, really putting that story behind what you're doing. So they know it's not just, again, platitudes, but that you actually have a plan to do this work. And what steps you're going to take. So I think Alice, if I could just interject here. I think that sometimes that's where we get hung up. We don't know how to develop a method or process that we feel is is, you know, equitable or clean or easy to implement, but will have good results. And I just want to suggest to people, because I've done this in the past, that if you're running into that problem, consider talking with your local university, because oftentimes they will have courses or classes that are looking at this kind of thing, and will help you come up with a way of identifying or creating a methodology, especially science researchers in this area. What are my step by steps? How do I do this? So I'm really covering the most ground and bringing in those underrepresented populations. Sorry to bust in, but I just had to say that. That's all right. I think that's like, I mean, our universities are great untapped resources to help us in a lot of different areas and and make, you know, bigger shifts by using those resources. So I think that's a great idea. So kind of tied with this as well is shifting cultures. Again, you're going to see a lot of similar things running through here, but, you know, philanthropists, you know, if they recognize it or not, they really are all doing this kind of shifting culture, or at least trying to and kind of like, you know, the building movements thing we were talking about, it can be big shifts or small shifts or somewhere in between. So just as an example, a small shift in a culture might just be getting your own staff or the people that work around your project to think differently about a topic and or to, you know, work with your mission with a different perspective. And an example of that, that I've worked a lot with this kind of internal ship that has to go on is around stigma, redemption in like substance abuse areas and addictions. And I've seen a lot of times in, let's say, a hospital setting or a private practice setting, where there really needs to be a better understanding of what people with addictions are kind of struggling with. And the staff needs to be educated about that to make that shift. And so, you know, I've seen that, you know, real positive shift when that, you know, education is done and, and, and, you know, people are really looking at things in a different way than they did before this education or training. So, Alice, could you tell us a little bit more about this? I mean, how did you I heard you'd mentioned this a couple times before, but I've just heard I've just been on the periphery of a conversation. So how did you, how did you achieve this shift in, you know, understanding and getting this, getting the staff to, I don't know, engage more?  I mean, how did, how did this all work? You know, so usually the way it started and again, using that same example was whoever was kind of providing the treatment, if you will, the folks that were working around that part saw in the other staff at the facility that people were really, you know, that the, that the, that the participants weren't treated well by the staff because they just, they didn't understand addictions very well. And so what made it work, though, I think it that's really critical here is that they started like here to peer education. So to kind of change that culture, they did it, you know, within the system. And, and then, you know, some, you know, of the staff were presenting information on, you know, the science of addictions in a more non-threatening way of like, this is the way you should do it, but like more peer to peer oriented. Yeah. And, and, you know, and then that the, you know, the nurses being taught by other nurses, then were more apt to make that shift than if it was coming kind of top down heavy. And then, yeah. And then I think the other thing, though, that's also kind of very important with like those kinds of things and probably, you know, other big external ones is just that you have to do it continuously. It couldn't just be kind of a one and done, we're going to come in and do this like they had to build this in so that that was a shift that stuck, if you will. That's that's really interesting, Alice. I also think I mean, I can see what you did there and it was a smart move. Just sort of a side question. Was it was this actually funded by a grant maker, this move and this shifting culture? They did as part of the the it didn't have to be a separate proposal in this I'm in this particular example. They were able to just do it with funding they already had and then shift, you know, shift the focus out from just their participants to the larger system. But when you report that back to a funder, you know, they like to see that. Yeah, they didn't know they had to do it at first, but then the funder was really happy with the results of what they were able to do. Yeah, that's really interesting. I also think there's sort of a, you know, externally, we're seeing grant makers interested in broader cultural change. But this is trickier than shifting internal, internal organizational culture, isn't it? It's a bit different. It's a bit trickier. I mean, attempting a cultural change or shift in your own community, that that could be tricky business. If you intend to do this, you really have to clearly define a set of desired outcomes, desired changes in behavior, desired changes in values, right? It was interesting in today's Chronicle of Philanthropy, Alice, the headline was, I'm going to get it wrong, but it was something like 28 foundation foundations urge, you know, their peers to channel more funds to Black-led non-profits, you know, and that's where you're getting it. Yeah, that's a real shift. That's you're really pushing a shift in culture. And when I think of cultural or societal change that happened within the United States, I always think of that the anti-liter campaign. Do you remember? Are you? Are you my too old? I remember the commercials. I do remember the commercials. Okay, there you go. It was really, it was an interesting story. Actually, there's a really interesting story behind the campaign, which isn't so cool. But anyway, not to divert us, but the campaign truly, truly worked. And our whole society made a significant shift in behavior. You know, there are many corporations who funded this and supported this cultural shift, mainly because it was their products that were being picked up along the side of the road or on the sidewalks or in people's yards. But that campaign teaches us the importance of really understanding what category a grant maker you can tap into if your campaign is, is you know, for example, in this case, it was something that was really important to businesses. So the campaign tapped into business, business and, you know, corporate giving as their, as their main areas. Anyway, it was just, it was just interesting. I think that that campaign really made a huge cultural shift in our, in our society, which has lasted for a long time. I think maybe time to do it again. But yeah, I think it lasted a long time. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so it's so much now just kind of ingrained that you don't think of it as a campaign anymore, but that's because it became kind of the normal operating procedures, if you will, in, in people's minds instead of not throwing, you know, stuff on the streets and this and that. So yeah. Okay. So our next trend is about developing an inclusive economy. So we all know that like racial equity truly walks hand in hand with economic equity and more and more grant makers are really looking at proposals to make sure that the things that you're proposing really do develop that inclusive economy. And again, tied back to some of the things we've said before that we again have those specific tactics outlined as to how we're going to address them. Again, not just saying we're going to but showing those steps. And I think that that's kind of, you know, what has happened in the past on that there has been, you know, yes, we have, you know, equitable policies in our organization, but we were never kind of forced to demonstrate it. And I think now funders are really, you know, saying show me how you're walking the talk. And I think that that's really great. And so when we're looking at some of these issues around inclusive economies, I found that the NAACP website has a lot of great information that you can go and look through and read to integrate into your proposals as to, you know, especially if you're working on any sort of, you know, community or economic development project, you know, how you're integrating different strategies to make that inclusive. Yeah, that is a good that is a good website, Alice. I like it too. I've used it I refer use it as reference many times. And then I think there's another way of looking at this trend. And it's quite quite simply providing if you look at it as providing more opportunities for more people, right? The Rockefeller Foundation defines inclusive economies by by five different interrelated characteristics, they say, you know, participation, equity, growth, sustainability and stability, those are the five things on which they judge if a proposal is really looking at is really creating an inclusive economy. And I think any project focusing on workforce development or economic justice issues needs to really embrace those five characteristics. And if someone wants to look at those, you can just go to the Rockefeller Foundation website and look for, you know, inclusive economy, and you'll see a whole bunch of information there. But those five characteristics are listed too. I also believe we're seeing sort of a sea change in society's approach to racial equity. It's not just a it's not just a trend anymore, but rather it's becoming a significant change in how our society thinks and acts. So it's it's a movement per se. And hopefully will eventually be as common in place as, you know, the recycling has become commonplace, right? Everybody adopts it. You think about it. It's got to be that important. It's got to be that ingrained in our society. Absolutely. I think that, you know, you might look at different organizations where they had a diversity or an inclusion program or a, you know, diversity initiative, right? And I think that that's not where this is. It's not about something separate, you know, that you're doing over here, but your organization is operating over here. It's like, how is that woven into the fabric of your organization and all that you do? So it's very intentional. And like you said, you know, part of the way things go, not separate. Yeah, I like that you say intentional, Alice. That's exactly, exactly what it needs to be. Absolutely. I think our next trend of defending democracy also kind of goes hand in hand with some of this, where, you know, grant makers are really looking at the trend of focusing on defending democracy and that can be, you know, here in the US or, you know, abroad. I think the trend is pretty widespread. I know we have a few people on here from other places. So I don't think this is only a US thing.  I think that one of the things that we want to do is to take advantage of this trend is just incorporating democratic approaches all across the board in the work that we're doing. So like this could be something like just making sure that underserved communities are kind of aware and invited into the process to share their concerns, help develop the approaches, you know, really get involved in it. You know, anything around again, you know, back to those community and economic development projects that you're really involving those that you serve, you're getting their voice so that you know that that you're developing the best approach possible to make the most difference. So Cindy, do you have any other ways that that that we could weave this into? Yeah, yeah, I do. I think there are a number of strategies that we could use to be weaving, you know, we could weave, as you say, into our grant request, knit, we're going to knit it. We're going to thread it. We're going to do something to do with fabric. Yes. Yeah, that's right. To help sort of alter the current disintegration of democracy right here in the US. Just as an example, if you're working in the area of climate change, then defending democracy is the elephant in the room, so to speak, and should be addressed in your proposals. Did you know I mean I've read this a couple of days or a couple of weeks ago, but did you know that something like the oil and gas industry has put something like an average of 4.3 million dollars into every Senate seat that they want to be elected? Or I think it was like a half a million dollars into every house seat, right? So we're it's, it's, you know, your whole approach to defending democracy has to be woven into the work that you're doing, whether it's environmental work, whether it's racial justice, whatever it is, it has to be woven into it. And we're actually seeing environmental and racial justice groups coming together to, to address these threats to democracy. We've seen that, you know, several times that's been happening in the last couple of months actually, or even years for sure, but months. And Al is just a side note. In the 1980s, and again here I show how old I am. In the 1980s, we put together, I lived in Fairbanks, Alaska. And we put together what we called May Day for Human Rights, which is, you know, of course, we were waiting for our time, so to speak. We just felt like there were so many organizations, so many different groups in our community, veterans.  And so we put together this march, myself and my husband and a friend. And we pulled together this May Day for Human Rights. And we had the veterans were marching with the women's organization, marching with the environmental organizations. The Black Baptist Church led the whole march. And we had almost every population you can imagine that was sidelined in that community, marching in that, it went on forever. And this is a small community. Fairbanks was probably 70,000 people at that time. So, but the beauty of it, Alice, the beauty of it, was that what happened was, I don't know how much it changed the people that were watching the march. But I know that it empowered those of us in the march. And what we did is we started showing up these groups, started showing up at city council meetings, at borough assembly meetings, you know, working on political campaigns. So it became a whole thing. And it changed it changed the culture of that community. I'm sorry, that was a sideline.  Now, I think that's a great example. And I think again, we're seeing like how all these different, you know, movements or part of that is almost like developing leaders in a way. And so how these aren't distinct necessarily, but they're they can really merge together. And and some of those that that example really demonstrates that. So thank you for that for that real life example. Our next one is a place based philanthropy. And so we are seeing a shift with grant makers kind of focusing a little bit more on place based philanthropy. That's kind of hard to say. But I'm going to read you a definition. Well, it's actually on the bottom of the page there. But what does that mean? You know, so it's defined as an approach that targets a specific location. So it could be your neighborhood or your town or your county or multiple counties or a region. But upon which then they focus their charitable resources to make a transfer transformative impact. So taking an area and taking those resources and excuse me, building it together. That the trend is to focus on the geographic area, bringing together those local partners that we've kind of talked about in some of these other examples, and then how they can leverage the different partners in and their different financial capital that they have or social networks or expertise or human capital or volunteers to address really complex issues. Excuse me, I'm going to take a drink there, Cindy, if you'll just take a take a pop at that. Yeah, I'll take it. I'll take it and you swig your water. It is water, right? Now make a joke. Yeah, yeah. So I just wanted to say a few things about place based philanthropy that maybe we haven't really touched on. I think it sounds like something that that this is something that grantmakers are doing, right? And how do you pull the grantmaker into this in your proposals? You have to make the case for the funders to target a specific location like a neighborhood or a rural community, your town, your village, your city, via a specific issue. So you've got to make that case that if they focus on this specific issue in this targeted community, that they can make a change. That means you have to break down the complexities around a specific issue and show how you'll, you know, how you'll tackle sort of the root causes. And then you have to identify a comprehensive approach to tackling the issue and show how your work, the work that you're going to be doing will really generate lasting, transformative. I kind of hate that word because everybody's using it, but it's true, you know, generate lasting transformative change within that chosen community. And this means the funder or the funders need to be brought in early via your discussions. They really do have to, you know, what I what I've been encouraging people to do that want to make a significant change in their neighborhood or their community is before they ever start proposal writing, before they ever start the complete planning process, they may have concepts in place, but before they really start that, bring grant makers to the table to discuss the issue. Because if the grant maker is invested in this early on, you're really talking about place based philanthropy, because you're talking about focused change in a specific area, but you don't have to call it that. And I think that a lot of grant makers will be excited and want to engage, especially if they're brought in early on, they may never fund you, but they may introduce you to others that will fund you, right? So you're not asking them for money. You're asking them to engage in the conversation. And I think that they can. Yeah. Oh, sorry. But I think that tying on to that real quick, that that, you know, you bring them in, they're going to introduce you, they're going to provide some credibility, you know, to get other people to the table because they are funders. So bringing them in early is great for that reason as well. And then once people start that buy in of, OK, we're getting together, then you can bring in, you know, again, some of the things we've already talked about are bringing in government sources and nonprofits and businesses and and collectively looking at this area and what you can do collaboratively using the assets of everyone involved because one, you know, one nonprofit maybe can't make all the difference. But you have government agencies who have resources, but they don't move fast, you know, and then you have businesses who can take a little bit more risk and then you have the nonprofit folks really on the ground. So once you kind of bring together all those resources, yeah, I think it's, you know, it can be a really effective trend and and again, weaving in all these different trends that that funders want to see funded. Right, exactly. And I think that I mean, I think sometimes this idea of place based philanthropy can actually scare a few grant makers off. So I don't know if I would use that terminology necessarily because I think that grant makers sometimes they get their phrase are going to get too involved and they can get too involved. In fact, I've seen funders get so involved that they're basically running the project. So you don't want that to happen. You don't want funder to get too involved. You want them to get too focused on what you're doing. You want them to be a partner in what you're doing. So, you know, I just think that it's just important that that people understand that those of you that are seeking that kind of focused grant making from local funders that you may be zero a little away from the terminology place based because it might scare them off. They may think they have to get too involved. So it can be just a little worrisome in my opinion. Yeah, yeah. I think our next our next topic as well, being collective impact or collective action actually fits with this very well, because it's like what we were just talking about. So again, this is where the same kind of situation we were talking about where you take those really strategic, structured partnerships, you bring them all together and you unite you know, to address again, address address a location or address a movement or, you know, any of the other things that we've already talking about and getting them united with that shared agenda. Again, is what funders do like to see because they really see how you're better positioned as a group to address some of those bigger social issues. Right. I think we see all types of collective impact as they call it happening. You know, when funders come together to, I don't know, to attack a social or maybe an environmental issue that results in what they that actually almost always results in what they call collective action. So collective impact, collective action, there are words that are being thrown around out there and you may want to include them in your your grant proposals as you write them because it's going to resonate. A lot of these funders go to conferences and they talk, they'll have a whole panels on collective action and collective impact. So using some of that terminology can actually help when you're writing a proposal. But when you do write a proposal, you want to base your project's impact on on this model that we've sort of put here on the on the slide. And you have to have that common agenda when you're working with other folks, if you're if you're bringing if you're developing collaborative of any kind, you have to have a common agenda and you have to demonstrate in your proposal that that agenda has been signed off on. So quoting from a meeting that you've held with emotion that was passed that adopted the agenda and was signed on by all these people, you know, it was unanimous approval that should be in your proposal because nothing weakens your proposal more than the grantmaker realizing you just don't have it. You know, you don't have that commitment, commitment from everybody and then shared measurements, you know, mutually reinforcing activities need to be called out in your proposal. Well, you know, what are you going to do? How is this group going to help this group? And how is this group going to work with this group? And then you need to adopt and articulate how there will be continuous communication amongst the partners. And then, of course, strong leadership is needed. So, yeah, I know we need to move on. We're probably running short on time, Alice. Yeah, we're running short. So you're waxing long. Now I'm just I'm waxing. I love to hear it. I love to hear it. So yeah, so I do have just a resource for you guys from this. If you go to Collective Impact, the website Collective Impact Forum, you can go to their website and they have a set of kind of tools.  So there's a lot of good resources to help you move forward in this area. So our last type or our last area of interest friend that we're going to talk about is true diversity, which really, you know, true diversity means embracing kind of the diversity of all the unique traits and backgrounds and perspectives and experiences of really each individual. And it really offers an organization, you know, a way to really advance their missions and make, you know, every person feel like they matter or they belong to the process, you know, that process of change. And so it's really, you know, it can be like we spoke about, you know, long term, short term types of things, but really, you know, it's the best way by really using the diversity of your community and those that you serve. It's the best way to really fully achieve what it is that you're trying to achieve in your programs and to fulfill your mission.  But I just want to mention that true diversity is now there's something called fair chance hiring. And if anyone wants to, it's really a growing trend, it's called fair chance hiring. And it really promotes a way to help hire people that have not been brought into the workforce easily, like those that have been incarcerated in the past. That's a great example. OK, so now we're going to move along to the two different types of support that there's other types of support, but we're just going to talk today about general operating support and capacity ability support and see where funders are trending on those two topics. So with regard to general operating support, you know, with the pandemic just recently, you know, raging and impacting all the work that the nonprofit community has done, one of the really positive trends that I've seen is that grant makers really started actually providing that general operating support, kind of with no strings attached, just kind of saying, OK, you need the money. We, you know, here here's what you need to operate. So, you know, at the time when that was happening, you know, those of us on this side of the the the field here, we were really hoping that this would stick, that that general operating support would stay. And I I'm a little worried that I don't think I think that funders have kind of switched back as, you know, the the pandemic recovery has happened to really kind of go back to not providing as much of that general operating support. You know, yeah, I think I think what you're saying, Alice, is spot on. I mean, I think there are a lot of the grant makers that did provide general support are backing away from it. But interestingly, many family funds that provided flexible support during the pandemic, their reasoning behind that was just because they didn't want to see these institutions fail and they still feel that way. And I think a lot of them got kind of intrigued by this idea of general operating, but it really comes down to trust. You know, can these funders trust the organization to continue to invest their general support in addressing their overall mission? Yeah, I agree with you there. I mean, I think that I mean, I hope and I really do hope that, you know, while we had seen the shift back a little bit like that, that we but we've seen the tide swing. So people saw some of the benefits of this general operating support and once, you know, nonprofits and those funders and like you said, family funders as one example, as they've developed that relationship, you know, maybe they're going to continue with providing more of those general how to keep the lights on dollars for nonprofits. So while it's switched back, hopefully it's still a positive trend. Yeah, it's a positive trend. And I think that everyone just needs to remember that trust equates to honesty. So when you're writing your proposals for general operating, don't be shy about saying, giving them the good, the bad and the ugly, you know, let them know the good you're doing, let them know the things you're for the challenges you're facing. And if you've had some ugly times, share it with them because that that kind of honesty is what these, especially these family funds are really looking for. So I think that that's a really, really great, great information. So the next and last slide and trend that we're going to talk about is capacity building.  But I do feel that this is also a trend that's become more front and center since the pandemic, with funders really looking at how to build the infrastructure of organizations to support their work into the future. And while this has always been a bit of a trend, I do feel like with the pandemic funders, even if they're not using the word capacity building, they are more apt, if you will, to really build, you know, short term capacity of building an organization on to longer term capacity of a movement like we were talking about. So, you know, that's a pretty diverse kind of field there. But I think that this is a trend that I think more funders are are interested in supporting and just helping you build your own capacity to do the work that to fulfill your mission. Yeah, I think that's right, Alice. I think you're right. It does tie back into several of the areas of interest we talked about earlier, you know, leadership development, shifting cultures, building movements, all of that. That sort of builds into that short term capacity building. I think that the key here is as an organization, just you need to be clear. Are you talking about short term or long term capacity building?  So just be clear in your own mind. Am I am I asking for two and three year funding to allow me to accomplish these specific objectives? Or am I asking for longer term funding or not longer term funding, but the funding that will address a longer term issue or movement, shifting culture, that kind of thing. Absolutely. And I think one thing that I do preach a lot when it comes to capacity building, you know, the more that you can demonstrate in your proposals that the activities that you're doing to build your capacity, the more you can show that that's going to help you serve more people, serve different people, serve people better, more efficiently, all those kinds of things, the stronger your proposals will be. So showing not only the activities that you're going to do, but how that's going to help you into the future with, you know, just better services or more services or whatever it is that you're doing. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. We're on the same team here, aren't we? So, yeah, and we, any questions you have about capacity building, I think both Cindy and I would love to talk with you about those. So I'm just going to point you out to a couple of tools and then we'll get to our questions. But some of the free tools that GrantStation does offer that you can hop on the site right now to help you with, you know, doing all this incredible work that we've been talking about. The first is the Insider. You can subscribe to the Insider and get free grant notices every week through our U.S. GrantStation Insider. We have, I know we had some people that were international on the line, so you can also sign up for the International Insider and or the Canadian Insider. So just you get free free funders in your inbox every week for the U.S. based on every month for international and Canadian. We also have a tool, excuse me, called the Pathfinder. And the Pathfinder, you can go in and find all sorts of information in a really extensive database by just entering the type of information that you're looking for. And then it provides you with with those links. And then our benchmarker tool, which is my favorite Alice. Oh, you tell about benchmarker. Yeah, let me give your voice a break. Thank you. Yeah, the benchmarker is really you can go in, you can we do a state of grant seeking survey every every year. No, yeah, every year. And that state of grant seeking survey, usually we survey any place between fifteen hundred and thirty five hundred nonprofits and tons of people participate in the survey. And by the way, it's just coming out again. But you can read the benchmarker. You can read the state of grant seeking survey report. And then the benchmarker is a free tool you can use. You answer the questions and you can compare your organization. How are you doing in soliciting grant proposals?  So it's you compare as missions and budgets and all that kind of thing. You'll love it. It's super fun to do. It is. It's a really great tool. So anybody with or without a membership can get these tools here and then just to kind of compare as well. So when we are looking at our databases that Grant Station offers, where you can find the funding sources that you're looking for, again, U.S. charitable, Canadian charitable, international charitable and then federal and state opportunities. We break our information down into areas of interest like the funders, like we talked about areas of interest for funders so you can look at your area and see what what funders are available to support you there and even under types of support like general operating funds or or capacity building funds. You can also search by the target populations of those you serve and see who would support children or families or different target populations. And then we have different search parameters there. So when you're searching, it kind of does follow what, you know, some of the ways that Cindy and I were talking today. And then the other tool that's really great is our three tool, the revenue report review and report tool where you can put in where you're getting your funds from and you can either look that into the future and look at where you want to get funds or you can just analyze your current revenue streams and it will help you develop strategies in order to diversify your funding or look at other strategies to help you find additional funds. So those tools you do have to have a membership for. But before I do the question answer, I'll just go to this right here that we do have the TechSoup promotion coming up to the 14th and 15th and those are those days only. And if you are a U.S. based organization, it's ninety nine dollars for a membership, which is a huge savings. And if you're Canadian organization, it's one hundred and forty one Canadian dollars. So that sale is just going on the 14th and 15th. Next week, we also have a free webinar with just to learn about all these tools that we're talking about at Grand Station. And so you can get on and see if a Grand Station membership is right for you and you can see all the bells and whistles that we offer. So I'm going to take another drink of water and then see if Aretha has any questions for us. Yeah, David has been doing a great job of answering all the questions in the chat, but there are I mean, in the QA, there are a few from the first Unitarian Church of Baltimore. They want to know our financial audits require prior to applying for and receiving grants. And if so, any recommendations on finding auditors? I will take that one and Cindy, maybe you could help on that auditor side. But financial audits are not required by every funder. So it's kind of specific to the funder if they require it or not. What I what I tend to do with organizations is if an audit is required and they don't have one to reach out to the funder and see if there's any work around like that can you submit other documents in lieu of an audit and you'll just find that funders are either like, yes, you know, here's a work around or no. And then in those kinds of cases, you either need to find a partner or a fiscal agent or another agency to work with that would have the audit because if you just don't have it and it's required, then then you can't apply. But it is very funder specific is as to if it's required or not. And then kind of looking for auditors, Cindy, do you have anything on that? I don't, Alice. I don't have any specific auditors, but I do know that it's a it's pretty common for a big CPA firm to do pro bono work in the area of audits for nonprofits. So I mean, I think I would start big look at some of the big auditing firms in the area and see if they'll do a pro bono for you. Yeah. And that is really the trend of corporate giving that they are giving a lot of the time of their employees to work in community. So that's a trend that has really stayed. So, you know, working to see if like their financial people can work on your audit is is a trend in corporate giving. So it's always a good, you know, a good option to start to look at. Yeah, very helpful. Anonymous attendee said when you feel like you're beating a dead horse and trying to educate and train your board members, how do you shift their culture? Any thoughts behind that? Oh, yeah. So do you want to take this one, Cindy, and then I'll think. Yeah, you think it's important for you to think. Yes, I think thinking is good for you. You can talk without thinking. It's just it's just so interesting. Yeah, right. It's just so interesting that you brought this question up because it's exactly what I'm going through right now with a board I'm on. And it is. It's not easy. I think I think the important you almost, you know, you can lead a horse to water, right? You can't make a drink. We already had the dead horse thing. We probably should stop with the horses. But I. I think what I've what I've discovered is that sending articles, little educational pieces over to the board in general and say, hey, what do you think of this? You know, what do you think of that?  I said that right out loud.  And so bringing what I'm trying to do with the board. I'm on is to make them understand that what we're that our mission is fabulous. But this is needs to be a movement, not just we need to think out way outside the box here. And so I think so what I've been doing is just trying to bring in little bits and pieces like we have one board member who manages our podcasts and he does all the interviews. So I've lined up some people for him to interview that talk about this issue. And so it helps just to sort of bring it in from different angles and have someone do a guest log for your organization, for your website, that kind of thing. Yeah, it's tricky. It's tricky. Good luck. Wish me luck. Yeah. And I think kind of combining with the story I told about that internal shift. I mean, I think sometimes like, you know, providing information to people and then but like doing it with like member to member, you know, like it might start a little smaller and you're just kind of building a little internal team that kind of grows out from there, but that could also be, you know, instead of looking at the whole board at first kind of like building, you know, building that culture with the four or five people who then spread out to the 10 could also be an option and start, you know, start small and grow it out. Yeah, I like that. So Alice is nicer than I am, both of you. I'm less manipulative than Sydney is. Don had a couple of questions and then they were pretty much the same. He said that all of his efforts, he's in the US, but his products are used overseas. So his non-profit is the US base, but his product is overseas. So how do he change the direction toward people who work only in the US but have to shift their products overseas? That was his question.  I mean, I think that it really doesn't matter if it's, you know, US based or with other countries that people are still looking at, you know, again, you know, getting every voice heard in the room, working with the assets of all the different players that could come to the table. So I don't feel that much of this is only a US thing. What do you think? Yeah, no, I agree. I think you're spot on, Alice, I think you're right. The other thing that I wanna mention to this person is that when you're doing your funding research, you can look at funders based in the US, but also look at international funders because there are a lot of grant makers who might be interested in what you're doing if you're shipping something to Kenya, for example, you've got someone online from Kenya. So if you're shipping something, a product or a service to Kenya, you know, there's gonna be cross-border kinds of funders that you should be looking at. So if you are a member of Grant Station, be sure and use that international database as well as the US database. And you're gonna find, I think, and David, you may wanna hop in here or Alice, I forget, but I believe you can also, in the US database, they say if you're working overseas or doing international funding too, or you're looking for international support too. Is that right? I am not entirely sure. I guess in the international one, I know you can find that, but I don't know if the US one, but I can go look right now. Yeah, do that. I think you can, but I think it's in both places. Yeah, we have global. Okay. We do, we do. We have global. There you go, all right. Yeah, you can search under global, and then you'd find those that would support other countries as well. Okay, good, good. I just wanna make sure that he's looking in the right places. And Claire said, I appreciate all the points surrounding trending movements, but can you expand more on strategies to seek out specific grants that align with these trends, like inclusivity and defending democracy, et cetera? Well, I think part of it is that all those, go ahead. Well, Alice, you're gonna talk, we were gonna say the same thing, I'm sure. I think a lot of these are listed in the areas of interest when you're doing your research on grants station, you can open up those. We have, I don't know, I can't remember you guys, how many areas of interest we have. We have like, I don't know, a hundred, right? And you can find these different things like democracy and do a search on that particular, yeah, that particular area of interest. It's the same as type of support. If you're looking for capacity building, you can put at the end that you're a food bank in Montana, looking for equipment and general operating support or something like that. You put all those parameters in and it will bring up the funders that will do that. And at Grants Station, we only profile grant makers that are actually in the game. In other words, actively accepting letters of intent or grant proposals or have a deadline coming up or something like that. We don't profile grant makers that actually would never give to you. So it's a very vetted database of funders. Absolutely. And even some of those, I think some of these areas, I mean, I think that you're exactly right. I don't remember what your name was, Vos, but I think you're right. You wanna search for those that are defending democracy and those kinds of things, but even weaving those types of things in to other, to funders that don't specifically say that, I think also really adds a lot to your proposals. So I think certainly search for them, but then you can take that to any community foundation and demonstrate how you're incorporating these things across the board. Yeah, Alice, I think you're absolutely right. I mean, one of the things, if you take away nothing else from this webinar, you guys, know that you don't have to be focusing on building a movement. You don't have to be focusing on shifting to culture. You don't have to be focusing on place-based philanthropy. What you wanna do is weave these considerations, these thoughts into your existing proposals because it will add so much credibility to your request. Absolutely. Okay, and Jackie said, you mentioned that general operating grant funders want to know your challenges and struggles. Is this also true for capacity building grant funders? Oh, that's a great question, Jackie, I love it. So one of the things that, again, when I'm teaching about writing capacity building grants, that's the one time when you are talking about your organization and what its needs are, whereas in other programmatic support, you're not necessarily, the need is external to your organization. So I do like to encourage people to talk about what those strengths areas are that you have. So maybe you're very strong in leadership development and board development, but you're struggling with marketing as an area that you need to grow. So I like to use different organizational assessment tools to kind of demonstrate that need. So you're talking about your strengths, you're keeping it where a funder would be like, oh, this is a good organization, but then weaving in to that where you need that support to grow. And then again, the more you can show that if I have this better marketing plan or volunteer development plan or whatever it is, that that can help me serve better in the future, serve more in the future, that kind of thing. So the more you can connect that directly. But yes, you do it in a positive light, but yes, you would talk about those areas that you're struggling with because that's what your proposal is gonna be about. Alice, you say organizational assessment tools, do you have any favorites? You know, there are a number of them online that you can use. And so that does kind of vary at different times, but if you guys do have my contact information and I can send you links to like the free ones that are just kind of out there for anybody to use. And then there's other ones that you might have to pay for by working with a company, but feel free to email me and I'm happy to send you examples of those tools that you can use. Yep. So an anonymous Tindy said, this is great, but you're leaving out a fundamental issue, time. Now most time is required and where do we get it? Where do we get the time? Cindy, do you wanna take that one just because you have your whole time tutorial? Yeah, and seriously you guys, I do a whole webinar on time, but and where you find it and how you can write these proposals. But I'm gonna give you one tip right off the bat. And that is if you don't have a lot of time, you don't have a lot of staff or you're mostly a volunteer organization, something like that, look for proposals that are asked for like two to four pages of narrative.  You're gonna have to develop a whole plan. How do you do all that? You don't have time to do what you're doing now, right? So when I'm working with a smaller organization that doesn't have a dedicated staff to writing grant proposals or even just to fundraising, I always suggest work on the easier ones up front. And that will help you leverage more staff which will then allow you to leverage your time so you can put more time into it. The other thing is, and I'll do it very, very quick here, I always set up a fundraising, well, I set up a grant writing team and I've had as many as 17 people on that team. Right now I have a grant writing team for this organization I'm volunteering for. I think we have nine people and we're still building it out. So I have someone that's just dedicated to doing graphics for me. I have someone who's just dedicated to copy editing. I have someone who's just dedicated to putting the proposal together, organizing all the bits and pieces, making sure we've dotted all the eyes crossed all the teeth. So I put together a grant writing team mainly made up of volunteers from outside the organization, people that are looking to improve their skill sets whether it's in graphics or organizational development or whatever. So those are two tips. Excellent. Alice, did you wanna say anything? You know, I'm just gonna add one thing really quick but it is just what I also like to do when teaching grant writing is to show you how to use a framework to put all the pieces together of an application and how you can weave all these things in, right? That we've been talking about that are all floating up here. How do you put those in your planning framework and get everything planned out? If you do that bit of upfront work then you can take this information and pluck it out of the planning and submit it to 10 different funders the way they wanna see it. So I really believe that you can maximize your time and get more proposals written if you kind of follow that planning strategy and that's what I teach in all of my webinars. How do we do that planning so that the writing isn't so challenging and take as much time? So just a plug for maybe some of our future webinars if you wanna participate in that. Awesome. Cindy, earlier you had asked that people put in the chat like what kind of grants they're working on. So John put in the Q and A, he said, we're working to expand and grow our student leadership academy. It's a leadership development tool presents more of a professional package, better videos and extending opportunity to other communities and areas. You wanna provide him some feedback where he can search for some grants? Yeah, I mean, I think that in the grant station database there are you're gonna, I mean, Alice, you correct me, David, you correct me if I'm wrong, but he's gonna be overwhelmed with the number of grant makers that are be interested in funding something like that. But the truth of the matter is, I mean, what he's doing is it is hot. It is a hot topic right now. Taking, we need to train the next generation. We need to bring these students up. We need to create these leaders. So I think that you're gonna find dozens and dozens and dozens of grant makers that will fund this. Don't be, don't focus too much on just your, if you're based in, I don't know, in Ohio, don't just focus on Ohio grant makers. Make sure you're looking at national funders that are doing this kind of thing. Because even though it may affect only a small portion of the United States, a lot of these national funders are looking for these kinds of very focused development projects. So I would look, you know, be sure and look broadly as well.  Okay, Laura says more than once, my grant was met with the response that the organization is looking to give a grant to a more established nonprofit with the history of success. How does one show this type of history of success as a startup? I just make it up, no, I'm kidding. Kidding, kidding. So I mean, one thing you can do is to partner with a more established organization and submit proposals together.  Alice, do you have thoughts? No, I do like that idea of that partnering. And then that a funder would be able to see that you've done the work and yet, because you just don't have the track record yet, this other organization would get the dollars that you would then implement the project. And I think that at first, you do have to really probably focus a little bit more internally as you're reaching out, like the strength of the board that got together to develop this organization. Like that's gonna have to be a stronger emphasis in a new organization or why this approach that you've developed is just well researched, well documented to be effective. Those kinds of things, I think you have to just highlight a whole lot more because they can't base it off your track record and you can just really focus on the strengths of what you have developed and then develop that task that you were talking about and all that. And I also think that, especially a lot of grant makers don't want to give you a grant award because they're not sure of your ability to fiscally manage it. And so you may want to look at a fiscal sponsor. And again, I can't remember the name of that website, Alice, but there is a website just to go on Google you guys and look at fiscal sponsor. It's an association and they provide fiscal sponsorship for, especially for startups, new organizations like yours. And if you can't find it, just email me too because I have some of that information too. So it says, have you encountered any efforts successful in attracting funders that would assist returning citizens with small grants or start small businesses? Many times business owners, business ownership is most viable past the earning sustainable income. I'll start on that one a little bit. So there are not a lot of grants for for-profit organizations out there. You're gonna want, if you're gonna find anything you're gonna be wanna look under the Small Business Association and that sort of thing for those types of support that they might provide. And I had one other thought that I just lost when I can't see the question. Sorry, let me go back. I got it. And then most viable path. Oh, and then I would look at, sorry, Cindy, I would look at different CDFIs, the Community Financial Development Institution. I think that is it. And those are really, it's federal money that's given to these intermediary organizations who then help build the capacity of nonprofits and for-profits. So it might not be a grant. It could be a loan or whatever or just technical assistance, but those CDFIs are really geared to help small businesses as well. And I would just, I would add to that that if as an organization, perhaps become a member of the Social Enterprise Alliance because a lot of what you're doing is helping these people start small businesses and many of them are social enterprises. And then the CDFI really comes into play there as does the, like the social finance fund out of California.  You don't have to be a nonprofit as well as nonprofit organizations. And again, if you're a grant station member just be sure and click on social enterprises when you're doing your research and you'll be able to find some interesting funders for the work that you're doing. Awesome, Randall said, we are a new nonprofit and one grantee said, they like what we do, but our concern we will fold and their money will be wasted. How do we convince them otherwise? I would answer that with kind of demonstrating to that funder what your kind of sustainability plan is just letting them know that you have other, even if you don't have it in hand that you have strategies there to support the work that you're doing ongoing. Cause it does make sense that a funder would ask that question like if I give you this $50,000 now, how do I know that you're gonna be there in the future or I didn't just waste $50,000? So I think anything that you can do to show what your long-term financial strategies are, the steps that you're taking to get other donors or to do fundraisers or to reach out for more grant opportunities or whatever. I think that that's some of the strategies I would use to try to talk them into it. And I also think that earned income plays an important role there. So depending on the kind of organization you are, you may be able to develop an earned income revenue stream. And I think that earned income revenue stream can say more than just about anything else because you can say you're going to go after grant funding but in truth, if you're gonna get it or not they're debating, right? So you want, but an earned income stream of some sort whether it's trainings or a product you're gonna produce or whatever it is that is gonna assure them probably more than just about anything else. I think you are muted, Aretha. I was, thank you. Last two, Tony said our foundation is looking for funding for general operating support so we can serve more of our constituents. And also for K-12 teacher scholarships for these teachers to go through training to write smaller foundation grants proposals. Any thoughts on that? Well, I have one and that is if you're trying to set up a scholarship fund of any kind it's always smart to do a corporate campaign. And so that court, and it should be an annual campaign and you do it every year and the campaign is just to endow that scholarship fund. And so you look at the businesses, the corporations that might be interested in the area where you're giving the scholarships and you go after those as potential funders. And I would do it every year. I've done that many times with many organizations over the years and they built scholarships that were the scholarship funds that were as small as $10,000 up into a million dollars or more now. So you just have to be persistent. Corporate campaigns a great way to raise money around any kind of scholarship program you may offer. Well, I wanna thank you all for being here today. There was a question that David just answered but I think it's worth somebody chime in. Somebody wants to know after they do the $99 promotion, what happens after that? I don't know. We'll let you stay. It's downhill. We do have renewal programs that you can do. So every year, if you want to renew your subscription or your membership you can renew it annually. You can even renew it through TechSoup, right? Everything is like, if you did it through TechSoup that last time you just go on and renew through the new promotion that'll be the 14th and 15th. And yeah, and if you, you know, yeah. So that's what you do. You just renew it every year. And so you can renew it every year. There's another question that just popped in. After you buy it one year for $99 you can buy it the next year for $99. So that can just be a constant renewal. If you don't hit the TechSoup renewal thing we generally send you an invitation to do your renewal at a really reduced price as well. So you would get that from us saying, oh, your membership and it will probably be at our general rate just right now is 179 during our promotional times. Normally 699, but during our promotional times is 179. And I would just mention, I would also just mention that once you become a member of Grant Station you'll be able to log in and you've got all these databases and tools you can use. We have tons of writing tools, tons of samples. We have a proposal, a winning proposal contest that we run every other year. We have tons of winning proposals posted on the website for your review. So you can get an idea of how other people have done it. We have step-by-step tutorials on how to write the need statement and the budget and all the different components of a grant proposal how to build a grant strategy. There's just tons of tools and resources embedded in the site once you become a member. And we have a very high renewal rate. So I think you'll be happy. And I got to go to another meeting. Thank you all for being here. Thank you all for what you do. Thank you, David, in the background. You've been awesome, Cindy. As always, thank you so much for being here and Alice, thank you for all what you do. Have a great day, everybody. Thank you, bye everyone.


Hello. Welcome back to my home. Today I'm wanting to give you kind of like a little bit of an update tour of my house because as you guys know, I purchased this home back in July, I did an empty house tour for you guys which if you have yet to watch that, I will link it in a card up above and we have now moved in about a month and a half, two months ago and I wanted to share with you guys kind of like an update where our things are furniture in the space and give you like a little update tour of the house. So one of the first things I wanted to do as well is also kind of talk to you guys about how this used to be a duplex because I feel like there's a lot of new viewers that might not know this was a duplex and how it was actually a duplex is this was completely walled off here. So then this right here was one unit like you'd walk up and then that's one unit and then this actually has a completely separate entrance across the way to the other unit. So there's really two entries to this home and there's doubles of everything because it was a duplex and that's kind of what I wanna walk through and share with you guys. So I actually ended up adding this archway here and I loved that there was electrical above it because it just seems intentional but let's walk into our first living room. This is the lower living room and currently there's quite a bit of furniture in here as you guys might be able to see and I will say that I didn't design this. I mean, it's really just like the excess of furniture from the old apartment plus some extra items in here that Justin and Marie kind of like pushed together to make a living room arrangement which actually has been really nice because whenever we do any sort of like going out or to dinner or hosting, it's always at our house. Like our friends always come here so I like being able to have an area where everyone can sit down and there's multiple kind of like conversation areas. So this is the current living room. I love the fireplace in here. I do wanna remove these little corbel pieces and I also have this incredible sofa. I love this couch so much.  It's from Castlery. It's the most incredible couch ever and I think it's gonna stay in this room. It's just a perfect fit in here. Some target chairs and this room still really is kind of storagey in a sense to where it doesn't have too much of a design yet but I'm ready to paint this room. We're working on the upstairs living room right now so just haven't really gotten to this space. There's this really cute little bookcase over here and then these sconces are original to the house. I love them. And by the way, you guys, the vintage drop is actually today. It's probably in about an hour. I think this video is going up at nine. It's at 10 a.m. on Lone Fox so if you wanna shop the drop, definitely make sure to check that out at 10 but let's go into here. So this actually is the door for the lower unit. So if we didn't have that archway over there, this is how you would enter. You'd walk through here and then this formerly used to be the dining room of the lower unit but as you guys know, I transitioned this into my movie theater room slash game room and I love this room so much. It's one of the only finished spaces that has been completed in the house and I kind of transitioned down here just because I ended up finding this sofa and then I had it re-upholstered and I was just so excited once I saw the re-upholstered couch to get to designing the space. So that's kind of why this space came to be pretty quickly compared to some of the other ones. Transitioning into this room, this is the lower breakfast nook. I love this breakfast nook because this one actually has full length windows so it's super bright in here whereas the upper one has like their mid height windows but that's actually nice because I wanna put a banquette in there which I'll share with you guys and that allows for it. This actually, I don't know if I want it to be a breakfast nook. There's something about me wanting to convert the lower kitchen which is through here and this breakfast nook into something other than a kitchen because I really don't need two kitchens. We have a full kitchen upstairs. All of the actual ovens and like ranges, microwaves, everything is completely unattached from the wall if that makes sense. So we can remove all of this and have like a tiled room with a sink. So I don't know what I wanna make this. I almost wanna make it like a craft room of some sort where I could clean up over here. I'm able to like, I don't know, like maybe have a work desk here. I wanna turn it into something useful and I don't have use for a second kitchen. So if you guys have any ideas, totally let me know. Kinda wanted to also transition this into like a snack bar for the movie theater room. I thought that could be cute. Just something different than your traditional kitchen because I just know I won't get too much use out of it but I'm definitely keeping all the original tile working here because it's one of the reasons I purchased a home, this arch behind me is one of my favorite vignettes. And then right around the corner, this is considered the butler's pantry but it's a lot of cabinetry. So tons of storage. We have like full length cabinets up here and it's actually still pretty great quality. So I just don't know. I don't know what I wanna do and I love this entire wall of green tile with the checkerboard on the bottom. A lot of you are wondering if the hutch blocked this entry and it definitely doesn't. It's just a little bit of a tighter entry but we have so many entries to the movie room that I wanted the hutch to be such a focal in there. So I ended up leaving that. And then as you walk out here, the first room in the hallway is my storage room. And I don't know if you guys have seen this. Actually, I think I've shared it just quickly on the channel. So you might have seen it in a couple of videos but you know my old Lone Fox room in the previous apartment, this is the updated version. It's actually probably around the same size. I didn't wanna increase my like storage space too much. I wanna still reserve what I have and what I use and kind of like filter it in and out. So I just don't have like an excess of items if that makes sense. But a lot of this over here is just pieces that I like to keep on hand. Like this really, really cool taper holder that you got. It's like a driftwood piece. Anything that I find that I personally wanna use in my home or my designs, I store on these shelves. And then all of this over here is kind of my craft supplies, paint, glues, all that sort of stuff. And then I mean more storage over here as you guys can see as well. But this is sort of just a storage room and it serves its purpose. So let's head out to the hallway and we're gonna go into the bathroom. This is the pink bathroom. And I love the pink bathroom. I really, really do. I feel like this bathroom is very hit or miss. Like some people love it, some people don't like it. And I feel like the people that don't like it are just kind of relating it more so to my other designs in the house and seeing that it won't match the same aesthetic. But I'm really gonna try to make this pink work. I don't know how, I have no idea. But it's going to be a fun journey. And I feel like it's just such a focal point of this home.  It feels bright and airy and I love the color. It's just a very happy color. So I kind of want to keep this bathroom as is. I might paint the ceiling of color to maybe tie it together. I'm thinking about adding like a shower curtain above. Like one of those oval metal shower curtains above this shower here to add some more pattern. I just need to break up a little bit of the pink and add some other elements from other places in the house to make it all tie together. But I do love this bathroom and it's again another reason why I purchased the house. So I will be keeping the pink tile. We are going to go to the last two rooms at the end of the hallway. This room is my vintage room as I call it. It's where I've been storing all the vintage items. It's actually going to be like my workshop studio. So the other room was storage where everything's stored on the shelving. It's not pretty. This room I actually want to make pretty. I'm going to give you a quick look at it. Looks absolutely insane at the moment. That's all you get. It's currently where I've been storing all the vintage for the vintage drops, where I've been photographing all the items for the online store. And so it's kind of just like a little bit of a mess at the moment. But I do want to get some really beautiful shelving in there and clean it up and actually make it a very presentable like studio space that I feel inspired to work in. We have some great close storage here. And then this is my guest room for my parents. I consider it to be my parents bedroom. If you will. Still a little Christmassy because I actually ended up setting this up for Christmas when they came and stayed with me. And it's just stayed the same since we do have another guest room upstairs though. And the thing I love about this room in particular is it does have a bathroom attached to it. And the bathroom is just so cute. It's pink and green as well. It's a really small one. But the thing about this bathroom is it is so damaged. Like the tile is so, so damaged. So I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to keep this bathroom as is. I'm probably going to reach out to like a tile preservation company and see what could happen in here. But for the moment, it's just a small little like powder bathroom, but it is attached. It also has a shower and a bathtub in there. I mean, that's the entire lower floor. Let's head out and back up to the top. So this is the main living room. And this is the entire reason I purchased this house. As you guys know, this ceiling here, the cathedral ceiling, which actually didn't have any electrical in it. I had to add the electrical. Found this chandelier. It's the 1920s Gothic Revival Chandelier from Long Beach. I am obsessed with it. I'm doing some built-in bookshelves against the back there that you guys can see. And those are going to be changing so much. That's just like the base structure of the bookshelf at the moment. They are going to be changing and looking extremely high end and very built in in the end. Working on the fireplace, I actually did the paint and I didn't love the texture that I had created. So I did another layer of plaster and I'm going to try to get it a little more textury. So it matches kind of the original texture on here. My Monterey chairs, which I do want to get re-upholstered for this room. But once it's fully painted, I'll decide on fabric for there. This is my absolutely incredible pottery barn sofa, you guys. I just love this couch. It's like a brown leather. It's just really, really beautiful.  Currently it houses everything that was in the living room. So there's like a lot of random trees. There's a TV in here. There's pottery. There's a lot in here. It's just temporary. We're going to be moving it back in once all the painting is done. And that's why there's just stuff everywhere in this room because it really is a work in progress. We are going to work our way into the dining room. The dining room hasn't had much happen to it but it actually kind of has because previously these doors here used to be a tiny, tiny flap doors. I converted it into an arch that they made it into and this leads into our breakfast nook. This over here actually used to be tiny flap doors about right here. And then I ended up adding in this entire archway here. Originally I wanted to remove all the walls but they were structural and it was going to cost over $100,000 to remove them. I said, absolutely not. So I did this nice big arch here. That way we kind of have this coffee bar, just like moment. And I love how it's centered through the arch when you're in the back of the room. So this is the kitchen, the start of the kitchen. And I painted the cabinetry Van Buren Brown. This is another room in the house that it's done. So the only two rooms that I've completed are the movie theater room and the kitchen. As you can see, Brown is definitely a trend at the moment for myself, I love it. And this is Van Buren Brown. All the hardware is from Rejuvenation. And this really is my favorite room in the house for sure. I put so much time, so many hours and so much love into the space. I found this incredible marble from a stone yard and then I had it completely custom cut to fit everything. I literally lay the template for every single piece of marble so that it flowed together, had them create a sink out of the marble. It was such a cool experience. I found these vintage lights. So much happened in here. Like literally built the entire range hood. New stove just arrived, as you guys saw in the last video just a couple of weeks ago.  I did plaster on the walls from me Oded. It looks so good. We did this by hand. In here is the breakfast nook. And this is what I was saying that the windows are kind of like a little higher than the other ones. So we can actually do a banquette if I wanted to. And I wanna know your guys' thoughts. What are your thoughts on me doing a banquette here? Whether it be like a kind of like a half round banquette. But with this table because I created this table from an old Moroccan tabletop and then I added a terracotta base to it. So it's kind of like a custom table. But I don't know if it's gonna look great with a banquette but something about me wants a banquette in here. I feel like it could just be so pretty and then have it like a pulse trick with a beautiful fabric. But these chairs are really cool. They're from Badlands. And that is kind of like the dining kitchen breakfast nook area, which is very similar to the below. But this room below is a movie theater. So it would have been the dining room as it is in here. But the dining room in here is definitely a huge work in progress. I really haven't done too much. But let's head to the hallway so I can share with you guys some of the rooms up here. So this is Marie's bedroom. And my house actually faces a red home. And the red home bounces red light in here. I need to like ask them if they'll paint their house but I haven't got the courage to ask them yet. So I'm gonna do that very shortly. I'm just kidding. I don't know what I'm gonna do but I'm gonna figure it out. Marie's room does have a little bit of a red tint to it but it's not too bad. Her setup is pretty similar to the previous room but the previous owners actually bought almost all the furniture in her space. So we just kind of brought over her mattress and some of the other pieces that were left and tried to create a cute little space in here brought the rug from the living room. We're gonna be working on the bedrooms shortly probably after finishing the living room up here then maybe transition into the bedroom spaces. There's a lot to be worked on up here though. So let me share with you guys the other rooms that need a lot of work. This is my bathroom and I don't like it at all. Like I really, really don't like this bathroom. I don't like the gray tile. It's just so dark in here and just gray also mixed with the stark white. I feel like the dark gray with a stark white is just giving cold. It's just not my favorite. The bathtub is plastic. Let's actually transition to my bedroom because I threw away the door that went here. It was in the bathroom and then it got thrown away. Couldn't tell you how. So I don't have a bathroom door to my room like that. And I love my room. It gets such, such great lighting. I have really everything from my previous room in here. It's my old nightstands, old bed or not old bed but my old headboard. I mean, this is my room, this is where I sleep. This is where I edit my videos. I don't really know what I wanna do in here. I'm not sure of the color. I'm not sure of the style. I haven't really done anything for my own room yet. I've been focusing on the main, more central rooms that everyone's in. So once I get here, hopefully we'll have some good ideas. But if you guys have anything, please let me know in the comment section below. But I'm gonna take you guys to actually probably the last room in the house which is the last guest room. Which looks like this. Honestly, this guest room is not very guest friendly. Like we have an air mattress on the floor, a twin one and a dining chair in the corner. Really, we had a couple of our friends stay over one night. We blew up the air mattress, popped it in this room and I really have not done anything in here. This is actually Marie's bathroom through here. So she uses this one. Below would be the room that my parents have the guest room attached with the pink bathroom. So this one actually was redone, very similar style to mine which this one needs completely redone as well. We're gonna be redoing that. There's a laundry room right here but there's so much. We have like appliances, there's a lot happening in there. So I'll pop in some clips from the empty house tour so you could see the laundry room in case you haven't seen it yet. That is the entire house in its current state after moving in and sharing with you. Actually, let's go to my room and do that room. I'm in the bathroom. So that's the tour of my house after being in here for a couple of months and working on it for about the past, I'd say seven months or so I ended up getting this house in July. So I hope that you guys enjoyed this video. I just wanted to give you an update to kind of share with you how it's looking, bring you a little bit into my life I guess and share with you guys like my house. And I hope that you enjoyed it. I would love any of your opinions, any of your ideas, absolutely anything you have. Leave it in the comment section below because I really want this video to kind of be like a creative, inspiring section in the comments that can spark ideas for some of the rooms. We can kind of bounce ideas off of each other so totally leave those. And also do not forget to check out the vintage drop today which is at 10 a.m. over on loanbox.com. I'll catch you guys all on the next one. Bye.