AmeriCorps*VISTA Presence in Fayetteville, at Kingdom CDC

The first interview with a VISTA member in the "AmeriCorps*VISTA Presence in North Carolina" article series is with Blake, who is over at Kingdom CDC in Fayetteville.  This interview really excited me because of all of his experience in nonprofit organization, and how willing he is to share his knowledge.  I've been lucky enough to talk to him during our VISTA training in Atlanta, as well as trainings the collaborative has held for the VISTAs in Durham, and am so happy to be able to share this with ya'll!  Enjoy!  -Andriana Bicanin

Blake is an AmeriCorps VISTA with an abundance of knowledge and experience in nonprofit and community organization.  He has spent the majority of his adult life working at nonprofits throughout the country, and now brings his wealth of knowledge to Kingdom CDC. 

When I asked him what his non profit experience is, he gave me the “readers digest” version, which is still vast and impressive:

Founding member of the Fair Housing Center of Greater Boston.  It is the only Fair Housing nonprofit in Eastern Massachusetts.

Program Assistant/ job readiness trainer/ job developer: welfare to work program. MassJob Training Inc.

Program Assistant- Moving to Opportunity Fair Housing Demonstration Program of Boston.  This was the precursor to the mobile section 8 and housing choice voucher program.  This program allowed the government to move to section 8 and housing vouchers holders throughout the country, instead of only in state.

Department of Health and Human Services, Social Security Administration.

Blake’s first experience with nonprofit organization was when he received a certificate from Literacy Volunteers of America and started teaching GED classes at City Colleges of Chicago. 

At one time, the south side of Chicago housed a thriving steel mill industry, but this industry found itself closing its doors and large amounts of people were left jobless.  He met the people who were directly affected, a majority of which had little or no education. and decided that his path was in the nonprofit sector, giving back.  He did not know what he wanted to do, he just knew he wanted to do something.

Why did you choose this program in AmeriCorps VISTA:

Community asset building is what he does, it allows him to continue linking people together with the resources in the community, while he gets the platform for when he talks to other nonprofits in the area on how they can partner with each other; these organizations need to partner together.  He then explained how there are two sides to nonprofit work that cannot be ignored.  There is a business side and then the nonprofit side.  With the business side you need numbers so you can keep getting grants and other donations  and the nonprofit or visionary side breaks down barriers for knowing what community assets are and communicating this to community.  It is also important for nonprofits to share clients with other non profits to get more done. 

With this he shares an experience he had with Habitat for Humanity.  When it comes to nonprofit work he strongly believes it’s about the family.  No matter the age it is possible to involve everyone in the family in what is being done and everyone benefits.  Habitat for Humanity requires that the receiving family put in a certain amount of “sweat equity” into the building of their house, but small children are not allowed to help build.  The Habitat group he worked with allowed children to support their family by getting good grades, which then translated as sweat equity hours- if the children in the household received A’s and B’s it was counted towards the building of their home.  This holistic approach brought each member of the family into the process, and the children involved usually received better grades!  As Blake said, the “Holistic approach is a beautiful thing.”

What does the organization you support do:

Due to the lack of decent, affordable housing for low income individuals in Fayetteville, a group of five or six Church folks came together and brainstormed ideas for such homes.  Through this effort, came the formation of the Kingdom CDC; 15 years later, decent, affordable housing is still its core mission.

The IDA program was brought into the program in 2003.  A big piece of what they deal with is foreclosure prevention and mortgage mitigation, with financial literacy built in.  Clients are required to take classes, and they also offer financial literacy classes free to the community.  Very recently, they conducted a class on budget and credit counseling, at Fayetteville State University.

An overview of Kingdom Community Development:

Foreclosure Prevention

Pre purchase Counseling

Financial Literacy

Building Homes

The greatest challenge to capacity is staff.  Not including the director and receptionist, there is a staff of 3 counseling clients, and doing everything for the organization.

What is it that you do with the organization:

Blake’s assignment at Kingdom Community is to lay the groundwork for making a stronger program, and talking to different nonprofits in the area with whom they can partner.  He also conducts volunteer recruitment.  He has identified three prime locations for recruitment, of those are:

-Fayetteville Technical Community College

-Minority Leadership Development Program- Sponsored by

United Way

of Cumberland County  They train individuals on how to work on nonprofit boards and committees. 

-ICL: Institute for Community Leadership- Sponsored by Cumberland County Chamber of Commerce, Fayetteville Technical Community College, The Arts Council and Cumberland County Schools. 

What do you find most challenging:

Pace.  “As an ISTJ,” he tends to stick to what is outlined in the goals and timelines of a project, and there are some things he would like to switch around, but does not because of adherence to the action plan as set in the VISTA Assignment Description. 

He would like to start working on making things more time efficient, and would like to create a central database.  There is currently no central database- everyone has information on their own computers.  They rely on the directors memory when they need to find the information for an IDA participants.  He feels that it would be more time efficient if this information was readily available, as they now have to manually get information.

As Blake said earlier in our conversation, the biggest challenge is staff. There are four people doing all the programs which keeps things busy, and their internal resources are spread thin. Space is also an issue.  They are located in downtown Fayetteville and share a very small space between the all of them.

Nonprofit workers suffer from a high burnout rate.  This is common because workers don’t always see action right away, or even over a longer period of time.  The people who choose to work in nonprofit organizations have all these great visions and missions, and tend to get overwhelmed by everything that comes with working in a nonprofit.  They come into this line of work idealistic as to what they can help to accomplish and the people they can help, but run into many of the same problems, such as: hindrances in community acceptance; an overall feeling that they cannot help enough and serve all the needs of the community; there is also the fact that nonprofits are businesses as well, and not just a mission- individuals come into the program with a great mission in mind, and then find out that there are numbers to crunch, meetings to go to, and people to report to. 

The people in this line of work need to realize is that they can’t help everyone.  Not only is this a highly emotion driven field, but as he noted, the “Pay is lousy.”

How can people get involved with this effort, who do they contact?

Contact Blake Lucas or Elsie Gilmore at: 910 484 2722

What suggestions do you have for someone who wants to get into nonprofit organization.  What steps should they take:

Volunteer at different nonprofits and find something that you truly like to do.  Think of the things that make you happy.  Do you like to build?  Then volunteer with an organization that needs handy people.  Do you like recycling?  Volunteer at a Restore Warehouse such as Habitat of Humanity has.  If you love reading then read to the blind.  Try to find something that you can learn from, but you also like so that you don’t get in there and lose interest.  Match it up.  If you are a student and it is possible, volunteer with an organization where you can get credit or gain skill to further your career.  There are VITA sites around the country where you can become a trained tax preparer. 

Look inside yourself and do what you like and what your passion is, and find an organization to do that with.  Don’t get scared to get dirty.

Networking is also important.  Go to community events and seek out what is going on in the area, and apply.  Clients can also be the best leads.  They share what’s going on with them, what they have heard, then that spark flickers and you go “Oh I can do that, I can look into that.” 

Political views aside, nonprofits do the dirty work.

Nonprofits also incorporates cross training of what you need in the business world. Regardless of public or private. Networking, communication, budgeting, grants, proposals, dealing with people- <= you do all of this in the nonprofit world, and it makes you valuable in the private sector as a manager.

What is your favorite part of this line of work; what is the best part?

With each question I ask, he takes a moment to reflect on his experiences and gather memories from a life of public sector work.  With this question he paused for a second and responded with, “Would have to be the look on the families face when they have achieved something,” and knowing he played a “small part.”

Here is a beautiful story from when he worked and lived in Boston:

When working on the Boston welfare to work program he worked with a single mother of a 3-4 year old.  Together they “Knocked on doors and finally got her a job.”  He left this program and went on to work at MTO.  One day, serendipity walked into his office in the form of the same woman he helped find a job years earlier.  Because he knew her history, they worked together towards her entry into a family self sufficiency program.  Eventually, they were able to get her a Section 8 voucher, and she moved into a Canton condominium. Canton, MA is an extremely wealthy, upper middle and upper class area just south of Boston MA, and she remains the only person to have lived in a condo there under Section 8.

 

Three years later he was walking out of a store and heard and saw someone waving and calling out, “Mr. Blake!”  At first he did not recognize the excited woman coming at him.  After a moment he realized it was the same woman he had helped all those years ago.  She had lost weight, looked great, and right in the middle of the street she gave him a bog ol’ hug.  They chatted for a while as she regaled him with stories of her accomplishments and achievements since their last encounter.  This single mother of a small child was promoted at work, went back to school, her kids were doing great, and with all of that she thanked him.  She thanked him for listening and not telling her what to do, equipping her for success, and advising her.

After telling me this story, he doesn’t miss a beat and reflectively says, “That is what nonprofit work is all about,” that is what he likes to achieve.  And even with the clients he is not able to help, he still wants to have given them something- he hopes they learned something from their interaction.  The people are what keep him going, and he reiterates, “That’s ‘the best part.’”