The creator is Greer Mendy and the space is the Tekrema Center for Culture and Art. Greer, a lawyer, mother, wife, artist, and long-time resident of the Lower 9^th Ward, opened Tekrema in 2006 as a place to preserve and develop African and diaspora art.

Today it is so much more. Tekrema offers a variety of diverse activities including: art, cooking, and dance classes, and gardening, film studies, tutoring, and family legal support. Over the holidays, it produced Black Nativity, a Langston Hughes play. “Art and creativity is how I educate. It’s my way of inspiring and giving back to the community I love,” explains Greer. Tekrema is a vibrant, social safe-haven for all who walk through its doors. Because of Greer’s enthusiasm and hard work, Tekrema’s attraction is growing beyond the 9^th Ward. It is growing into a center that sells tools of a different kind: tools for life.

The Greater New Orleans Foundation awarded Tekrema Center a 2011 IMPACT grant that supports after school programming for up to 80 kids and provides for three cultural community events.

St. Anna’s had received a new mobile home as a generous gift to use for emergency housing. The ever-resourceful rector of St. Anna’s, Father Terry, had a better idea for its use. Why not turn it into a much-needed medical facility? Now, all he needed was a registered nurse. Luckily, he didn’t have to look too far.

At first Diana remembers her reluctance, thinking of the large responsibility that entails running a medical program. “Eventually I took the leap of faith,” said Diana. Now, six years later, she is St. Anna’s community wellness director with a staff of many including a social worker, a part-time doctor, and several volunteer medical students and nurses.

“Eighty percent of all the patients we see are uninsured or underinsured, and we service between two and four thousand people a year,” says Diana. Referred to as SAMM , short for St. Anna’s Medical Mission, they provide a gamut of services including mental health counseling, high blood pressure monitoring, diabetic and cholesterol testing. “I’ve diagnosed illnesses and prescribed medicine to people who have never seen a doctor before,” says Diana.

St. Anna’s mission reaches the community beyond church walls, and it’s people like Diana who are driving the call.

SAMM received funding from the Foundation’s Coastal Community Fund.

Click here to see the recent ABC spot on St. Anna’s Medical Mission.

Through the  story of two cats, Lafayette LeChat and his fat cat lawyer friend Claude DeMieux, the book describes various ways to plan a charitable gift while enjoying a day doing all their favorite things in New Orleans.   Charming illustrations by Mark Andreson accompany the text written by Lauren Cecil (pictured with Lafayette), a children’s book author and development associate at GNOF.

“We wanted to make a book about planned giving that’s fun and positive, and expresses the warm feelings we all have for the city we love,” said Cecil, who signed copies of the book for attendees.

“Though it is written in the style of a children’s book, Giving While Living is intended for adults who aren’t necessarily cash rich but want to give back to the city they adore,” explained the Foundation’s President and CEO Albert Ruesga.  “As the book illustrates, there are many ways to give.”

On board the streetcar parked on Howard Avenue at Lee Circle, Lafayette shook hands with his new friends, posed for photos, and danced to the sounds of trumpet player Mario Abney.  Attendees munched on some of Lafayette’s favorite snacks: sausages, Roman chewing candy, Hubig’s Pies, and peppermint hot chocolate provided by Liberty’s Kitchen and Crescent Pie and Sausage Company.

You can share in Lafayette’s adventures while learning about some of the many ways to give back to the community.  The book, Giving While Living, can be viewed online here, or you can order a copy by emailing asklafayette@gnof.org.

Written by freelance writer, Rebecca Connor.

Responded to Families after the Oil Spill

The Coastal Community Fund responded to needs created by the oil spill disaster. The Fund fed 90,000 residents through Second Harvest Food Bank; provided emergency assistance to 8,140 individuals facing fiscal, housing, and/or employment crisis; administered health and social services in physical and/or emotional need; and offered long-term assistance in financial planning and workforce training to coastal residents.

Addressed the Needs of Nonprofits

Based on the survey results from 175 nonprofit leaders and 80 conversations, the Needs Scan Report provides an honest account of the state of local nonprofits.  Foundational to GNOF’s Organizational Effectiveness work, the Needs Scan has provided a platform for ongoing engagement with nonprofit leaders on how to address the challenges facing local nonprofits.

Helped Families Move Home

This year alone, the Community Revitalization Fund helped over 2,100 families move into newly-renovated and energy efficient homes and apartments which helped reduce blight and stabilize neighborhoods. During the four-year life of this initiative, we’ve helped 11,600 families find homes.

Launched the Coastal 5+1 Initiative

The Initiative has engaged residents in six coastal parishes in citizen-led planning for their future in coastal communities. Coastal 5+1 supported UNO-CHART to conduct a comprehensive outreach and education program focusing on community sustainability.

Partnered with the City to Provide Employment Opportunities

The Foundation worked in partnership with the City of New Orleans and other organizations to match a $300,000 federal grant and launch a new initiative to train workers for the jobs coming in the biotech and healthcare sectors.

Provided Learning Opportunities for Nonprofits Leaders

Through workshops on advocacy, fundraising, and evaluation to one-on-one capacity coaching sessions with nonprofit leaders, our Organizational Effectiveness team has quickly become a very real presence in the community addressing very real organizational needs.

Initiated a Regional Approach to Revitalization

In partnership with the Ford Foundation, we’re focusing on connecting residents with workforce housing, good jobs, and efficient transportation in the most efficient and equitable way possible.

Invested in the Best-of-the-Best

The IMPACT Program is the Foundation’s largest discretionary grants program that supported 33 nonprofits in the following four categories: arts & culture; education; health & human services; and youth development. Now in its third year, we have invested $2.4 million in local nonprofits through the IMPACT Program.

Informed the Community

Conducted Circle Talks events to discuss what’s working and what’s not in our community; held bus tours called Understanding New Orleans, One Neighborhood at a Time to introduce residents to outstanding nonprofit work; and, hosted New Orleans Now to celebrate local and national philanthropy.

Published Lafayette, the French Quarter Cat

To discover the joy of giving, email asklafayette@gnof.org for a free copy of this delightful book about the good feeling you get when you make a planned gift.

Here are a few tips to share:

• Before doing anything, create a fundraising plan, including your organization’s goals with a yearly calendar & budget. (We can’t overemphasize the importance of this step.)
• Create a donor or member database tracking those who have given or plan to give to your organization. Recordkeeping is a key step in any donor development effort.
• Focus on the individual donor and ask yourself “why do people give?” (Frequently, people don’t know it’s okay to give unless they’ve been asked.)
• Be a fundraising detective! Ask your board or volunteers to refer friends; make sign-up sheets at your events; inquire with partnering organizations; see what the giving climate is like in your field. Learn more about current and potential donors that can help you grow their support.
• Once they give, thank your donors profusely. You can’t thank people enough for how their gift directly impacts your organization’s growth. People want to know what difference their dollars are making.

Grantseeking tips:

• Finding the right grant opportunities can be hard, but  LANO’s Foundation Center & the Foundation Directory Online is a great place to start. (GuideStar.org is another resource.)
• Get all documentation and mission plans in order before starting to write (copy of IRS determination letter,  most recent 990, audited financial statement, and list of board & staff and their roles).
• Choose the right grant for your organization – don’t apply for those out of reach or out of your service area.
• Know in advance how you will use the money – and know how you will proceed when the grant term ends.  Work with staff or volunteers who are responsible for the work and plan together for success when that grant funding comes through.
• Follow directions. Know in advance the things you can’t do by yourself (like supplying a board member’s signature) and pay attention to the grant directions.
• Rules for writing: Keep it concise, use programmatic stories of success, be specific, stay on track, and edit.

A few take-aways regarding corporate giving:

• Find potential donors – businesses that fit  your audience, vendors, and other key stakeholders
• Send a letter of introduction with your mission, your connection, your ask, how they can benefit, and have a follow-up plan
• Recognize your corporate donors in different and creative ways

Recommended Fundraising & Nonprofit Resources:

-          GNOF’s Needs Scan Report, Primer Two: Fundraising, What’s the Right Mix?

-          Fundraising for Social Change, by Kim Klein

-          GivingUSA’s The Annual Report on Philanthropy for the Year 2010

Things to Remember:

1)      Fundraising is about raising donors first and foremost

2)      Be prepared and make use of what you already have: resources, relationships, information

3)      Know who you are and what you do

4)      Planning is everything

Next Steps:

The Greater New Orleans Foundation will be holding follow-up Learning Community Sessions on Fundraising. Check our website for further updates.

P.J. Hahn, director of coastal zone management for Plaquemines Parish, pointed out that in addition to the effects of the oil itself, some of the efforts to clean up the spill had further devastating effects on the coast. “Water was diverted from the river to try to push out the oil,” said Hahn. “But it didn’t work. We got oil in our marsh anyway, and because oysters need a certain degree of salinity, the diversion wiped out the entire oyster industry on the eastern side of the river.”

Telley Madina, coastal communities program officer for Oxfam America and former head of the Louisiana Oystermen’s Association whose family has long been in the fishing business, spoke to the uncertainty oystermen face as they head into the current season.

“You might not see the oysters you’d expect to see,” said Madina. “You may see higher prices. Also, people are still not sure they want to eat it. Within two to three months, if things don’t go well, these family businesses may not be able to go on.”

Lanor Curole is program director for the United Houma Nation, who have lived along Louisiana’s coast for centuries on commercial and subsistence fishing. However, multiple hurricanes, the oil spill, and coastal erosion are seriously threatening their homes and way of life.

“The consensus among our tribe is that people want to stay as long as they can, and the fishermen have been very clear that as long as they can fish, they’re going to fish,” said Curole. “This is hitting people where they make a living. It’s difficult to absorb.”

Kristina Peterson is a research associate for the University of New Orleans’ Center for Hazards Assessment, Response and Technology (UNO-CHART), which is working with the Houmas.

“There is a tremendous amount of traditional knowledge that is absolutely critical to restoration projects,” said Peterson. “The people who live here see themselves as the first line of defense for the coast. They’re now becoming citizen scientists, having learned how to accumulate data and do independent research on their own. CHART has helped them do this and be advocates in addressing the things they’re seeing.”

Marco Cocito-Monoc, GNOF’s director of regional initiatives, moderated the panel. “The Coastal 5+1 Initiative aims to connect the legitimacy, political clout, and national attention that New Orleans has to the coastal parishes which need that and don’t have it,” he said.

Launched by the Greater New Orleans Foundation, Coastal 5+1 is about uniting the five coastal parishes of St. Bernard, Jefferson, Terrebonne, Plaquemines, and Lafourche, and the coastal-dependent urban parish of Orleans. The Coastal 5+1 Initiative overcomes the challenges facing these communities and works with partner nonprofit organizations to create innovative solutions in order to preserve the rich and vibrant cultural and civic life of Louisiana’s coastal communities.

Getting to this position, however, required quite a transition for McKinnon herself. She’d been a classroom teacher here both before and after Hurricane Katrina, but eventually she hit a wall.

“Two years ago I was really kind of exhausted because teaching is a really hard profession, you’re on stage all the time,” McKinnon says. “I wanted to keep working with kids, I had a lot of experience working with upper middle school age kids, but I was ready to parlay it into something else.”

It’s a common conundrum for teachers, and the answer for some is to leave education altogether. But McKinnon found a different answer, one that kept her working in New Orleans public schools but now applying her skills and experience in a different way.

One key to this transition was Leading Educators. Executive director Makiyah Moody says the group takes aim at a gap between new teacher development and principal training, helping early and mid-career educators build professional leadership skills that go beyond classroom instruction.

“You may be a phenomenal teacher with your 30 students in your fourth grade class, but you may have some challenges inspiring and motivating the other teachers that are in your building or on your team,” says Moody. “I like to think of Leading Educators as the foundation when there’s a teacher that may aspire to be a principal or may aspire to be an amazing mentor teacher but just needs a little bit more support in developing those leadership competencies to have the greatest impact that she wants to have.”

Leading Educators does this through a two-year fellowship program of training, mentoring and ongoing support and networking. One important facet is visiting successful school districts around the country to study how they overcame challenges New Orleans area schools face. The goal is to make more effective educators, whether they devote their careers to the classroom, move to other school leadership positions or become principals.

“We know from research if teachers feel a sense of efficacy in their roles that they stay longer. So we want to retain high quality teachers so that there’s a long-term effect on the students they’re serving,” says Moody.

The group started in Orleans Parish in 2008, and it’s now expanding to other cities to spread some of the ideas that are working for the renewal of New Orleans public education. Back home, it’s preparing a new generation of educators with professional skills that are increasingly in demand at independently-run public charter schools with many new in-house leadership needs.

Certainly, the Leading Educators experience has made a difference for Darcy McKinnon, who today foresees a bright future in her new educational career.

“I love my new job,” she says. “That combination of being able to find a place where I am challenged professionally but where I know I’m still having an impact on students and families is really, really great.”

Written by Ian McNulty for the Community IMPACT Series and produced by WWNO in partnership with the Greater New Orleans Foundation. Learn more about Leading Educators here.

To hear more stories about other great nonprofits, click here.

In sharp contrast with this gloomy picture of their financial health are the myriad contributions these organizations make to the well-being of our city and our region. Across the US, nonprofit organizations are responsible for 12.9 million jobs, or approximately 9.7 percent of the country’s workforce. Every dollar granted to a charity or charitable program produces $8 in direct economic benefits—this according to a 2011 study by The Philanthropic Collaborative titled Creating Jobs and Building Communities.

Beyond their contributions to our region’s economy is the important work they do in keeping us bound together as a community. They provide avenues for the wealthy to work shoulder to shoulder with the poor to improve our city; they help us bridge the racial, ethnic, and class differences that so often divide us. The many organizations in our region devoted to the arts and culture help preserve the very special character of New Orleans and its people.

We ignore the health of these organizations at our peril.

This is not a time of great prosperity for many of us. When times are hard, we need to ask what’s most important to us, our families, and our communities. We should consider what our community would look like—what it would feel like—without the thousands of nonprofit workers who dedicate long hours on short pay to make this a better place for all. Consider what New Orleans would be like without its homeless shelters, without its food pantries, its hospitals and schools, its afterschool programs, its museums, and its parades.

As we better understand our priorities as a society, the many contributions that our nonprofits make to our region should move us to contribute more to them not less during this giving season. Our community’s nonprofit organizations are just too good and too important to fail.

“He came in at 5:30 in the morning and he shot me in the face three times and my 18-year-old daughter was killed that morning, point blank,” Richardson says. “And then this man left the house and locked the door and ran off like nothing happened.”

The perpetrator of this crime, who is now in prison, was Elizabeth’s own husband. Though the attack was a shock, with hindsight she says, there were signs that serious trouble was brewing in her home. In fact, she had even sought help before at the St. Bernard Battered Women’s Program.

“I met with them and they explained to be about being a battered woman. And I’m like, I don’t fit that, you know. But I fit it, and I fit it very well but I didn’t believe it, because I didn’t want to see myself as a victim,” she says.

That’s just one of the challenges to addressing this incredibly personal, often complex issue. But for those in need, the nonprofit St. Bernard Battered Women’s Program offers resources from legal consulting to financial assistance to physical shelter. It’s aimed at helping women make the best decisions for themselves, whether they’re suffering from emotional abuse or in danger of domestic homicide, as in Elizabeth’s case.

“A lot of times when women do come into shelter, they start at different points, they enter the shelter at different points of their life,” says executive director Gail Gowland. “Some of them will hit the streets running, they’ll know, okay, I have to get a job, I have to get an income in order to move myself on and my family on. But some other women come, it might take them one or two weeks to even get to that point.”

Though the shelter is based in St. Bernard, its services are available to anyone in need, serving women and children from across the region. Lately, the numbers of those in need have been on the rise, which Gowland attributes in part to woes ranging from recent hurricanes to the economy to the BP oil spill. These have all upped the stress levels in many households, leading to arguments and worse.

“And those arguments are escalating, to where before they might just have been pushed under the rug or something like that. But they are escalating to the point where women and children are seeking help to get out of their situations,” she says.

That’s why even though it’s a painful, Elizabeth is committed to sharing her story, speaking out to let others who may be suffering in silence know that resources like the St. Bernard Battered Women’s Program are available to help them.

“After this happened to me I found out that several of my very, very close friends were battered women,” Richardson says. “And they had been living with batterers and these were the people that we sat down to the barbecue with and had fun with and went to games with. And when this happened, you know, suddenly it’s like the covers are off.”

Written by Ian McNulty for the Community IMPACT Series and produced by WWNO in partnership with the Greater New Orleans Foundation. Learn more about St. Bernard Battered Women’s Program here (or call 504-277-3177).

To hear more stories about other great nonprofits, click here.

She is also quick to join conversations with the passing older students walking to and from Delgado College, a two mile walk from Faubourg Lafitte. “There used to be a City Park bus that stopped right on this corner,” she lamented, “but it hasn’t run since Katrina.”

Like the students, Miss Lynn depends upon public transportation. There is only one convenient bus line near her home which makes getting to the supermarket across town and her West Bank doctors almost impossible.

How to connect people to jobs and other opportunities through smart transportation planning and policy is a focus of the Greater New Orleans Foundation. “Twelve percent of New Orleans working households don’t have access to a vehicle,” says Ellen Lee, senior vice president for programs at the Greater New Orleans Foundation. “We’ve invested for years in workforce housing, which has helped residents to move back home, and now it’s time to address our transportation infrastructure. One can’t succeed without the other.”

The Greater New Orleans Foundation recently funded Transport for NOLA, a nonprofit organization working to create a world-class transportation system in the Greater New Orleans region. GNOF’s grant will help educate the need for a comprehensive regional transportation plan based on equity, accessibility, and best-practices.