Green Cuisine

Volunteers are needed for Green Cuisine, which is being held at Food For Thought near Honor on July 15.

Described as "the annual celebration of local food, living and sustainability," the event focuses on green and sustainable lifestyle, business and culinary excellence in the region. More than 1,000 people are expected to attend, with events including a Green Fashion Show and Luncheon to include all local ingredients. Little Artshram is one of the organizations that will benefit from Green Cuisine. Volunteers are needed for shifts that run between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m., for jobs that include dishwashing, bussing, routing traffic, badge registration and greeting.

If you can volunteer, please contact the United Way office and leave a message at 947-3200, Ext. 208 and someone will call you back, or email to kathy@unitedwaynwmi.org. Thanks!

Traverse City Film Festival

The Traverse City Film Festival (TCFF) is celebrating its 5th year in 2009! This year's festival will run from July 28th thru August 2nd. As in the past the TCFF relies heavily on volunteers and donated items to keep the festival running smoothly. Following is a list of items that the TCFF needs donated and/or to borrow for this year's festival. If you can help them out please contact Jane Klegman (jane@traversecityfilmfestival.org).

15 Flashlights
10 First Aid Kits
Homes or Condos Downtown 3 bedrooms-We are looking for houses or condos downtown TO RENT, hopefully at discounted rates. We need these places for the week before and the week of festival, through August 4. We also need one place for just the week of festival.
Bicycles to borrow for Crew
100 blank Mini DV tapes
Blank CD's
A Mini DV Tape Deck for playing and importing footage to a MAC/PC computer
Vacuum cleaner for the City Opera House ( borrowed)
Refrigerator for box office ( borrowed)
Glow Sticks for Open Space
Cargo Van ( borrowed)

United Way receives $36,000 Rotary grant

TRAVERSE CITY – The United Way of Northwest Michigan has been awarded a $36,305 grant by Rotary Charities of Traverse City.

The funds will be used to support the United Way Volunteer Center’s youth and families initiative. The program recruits and matches young people and families with volunteer opportunities in a roster of 220-and-growing non-profit agencies in the Grand Traverse region. "Our continuing goals are to increase the recruitment of youth and family as volunteers and to develop our capacity to use the Internet in this recruitment effort,” said Steven Wade, United Way executive director. “We have implemented a variety of efforts to connect with this population – and with good reason. Our hope is that young people, starting with early volunteer opportunities now, will embark on a lifelong pattern of giving to their community through volunteerism.”

The United Way has built a Volunteer Youth Web page that is now one of the primary tools used in the recruitment of youth and family, Wade said. There’s also a blog to encourage conversation about volunteer experiences among young volunteers, with links to social networking sites.
The United Way also manages the Retired and Senior Volunteer Program, linking people 55 and older with volunteer opportunities in area organizations and agencies. Combined, the volunteer recruitment efforts are designed to support community non-profits – many of which find themselves even more strapped for help as they are overwhelmed by demand in the current economy.

“Many of the non-profits with whom we work have limited resources and their capacity to manage volunteers, or even to identify quality volunteer opportunities within their organization, is quite limited,” said Wade. “That’s where, with support from this grant, we can really make a difference.”

The United Way of Northwest Michigan seeks to efficiently raise and effectively distribute both financial and volunteer resources to support community-determined initiatives that improve the lives of residents in Antrim, Benzie, Grand Traverse, Kalkaska and Leelanau counties. Information about the United Way and volunteering can be obtained through the Web site, www.unitedwaynwmi.org, by calling (231) 947-3200 or emailing info@unitedwaynwmi.org.

FREE FOOD!

Retired Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP) volunteers: Turn in hours and eat!

Several area businesses have donated gift certificates to be used as a bonus for RSVP volunteers turning in their hours each month.

Being able to tally and report all of the hours RSVP volunteers give back to the community is essential not only for the program’s funding, but to be able to show the important role retired and senior volunteers play in supporting the 200-plus nonprofit organizations where they work. To provide a little extra incentive for volunteers to turn in those hours, there will be monthly drawings among those who submit hours. Starting in July, RSVP will draw names from those submitting monthly hours and give away two prizes.

So far, Casciano Traverse City (Burger King), Ponderosa Steakhouse, Mancino’s, Firefly, Bubba’s and Mackinaw Brewing Company in Traverse City, along with Giovanni’s in Interlochen, have contributed gifts. Thanks to all of these businesses for helping support our volunteers and RSVP!

Who's The Boss?

It might be the best job she ever had.

And she doesn’t even get paid for it.

Jeannette Hans0n makes the 27-mile round trip from her home in Elberta to The Gathering Place in Honor six days a week. On Monday through Friday, she comes to volunteer. On Saturday, she comes as a guest, for breakfast.

The Gathering Place is the Benzie County Council on Aging’s senior center and meal site. Located in a shopping center in what used to be a restaurant, The Gathering Place hosts as many as 130 older adults on weekdays who come for fun, activities, meals and camaraderie.

A 15-year RSVP member and volunteer, Jeannette sits at the welcome desk, greeting people and collecting money (seniors make voluntary donations of $3 for lunch). She does secretarial work, helps with the newsletter and does just about anything else that is needed. “They call me the boss,” she laughs.

Before she retired, Jeannette worked in a bar, and in a sewing factory. She likes what she does now the best. “If I didn’t do this, I’d just sit at home,” she says. “I wouldn’t get out at all. We have a lot of fun here."

Why Education Matters Part III

Rigorous studies show a strong link between more education and reduced rates of violent crime (Lochner 2004). A one-year increase in the average level of schooling in a community is associated with almost a 30 percent decrease in the murder and assault rates (Lochner 2007), results which are particularly reliable through high school. Of course, one important reason is that more school generally brings higher wages and expanded job opportunities and thus less incentive to engage in criminal activities. However, wages and jobs are not the end of the story. Classrooms help instill values that oppose criminality and socialize students to become better citizens. In many cases, schooling may also teach patience, reduce tolerance for risk-taking, and provide a supervised environment that tempers negative interaction among young people. And finally, youth who leave school early risk being influenced by a more negative set of peers, while those who stay are more likely to build a constructive social network and set off on a path toward productive work experiences.

The physical and emotional scars to families due to violent crime run deep; and the price of reduced productivity and decreasing property values in American communities is steep. Compared to incarceration, educational outlays are a far cheaper and more productive investment. Public costs for one year in prison are $24,000, while public outlays to educate a K-12 student are $9,000, on average. While additional funding for education does not automatically
guarantee decreased crime, the numbers point to the tremendous potential to expand young people’s choices and opportunities while simultaneously building greater security in our communities.

Why Education Matters part II

The value of education to individuals and to society goes far beyond increased income potential. Higher educational attainment is linked to a host of beneficial behaviors and good health outcomes, including greater life expectancy overall as well as a larger percentage of years spent in good health and with adequate mobility. Better educated people practice healthier behaviors, are more informed consumers of medical services, and are more likely to adhere to treatment regimes. More education is also associated with more robust mental health - greater personal happiness, more stable family relationships, more self-esteem and self-awareness, a greater sense of self-determination, and greater ability to adjust to change. Better educated people
are also more effective in supporting healthy outcomes for their children.

Life Expectancy

Life expectancy in the U.S. is 77.8 years at birth, with great variation by education, gender and ethnicity. Those who acquire education beyond high school have an average life expectancy that is seven years longer than those whose education stops with high school (Meara, Richards, and Cutler 2008); the lifespan gap between those two groups increased 30 percent from 1990 to 2000 (Singh and Siahpush 2006). People with more education tend to earn more, and thus have greater resources to pay for quality healthcare. In addition, more educated people behave in ways that help maintain health — applying critical thinking skills, adhering to treatment regimens and better managing chronic conditions, using newer and more effective drugs, and sharing more resilient outlook to cope with stress, avoid depression and hostility (Lleras-Muney 2005).

Why Education Matters, Part I

The Common Good Forecaster is a tool that breaks down, by county, the level of education of residents, the median income, and the % of people living below poverty. To check it out for yourself go to www.liveunited.org/forecaster/. The people living in poverty statistic is based on the number of adults over the age of 25 who are below the federal poverty threshold.

Here is what it says about some of the counties in Northwest Michigan.


Leelanau County:
Median Income: $30,297
People living in poverty: 5.1%
Unemployment rate: 5%


Grand Traverse County:
Median Income: $29,477
People living in poverty: 6.7%
Unemployment rate: 5.3%


Antrim County:
Median Income: $25,089
People living in poverty: 10.4%
Unemployment rate: 7.2%

At this time information is not available for Benzie or Kalkaska Counties through this particular forecasting tool.


Now, lets take a look at these numbers again and assume everyone actually graduates from High School:


Leelanau County:
Median Income: $31,177
People living in poverty: 4.4%
Unemployment rate: 5.2%


Grand Traverse County:
Median Income: $30,234
People living in poverty: 5.5%
Unemployment rate: 5.5%


Antrim County:
Median Income: $25,833
People living in poverty: 9.3%
Unemployment rate: 8.3%

25 Things About Fundraising

Easier Said Than Done : 25 Random Things About Fundraising
Here’s some stuff you might not know about an old friend.
By Jeff Brooks
May 1, 2009

If fundraising were a person, and he or she was on Facebook, I’d tag her/him with the nasty “25 Random Things” meme. We’d learn some surprising things about fundraising. But since fundraising itself is a mute nonentity, I’ve taken the job upon myself …

1. The oldest recorded fundraising appeal was written by St. Paul around A.D. 55. It’s an appeal to a group of church members in Greece to help impoverished church members in Jerusalem. The appeal is a masterpiece of donor-centered fundraising, spending most of its words describing the benefits of giving.
2. Race and ethnicity are not good predictors of charitable giving. Age and sex, however, are strong predictors: Women give more than men, and older people give more than younger people.
3. Someone who regularly attends a house of worship is twice as likely to give to charitable causes as someone who seldom or never does. The churchgoer gives 100 times as much to charity per year — including 50 times as much to nonreligious causes.
4. Measuring by percentage of gross domestic product, the United States gives more to private charity than do any of the world’s nations. The U.S. is followed by Israel, Canada and Argentina. The most generous European nations — Spain, Ireland and the U.K. — give less than half of what the U.S. gives on a percentage basis.
5. The most read part of a fundraising letter is the P.S. That’s why the professionals always use the P.S. to restate the letter’s call to action, rather than for the traditional afterthought.
6. Mail recipients spend more time looking at the back of the envelope than the front. Think about it: You have to face the back toward you in order to get the envelope open. A tricky way to take advantage of this is to put the recipient’s address (or the window that displays it) on the flap side of the envelope.
7. A pleasant orange scent applied to a direct-mail package does nothing to improve fundraising results.
8. More often than not, an envelope with no message on the outside gets better fundraising results than one with a message. I don’t think this is because nothing is better than something, but because most teasers are so lame we’re better off without them.
9. Most enclosures added to direct-mail packages suppress fundraising results. One of the smartest tests you can do is to remove enclosures. It not only lowers cost, but very often also improves response.
10. Direct-mail testing does not yield universal principles. It only tells you specifically what happened in your test. Only a fool or a charlatan will claim otherwise.
11. The more recently a donor gave, the more likely it is she’ll give now. “Resting” donors from opportunities to give for some period after they’ve given is one of the most revenue-negative strategies around.
12. When donors are offered choices — about how you communicate with them, where their money goes or almost anything else — their giving measurably increases. Even when they don’t exercise any of the choices offered (as most don’t), their giving is greater than the giving of those not offered any choices.
13. Typos improve fundraising results. I’m sorry, but I can’t prove that. Seriously, I can’t count the number of times we discovered an egregious typo, then waited in horror for donors to voice their wrath and confusion by not responding in droves … only to experience instead an unusually high level of giving.My theory: Once someone finds a typo, she pays a lot more attention — and that dramatically improves the chance she’ll be moved by your message and give.
14. The working poor are the most generous Americans, giving the greatest portion of their incomes to charity of all U.S. economic groups.
15. Wealthy Americans follow in generosity, giving slightly less than the poor do on a proportional basis.
16. The rest of us? We’re way behind. But there are so many of us that the bulk of charitable giving comes from middle-class donors.
17. Donors are all-around excellent people. They are significantly more likely than nondonors to give blood, help the homeless with food or money, give up their seats to others, give directions to strangers, or return mistaken excess change to cashiers.
18. Donors also are more tolerant and open-minded than nondonors. They are less likely to be prejudiced against members of other races and religions. Compared to nondonors, they have a more favorable opinion of all kinds of groups, including labor unions, big business, environmentalists, feminists, welfare recipients, Congress and the military.
19. There is no objective evidence that there is any such condition as “donor fatigue.” Donors give extraordinarily in times of extreme need, like the Indian Ocean tsunami or Hurricane Katrina. “Fundraiser fatigue,” however, is all too real. Fundraisers routinely grow tired of urgent messaging and drift away from it, then blame the resulting drop in response on the donors. This unfortunate habit costs the nonprofit world billions of dollars a year.
20. The return on investment for charitable giving is $3.75 to the dollar. That is, for every dollar a donor gives to charity, she eventually becomes $3.75 wealthier. It’s not clear whether the dollar given directly causes the $3.75 return, but the correlation between the two is so strong and consistent that it’s obvious they are connected.
21. A dollar given to charity doesn’t just enrich the donor; it also adds more than $19 to the gross domestic product. That’s an almost unbeatable level of economic stimulus. Giving is patriotic!
22. Givers are more happy than nongivers. They’re 43 percent more likely to say they are “very happy.” Nongivers, on the other hand, are three and a half times as likely to say they’re “not happy at all.”
23. Givers are more healthy than nongivers. They are 25 percent more likely to say their health is excellent or very good than are nongivers.
24. Being a donor can transform your life.
25. So can being a fundraiser.