In Session: Spring 2012

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. I can see it. It's not so much a halogen, more like the flashlight on my phone. LOL.

This is the semester before my final semester.

My classes are Program Planning and Evaluation and Leadership Development. Thanks to Victoria Michael and Brent Scholar, Scholar Consulting, for being my mentors and joining me on my journey in the nonprofit sector.

Let's get started!!

Fall 2011: Aaaaaand we begin

Here ye, hear ye!

Fall 2011 is In Session:

Board Governance - mentored by Jan Schwartz

Strategic Planning - mentored by Joy Clarissa Taylor

From what I've been reading about Strategic Planning, nonprofits dread doing it, and looking at the activities I have planned for this course, I know this is going to be my second most difficult course (Financial Management being the first, of course).

Summer 2011: Done and Done

Summer 2011 is ovah!!

Originally, I was supposed to be taking three courses:

Marketing for Nonprofits
Program Planning
Self-Exploration Through Creative Writing

The first two were supposed to are mentored courses. The third course was an online course through Prescott and happened to be taught by the same person who was going to mentor my Program Planning course. But it didn't work out, so I only took Marketing and Creative Writing and bumped the now Program Planning and Evaluation course to Spring 2012.

I would like to thank Abbie Fink of hmaPR for being a great marketing mentor. She was teaching two other classes for ASU (one online, one in-person) at the time. As well as doing her day job on top of that! Wonder Woman, she was. I learned so much from her:

The most valuable lesson I gleaned from this course was the importance of research: the market, the target audience, the competition, and the different methods in which to reach the public. In addition, I was required to dig a little deeper for a SWOT analysis and discovered that a strength can be considered a weakness, and vice versa. The book review I conducted of Kivi Leroux Miller's "Nonprofit Marketing Guide" provided additional helpful information for nonprofits with small or nonexistent budgets. Based on what I learned, I was able to produce a workable marketing plan that I can implement within my own organization.

As with all my mentors, I hope to do justice to their teachings by applying/implementing them in my own organization. Out of all the creative writing courses I've taken, this one was the best and I am so glad that Susan Vespoli taught it this way:

The one thing I've discovered about the various creative writing courses I've taken over the years is that the syllabus doesn't change: students read the work of authors, answer questions about their work, and write a paper. I feel like I never learn anything new, that the teacher is just following a curriculum designed by every other school in the country. This course followed the same pattern, to a certain point. I enjoyed being reintroduced to Maya Angelou, the tears and little hairs that arose when I read Martin Luther King Jr's speech, the poem where the author felt connected to her African heritage, and writing my first superhero poem. The main aspect I liked the most was the incorporation of "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron.

This course forced me to dig below the surface and raised issues and emotions that I had to deal with. My expectations for this course was to find my writing groove again and start a regular writing routine. While I did maintain a regular writing routine, I discovered that any "productive" writing will have to wait until I've completed school. I was able to understand the kind of writer I am and come to terms with the fact that I can't be like every other writer out there. I'm just me.

As a writer, I've been meaning to add Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way to my collection of writing-related books, but it always slipped my mind. Finally, I had a reason to buy it, just for the simple fact that it was required reading. And I thoroughly enjoyed it and the experience! I hope to try and incorporate that somehow into the programs at TWZ.

Now it's time to say goodbye...take a short 8-day break...and then jump into Fall 2011 for Board Governance and Strategic Planning. 

And so it begins...again

The summer session starts for me tomorrow. I was supposed to be taking 3 classes this semester, but one of my mentors backed out. So now, I'm back down to 2. I'm taking that as a sign. I don't think I need the stress. And really, it's not going to matter whether I take 2 or 3. I'm still going to finish at the same time, I'll just be taking 2 (technically 3 because my Senior Project is considered to be 2 courses) courses in Summer 2012 instead of 1. This semester my courses are:

Marketing for Nonprofits - mentored by Abbie Fink of HMA PR

Self-Exploration Through Creative Writing - online Moodle course

My best friend is moving to Boston at the end of July and she's decided to have a service-oriented going away party. I thought that was pretty cool and plan to incorporate it as one of my assignments for my marketing course. Should be interesting.

I had a little 3-week break that really didn't feel like much of a break, LOL, but I'm looking forward to getting started.

Done and Done...I survived Spring 2011

The spring semester was officially over last Friday, the 6th. I received A's in both of my classes. Thank you to Shoshana Ross, Volunteer Coordinator at Free Arts AZ for mentoring my Volunteer Management course, and Chantal Sheehan, Exec. Dir. of New Global Citizens for mentoring my Human Relations course. They were so great and I learned so much. With Shoshana, I came away with a Volunteer Management Plan I can utilize and with Chantal, I learned about the different parts of HR. As part of the evaluation process, I had to evaluate myself and then my mentors had to evaluate me. A couple of things Shoshana said stood out for me. One of them was that I "...sought more structure, details and examples than necessary...".

She also said:

"...My one critique would be to encourage Ms. Colston to be more self-sufficient and self-starting in her work, as would be necessary were she to pursue a career in this field. Ms. Colston is very capable and needs simply to have faith in her own ability to craft projects/blurbs/whatnot on her own, utilizing her own skills and creativity..."

In my defense I cry INSTITUTIONALIZED. This type of experiential learning environment is frowned upon in public schools. LOL. I have way more freedom than I'm used to and, despite the fact that I've been in this program for nearly 3 years, it's apparent that I can't shake the whole public school structure thing. It's also the fact that I'm learning something new. I only know the NP sector from a volunteer standpoint. I keep feeling that there's a wrong way and a right way to do things. What I'm slowly learning is that I don't have to reinvent the wheel. If it's already out there, why start over? I can just take from all sources and tweak it to fit my needs.

As for her comment about simply having faith in my ability, she is spot on. I've heard that before from my best friend and I'm going to have to be honest and say I don't know where that comes from. It's not like I had a bad childhood where I was verbally or physically abused. Quite the contrary. I had a great childhood and I love hanging out with my parents. When I was younger, I had a lisp and stuttered. Not as bad as Mel Tillis, but it made me self-conscious to the point where I didn't do a lot of talking. I no longer have the lisp and I don't stutter as much, but I occasionally stumble over some words. I was better at communicating on paper than verbally, which is probably why I became a writer.And kept diaries. And write blogs.


Maybe once I see the light at the end of this educational tunnel (4 more semesters to go!) and have a better grasp of the NP sector, I'll grow into self-starting and self-sufficiency.

Maybe once I have a better handle on my idea, what my community needs, and I start to feel that TWZ will really happen, I'll just grow into"faith in my abilities."

I think I have to feel passionate about what I'm doing to be there, to feel/know any of that. And right now, I'm just not there.

Yet.

NOTE: I'm still looking for mentors for the Fall 2011-Summer 2012 semesters. See here for more details.

Final week

This week is the final week of the spring semester. I have a project to revise, a research paper to finish writing, and a final exam I have until May 6th to take. I've already signed up for the summer session:

~ Marketing for Nonprofits

~ Program Planning

~ Self-Exploration Through Creative Writing (online through Prescott College)

Originally, I was only going to take two courses (because I remember what happened when I tried three), but I picked up a Grants course that didn't really require me to submit work (just be part of the discussion), so I think during that time I found a balance. I hope I'll be able to keep that balance when the session starts in June.

Not this, but that...

The great thing about this grant class I'm taking is that we don't have to actually submit homework. We can if we want feedback, but it's not required. Which is good because it kinda takes the pressure off me. In assignment #4, we learned about Goals and Objectives. I threw mine up in the Discussion area to get feedback:

Goal #1 – To increase literacy and writing skills.

·         Objective 1.1 – To offer free writing workshops focusing on various genres.

·         Objective 1.2 – To show students how many professions require good writing skills.

·         Objective 1.3 – To provide free access to writing and tutoring labs.

Goal #2 – To increase the number of youth accepted to post-secondary institutions.

·         Objective 2.1 – To conduct free series of college preparation workshops.

·         Objective 2.2 – To partner with Arizona colleges to provide informational clinics.

·         Objective 2.3 – To equip students with necessary academic skills.

Goal #3 – To provide youth with a positive role model.

·         Objective 3.1 – To foster mentorship between students and creative professionals.

·         Objective 3.2 – To recruit local professionals in the writing field for a period of five months.

·         Objective 3.3 – To give students one-on-one attention and let them know their work is value.

Per my instructors, B&J

Celise, all these are activities, not objectives. Think about what will change as a result of  these activities and quantify these changes to come up with objectives, e.g.

The writing skills of 70% students who participate in XXXX will improve as measured by XXXXX.

Well, crap. Good to know. At this rate, I'm still debating on whether my organization's target audience should just focus on teens or the community in general. I change my mind every couple of days it seems like, so I guess I have time to think about it.

And definitely revise.

And it continues...

I've had many great mentors over the past year and a half that I have to share

Georgia McBride, author and founder of YALITCHAT.ORG mentored my Creative Writing II: Revising Your Novel course (to cover my Writing and Literature Breadth) in Summer 2010:

As a writer, my revision process is to finish the first draft, set it aside for a few weeks, go back and read it over a couple of times, then send it off to a beta reader. This course forced me to step outside my normal routine and look at the revision process in a more organized way. After an initial review of the material--as well as feedback from my mentor, other authors and teen readers-I was able to define and work on the following: up and down moments for the protagonist, tracing major plots throughout the chapters and making sure there are up and down moments, creating more conflict, showing the best and worst characteristics of the main characters, reducing meaningless chatter, pacing, creating distinguishable characters, changing and developing relationships between characters, and thinking more like a teen, but writing like an adult.


Creating a revision outline helped considerably. It gave me a guideline to work with and I am hoping to adhere to it as I continue to revise the remainder of my novel. Even though I only revised the first 50 pages of my fourth novel, I can now apply what I've learned to my future books.

The wonderful Kristi Edwards, formerly of the Arizona Community Foundation, mentored my Nonprofit Explorations Course in Spring 2010 where I learned the basic overview of certain aspects of running a nonprofit. I learned how to write a mission statement, a vision statement, a value statement, and a case statement. I created a fictious board of directors, staff job descriptions, wrote an action plan for an event, and created evaluation forms for board and staff members.

Chantal Sheehan, former CFO of New Global Citizens,  had the formidable task of mentoring my Sustainable Financial Mgmt course in Summer 2010. She did a great job even though I was thinking I could've benefited from an Accounting 101 class before jumping into this one. In this course I determined which type of organization I would have, analyzed financial statements of 3-4 nonprofits (including that of Chantal's employer), and learned the steps to take to protect my future organization from fraud.

The most work I've done to date has been in my Fundraising and Resource Management course, mentored by Maureen Baker, Mgr of Individual Giving, at MIM (Musical Instrument Museum). I learned so much from Maureen, it's ridiculous: became familiar with fundraising terminology, honed my writing skills by drafting a number of documents including a case statement, annual appeal letter, letter of inquiry, proposal and budget, prospect profiles, e-newsletter, event committee letter, acknowledgment letter, and membership campaign letter. Through role play, I rehearsed common fundraising-related scenarios including an in-person gift solicitation, thank you phone call, leading a development committee meeting, and giving an "elevator pitch." I also gained an understanding of important concepts, practices, and strategies for implementing a successful fundraising campaign, including strategies for donor identification, cultivation, solicitation, and acknowledgment/recognition. I even designed an event and prepared related documents such as a flyer, budget, plan, and timeline. Utter craziness, that, but it was so great.

Spring 2011 is nearing a close. Chantal is now the Executive Director of NGC and I'm lucky enough to have her as a mentor again this semester for my Human Relations class. Shoshana Ross, Volunteer Mgr for Free Arts AZ is my mentor for my Volunteer Mgmt course as well this semester. The semester ends May 5th and I'll be sharing my self-evals of these courses around that time.

The pros of this program definitely outweigh the cons (searching for and asking complete strangers to mentor my courses). I've been learning so much from my mentors so far, that the minute I graduate next year, I feel like I'm going to be so ready to open The Write Zone.

I'm like SpongeBob right now, soaking up all this information like a sponge to squeeze out later. Now that I'm a member of a couple of local nonprofit organizations--and have subscribed to the ASU Lodestar Newsletter--I'm attending more seminars, workshops, forums and whatnot. I'll be sharing my thoughts on those in upcoming posts.

The more I immerse myself in this sector, the more excited I am to leave my current job and get started on my real career. LOL.

IF YOU'D LIKE TO BE A MENTOR FOR ONE OF MY CLASSES, PLEASE CHECK OUT MY "COURSE MENTORS WANTED" PAGE AT THE TOP, IN THE SIDEBAR.

The journey started in Aug 2009...

In going back to the beginning of this process, I'd forgotten that I had started a blog for this particular purpose. It was called Non-Profitation. Kinda snazzy, eh? I started school at the end of August 2009 and went up to Prescott for the 3-day orientation. I wrote about it on my author site:

Orientation: Day One

Orientation Day Three

Smell The Learn

Smell The Learn Part Two

Smell The Learn Part 3 - with a mention of the previous blog that no longer exists.

Dang it! I'm almost wishing I had those posts back. Just to remember what it was like when I first started out and had such a hard time adjusting after not being in school for 17 years!

Fall 2009 was a defining moment for me. In a post on Sept 28, 2009 I'd written:

I’ll be taking 3 classes next semester and I’ve lined up mentors for two of them. Because the third class will be taken online at Rio Solado. A Modern Fiction class. This first semester has been overwhelming for me and I think it’s because I haven’t been in school for a long time. Unlike Stella, I’m trying to find my groove. Not get it back. Because I’m pretty sure I never had one in the first place when it came to the whole school thing.

I’ve had little breakdowns along the way and have had to get pep talks from people. Not to mention a comforting “you-can-do-it-everything’s-going-to-be-all-right” hug from Mr. Maul. There’s required reading for my Math class (yeah, I know that sounds weird), and simultaneously I’m scouring the Net for articles to read for the paper that’s due for my EIS class. To make time for both, I came up with this: two chapters a day for Math, look up articles the rest of the time for EIS. It’s working so far. It was really hard to finish two chapters on Friday, but I rewarded myself by reading a fun book when I was done. And by fun, I mean an adult romance book.

It’s probably going to kill me. By the end of this semester I imagine I’ll have less hair (from all the pulling), possibly even a few gray hairs to pluck, and high blood pressure (from all the overwhelming-ness), but here’s to hoping I’ll have a groove.

And yes, that second semester really did almost kill me. LOL.

Here's the School Daze post that still makes me laugh.

I found some other posts about my EIS course and the Math Explorations class. This one, too.

My grad date has since been pushed back, of course, but by the end the semester, quite the impression had been imbedded:

Math Explorations self-eval:

This course allowed me to readjust my perception on the subject of Math. Based on my responses to the Math Therapy Exercise, my mentor understood my initial opinion on a subject that has always eluded me. I found it interesting that a teacher would want to know when and why a subject became difficult, or how they could make it better.

Through material written by Bill Bryson, and Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, I discovered the inter-related fields of math, cosmology and general scientific knowledge. In completing the Math Exercises, I had to set aside my prejudices regarding word problems and develop reasoning skills. As a result of the material in this course, I was able to create mock-up floor plans for my future business. This gave me an opportunity to visualize what I hope my business will look like and provide an actual blueprint. Overall, this unconventional course deprogrammed my view of this subject and helped me understand that math is not always about numbers.

EIS (Explorations in Interdiscplinary Studies) self-eval:

As someone who has not been to school in 17 years, I am very glad I was required to take this class. As a participant, I learned how to access and successfully navigate research sources, contact the Writing Center for assistance, and interact with my fellow peers. As a result, this crash course in college has allowed me to create a plan that will guide me in my educational future, write a 10-page research paper, and complete a social literacy activity that involved me journaling about my time as a mentor for a nonprofit organization.

This course has helped me ease into and adjust to being in school again. Jill was very patient, supportive, and kind mentor. She's even good with the pep talks when I started to feel a little overwhelmed. With the skills I learned in this course, I feel that I can now move forward and enjoy working towards my goal.

I want to thank Gary Stogsdill and Jill Young (former core faculty) for being such great teachers. I can't wait to honor them in my graduation speech next year.

Welcome to The Write Zone

My name is Celise Colston and I'm an undergrad student at Prescott College getting my degree in Nonprofit Management. I'm also an indie author who writes young adult fiction (www.celisedowns.com). By indie I mean "self-published". Way back in 2001-2002, I created my own company, Gemini Mojo Press, to publish all the books I would write. In 2008, I closed GMP and decided that I wanted to publish the work of aspiring teen writers. That spawned another company, Youthful Wisdom Press. During it's short-lived reign, I didn't publish any books by teen writers.

Because by then, I figured out another way I could inspire teens who love to write: by providing a place just for them to learn about all the different forms of writing--from full-length novels to screenplays. Creative writing is a dying art that is no longer available in public schools. Untapped talent is being squandered. Imaginations are being stifled. I believe that teens will always have a story to tell and should have an opportunity--and a place--to express it.

And eventually they will.

At a place called The Write Zone.

I wanted this place to be special and you really can't get any more special than a nonprofit. But I knew nothing about the nonprofit sector from a business standpoint. Only from a volunteer perspective. I've always wanted to go back to school, but never felt motivated to do so until my best friend told me about Prescott College. There, I could create my own degree plan and get the hands-on guidance I needed from experts in the field. So I closed Youthful Wisdom Press in 2009 and began my journey...

I am now in my second year of school and will finish in September 2012. As I've gone through this undertaking, the idea of The Write Zone has manifested in many different ways. In all of my school assignments to date, I've been referring to my future organization as "The Write Place", because I see my NP  in a Victorian house (like Hugo House). The more I thought about it, the more I began to realize that, while that may be pretty cool, what if it doesn't happen? What if it doesn't end up residing in a "place", but a place within a "space" or a small corner of the Internet? Writing isn't about the physical place you go to write, it's about the inner place that makes you want to write.

For us writers, that's called The Zone.

Hence the new name.

On this blog, I plan to chronicle the journey of opening my nonprofit--from education to grand opening. I'll be writing about the successes, lessons learned, A-ha moments, and epic fails---all the while hoping that I'll be entertaining and imparting knowledge to the public at large.

The most talked about categories will be:

• In Session - stuff I'm learning in my courses at Prescott College (including my mentors) and other continued education resources.
• Sector Knowledge  - stuff I'm learning through conferences, workshops, seminars, forums, networking, retreats, etc.
• A Little Reading - books and/or articles I've read.
• I Signed Up - my volunteering experiences.

Everything else is gravy. I hope you join me for this wonderful experience and provide your $1.50 (inflation and all) when it comes to advice, suggestions, tips and whatnot regarding the nonprofit sector.

And when the time comes, and you happen to live in the Valley of the Sun, stop by The Write Zone and say hello. :)