Nonprofit Day 2010 Stories

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6 Winners in Our Story Sharing Contest

To capture and celebrate the unique stories and experiences of the Bay Area’s nonprofit community, we’ve partnered with StoryCorps , an innovative organization whose mission is to document the everyday history and unique stories of America. Here are the winners!

Alissa Nourse & Deb Glazer
Tahoe Youth & Family Services in South Lake Tahoe, CA
Deb hired Alissa as a camp counselor for inner city youth in New York City in 1993.Throughout the past 17 years, Deb and Alissa have consulted each other on career decisions, non-profit management, personnel issues and stress management while working in the non-profit sector. Alissa is now an Executive Director and Deb does consulting work for non-profits including grant writing and strategic planning out of her home in San Francisco. The mentorship and friendship continues to this day as they attend the Compass Point Non-Profit Day together for the second time.

Patty Wipfler & Darci Smith
Hand in Hand Parenting
A healthy infant sister's unexplained descent into profound mental retardation in 1950 has led to the founding of two non-profit organizations that serve parents: one, PARCA, co-founded by my mother in 1953, which serves developmentally disabled people and their families in San Mateo County, and Hand in Hand Parenting, founded by me in 1989, giving parents and those who serve parents and children the skills they need to build strong parent-child connections.

Elana Ford & Chris Ford
Starting Blocks
The Starting Blocks story is one of creation and transformation that will speak to listeners on multiple levels. First, there is the behind the scenes look at what it really takes to start a non profit from the ground up; from the idea so strong that you have to pull over just to write it down to a vetted program entering the second year of operations! I am still very much in touch with all the blood, sweat and tears I and other members of the community have put into the program, as well as the unspeakable joy it has brought into my life. On a higher level, there is the story of the personal transformation that my husband and I BOTH had to go through to make this dream a reality.

Lisa Lee & Melissa Hung
Hyphen
The Story of Hyphen In 2002, spurred by the shuttering of a Magazine, a small group of 20-and-30-something journalists and artists got together to fill the void by envisioning the kind of magazine we always wanted to read: a publication that would go beyond celebrity interviews and essays about discovering our roots, which we found a long time ago, thank-you-very-much. It would feature emerging artists, thinkers and doers,not only the few established Asian Americans who'd gotten mainstream approval. It would be a magazine that looked beyond identity -- we'd explore cultural issues while tackling what is Asian American by accident, by tangent or by happenstance.

Valeria Coleman & Karen Nemsick
Rebuilding Together SF
I’m not sure when I got bit by the nonprofit bug, but looking back, I’ve been passionate about volunteering and nonprofits as far back as I can remember. This obsession with community work definitely didn’t come from my family, although they have always supported my life decisions (even grudgingly), even if they’ve never really been understand. My dad was always saying that someday I’d give up and get a real job, that when the reality of wanting to own a house, have children, be an “adult” kicked in, I’d sell out and get a ‘real job’. Looking back on almost 10 (hard & poor) years in the field, I’m often amazed that I’ve stuck with it this long – maybe it’s a testament to my stubbornness, or this deep need to be able to go to sleep knowing that I’ve spent another day working hard to make a difference in this community.

Femke Oldham & Linda Hunter
Watershed Project
Linda and I were both moved to protect watersheds through our work on papers about California water management. However, we were working in two different parts of the state, on two different issues, at two different points in time. In 2008, our paths flowed together. Linda hired me to develop content for The Watershed Project’s fledgling outreach program. A few short weeks after I started, the State of California entered a budget impasse, freezing millions of dollars in grant funds. Meanwhile, the federal government continued to report a growing economic recession, signifying a grim outlook for foundation funding. On a shoestring budget and with ample support from friends and colleagues, we met or exceeded every single one of our goals. Linda and I feel that the financial crisis propelled us to develop a work environment where staff and interns truly feel that our work matters—both to our organization and to the planet. We feel lucky to be able to do non-profit watershed work and even luckier that we have the chance to inspire others to do the same.

Hear StoryCorps' story:

For more information about StoryCorps go to www.storycorps.org
 

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Watch Peter Bratt Tell His Story Here!