6710 Grand

I’ve tried to participate in small groups 3 times.  If you’re not familiar, it’s a church thing.  The idea is that we “do life” together.  You join a group with people in like-situations.  You share, you laugh, you cry, you support—you bond and make connections.  I can’t possibly do life “alone”.  I have too many kids for that.  But there’s a difference in being alone and being lonely.  You can be lonely in a house full of people.  And there are many parts of life where I am lonely, at least for periods of time.  ·          I often parent alone, without ever being a single parent. I am the only parent of children living at home in my workplace.   ·          I work alone, in my home office, in a job that is all about relationships. ·          I celebrate alone—we have no family nearby for holidays and birthday...

I recently went to a screening of the movie Uncharitable .  It’s more of a documentary really about non-profits and how the outside world see’s “overhead” in the overall execution of any non-profit’s mission.  Ok ok, I know it’s not the kind of movie most people are like “OOOOOHHH!  Let’s go see THAT on a Friday night!”, but not only am I a non-profit professional, I’m a fundraiser—my entire job is “overhead” …and they gave me a free book and there’s not a lot I WON’T do for a free book. I left the movie feeling both inspired (yay!) and depressed (boo!).  Donors don’t like overhead.   They don’t want to pay for overhead.   But what is overhead?   It’s the portion of an organization that’s necessary to run the “business” but that doesn’t directly contribute to the programs that are designed to execute the mission.   If I’m a food bank, the building I work out of is overhead (actually, that’s capital—another big “no no” for most funders).  ...