Impact 100 Owensboro has been providing $100,000 grants for 13 years to nonprofit organizations within the community, and almost every person in Owensboro has had the opportunity to benefit from the grant recipients.
This year, the board has set a goal of recruiting 300 members in order to hit $3,000,000 given back to the community since their inception, and they feel certain they can do it.
“We set the expectation on ourselves so high, but we have had a lot of growth,” said Carol Bothwell, Impact 100 President. “It’s a doable thing.”
President-Elect Katie Drab agrees, stating that the first year of Owensboro’s chapter was the only year it did not have 200 members.
With 52 Impact 100 chapters worldwide, Owensboro’s chapter was the seventh formed and has continuously outpaced larger communities. In its 14th year, over 600 different women have been a member of Impact 100 Owensboro.
Now the organization is working to be more “intentional” and to have a stronger media presence. According to Bothwell, one of the goals is being more inclusive by engaging women of all ages who want to be involved in committee work, as well as those who want to be philanthropic through their donation only.
“We do need both [types of members],” Bothwell said. “We need to utilize members who want to be a part of it. We need as much help as we can get.”
In an effort to get the word out about what the chapter does, Drab began Member Monday on the Impact 100 Facebook page. Showcasing a broad range of members and highlighting one each week, Impact 100 hopes to show that the demographics are not what people would think, Bothwell said.
“The younger women are really invested and vested,” Drab said.
For the past three months, right after the 2018 annual meeting, the board began their first-ever strategic planning with Libby Alexander, owner of Saturn Consulting in Louisville. Alexander was born and raised in Owensboro and choosing her was not a coincidence.
“She was working with another organization in town and she knows the community,” Bothwell said of Alexander.
The changes within the organization, and the desire to revamp areas within it, came from the collaborative efforts of women in other Impact 100 chapters as well as current Impact 100 Owensboro members. In preparation for the strategic plan, Alexander requested that five Impact board members reach out to five other Impact 100 chapters to discuss what made their respective chapters successful. The women incorporated those discussions into the strategic plan where the board began “throwing around ideas,” something Alexander said was “dynamic.”
Taking those ideas, Alexander formulated a one- to three-year plan for the chapter. Some changes can be implemented right away, whereas others will require up to three years to implement.
“It was non-stop — the ideas that came out of that were amazing,” Bothwell said. “Having someone from outside was beneficial because [the board] is insulated.”
Drab said the retreat showed the board is on the same page with common goals and now they need to work on implementing the changes and seeing it through.
One of the areas that the board is focusing on is the difficulty for nonprofits to write a grant for $100,000, which is the first step for grant applicants. The board is reviewing the guidelines that were established almost 15 years ago to make sure they are keeping up with the community.
The board is hoping that through Impact 100 education in their grant writing workshops, nonprofit organizations will “think big.” Bothwell mentioned that a collaborative effort between two organizations could be considered.
“We need to evolve with the times, to help [organizations] think bigger and outside of the box,” Bothwell said.
Another change that came out of a 2018 focus group is that all site visits will be recorded and available for focus group members.
Drab said, for those members who were reluctant to join a focus group because they could not attend all of the meetings, the recordings should allow for increased accessibility.
“It’s important for them to see what is going on, who applied, and what is being asked for [in the grant],” Drab said.
Since all nonprofits who submit a grant application will now host a site visit, members will have the opportunity to become familiar with the organization prior to the vote, something that could also be beneficial to the grant applicants. Bothwell said that in the past, members who participated in site visits often became passionate about that organization and often donated to it outside of Impact 100, based on the perspective of the visit.
If Impact 100 Owensboro meets their goal of 300 members, three $100,000 grants would be given to local nonprofits, something that has been their goal for several years. This year, the organization is also looking at how the remaining residual money is spent — anything over a $100,000 mark. In the past, the three finalists who did not win the $100,000 grant would split the remaining residual money, but this year, the board is open to change.
Women who are interested in joining have the opportunity to attend two Impact 100 events prior to the March 31 deadline.
On Feb. 28 from 4:30 to 6 p.m., an event is being held at SIP Owensboro where women can learn more about Impact 100 Owensboro and hear Amanda Owen from Puzzle Pieces and Paula Yevincy from St. Joseph’s Peace Mission discuss the importance of being an Impact 100 grant recipient.
The second opportunity is March 14 from 4:30 to 6 p.m. at Bar Louie. Thad Gunderson of the Daniel Pitino Shelter and Cindy Jean and Carol Adkins of Fresh Start will discuss the importance of Impact 100 for nonprofits.
