Last Wednesday, four Connectors met in Silver Spring, Maryland at Ginny’s house for homemade pizza.
The Team included a fiction writer, a PhD student in nonprofit leadership, a former journalist, and a social good consultant.
“It was actually really nice to start with a smaller group and get to know them really well,” says Janice Hepburn, the consultant on the Team. “I think I probably feel better connected to them than I would have if it had been a larger group. We ended up talking for hours and by the end of the night, we were telling jokes and much better connected personally.”
Connector selfie! From left to right: Drena, Ginny, Janice, and Michael.
(photo courtesy Janice Hepburn.)
By the time the last slice of pizza was finished, the Team had tons of ideas about how to encourage more connections in their community. Here are some of them:
- Develop a way for people with new ideas to connect with people who’ve tried similar things before.
- Use Idealist as a platform to share knowledge about local resources, funding, people, connections, etc.
- Talk with corporations about a potential “Adopt a Nonprofit” program.
- Host service fairs at schools so youth can get connected to more volunteer opportunities.
The ideas may be big but their next steps are very doable: figure out whether or not to combine with other Teams in the same county, and get clarity around the upcoming Groups feature and their role in them. (Stay tuned for updates from us in the next few weeks. Here’s our FAQ in the meantime.)
There’s lots more discussion to be had, but for Janice and others, the potential for Silver Spring is limitless.
“Even with just our small group, we were already learning from each other,” Janice says. “Building a network of people to share knowledge, experiences, and tools could be incredibly powerful.”
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Interested in what else the Silver Spring Team came up with or want to learn more? Feel free to reach out to Janice. Have ideas of your own to share? Let us know in the comments!
