Where giving comes full circle

Dear Members,

To read The Alexandria Times' front-page article on The Giving Circle's Fall Forum, "Moving Ahead in Hard Times," please click here.

A summary of the panel discussion follows. We hope you will take a few minutes to read it or the article in the Times. We were so pleased with the diverse turnout of our members, non-profits, city employees and foundations - and with the substantive, interactive dialogue about how we can help vulnerable families in our community. While we all face difficult times ahead, we left the meeting energized and confident of how, by working together, we can keep Alexandria a great place to live, work and raise our families.

The Giving Circle is committed to support further dialogue and look forward to working with the city, non-profits and our members.

Help us reach our goal to invest $100,000 in Alexandria's most vulnerable families in 2009 by investing today! Visit the website to learn how.

Sincerely,

Holly Sloan and Peggy Morrison-Curtis
Co-Chairs, The Giving Circle

Moving Ahead in Hard Times

The Giving Circle 2008 Fall Forum
November 18, 2008

Krupicka, Collins, Freeman Fall Forum 08

Panelists Rob Krupicka, Debra Collins and Terri Freeman

Introduction and Welcome
Peggy Morrison-Curtis,
Co-Chair, The Giving Circle

INVEST: Since 2004, more than 400 women - in partnership with the Alexandria Community Trust - have pooled and invested more than $275,000 through The Giving Circle into initiatives that prepare Alexandria's children for success, and in the coming year we hope to invest an additional $100,000 back into our community. We hope to meet our target by December 31, and we need your financial support. Join or renew today by visiting our website, givingfullcircle.org.

ENGAGE: Members of the Giving Circle have the opportunity to engage and participate in a variety of activities and committees, depending upon their time, interests and circumstances. Events like these are an important form of giving circle engagement. Together, we learn and explore issues, challenges, and opportunities. Our hope is that today will lead to more engagement and working together - to help those most in need, in the months and years ahead.

ENRICH: All of our investment and engagement results in enrichment. First and foremost, it's the long term impact on children and families we seek. In addition, the experience of working together with our community - for our community - is personally rewarding and enriching.

Panel Discussion
Mary Beth Emson, Giving Circle Moderator
Debra Collins, Assistant City Manager, Community & Human Services
Terri Freeman, Executive Director, Community Foundation for the National Capital Region
Rob Krupicka, Alexandria Councilman

The following summarizes our engaging discussion in response to "What keeps you up at night?" and "What can we do?",

Rob opened with the observation that we are in "uncharted" territory as this economic crisis unfolds. Planning strategically, a strength of Alexandria city government, will become a luxury as we focus on immediate and emergency needs. The city would need $50M-$55M to keep pace with last year so major budget cuts are to be expected. There will be a need to:

Focus on health and safety
Make hard choices
Prepare for Job Losses
Support local business who can feed the local tax base. "Buy Alexandria" and "Give to Alexandria"
Prepare for a multiple-year crisis
Focus on the sustainability of non-profits that serve critical needs (and those who serve children)
Ask everyone to help: Civic service is key.

Alexandria is innovative, creative and generous. We will need to find new ways to help our neighbors through this. New scenarios of running non-profits will emerge and new ways of volunteering will get us through.

Debra reminded us that city servants are all about people. They are there to help people, serving the city's most vulnerable first (children and seniors), from providing protection and safety to providing help towards self-sufficiency. Therefore there are many issues arising such as the following

Growing client base. "There is a new growing base of need" for people with no place to turn and who never needed it before. Growing unemployment will compound the need.
Non-profit support. The city depends on their partnership with non-profits to provide valuable and critical services. Non-profits will be suffering from lack of grants and donations.
Work Programs

"Best practices" show us that prevention programs are the best use of dollars, but in this economic climate, they unfortunately will be the first to go. This includes job training/retraining, especially important to those that have been laid-off or are re-entering the workforce.

We have a great city and open communications with generous, creative people all across organizations to get the job done.

Terri echoed the expanding need for services by not just the working poor, but county employees, teachers, etc. Especially troubled that the disappearance of construction jobs that don't require background checks leaves former offenders without employment options especially vulnerable. Areas of concern include:

Seniors and the decisions they will make when funds are low, such as not getting medication or needed medical treatment.
Foundation effectiveness (CFNCR- the giving circle's 501C3 holder) provides grants but like other foundations are dependent on interest from financial assets.
Major problems shifting from home foreclosures to job loss
No one is exempt as educated professionals may find themselves unemployed.
Temporary assistance caseloads up 35-50%
Too many non-profits in need calls for longer-term consolidation and alignment (in a sector where this is not natural occurrence).

Incentives must be created so that more people and organizations work together. Efficiencies may be achieved through shared resources (such as back office support). Faith based charities should be included as we look at new ways to serve our neighbors. For now we will have to ensure we can provide basic needs:

Triage - determine what services have the highest priority such as food and shelter
a Summit is planned with the Community Foundation and other non-profits to have these hard conversations and build a plan that gets us to the "bright side."

There is belief in the future that will require we all work together.

Alexandria Community Trust (ACT) representatives commented that an effort is underway to "Connect Alexandria" in getting prepared and providing an organized way of engaging citizen involvement.

Closing Remarks
Holly Sloan Smith,
Co-Chair, The Giving Circle

Thanks to everyone for this informative and active dialogue. The Giving Circle will play a major role in continuing our open communications and mobilizing Giving Circle members to help in Alexandria's time of need.