NAYA Team Update
As a Lead Partner, part of Rebecca Schroeder's role is celebrating progress around capacity building milestones, facilitating connections and communicating with all SVP Partner volunteers engaged with our Investee, the Native American Youth & Family Center (NAYA). Everyone should be aware of the bigger picture: how capacity building work in one domain (e.g., marketing) relates to capacity building in other areas (e.g., fund development) as well as NAYA's larger strategic goals. Over the past quarter, there has been a lot of progress due to valuable work by several SVP Partners in partnership with NAYA staff.
Many thanks to Carolyn Manke for lending her expertise to the NAYA staff as they have been determining the metrics they will track for the programs supported by the Portland Children's Levy, including the new Home Visiting program that is launching this fall, thanks in large part to the tremendous work of Stephanie Feeney and the Early Childhood Advisory Council. In the areas of Early Childhood Services and Program Expansion, it is exciting to see Carolyn and Stephanie's hard work paying off as NAYA's new Home Visiting program is about to launch.Huge thanks as well to Carlo Delumpa who continues to bring great value to NAYA's marketing and communications work. NAYA's marketing, communications, and fund development team have engaged Carlo's expertise and mentoring to help them develop a powerful value proposition that informs their messaging and grant writing, create a comprehensive online marketing plan, and to begin to formulate a strategic plan for their department that will help them be even more cohesive, responsive and effective.
NAYA is intentionally building capacity across the organization with an eye toward sustainability well beyond the capital campaign. This focus is a direct result of the input and financial investment of the SVP Community Impact Committee last spring - a tremendous example of how SVP can strategically build capacity while meeting immediate needs of an Investee!
I am thrilled that we have a new volunteer joining our team, Rod MacDow (a former Encore Fellow), lending his business planning expertise to this important process. Welcome Rod! I'd also like to welcome Wendy Weissman (a former Encore Fellow) to our team. Wendy brings wonderful insights and expertise to her new role as advisor to lead partners and investee engagements. She joins Lauren Johnson (SVP Director of Community Impact), Renee Rhiner (a former Encore Fellow), and SVP Partner Val Ilsley in helping guide our capacity building work and support me in keeping us on track. And Carol Rossio has been hard at work as an Encore Fellow researching potential micro enterprise and social enterprise projects.