Laurel Civic Association Summer Camp Overview
Since 1994, Karen Eber Davis Consulting has helped leaders improve their services, organizations and bottom line. We help people turn good ideas into exceptional funded ventures. The firm serves large multi-service nonprofits, including Catholic Charities, Meals on Wheels Plus of Manatee, United Cerebral Palsy and the Senior Friendship Center. Public sector clients include the Englewood Water District, Sarasota County Health Department and DeSoto Memorial Hospital. In the specialty nonprofit area, we've worked with entrepreneurial leaders from such groups as the Animal Rescue Coalition, the Sarasota Film Festival, Ringling College of Art and Design and St Leo's University Center for Jewish and Catholic Studies. Our consulting services foster organizational excellence and promote the transfer of skills so that your organization's leaders grow in skills and competence.
Volunteer Sharon Stoutenburg and Director Irene Flynn at the Florida-Bahamas Synod Resource Center Philosophy
Our philosophy is simple: We help individuals with a vision for bettering people's lives realize them. It is our belief that visionary leaders, and those who help them, are the impetus for innovation, organization renewal and improved quality of life in every community.
Our success rests on helping leaders develop the skills and resources to make their vision a reality. Finding ways to increase funding is among the most popular tasks, but visionaries require more than money for success. Visionary leaders need knowledge, skills and tangible plans to invest their scarce supplies of time and money to create their vision. Having the right competencies makes the difference between creating a coloring-book picture and a masterpiece.
What We Do
Below we list several activities from client files. These projects provide an overview of custom interventions and convey real-world glimpses of our services.
Grant Services
The leader of the Animal Rescue Coalition and board had a vision that a low-cost mobile spay-neuter clinic could greatly reduce the number of healthy, adoptable animals put to death in their area. We worked with staff to identify grant sources and drafted three successful grant proposals that helped them to purchase and open a mobile clinic. One year later, we helped the organization design and writing four grant proposals that yielded an additional $65,000 to expand the clinic hours and provide services to low-income pet owners.
Suncoast Workforce Development Board
Program Development
For the Manasota Industry Council, now the Suncoast Workforce Development Board, we designed a school-to-work program for use inside local high schools. In its first year, Sarasota County Government funded the Career Express program for $100,000. One year later, the program won a competitive federal award of more than one million dollars. Career Express was modeled after a successful national program, which we customized to advantage local strengths and assets.
Program Renewal/Redesign Grants
Faced with the last phase of state funding for a long-running program, the staff of the Women's Resource Center in Sarasota realized they needed new resources to continue their activity. Staff members became intrigued by the opportunity new funding sources might offer to women who hadn't previously qualified for the program. We worked with the Women's Resource Center to create a more inclusive and updated program based on their existing successful activities. Our help also brought in new funds from a funder who "never funded operating costs" - but consented to do so on the merits of the group's challenge grant proposal.
Laurel Civic Association Event Development
Newly elected leaders in the Florida Bahamas Synod, ELCA, sought to redesign their 21-year-old standard in-the-hotel-assembly. We helped them create a leadership development event, in a retreat setting, that served 700 people and offered a keynote speaker and 40 workshop opportunities. The response was enthusiastic and contagious. One participant said, "I didn't know assemblies could be this much fun."
Facilitation
St. Margaret of Scotland faced an opportunity to expand. It found capital funds relatively easy to raise. Raising ongoing operating funds was a long-term challenge. The Board needed to decide to pursue or not pursue an expansion. We helped by providing two kinds of decision information: data from other groups who successfully made similar decisions and a process where the Board collected and examined knowledge about the options and weighed the most important factors. As a result, in an afternoon retreat, the Board of St. Margaret of Scotland moved from confusion to a firm decision. It set forth to develop a practical plan to work on the expansion, while simultaneously shoring up operating resources—thus taking one important step forward.
Circus Sarasota Strategy Formulation
For the Senior Friendship Centers, which specialize in helping older adults volunteer to help other older adults, we provided the idea that allowed them to continue their well-received, but expensive, health education courses. In the past, similar classes led by a licensed practical nurse resulted in whole-hearted participant response and healthier behaviors. While these outcomes confirmed both the need for the education and its success, the cost of replicating these classes agency-wide was prohibitive. We helped the organization get a grant to fund an LPN lead program that provided trained, qualified, retired volunteers as teachers, thus creating an affordable, replicable program.
Dreams are Free, Venice, FL
Circus SarasotaProgram Expansion
Our work with Renaissance Manor, a southwest Florida organization, helped to create 41 additional units of housing for adults with mental illness over a two-year period and over $5 million dollars over 5 years. Thus doubling the organization's housing stock. The organization specializes in housing management and collaborates with local mental health providers for necessary casework services. Historically, nonprofits that try to do both functions struggle. This approach allows each nonprofit to excel by focusing on what they do best.
Please contact us for additional examples of results we've generated with our clients and/or for specific references.