Hi friends!
Is it just me or does 2018 seem to be moving super fast? We are already more than halfway through the year and I am so excited to share what we’ve been up to since you last heard from me.
What We’ve Been Working On:
I am going to start by updating you on the goals I put in my last post. As I mentioned, one of our big goals is making our Kindling Workshops more scalable and available for other organizations to run since someone from the Celebrate EDU team has been teaching all of our workshops so far. Well, this quarter, we made huge strides in making this happen and hosted 2 partner-run Kindling Workshops! We hosted Kindling Instructor trainings with both organizations and were able to observe the workshops in action since both of the partners were here in Colorado. This helped us to discover what was successful in the workshop, and also see the areas where we need to do a little more training. Overall, both workshops were hugely successful and we are excited to get more partner organizations facilitating Kindling in the next few months!
We also made steps forward in growing our team! We posted 2 full-time positions, Partnership Manager and Evaluation & Innovation Manager. We are looking for the perfect candidates to fill the roles. Hiring is a somewhat new process for us and we are learning a lot about it. We can’t wait to bring on our new Celebrate team members soon!
The biggest thing that happened this quarter was the Chick-fil-A Foundation True Inspiration Awards. In April, they sent a talented film crew to Colorado to film a short video about us to be shown at the gala. We had such an amazing time with these guys, they made us so comfortable on film (not an easy feat) and were so much fun to spend 2 days with.
The biggest thing that happened this quarter was the Chick-fil-A Foundation True Inspiration Awards.
A month later, we made the trek to Atlanta for the real thing, the True Inspiration Awards Gala. We arrived with a bit of a crew in tow: Linda, Brent and I of course, our team member Melissa, my uncle Jim and 2 of our close family friends. Our local Chick-fil-A operator Nathan, (the guy that brought us the giant check last November), was also there. I didn’t realize it until we were there but we were by far the largest group in attendance-so go us! We had fun touring the Chick-fil-A Support Center and learning more about their company, but most of all celebrating this giant accomplishment for our organization. During the gala, I gave a little speech, Brent joined me on stage, Martina McBride performed, altogether a very memorable evening. Be sure to check out our Instagram highlight to see all that happened during our trip.
I also made a trip to Ventura, CA to work with our long-time partner, the Arc of Ventura County who is making a big push to take more people through Celebrate EDU programs. I did a refresher training for their staff and worked on strategy for how to get more students access to entrepreneurial programs. They are an awesome group and we love working with them!
What’s Next?
If any of you have had the chance to visit our office in Boulder, then you know that it is tiny! We have been subletting space from Bonusly, who so graciously has shared their office with us for 2.5 years. (Side note: if you haven’t heard of Bonusly, take a minute to check them out—their company is super awesome!) But we have outgrown our tiny space, and Bonusly has grown as well, so we have to move! Our Pearl St. office was our first-ever real office and we grew so much here but we are excited for the next chapter. We have found a new space, are remodeling it during the month of July and are looking forward to making the move in August. Stay tuned for all the updates on that!
Thanks for listening!
Jenny