When I started this project, I was many many things at the same time. I wore many hats. The hats I had were office manager, peer counselor, advocate, fundraiser, treasurer, and educator. Over the 8 plus years, I was able to cultivate loyal volunteers who took responsibilities away from me and therefore I ended up being the fundraiser chair.
Finding and cultivating loyal volunteers was a big challenge as our agency was seen as a weed in someone elses territory. But I suceeded at that. And I had to weather a lot of interesting flak from our competitors who'd sometimes use our volunteers to try sabotage our agency a few times. I'm very happy I was born with my mother's thick skin. Not only that, we have a procedure for dealing with these scourges and they havent failed yet. That's something I cant share at this time.
What comes in the future is change and that will bring more challenges. Rather than marketing ourselves to the community we serve, we market ourselves to the community that also serves them and we're reaping the benefits from collaborations like this.
Basically we've gone from being a screaming access fighter to a dependable access provider and the economic benefits from doing so are thunderous. The society likes us better this way.
And the personal benefits is that I get to spend more time home, more time with my family, more time taking care of myself, and less time dealing with pressures of running a battleship.
Richard Roehm
CEO
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