Children & Youth Impact Council

Meeting Summary for Thursday, May 1, 2008

Noon – 1:30 p.m., Room 136, UWCO Building

Rob Edmund, Chair

Demetries Walker, Vice Chair (excused)
Rob Marx, PAC Vice Chair (excused)

Members Present:
Maurice Blake, Director of Student Management,
Columbus City Schools
Barbara Boyd, Education Partnerships, Nationwide
Chris Kealy, Ernst & Youth LLP Tax Services
Ezetta Murray, Staff Consultant, Columbus Education
Association
Dr. Nancy Nestor-Baker, Director, OSU P-12 Project
Hope Sharett, Office of Attorney General Marc Dann
Douglas Shoemaker, Magistrate, F.C. Juvenile Court
Reina Sims, Program Project Manager, Ohio
Tobacco Use Prevention & Control Foundation
Nicholas Stanutz, Senior Executive Vice President,
Huntington Bancshares, Inc.
Tei Street, Director, Office of Education, City of
Columbus
Yeura Venters, Director, F.C. Public Defender’s Office
Becky Westerfelt, Executive Director, Huckleberry
House
Jane Whyde, Deputy Director, Development Support
Services, F.C. Job & Family Services
William Wise, Superintendent, South-Western City
Schools

UWCO Staff Present:

Tobi Furman, VP Marketing
Chris Groves, E-Communications Manager
Angel Harris, VP, Relationship Manager
Shuba Lembach, Project Coordinator, Juvenile
Justice Planning Initiative
Janet Ravneberg, AVP & Senior Impact Director,
Ensuring Children & Youth Succeed
Valerie Ridgeway, Director of Public Policy
Adero Robinson, Assistant Impact Director, Ensuring
Children & Youth Succeed
Evelyn Johns-Rivera, CI Administrative Coordinator
& Meeting Recorder
Cindy Sturni, Director of Start Smart

Guest:
Iben “Chip” Smith, Directions For Youth and Families
Kathy Shahbodaghi, Columbus Metropolitan Library

1. Introductions, Updates & Announcements, Robert Edmund

 The meeting was called to order at 12:05 p.m.; the meeting summary from January 10, 2008 was
approved as read.
 The annual “Celebration of Excellence” recognizing leaders in workplace campaigns will be held on
May 12th – all volunteers are invited to attend.
 Huckleberry House extended an invitation to all council members to attend an open house at their
new counseling center on May 28th.
 Kudos were given to Nationwide – who received the National Spirit of America award from United
Way of America (UWA).
 The State of the Child Luncheon will be held on May 6th – for further information on any of these
events, please contact staff for details.

Agency Colleague Comments – Guest: Directions For Youth & Families

Adero Robinson invited council members to share their passions or refer someone in the community that
they know in order to learn how United Way programs are creating impact. This month’s guest is Iben
“Chip” Smith from Directions For Youth & Families Short Stop program. This UWCO funded art-based
program provides nurturing after school activities for over 250 at risk middle school youth. Chip brought a

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gallery of art work produced by his students and talked about how essential this program is for developing
talent and providing alternatives to drug and alcohol lifestyles.

2. LIVE UNITED, Tobi Furman

United Ways across America form the largest fund-raising organization in the country with over $4 billion
collected last year and a brand worth $34.7 billion. It is estimated that the Franklin County community has
over $1million in uncollected resources, simply because not enough potential donors are asked to give.
Following extensive research in ways to enhance the brand and to create a national movement for the
newly defined priorities reflected in the local four focus areas of children and youth, individuals and
families, vibrant neighborhoods and emergency and basic needs; UWA revealed the “Live United”
campaign. United Ways across the country are adopting the “Live United” campaign, realizing that a
national focus is needed to create impact for change. Tobi demonstrated ways that the campaign will be
revealed to the public – through media and product placements. She brought volunteers “Live United” t-
shirts and buttons. If you did not receive a t-shirt, please contact staff so that arrangements for one can
be made for you.

3. Community Impact Toolbox, Chris Groves

The Marketing Staff and Community Impact Staff have been busy at work to develop an online “toolbox”
for each of the four impact councils. The “toolbox” is an online site where members can get detailed
information about their council – with ability to access meeting materials, forums, special voting events,
archive materials and more. The “toolbox” will eliminate multiple mailings, e-mails, phone calls and will
streamline all Impact Council information to an online site that will be easy to enter. During the month of
June, Impact Council members will be receiving an e-mail asking them to register at the site. Beginning
with the July 10th meeting, all meeting materials will no longer be postal-mailed; instead they will be online
for access at the member’s convenience. Kudos were given to Chris for his much appreciated efforts –
Chris is a member of the Children and Youth internal staff committee.

4. Public Policy Agenda, Valerie Ridgeway

Valerie presented an update about what is happening in the development of United Way’s 2008-09 public
policy agenda. Valerie visited each of the nine Results Committees and has walked away with 23
separate issues for tier assignment. Seven of the 23 issues were submitted through the Kindergarten
Readiness and High School Graduation Results Committees. The Public Policy Committee met in March
and began the hard task of prioritization. Some considerations that were weighed in the decision-making
process:
• UWCO should not give priority to issues that other organizations are already championing
• Some issues are not ready for full Tier 1 support; they are in the think tank and in legislative
development; its important to choose priority issues in which the legislature has a current opportunity
of change
• Some issues are better address programmatically and may not need legislative action to create
impact

Discussion
• Council members congratulated Valerie and the Public Policy Committee for its thorough and
thoughtful job of collecting and organizing the public policy issues
• Tier 1 ranking issues offer a unique opportunity for UWCO to take full leadership of the issue and
shape its development. Tier 2 ranking issues are opportunities for issues in transition and best
described as active advocacy, Tier 3 issues are on watch, and may recognize a future opportune
time to develop a fuller relationship
• One way for UWCO and non-profits to be more effective in legislative matters is to place more
interns in their organizations – it would be important to create a way for non-profits to compete for
intern placement
• Agencies and schools can partner to secure dollars that make impact – for example – partnering with
Columbus City Schools to compete for a $50 million grant from CF for assessing three and four year
olds for school readiness – these activities can create huge impact outside of legislative activities

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• If an important bill is before the legislation, but not Tier 1 ranking for United Way, ad hoc committees
can be formed to create support around the issue – the Public Policy Committee receives legislative
summaries and can determine what issues are on the forefront and match them to any of the
priorities on any of the three tier levels

5. 2008-09 Program Investment Draft Recommendations, Janet Ravneberg

During the May Board meeting, members will review the Macro-investment Plan which reports of dollars
raised during the last campaign and recommends specific funding areas for 2008-09. The campaign
raised a small increase over the previous year’s results; however, the total amounts designated lowered
the overall pool available for disbursement through the investment process. Currently funded programs
will receive an across-the-board adjustment beginning on July 1 resulting from total dollars available that
will be reported in the plan. This approved plan will be shared to council members during the July 10th
meeting. The current year adjustment will include allocations until June 31, 2008. July 1, 2008 -
December 2009 will represent an 18-month transitional funding period before the new investment process
will begin in January 2010. UWCO will change its fiscal year reporting to a calendar year system.

6. Strategy Development & Results Committee Reports

Ready to Read Initiative Report/Funding Recommendation, Chris Kealy & Kathy Shahbodaghi
The Ready to Read Initiative received its first year of funding last year and has demonstrated positive
outcome results with the program. This early reading program that focuses on parent involvement
facilitated 66 workshops last year that involved over 1300 participants. Each of these families received a
walk-away tote filled with activities and books that encourage learning early reading skills at home. The
program follows the philosophy that a child’s first and most important teacher are the parents. In order to
have an outreach to families that live in mid to lower income areas, the workshops were offered at a
diversity of sites throughout the city. Participants were surveyed following the workshop and also asked to
self-report back to the Columbus Metropolitan Library – their child’s increase in reading skills.

Ready to Read is ready to launch another year of workshops – this time focusing on more outreach sites
– like Community Properties of Ohio, pediatric clinics, Children’s Hospital, etc. They’ve streamlined their
approach and will offer more snacks instead of meals. They are requesting $62,500 for funding needed
for the 2008-09 workshop costs. Kindergarten Readiness Results Committee reviewed their proposal and
favorably impressed with the results and participant impact, have recommended funding for the renewal
proposal.

ACTION: A first and second motion was heard to approve the full amount requested. The motion passed
without abstaining votes or conflict of interest noted.

Strategy and Performance Measure Development

All nine Results Committees began the process of selecting strategies and subsequent supporting
performance measurements at the beginning of the year. In February, the committees were asked to
provide feedback against a group of criteria developed by staff and volunteers. There were several
avenues of approach for discovering effective strategies – volunteers participated in a literature scan,
examined successful models across the country and collected data against these models to find the more
effective approaches of measurement. General agreement was made among the committees that a
limited number of strategies could create optimized impact in those areas. In addition to the work of staff
and Results Committee volunteers, Performance Measures Subcommittees were formed to fully define
ways in which outcomes could be specifically measured and also offer opportunities to collect aggregate
data that would truly reflect any changes in the selected strategies. This ability to aggregate measurement
data has been missing in collection practices and is needed to truly reflect influence against a chosen
strategy in the community.

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Kindergarten Readiness, Chris Kealy
Kindergarten Readiness continued its discussion of strategy development in its April meeting.
Kindergarten Readiness enjoyed a Tier 1 ranking in the 2007 Public Policy Agenda and the committee felt
it was not time to reduce this ranking, since so much ground was gained and so many issues are still on
the line in the next legislation. Discussion also turned to the new branding campaign and its effect on
UWCO’s capacity for system change in the community. Parallel to the work of its Performance Measures
Subcommittee counterpart, KRRC also reviewed their drafted strategies and refined language for clarity.
The committee also found a need to continue its strategy selection through e-mail forums, voting and is
still working with Janet and Adero to improve the draft.

High School Graduation, Dr. Nancy Nestor-Baker

HSG RC began its strategy discussion with over 20 strategies to review and prioritized these down to 9
current strategies for consideration. Their discussion focused on eliminating overlapping issues or issues
that were fragmented – trying to choose broad approaches. They surveyed which strategies were being
aided by other entities and they took a look at programs that were historically ranked as important.
Members agreed that college may not be a post-secondary choice suitable for everyone and debated if a
strategy geared at college preparation was inclusive. Foremost in their minds was the potential return of
investment a particular strategy could deliver. This committee will also continue its work in strategy
development.

7. Plans for the July 2008 Meeting, Robert Edmund

• The Results Committees will continue their strategy refinement process and will update their
progress during the July meeting. Adero and Janet thanked the volunteers for the hard work and
generous time commitment to the process to date.
• Janet Jackson will hold a community funders systems breakfast and share a summary of strategy
development in order to secure their feedback. Collaboration is highly valued and this invitation is
important for setting the stage for future partnerships, and to determine community service gaps.
• Janet Ravneberg and Adero Robinson will also be meeting with other Impact Council UWCO staff, to
report on strategy findings and look for potential cross-functional links.
• The meeting was adjourned at 1:30 p.m.
• The next meeting will be held on Thursday, July 10th at noon in Room 136.

Happy Fourth of July!