Let’s look to the future a little bit: have you and
your staff talked about what the next couple of
months might look like? As you said, we’re all kind
of on the tail end of this wave and going into
another wave of the pandemic.
I think if we’re forced to close to the store again,
we’ve learned how to tread without water, and if
we had to close the clinic again, I think it will go the
telehealth direction – which is the wave of the
future anyway. We’re getting ourselves set up for a
facility that doesn’t always require people to come
to that facility, like with food pantry deliveries and
things. I feel like having gone through that first
wave, if we have to do it again, we have a plan now.
We know what we have to do to keep the doors
open.
I did want to touch on Community Helping Place
and its involvement with #LumpkinMatters and the
Two Georgias Initiative. Do you think that your
involvement with The Two Georgias helped your
organization throughout this era or might help you
in the next phase?
Oh yes. I felt like they were really gracious to us and
flexible. I came on a year ago and basically rewrote
the budget. They were so good and so kind. Javier,
Lisa, Samantha, everybody – gave me a lot of
technical help and Catherine Liemohn was great too.
That gave me the courage to say, “Is it ok if we
spend this money a little bit differently?” When you
write a grant, you’re basing it on what you need
right then, but in 2-3 years, things can really change.
It’s like it’s a living document, it changes as you go.
Being able to have the flexibility to change that was
already great, and then when we got around to April
8
and the grant was due for the next cycle, we were
right in the middle of COVID-19, writing all these
grants and trying to get emergency help. I was a
little nervous that their expectations of me would be
more than I could meet, but they were great. They
said, “Let us help you get ZOOM, let us help you
transition some of this money and use it in different
ways.”
We decided that since we weren’t having an inperson
May event, we instead purchased a no
contract phone and set up an emergency hotline so
that people could still access those resources but
without a resource there. Now when they call this
24 hour number, there’s a volunteer operator who
answers the phone and who is trained to ask what
their biggest need is at this time; is it food, is it
housing, is it transportation? Let’s get you hooked
up with the right resources. That has really taken
off, and they’re having 3 or 4 calls a day, 7 days a
week and responding to those calls. We partner
with Family Connections and the school system to
really get that number out to the community, and I
feel like it’s picking up as we go along.
This pandemic is changing the way we use those
funds, and I think it will change it in the next year
just because it’s a natural thing. I kept continuing to
ask what the Foundation’s goals were, and I want to
align myself with that. But I felt like as long as we’re
still helping people who are food insecure, helping
people who don’t have access to proper healthcare
– as long as I’m helping people change their life,
we’re using that money in a way that we can be
proud of and the Foundation can trust us, and we
can be accountable to them. I think it’s all working
out.
15