Category Archives: Association

Food Fight Between Winston-Salem and Greensboro

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Here's the deal: the organization I work for (Triad Apartment Association) has kicked off its annual food drive for Second Harvest Food Bank of NW NC.  For the past several years we've hosted an event at a Greensboro Grasshoppers baseball game and invited the public to bring cans of food to contribute to Second Harvest.  This year we've stepped it up and are hosting an event at the Winston-Salem Dash game on July 12 and the Greensboro Grasshoppers game on July 14 and we're holding a contest to see which game will raise more food/money for Second Harvest.

As part of our efforts WXII has agreed to partner with us and both Mayor Joines (W-S) and Mayor Knight (GSO) have filmed public service messages that will run on WXII as part of our efforts.  Obviously we're most thankful to the mayors, the Dash, the Grasshopper and WXII for working with us on this effort.

If you'd like to participate you can do so in several ways:

  • Attend one of the games and bring food or financial donations ($1 = 12 cans of food)
  • Drop off cans of food at one of our participating apartment communities (see the map below, or the list on the TAA website).
  • If you'd like to mail in a donation you can send it to TAA at 3407 West Wendover Ave., Suite E, Greensboro NC 27407. Checks should be made out to Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest NC
  • An added bonus: if you want to donate a couple of bucks just write "Shave Jon's Head" in the memo field of any check, or on a cover note with the donation, and if we get $1,000 with that note then I'll have my head shaved.

I hope to see you all at one of the ballgames!

Winston-Salem/Kernersville Drop Off Locations

View 2010 TAA Food Drive W-S Drop Off Locations in a larger map

Greensboro/High Point Drop Off Locations

Nice Article on Labor of Love

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Kim Underwood wrote a nice article for the Winston-Salem Journal about TAA's Labor of Love project at The Children's Home.  As I wrote before, this is one of the most amazing projects I've ever been involved with and I think the article really helps explain why:

The cottage is needed because last Sept. 1, the Children's Home took over the operation of Opportunity House, a nine-bed emergency shelter for young people on Brookstown Avenue. The shelter had been run by the Youth Opportunities organization.

"The intention from Day One was to move that facility on campus," said George Bryan, the president and chief executive of the Children's Home…

When the Children Home agreed to take over the shelter, Bryan estimated that it could take $150,000 to renovate the 10,000-square-foot Stultz Cottage. With no money available, immediate action wasn't possible.

Along came Marc Crouse, a member of the apartment association who volunteers at the home and is in the process of adopting a young person who has been living there. When he approached Bryan about the association doing something at the home for this year's "Labor of Love" project, Bryan thought that fixing up the cottage for the program would be just the thing.

"From the first, we are considering this a miracle," Bryan said.

All Lives Have Equal Value

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You can read Bill Gates' 2010 Annual Letter for the Bil & Melinda Gates Foundation here.  It's broken into 12 sections which you will find below.  Personally I really like the line at the top of every page: "All Lives Have Equal Value"

Helping The Children’s Home

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This actually has to do with my day job.  The Triad Apartment Association (TAA) is gearing up for it's annual Labor of Love and this year we'll be working with The Children's Home to fix up a building that's been vacant for over 25 years so that it can be used as transitional housing for kids who turn 18. 

As things currently stand when a child turns 18 they are pretty much on their own.  I don't know about you, but if I'd been left to my own devices at 18 I would have been in a world of hurt.  The Children's Home envisions taking this refurbished building and using it as a place to temporarily house the 18 year-olds while they learn how to make their way in the world.

The TAA is going to take several teams of volunteers to clean up, paint, fix the landscaping and make repairs to the building over two weekends in February.  We're in the process of organizing our teams and gathering supplies for the project.  To give you an idea of the scope of this project we anticipate using a minimum of 200 gallons of paint and having dozens of volunteers on site at any given time. 

One of the most exciting aspects of this project is that we keep getting donations and volunteers by word of mouth even though we haven't really been pushing it to this point.  I can't tell you how many calls we've gotten from "friends of friends" who want to know how they can get involved.  What I've been telling them is that we will happily take donations of supplies, or money (financial donations go directly to The Children's Home for the project), to help with the project.  If we get a duplication of donations, say for kitchen appliances, then we've been assured that The Children's Home can find a use for them.  If you have any interest in helping out please feel free to contact our office at (336) 294-4428 or visit our web page about the project here. 

I wasn't yet at TAA when we did the 2009 Labor of Love so I'm REALLY stoked about this year's project.

 

Profit vs. Non-Profit

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David Boyd has this from Walter Williams:

One of the wonderful things about free markets is that the path to
greater wealth comes not from looting, plundering and enslaving one’s
fellow man, as it has throughout most of human history, but by serving
and pleasing him. Many of the wonderful achievements of the 20th
century were the result of the pursuit of profits. Unfortunately,
demagoguery has led to profits becoming a dirty word. Nonprofit is seen
as more righteous, particularly when people pompously stand before us
and declare, “We’re a nonprofit organization.”



Profit is cast in a poor light because people don’t understand the role
of profits. Profit is a payment to entrepreneurs just as wages are
payments to labor, interest to capital and rent to land. In order to
earn profits in free markets, entrepreneurs must identify and satisfy
human wants in a way that economizes on society’s scarce resources.


As you may know I do most of my work with non-profits and here is what I can tell you about them: the good ones behave just like well-run, for-profit companies.  If they think of themselves as existing for a “higher purpose” and justify their existence in that light then they are doomed.  If, on the other hand, they view their members or constituents as customers and view their existence as serving those customers then they are most likely going to succeed.

Blogging for Associations

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Rex Hammock, one of the leading bloggers out there, is doing some guest blogging for American Business Media (ABM), a trade association of which he is a member.  In his introductory post on the ABM blog he shared this nugget:

As a note of transparency, my company works with several large national
associations in publishing their member magazines and providing online
editorial services to them. (ABM is not one of these.) And
so, in addition to my willingness to serve in another voluntary role
for ABM, I also have a professional interest in trying to understand
the role of participatory media (I call it conversational media) in the
context of associations. I believe associations have a unique
opportunity to serve as neutral platforms for conversations — they
certainly do so when they host meetings. I’ve spent the past decade
trying to encourage clients and other publishers to embrace ways to
amplify the voices of those they serve, rather than view those voices
as threats or competition. I hope the blogging committee and this blog
can help me keep ranting on discussing that topic.