Canes, Trains, and Literacy - days 3-4 (grants and demotions)
Here are my thoughts from my third and fourth days, which were on Friday May 25, and Tuesday May 29. I am busy at night, what with working out in my dorm's gym and things, and I do need some sleep, so I'll be able to catch up more this weekend. For now, enjoy, and thanks!
Day 3: Bumped my head on a column during my commute and buttoned my blouse incorrectly; got to work a little late; no big deal. Set up my voicemail, read some past annual reports (in Braille), because I’ve been asked to write the reader profiles for this year’s. The reader is a first-person account of how Braille has significantly impacted someone’s life in a positive way. Each year NBP interviews a few different people, so that there are normally profiles representing an adult and a child’s perspective. The VP for Development (one of my main supervisors) asked me to help her interview a young blind girl, who will be the subject of one of the profiles. I did so, taking some furious notes, and afterward went back to Harry Potter blog posting and newspaper wrangling.
Later in the day, though, I was introduced to the concept of grant research by one of NBP’s two main grant writers. Using the beloved internet, my task was to go through a list of corporations and foundations, evaluating the kinds of grants they were offering as they related to our focus. If we seemed eligible for a grant, I would go to a database that provides Form 990s for every charitable foundation in the country, and print out the first and last few pages of the form for Carol’s perusal. All the 990s (which are tax forms, as far as I know) are available as .pdf files, which utilize Acrobat Reader. Because the contents of these files is not text but an image, my screen reading software cannot interpret it, so I can’t read it. Nevertheless, I can take notes on information from the foundation’s web site, and provide the form 990 when necessary.
When researching grants, I look for: what the typical size of the foundation’s grants are; who some of the past recipients have been; organizations that are similar to ours (that focus on education, blindness, literacy, or any combination thereof); who their trustees are (in case we know them); whether or not they accept unsolicited grant proposals; and lastly, what their exact program areas for funding are. I tried one with my supervisor, and was then off and running.
Day 4, Tue May 29: I had a rocky commute today (I’m blaming it on the long weekend). I had to get help finding the E train in the Park Street station, because I couldn’t find my trusty columns that are my landmarks. I then went the wrong way at the Symphony stop – but I got here anyway. Did I mention that for my first 3 days I was in the President’s office, because he was on vacation? It was not bad, and since I’ve met him before, I wanted to leave him a fun message of thanks for the sweet workspace, but I’m not that gutsy…yet. Anyway, I’ve been demoted to the former CFO’s office, which he has just left. He’s coming at night until a replacement is found, so we shouldn’t overlap. It’s a tough life, being an intern.
I did more grant research, some brainstorming on publicity for the Harry Potter and the Walking Wizards team for the Vision 5K, and got some confirmation that my posts had made it onto the “Floo Network” and “Leaky Cauldron” Harry Potter fan forums. Yay! This day was over fairly quickly.
Thanks go out to Rachel for going to the awesome Earthfest concert with me this weekend. It’s an annual free Boston concert that takes place outside by the Charles River. Guster was the headliner, and Grace Potter and the Nocturnals played, the latter having come to Conn! It made what could have been a lonely first weekend great.