Leading a widows health nonprofit organization for women in a society that doesn't not think of widowhood as a women's health issue is not easy.
Each day is different. Somedays I am deep in managing staff, operations and social media, the next I am speaking on the mental health, advocacy and financial needs of our the women and kids we empower each day.
Yesterday, over the weekend, I decided to spend 5 hours applying for a Letter of Intent (LOI) with a Community Foundation. In order to complete these, I need quiet and no distractions around me. I chose this area because we have had many requests for a Modern Widows Club community to launch. The Tampa Bay Area spans 3 counties in Florida, and has a total of 126,800 widows, an average of 12% of total population. Yet, they do not have any widow specific outreach in the area for them to build resilience, decrease social exclusion and isolation or increase economic stability issues related to widowhood.
It makes me wonder where all of these widows and their family are finding community and resources from an organization that understands them.
But now it's Monday morning, so I'm back to the day to day of our organization. Today, I will:
- Complete a U.S. Department of Commerce form for 2022 Economic Census
- Write content for our 2023 Monthly Topics that we share throughout the year nationally and locally. All of this also aligns with our Social Media campaigns month to month. Each month includes a Title, Pillar of Health selection, MWC Book Club selection, Body Content, Legendary Widow selection, Legendary Widow quote and a list of holidays and happenings for that month. It's quite a project that is solely on my deliverables list for October and November. This enables our communities to plan ahead and determine activities, speakers and outings focused on the topic of the month. This multi layered approach has worked for us over the last 3-4 years.
- Research resources on collective resilience and human capital benefits.
- Review and finalize our 2022 Widow Empowerment Event financials from September with our Program Director and Treasurer of the BOD.
- Respond to social media messages on IG, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. While I'm there I will block and report about 5-8 predators from our social sites.
- Send a loving birthday message to one of our community advocates. This is so important because widows birthdays are often forgotten since their spouses/ partners have died. Many memories are brought to the surface on memorable days of all kinds. Remembering widows on these days is meaningful and caring.
- Preparation for our Grants Committee inaugural meeting with 5 volunteers to assist us with the 37 grants we currently have to apply for funding in 2023. This will be a huge accomplishment for our nonprofit, funding is critical as our direct serviced has increases above 166% in one year. Widows have needs, Modern Widows Club
has solutions, we need funding to continue meeting those needs nationally and locally.
- Add research content to our 2023 Capital Campaign vision and mission.
- Slack communicate between all our staff members to stay on top of media and podcast requests as well as on going projects.
- Create a short video to add to our WEE2023 Sept 22-24 in St. Louis
to add to our registration page.
- Review the financial management module videos from my Empowering Good program with Rollins College/ Crummer Graduate School of Business.
That's it for today. Executive Directors wear many hats and possess many talents in change management, operational efficacy and program development. I'm in awe of all the skills required of someone who runs a nonprofit. Team work truly makes the dream work.
We are creating a new experience for widows and changing the world because of it one widow at a time. It's both necessary and audacious. One never knows when they may need what we provide.
Modern Widows Club Founder
To learn more on how you can care for widows with improved mentoring and leadership skills, check out my new book Inspire Connect Lead: Empowering Your Widow Mentoring & Leadership Gifts .
