The SOS Center - Finding the Sustainability to Continue to Touch Lives

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  Today I am sharing with you the story of one of my clients, the SOS Center, a non-profit that has worked in the community of Milwaukee for 30 years.  

The SOS Center of Milwaukee 

For nearly 30 years, SOS Center has been empowering children and adults to overcome poverty through their education programs. 

Thirty percent of households in the surrounding area earn less than $15,000 a year.  Neighborhood students are part of the MPS school district, where overall proficiency/advanced rates reach only 62% in reading at the 8^th grade level and only 50% in Math in 8^th grade.

Through its GED Preparation Classes, After School Homework Program, Adult Basic Education, Youth Summer Camp, English as a Second Language and Sewing Classes, the SOS Center touches the lives of each child and adult they connect with and support. 

Just ask Darlene, who dropped out of school in the 10^th grade and by the age of 16 was pregnant and married. After raising two children as well as grandchildren and working as a housekeeper for over 20 years, she signed up for free GED classes at the SOS Center at the age of 52.  Though she felt at times she felt like giving up, she completed her GED, and scored a rare perfect 800 on her Reading Test, where only a score of 410 was required to pass.

But as with any non-profit organization, the key to continuing to touch the lives of people like Darlene is financial sustainability.  With this understanding, Jodi Kessel Lyon, the Executive Director of the SOS Center, signed up for Deb Lukovich’s alinea seminar, “Learn the Secret to Sustainability.” After attending, Jodi learned that the key to financial sustainability was relationship fundraising and that her board members needed to adopt this new mindset. She knew her board and staff needed to find a better way of telling the story of SOS Center’s hard and dedicated work.

“While we knew we were doing good work, we were stuck on how to share our story,” Jodi said. “We would meet someone and be so focused on ‘we need money.’ We needed to build relationships, but struggled with the conversations we needed to have. We didn’t know how to get there.”

After selling this idea to her board, alinea was hired to work with SOS Center on strategic relationship cultivation as well as to create a compelling professional case statement to use to inspire people with their story. As soon as the case statement was created and presented to the board, Jodi already saw a renewed sense of engagement among them. 

“I think they’re getting it.  In August, one of the board members immediately contacted an old family friend and brought her in as a new board member. One of our committed board members felt uncomfortable asking for anything.  After she learned how to talk about SOS Center, she was able to get donations and now feels very comfortable talking about the Center.  Her husband became involved and after he learned how to tell our story, solicited a number of auction items for our fundraiser,” continued Jodi.

Jodi saw by September that board members were more engaged in identifying relationships and positive where they hadn’t ever been before.  “Shemagne from alinea kept us on task and truly got to know us. We even found the process fun.  Everyone came up with contacts they had, thinking outside the box.  The more they talked the more excited they got. One idea led to another. Being this engaged in the positive at a board meeting hadn’t happened in a year,” Jodi exclaimed. “This was exciting!”

With a renewed passion from her board and a new approach of telling stories, Jodi feels excited and knows that SOS Center is on the right track.  While SOS will always be fundraising, in the future Jodi plans to find more sustainable fundraising to get beyond a critical point to allow SOS to concentrate more on programming. In 2012, SOS Center would like to expand the Adult Basic Education Program, recruit more board members and volunteers as well as secure resources for ongoing capital improvements.

“After working with alinea, we learned that we need the knowledge, and the commitment. We need the tools and skills,” Jodi said.  “And we need to keep a relationship with alinea because this is just a tip of the iceberg of what we are capable of!”