Showing posts with label nonprofit organization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nonprofit organization. Show all posts

Saturday, January 17, 2015

Frustration

I spent the day yesterday with my daughter Val working on our nonprofit organization. The better part of two hours we slaved over our business plan. Neither one of us has any clue how to do this and are just winging it from sample business plans we have found on the internet. Val has asked a few “experts” but hasn’t been able to get a straight answer from them. The one guy just keeps sending her documents. We have enough documents; we can pull more from the internet. What we need is someone to go over the business plan we have and say, “yup, you are on the right track” or “boy, maybe you should scrape this and start over”.  

Simple enough. Feedback. That’s all we want. Why haven’t we been able to get any???

Next thing we worked on was social media. Tumaini Volunteers is already on Facebook and has a website. I thought that LinkedIn would be an appropriate place to get connected, so we tried that. After typing in our organization’s name, they wanted the work e-mail address of the person (me) who is the designated contact. We thought that the organization’s email address should be the one to use, which is tumainivolunteers@gmail.com. And LinkedIin can’t accept gmail accounts as a business email. Why would that be? It is the truth. That is our email address. So that went nowhere.

Next I set us up on Twitter. That actually worked out okay. I found a bunch of other nonprofits to follow who all either work with Kenya or orphans or clean water. Now they all just have to start following us. Except that I really don’t get Twitter anyway. I think that there is just too much going on. The goal, I suppose, is to have lots of followers, but the more followers you have the more Tweets start popping up and there is no way to read all of them.

On my personal Twitter page, I can get a hundred Tweets coming in within a few minutes. And often times there isn’t even anything to read. All that comes up are random numbers, letters and hash marks, which I know are all links to websites, but when there are four or five of these in each Tweet, which link do I even want to go to?

Arggh! Is there anyone out there reading this who can help us with any of these issues? We would so much appreciate it.


Thanks so much and have a great weekend. My goal is to have a weekend without frustration. Which may mean unplugging. 
This is little Monica. Her father had abandoned her and her mother. When her mother couldn't take care of her child anymore, she hung herself from a tree outside their home. A neighbor took Monica to Agape Hope Center orphanage. This, believe it or not, is a story with a happy ending as Monica is now being taken care of. Thousands of children in Nairobi end up living on the streets - or worse - when their parents are no longer in their lives. 

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Tumaini means Hope

I spent another entire evening tonight working on Tumaini Volunteers Inc. The IRS form 1023, the big complicated form required to apply for tax exempt status, is complete and Val will get it in the mail in the next few days.

We also have a logo and had a little fun in between all the hard work by designing and ordering business cards. I will post a picture of that as soon as they arrive.
The next item on our agenda is to plan a few small fundraisers and secure some speaking engagements. I also hope, that as things begin to take shape, we can rope some more team members into jumping in the trenches with us and helping with some of the work. I think it is also time to get some commitments from volunteers who are ready and willing to journey to Kenya and possibly jump literally into the trenches.

It is all very fun and exciting, as well as nerve-racking.

If you are tired of hearing about my travels in Africa, click here to follow the Compassion bloggers as they journey to Uganda. They would appreciate your support as well.


The vision of Tumaini Volunteers is to build teams of individuals who share the same passions to reach out to these underprivileged communities.

It is the mission, duty, and purpose of this organization to educate, encourage, provide aid, and facilitate sustainable development projects in underprivileged areas through empowerment of people on a local and global level.
(From our website)