Good Stuff But Not Much Sewing

The grant meeting I went to Tuesday morning was very interesting. The Whitefish Community Foundation exists to give money to local Flathead Valley nonprofit organizations. Our local volunteer fire department’s support organization participates in the Great Fish Challenge every summer, which is a five-week event during which each group has to raise at least $25,000. Those funds are then matched in part by the Community Foundation. Our homestead foundation is not big enough to participate in the Great Fish Challenge, but they have some smaller grant programs for which we qualify.

Being a small community organization is both a blessing and a curse. We have a lot of community support, but we don’t have the infrastructure that larger organizations do. Many of the organizations attending the meeting on Tuesday have paid staff. The Whitefish Community Foundation wants all of their participating nonprofits to use QuickBooks, which our organization does not—yet, but we’ll be moving to that shortly. I’ve been on several nonprofit boards and they tend to be filled with people who want to do good work in their communities but who don’t always have a solid understanding of basic business principles. When I joined the board of the homestead foundation and built the new website, I included features that allow for passive income streams. We have business sponsors, we can take payment for memberships and events online, and I am in the process of setting up a merchandise store where we can sell things like T-shirts, aprons, and tote bags with our logo and other artwork on them.

After the grant meeting, I went to one of the assisted living facilities in town. Several members of our congregation live there and they invited us to a hymn sing at 11 am. We ended up with a group of 12 people from our church. Half of us stayed for lunch. The food in their dining room is very good and we all had a lovely visit.

[I am not kidding about the Mennonite singing thing. All you have to do is mention singing and a bunch of Mennonites will show up.]

Ruler class yesterday was a lot of fun. It is so gratifying to witness those “A-ha!” moments in a class when students understand a concept or master a skill. I also had a good chat with the store owner’s daughter, who runs their website and social media. She has some intriguing ideas about the podcast and ways we might work together.

As predicted, the only sewing that is happening this week has been on the Tim Holtz Correspondence quilt.

I finished sewing thirty-two of these units together. They need to have another rectangle sewn to the ends and then I can assemble the top. This has gone together quickly.