JOE MICHNER:All right everyone,welcome back,welcome back.
Good morning again.
How's everybody doingafter that quick break?
Ready to go?
Okay.
So again, we are now goingget into that part that I knowyou've all been dying for,the nuts and bolts.
Our fine friends from ABLEare going to help us out.
Yesterday we gave you thequick rapid fire of all of thedifferent programs we have.
We didn't get into how they'refunded and how they evolved.
Those are the kinds of thingswe want to talk about duringthis portion ofthe session.
We're going to touch onthings like partnershipswith funders.
We're also going to talk alot about partnershipsthis afternoon.
Okay, so we are reallygoing to delve into stuff.
After every little program wetalk about, we're going toopen it up to a couplequestions from you ifyou have them about theprograms, and we're reallygoing to try to get into specifics.
We're going to try toslow everything down.
So we're going to talk aboutfee for service ventures.
We are going to talk aboutcontract development.
We are going to talk abouthow to work with schools.
We are going to talk abouthow to get into schoolsand all of that fun stuff.
And most importantly,we're going to talk abouthow that youth and theirvoice is essential to thedevelopment of all ofthese programs.
With that in mind, Ithink we have to takea group selfie.
All right?
Group selfie.
I don't know how to dothis at all, so Kim's goingto tell us how to do it.
KIMBERLY TISSOT: Sosocial media is veryimportant, obviously.
We make sure thatall of our services,not all of the services,but what we're actuallydoing in the communityand at conferences likethis are put on our socialmedia just so that ourfollowers can see howbusy we are educatingthe world about IL.
We're going to take a selfie.
We're going to turnaround and do a selfiewith you all in thebackground,so do something funin the background.
Put your hands up,make funny faces,whatever you want to do.
Are you ready?
JOE MICHNER:This isthe aspect of being kindof dorky around youngadults and they reallyappreciate that.
We're still trying tofigure this out.
SETH HODEREWSKI:Am I in there.
KIMBERLY TISSOT: Making fun faces?
Are you ready?
One two three!
Another one.
SETH HODEREWSKI: Getyour head in there, Joe.
KIMBERLY TISSOT:One two three!
Fantastic.
Thank you.
JOE MICHNER:Okay.
I don't know if you want my face like that.
High altitude, what fun.
So we'll get that onthe hash tag.
What's the hashtag again?
#CILyouthmatter.
Okay.
Let's get going.
SETH HODEREWSKI:I'm sweating.
JOE MICHNER:So, ifyou remember yesterday,we talked really quicklythrough these programs.
We're going to first startwith our first youth transitionprogram that is S2L andReal World, and wasstarted about eight yearsago, so long before theWIOA stuff wasput into place.
I'll turn it over to Seth.
SETH HODEREWSKI: Just to give a little back- ground on what S2L is.
S2L group is ouryoung adult groupthat gets togethera few times a monthand we do differenttypes of activitiesthat the young adultschoose that they want to do.
So social activities, advocacy, you name it.
Whatever they are looking foris what we are looking to do.
And our summer programis the off-shoot of that,our Real WorldLehigh Valley.
That is our six-weekintensive program thathas morphed over timeinto becoming more ofan employmenttype of program.
Really looking at teaching employment skills in avery creative way.
But, it initially was started,both of those two programswere together,funded through a grantby the DevelopmentalDisabilities Council.
I know everystate has a DDC.
They are a great resourceand a great option to lookat for funding for differenttypes of work.
They have a very similarphilosophy to a centerfor independent living.
They are generally agood group to work with.
For us, we've worked withthem in this regard andmany other projects fromlooking at things likeaccessibility tocross-disabilitythinking to leadership inschools that we talkeda little bit about.
You know, so they're,I think we have a prettyprogressive DDC inPennsylvania as well.
But it really started withthat grant, you know?
And having a grant to beable to build off of is, for us,we have seen it time andtime again where it's justtotally vital to puttingprograms together and,you know, you have thatlittle bit more leewaywhere you're not havingto look at all the specificsall the time.
You have the deliverablesand everything that youneed to accomplish,but it isn't as, it may notbe as strict as some ofthe fee for service stuff,and some of the fee forservice stuff that we do too.
JOE MICHNER: Letme jump back a little bit.
We're talking about eightyears ago, but thesekinds of opportunitiesare available out there.
That's why we're kind of highlighting how ourprograms evolve.
Just by a show of hands,how many people in theroom are really startingfrom scratch comingout of this conference?
Okay?
So about a third maybe?
A third of the room?
How many of you havesome transitionprogramming, butyou want to build it?
Okay.
Big amount.
Three quartersof the room.
And how many of you havereally well establishedtransition programmingand you just want to seewhat other options areout there to maybe dosomething different?
Nada.
Oh, maybe one.
Two.
Okay.
So that gives us anidea of where you'reat when we talkabout these things.
I think as we go throughthe slides you'll see thatthere are some thingsyou could start outfee for service at thispoint, but that'sa challenge, right?
Because you don't havethe time to set up theprogram, theinfrastructureto go out thereand do the outreach.
The grant isalways the ideal.
And we are going to talkto you about most of ourprograms, until we hada solid infrastructure,were startedthrough a grant.
And then we made thoseprograms sustainablethrough a fee for servicemodel after the grant ended,and we were able to buildother programs off of those.
I wanted to put thatout there right upfront so you could seehow that evolved.
SETH HODEREWSKI:So we had those funds,four years, $100,000 eachyear to do the group work,to do the summer program.
It was something likewe saw the need.
Lehigh Valley Centersaw the need in thecommunity for youngadult transition programming.
And, you know, that wassomething they initiallytried to get a grant.
It didn't work.
It doesn't always work,unfortunately.
But when it does,so many good thingscan come out of it.
We were seeing things like,we do a peer support group.
So we had some youngadults interestedin that type of thing.
They would join that onoccasion which was awesome.
And we also had anothergroup run out of our coreservices that was calledour FAN group,Future Advocates Now.
Now that group hasmorphed into, we willtalk about a little later,what we call ourCommunity Club,but that kind of thinking,that kind of work along withthe fact that in the fall ourcommunity supportscoordinators would getphone calls from parentssaying, our young adultis done with school.
They're at home sittingand doing nothing now.
What do we do?
That was the thinkingbehind all of that ofwhy we decidedto go in there.
I was fortunate enough toget hired in November 2008,and I never heardof a CIL before.
You know?
Like I actually, I workedin the sheltered workshopfor many, many years,and I saw some youngadults that would comethere right from school,and I always had it inthe back of my mind of,what's going on?
Why are these youngadults not in thecommunity getting jobs?
When I saw this ad forwork in a place called a CIL,I thought it soundedpretty cool and thatI should check it out.
We were able to,we were fortunateenough to get that grant.
It started off as justme in a room andmy executive director.
We were the only onesworking on thetransition services.
I always like to tell Joe,it was me and a box ofone of those self-servecandy boxes.
I always like to tell Joe thatwas my favorite co-workerand best worker everthat I got to work at.
JOE MICHNER:WhenI came, he had to movehis candy dish.
But the question is,so what do we dowith the $100,000.
And I want to say, too,for those of you if youhave a grant writer,that's awesome.
If you don't, you need toinvest a lot of time intolooking and seeing if thegrant, these funders haverequirements and havetheir ideas of what you'regoing to do with the grant.
You've got to make surethe grant will work forwhat you do and that'sa whole other process.
That could be a three-daytraining on how to researchthese grants.
But we're certainly happy totalk to you about the processand how we've goneabout it in the past.
SETH HODEREWSKI: Howto go about writing those grants.
We really take ateam approachwhen we go to write thegrants and our grantwriter has some specificlanguage where ourDevelopmental DisabilitiesCouncil told us that ourgrant writer should bedoing the trainingfor their grant writing.
And write down to ourfinancial folks, you know?
And having a personthat really understand.
We were fortunate enoughto have someone that wasable to look at and take theprogramming piece andthen, kind of putnumbers to all of that.
She's amazing in theway that she did that.
We actually gottoo big for her.
She worked part timeand was doing prettymuch a full work on apart time schedule.
Having those two piecesreally were huge with uswhen we've goneinto all of this workespecially around grantsand into fee for service stuff.
JOE MICHNER:So whatdid we do with the 100,000that first year,that was Seths position?
A ton of outreach.
Seth was going out everywhereto talk about these programs.
To find the young adults andtalk about the programs.
Several months then before, in the fall,we started up theactual services.
So you need that timeto get everythingprepared andready to go.
I know a lot of you arethinking, I already havea full-time job, how doI find that time, right.
It is an investment, weare not going to lie to you.
The reality is Sethand I work a lot.
I know Charlieand Kim do, too.
She's working allthe time, right?
It's definitely aninvestment.
But again, as you see aswe build these programs,we're building layers in.
We're bringing new peoplein the door and findingthose right peopleas things build up.
We did it very quicklyover the past few years,probably too quicklyin some cases.
So we're playing a bit ofcatch-up right now at ouragency to get people up tospeed and everything.
But you have to constantlybe thinking about logisticsfor these programs andhow they're going to happen.
You might be the personinvesting all that time upfront, but you can'tdo that forever, right?
So you have to be ableto make it sustainableand to build those layers,and that's a whole othertraining but somethingwe'd be happy to talkto you aboutand help you with.
SETH HODEREWSKI:Going into it all,I had no idea.
I was really clueless.
I didn't know how toput a group together.
I did not know how to do this,it just came, you know?
There were thesedeliverables thatwe had to meet.
We went out and promotedthe heck out of this thing,got young adults involved,got them excited,got them talking to otheryoung adults and talkingto parents about transitionand what the CIL is.
And to me, that was just anatural hook, you knowthat whole IL philosophy,that consumer controlpiece, along with transitionwas just a hook for youngadults and for their parents.
They got to seewhat could be.
And like I said in one ofthe other presentations,we actually were able todecrease our advertisingbudgets because our youngadults got so good atpromoting the program thatwe almost didn't have to.
It was just amazing tome in the way thatthat kind of naturallyhappened.
JOE MICHNER:Sofour-year grant,that's a prettyawesome grant right?
You don't usually getthat much time.
So four years to buildthis up and sustain it.
But from day one, andagain it was beforeI got there, Seth and Amy,our executive directorwere talking aboutsustainabilityfor after the grant,okay?
But as Seth got that programbuilt up and as he was workingon that full-time and gotbetter at it, we brought insummer staff to help withthe summer program,things started goingsmoother and theprogram wasestablished.
Word of mouth,other agencies startedpaying attention to it.
We actually had an agency steal a lot of the ideas wordfor word on their website.
That happens.
That means we're doingsomething right, okay?
So we're going to stick withS2L and Real World and thenwe'll open it up for questions.
On to the next slide.
So starting to talk aboutthe sustainability piece.
This is where you needgood fiscal people.
This is where you needpeople that understandnumbers.
What kind of rate doyou have to have?
How much do you have tocharge for a young adultto attend the programafter the grant goes awayand you don't havethat funding?
What other funding ideascan you come up withto continue the program?
We're going to get intoa lot of that this afternoon,different ideas for fundraising and partnershipsand all sorts ofdifferent stuff.
On this slide, you cansee as the programdeveloped, the young adults, some decided that oneportion of the program orthe other was best for themor they only wanted to attendmaybe the bi-monthly meetingthe S2L portion of theprogram and someonly wanted to come to the summer program.
SETH HODEREWSKI:We had the thinking ifanother outside agencywas going to pay for ayoung adult to attenda program,you all right there, Joe?
JOE MICHNER:I'm okay.
SETH HODEREWSKI: Ifthere was an agencythat was going to pay fora young adult to take partin this, potentially VR,we would have to makeit more based onemployment.
And we were fortunateto have that foresightto do that because thenthe pre-employmenttransition services whereVR has to put 15% of theirbudget to transition camealong and they saw thesummer programand was like, yes.
This totally fits withthe thinking aroundpre-employmenttransition services.
We were fortunate enoughto make that switch wherewe broke out the S2L groupon its own fee for serviceprogram and RealWorld Lehigh Valleywhere that wasalso broken out.
Young adults could takepart in one or take part inboth or really whateverworked for them.
Going from that grantto the fee for servicepiece, that canbe really tricky.
That is where the whole,it's so important to havethe good fiscal folks thatcan put all of that timeand thinking into that.
And that was, I rememberthat being a little bit of achallenge for us.
Especially because wewere going from a grantwhere we had a ton ofmoney and we could do allkinds of stuff with it,to now what?
How are we going to havefunds because we knewthat these groups had tobe sustained in someform or another becausethey led to so many differenttypes of programmingand so many different typesof options for young adults.
You're going to see thathere as we progress on.
JOE MICHNER:So someof the things you haveto think about, when youare working through thatgrant phase, when thegrant is over, how areyou going keep thecosts down?
A lot of times you have themoney in the grant and youcan play and do a lot ofthings, but all of a suddenthat money goes away, how do you keep the cost down?
Is there going to be aprivate pay element?
And how is that goingto affect things?
What kind of fund raisingare you going to do?
You're continuouslyseeking fundersthroughout theprocess.
Your potential contracts,do you have somebodywho understands howto do an agreement ora letter of understandingor a memo of understandingwith a potential funderfor a program?
And then you have to thinkabout, okay, now we havea new funder, what arethey requiring from us?
And does it still fit withthe CIL philosophy?
Can we still do thisprogram we want underthe restrictionsof a new funder?
Changing the programdesign, reporting andother responsibilities.
So the DDC, they were,Development andDisabilities Council,they were just happyto see the program going.
We didn't have a lot ofrequirements as far asreporting goes.
But now workingwith VR, it takes ona whole different beast.
You got to have thatadministrative time to dothe reportingand documentation.
Staff responsibilities.
If you're going to fee forservice model, how muchtime realistically, can yourstaff spend doing billable time.
We talk about billable timea lot at our agency andI hate that we have to,but it's a reality of whatwe do when we're workingwith various funders.
Staff responsibilities,scheduling and logistics.
Keeping it person-centeredand keeping the youth voice.
Again, we all know thatfunders have their owngoals and objectives.
How do we negotiate,I would say fight,but maybe negotiateis a better word.
To keep it youth-driven.
To keep that CIL philosophythrough everything we do.
And then continuouslysearching for funders.
Not just stopping, if you thinkyou got the right funder,because you never know,tomorrow that fundingmight go away.
How can you supplementyour services and we'lltalk about that againthis afternoon.