NORWICH – As the result of a grant received back in October of 2014, The Place is proud to welcome Michelle Tomei as its 2014/2015 AmeriCorps VISTA member.
In October of 2014, The Place announced that it had received a $15,000 grant from The Community Foundation for South Central New York. The grant was used to fund an AmeriCorps VISTA Member for the next two years who will focus on capacity building for the organization.
Executive Director of The Place, Rebecca Sands said, “we are going to focus on putting in the right structures so that our organization can function at its very best.”
After a thorough search, The Place welcomed Michelle Tomei as its 2014/2105 AmeriCorps VISTA member. Originally from Little Falls, N.Y., Tomei is a recent graduate of the State University of New York at Oswego, where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Public Relations, French, and International Business. As a recent graduate, Tomei brings with her new ideas and a fresh perspective that will contribute to the success of the organization.
“We are pleased to have received this grant award that has made it possible to have Michelle join our organization,” said Sands. “She is going to develop both internal and external support structures that will assist our organization in becoming more sustainable.”
Tomei will dedicate her service to The Place by focusing on capacity building and sustainability. Tomei has already worked on researching and organizing grants that could prove useful to The Place into an easy to read database, and has written a few. Having this database in place will make finding and acquiring grants easier in the future.
Tomei has also worked on organizing The Place's donor list. The first aspect of this project was to research and purchase a database system in which to compile the donor list.
“This helps us keep track of our donors better so that we can maintain communication with them,” said Sands. “Our donors are extremely important to our organization and we want them to be aware of it.”
Tomei is also working on the creation of an internship program for The Place. Part of this is communicating with local colleges and universities to find out what types of programs these colleges offer that are in line with the scope of The Place. “Having interns to help out around The Place would be tremendous,” said Sands. “We are a small organization so everyone here is doing many different jobs.”
Tomei was also tasked with organizational research and development. “Overall,” said Sands, “we want to better the structures that we already have in place.” This is important for employee turnovers. If somebody leaves the organization, we want these structures in place to ensure the transition is smooth.
Tomei is also working on promoting the Headwaters Youth Conservation Corps program. Headwaters has the potential to be revenue generating, said Sands, and Tomei is working on getting the word out there. Part of this will be the creation of a brochure so that different environmental organizations in the area with become aware of Headwaters and possibly utilize its services.
Another big accomplishment of Tomei's has been the creation of a website for The Place (theplacenorwich.com). Sands had taken down The Place's outdated and defunct website awhile ago, and this new and improved website will be immeasurably helpful to the organization. It was launched fairly recently and Sands said, “we are pretty excited about it.”
“Once these systems are all in place,” said Sands, “we will be able to function a lot stronger.”
AmeriCorps VISTA is a national service program designed to combat poverty in communities nationwide, with over 8,000 participants annually. Michelle's VISTA placement is through The Place's partnership with Rural Health Network, SCNY (rhnscny.org), the local grantee agency that provides AmeriCorps and VISTA members through its Rural Health Service Corps programming.
For more information about The Place, call 336-9696 or visit them online at theplacenorwich.com.