President's Update

Hello from beautiful St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, where everyone is working hard to rebuild after the devastation of Hurricane Irma and Maria! The trees are green again and the water is still turquoise blue, so don’t hesitate to come visit VI when you can.

Back home in the DC area, GT has started the year with good works. On Martin Luther King Day, Jan. 15, we had a successful Day of Service at Nourish Now (NN), with 12 GT volunteers sorting and packing food and helping to redistribute it to those in need. Going forward, every second Monday of the month our Nourish Now Liaisons are leading groups of GT volunteers to continue helping at NN. If you are interested, please contact either of the NN Liaisons, Susan Alberts (susanalberts@gmail.com) or Lisa Shofnos (lshofnos@gmail.com).

Please take the time to visit the GT website where, under the Activities tab, you will find a calendar of community service events scheduled for the coming year. On March 25th we volunteer at Aspire’s Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies; in April at the DC Healthy Babies Project; and in May at Interfaith Works. Also under this tab, you’ll find our new Grantee Connector page. This year members have volunteered to be Grantee Liaisons with our past and current grantees. Liaisons reach out to key people at their organizations on a regular basis and gather information that is shared with the membership. This includes communicating the grantees' mission, volunteer opportunities, upcoming events, links to sign up for newsletters and other things of interest to our members. For more information about being a Liaison please contact Pam Feinstein at Feinstep@gmail.com.

Below are some scenes from our wonderful Day of Service at Nourish Now:

Our Grants Committee work is already underway. This year, as most of you know, we will be awarding a two-year grant to one of six of our worthy past grantees. It’s the first time GT will undertake a multi-year grant! We will also award a traditional single year grant. Both grants will be awarded at our annual meeting at the end of September.

This is an exciting time for GT. With 70 members we are now in a position to expand our grants program by strategically targeting a past grantee with whom we have a track record. As our Vice President Karen Gilgoff said at this past year’s annual meeting, multi-year funding allows nonprofits to enhance their work over a two-year period allowing for better planning, sustained programming, and reduced administrative costs. “The promise of sustained funding for a project also gives nonprofits the ability to leverage those funds in order to attract donors.” Finally, multi-year grants will let us build deeper relationships with local non-profits, and give us a stronger hand in helping them develop programs that have greater impact on our community.