Post date: Nov 17, 2017 4:48:16 PM
One of my Taos friends — a real promoter type — asked me, as a resident of Valverde Commons (a senior co-housing community), to sponsor and attend a meeting of the state Aging office to be held in Taos. He lives in a financially (and managerially) failing retirement village just up the hill from us and feels that Valverde Commons might be a good model for aging elders.
This led over several months into a group of us forming a steering committee, joining the Village-to-Village network, and incorporating as a ‘virtual village’ to support elders in Taos. One (among many) services of this network is a list of 87 tasks to complete before we can successfully open our doors to full operation.
I offered to help,
We have sponsored public programs of interest to seniors about every three months and are pushing for events every two months — held in the shared meeting room at Valverde Commons — but this may be too small after the next meeting!
I used my background to design and develop an Access database that might support the full operation of an organization that would gather the services willing volunteers and offer them to paying members, who would request those services. I also created an online survey and sent it to the 60 or so people who had shown interest (and email addresses) in what we are doing, plus another 60 or so Taos people from my personal contact list.
The results of that survey were very encouraging! Over four weeks, 58 people responded to the survey with specific offers of help, such as driving elders to appointments or the grocer, reading to them, preparing meals, small home repairs, and the like. This seems to be an excellent response rate. Now we know that we can meet the need for elder support — at least with volunteers.
I realized that we needed a marketing platform. With the help of a volunteer we developed a name, a vision statement, and a mission statement. With another volunteer we produced our first newsletter and are working on the second.
I investigated web platforms, as my experience with WordPress has been good as a blogging platform but not so good as a marketing platform. So, with the help of a few volunteers who are better at graphics than I, we developed a marketing web site, using the domain name: TaosElders.org. [The marketing has since been incorporated into our operating web platform at the same URL.]
I’ve also investigated background checks for volunteers and insurance. The next big effort will be to raise the funds for these major expenses. There is considerable help on the web available to nonprofits to raise money, both via grants and direct solicitation. TENT is off to a good start.