Fund Raising Planning for 2019

With online fund raising now more popular than ever, traditional forms of fund raising for charity events, even though still successful, are not as cost-effective. Target your audience, make sure they are interested in your cause, and frequent them on social media. You will receive more personal contact and you will reap rewards at a fraction of the cost.

Keep on with the bigger events, but when you're planning the new year, don't forget social media is a game changer.

On Tuesday, October 30, we are the guests on the Ted TV Show, a local favorite here in Orlando. Such a great opportunity to tell our story and get some candidates aware of what we do. We will post the results of the show later this week. It marks another important step in getting our message across. Women who really want to succeed can do so. Nothing can stop them, and we are one of the groups that is going to make sure they have a fair chance.

Today, we were lucky enough to be invited to the Orlando Commission on Homelessness breakfast where they showed the results of a massive study identifying the next steps for Orlando. Orlando has made great progress on homelessness, and is now in the top 20 percentile of U.S. cities for addressing the homeless problem. Housing was the major component of the study, and groups like RSC are welcomed in, to attack other issues that can help solve the problem.

Getting a job is one thing, but starting your own business is a completely different animal. Over time, we will see how successful we can be. For now, we have a very important piece of solving the homeless problem, and we are happy to be continuing down that path.

Congratulations to Orlando. They are taking this problem very seriously. 

Well, we are working with our first candidate who has the mental capacity and toughness to take a shot at creating her own business. Raped at 15, kept the child, now struggling to keep her child fed and clothed, Elena is one of the toughest, most dedicated and principled people, we have ever met.

A little background. Because of her circumstances, Elena was never able to finish high school. She had an unforeseen child to take care of.  But Elena impressed us because when we interviewed her, she had no excuses. She accepted what happened to her. She knew it wasn't her fault, but she has some hidden feelings of guilt that still persist. Instead of begging for help, crying and feeling sorry for herself, she alone stood up, decided to fight for her baby girl, and she was going to make herself a success.

We are now in the design phase about what business Elena could pursue. We have very little doubt about either her intelligence or her desire to fight. Depending on her choice and what we all feel best and sensible to pursue, this may involve more people, more components, etc. We won't know until we complete.

Stay tuned. By the end of July, we will have our first progress report. once we know Elena and we are on the same page, we will introduce her on our website. Right now, she and we need privacy to design and make this happen. In the event we can't come up with a working formula, we don't want Elena exposed. But once she gets going, we want the world to know what a great human being we are all helping.

I don’t think there are any reigning experts on entrepreneurialism in the homeless community. The two topics seem incongruous to be discussing in the same conversation.

But, think about it.  What if a homeless person, somehow, sees a place to travel to from either hurt or complacency? What is there is another path that no one ever thought possible?  This is what we at Real Second Chance grapple with every day. And what is happening is truly eye opening to us.

We are finding a hard core that has just fallen prey to the homeless lifestyle, found out how to exist in it, and are completely comfortable in spending the rest of their days content on living this way. There are others who truly don’t want to be there, but have no support group, no peer group that will push them to do anything but survive where they are. Of this group, there truly are candidates who can make it to becoming entrepreneurs, or at least have the aptitude and potential drive to do it.

These are the people we are beginning to interview, and we are going to show some surprising facts over the next months and years. A life-changing project.  One that we are happy we began.

As of April 23, we have had two meetings with potential Candidate providers for RSC to evaluate and see if RSC can accept them into the Second Chance Entrepreneurial Program©. Some things worth sharing.

 

Our first meeting was with a drug addiction care center in Orlando, FL. To say the least, it was an eye opener. I’m not sure any TV or any news reporting of the problem does it justice and describes the true magnitude of the problem. Everyone should, if they have the chance, visit a drug addiction facility, see for themselves and realize that this area of our lives deserves more than just casual attention.  

Our second visit was to a homeless shelter located in Winter Haven, FL. The shelter is Christian-based, and is run by some of the most dedicated and knowledgeable people you could meet. Our visit saw almost busy-airport-style activity, with so many people doing so many things, operating in completely different aspects of taking care of the homeless they provide services for. What’s unique about this facility and the people running it is they actually try to take the extra step and try to develop and give their visitors a reason to be better. They try to show how faith plays an important role in them getting better, and whether you have religious beliefs or not, it is an incredibly impressive program. This is a group of people who are doing much more than they have to, to make their community better.   

We hope to be working with both groups in the near future.

On our website at www.realsecondchance.org, we have many videos trying to show it can be done. You actually can become a successful entrepreneur regardless of where you come from, and what baggage you carry into any situation. The key is to try. And if you don't first succeed, do you have the guts and courage to try again. If you can pass these tests, you're part of the way there.

What we try to do is to predict a candidate's likelihood of success. That doesn't mean we would reject someone if they were short in a given area. It just means we would have more predictable results from analyzing certain characteristics that would identify a higher probability for success. When you deal in disbursing scarce funds as we do, you want to pick the highest likelihood of becoming a successful entrepreneur.

All in all, so far a great experience, and one that will just keep getting better as we progress.

It has taken nearly 8 months to set up Real Second Chance. What we have found along the way has surprised even us. More statistics than we know what to do with, but some amazing ones on women entrepreneurs, their differences from men, and how many are so especially suited to entrepreneurship. That alone should be a country goal, to get more women involved in building their own businesses.

But our group, those who really haven’t had a chance before, is especially challenging. They have all the positive characteristics of women entrepreneurs, but really have to fight twice as hard in order to overcome their current places in society. Those who make it could start an army that could control the world. The strength we’ve seen from some of our early possible candidates could shake the very ground we walk on.

We are in this to see if these women can make themselves and all of us proud. It won’t be easy for any of them, but talking to some early candidates, we can’t wait to get started. 

Our first blog test post. We will be launching April 7, so look for much more activity