People from all over Lake County came to learn how to become better at acquiring grants for nonprofit organizations.
In fact, more people RSVP'ed to the event than the Greenview Restaurant's dining room could actually hold.
Fortunately, not everyone who RSVP'ed actually showed up. Amazingly, the dining room ended up providing the exact number of chairs needed.
A special "thank you" must go to Mike Zuech, manager of the Greenview Restaurant, for providing a place for The Foundation Center to make this presentation. Zuech was not even able to attend the presentation as it was scheduled during his vacation to Mexico.
However, Zeuch is likely to hear a lot about it after he returns from vacation on March 8.
"Grantseeking Basics" was in part a slide show presentation. However, if you happened to be present that night I think you would agree the slide show really was not necessary. Scott Ullman was "the show." This man is a walking encyclopedia of information when it comes to grant funding. It is not likely that Lake County will see him again in person for a year or more.
Ullman actually is assigned to cover the western United States for The Foundation Center doing presentations to groups. He spends a great deal of time on-the-road. Lake County just got lucky this year and was able to entice him to stop off in Hidden Valley Lake on his way to Ukiah.
Even though face-to-face encounters with Ullman may be few and far between, he did say he was open to participating in online webinars or interactive podcasts. In fact, The Foundation Center itself is getting more and more involved in online traing with regard to grant funding. Even so, there is a possibility the Lake County online talk show, Power Networking, will get Ullman as a special guest at some future date. If so, that date will be announced in this publication at least a week prior to the event.
One thing that should interest a lot of grant writers here in Lake County is the possibility there may be a satellite resource center for The Foundation Center set up here in the not-too-distant future. There have been some rumblings that the Clearlake Public Library may be interested.
At the meeting Monday night, someone suggested the Calpine Visitor Center would be a great location for the grant research material to reside. With two conference rooms and an upstairs reading area, there certainly is room. Plus, the fact the Calpine Visitor Center has high speed Internet access is a real plus.
According to Ullman, the only thing the Calpine Visitor Center lacks to qualify as a Foundation Center sattellite location is its hours of operation. The Foundation Center requires that every one of its satellite locations be available to the public for more hours than the Calpine Visitor Center is currently open.
But, now that Calpine has had its restructuring plan approved by the Southern District of New York Bankruptcy Court, perhaps a lengthening of its visitor center's hours of operation is in order?
What would really be nice is for the Calpine Visitor Center to become a wifi hot spot. Then, Calpine could actually generate some revenue for itself through its own visitor center while it was open to the public. Grant writers could come and bring their online mobile devices and actually do philanthropic research within the premises. They could even make free VOIP calls to The Foundation Center in San Francisco via Skype while doing research online. This would no doubt be a refreshing change of pace from the empty parking lot that has become an all-too-familiar site at the Calpine Visitor Center these days.
For more information about The Foundation Center, visit http://foundationcenter.org. If you want to connect with Scott Ullman, be sure to click over to the San Francisco location.
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