Our group is focusing on children and medical care. I contacted the Quantum House and Palm Beach Children’s Hospital. The Quantum House was very interested in our cause and would like to work with us. Palm Beach Children’s Hospital did not answer so I left a message, but have not heard back.

The Quantum House’s Information:

Laura: lbelcher@quantumhouse.org

Megan: mthompson@quantumhouse.org

This past class was very informational. Our guest speaker taught us a ton of useful information reading different tax forms. He focused on the 990 forms, which are particularly useful for out philanthropy project. These 990 forms will help us determine how successful, or unsuccessful, a business is. It is important to be able to read these forms and understand them before investing in a business so that you know if the business is successful or not. You would not want to invest in a business that is failing. These forms allow you to invest in a business and be comfortable with the investment because you know that the company is getting by. We looked at the 990 forms of our organizations through guidestar.org. After looking at the 990 forms of the Quantum House I learned that they had made money this past year and that they will be able to survive for over a year.

Our team is working with hospital and medical care and we have mutually decided that we would like to focus on children care. With this in mind we started discussing potential ideas for our Purpose, Vision, and Mission Statement. As we thought about it, however, it became very difficult. We could not think of the perfect way to say what we wanted to say. We had the general idea, but we could not find the perfect way to say it so that no one was offended. After much discussion we decided that the best Purpose Statement, for now, is, “Our team’s purpose is to serve our community by making a difference in the lives of children receiving long-term medical care. We accepted the fact that this was not perfect, but we decided that it was a good foundation. After that we moved on to try and develop our Vision Statement. Our starting point is, “A world where families with children receiving long-term medical care have all the resources necessary. It is not our exact goal, but it is our starting point. We have not yet discussed our Mission Statement, however, we will be working on formulating something that explains how we are working to help support families of and the children who are in the hospital or receiving medical help for an extended period of time. This was a great experience to see how much thought and trial and error goes into the actual formation of business’ Purpose, Vision, and Mission Statement.

I would hope to encounter happy and grateful people. Since I am interesting in donating money to their organization, I hope that they are open to share more about what their purpose is and what they do as a group. I would also expect them to be happy and eager to help me help them. Of course I do understand that I may not see this happen and I may come across some who are not interested in what I am offering because they do not think I will offer much. I will work my hardest to try and make the process as smooth and comfortable as possible.

Today we got a lot done in our class. The beginning of class was exciting because we learned who was in our group and what we were going to be focusing on for the rest of our program. Once this was sorted out we sat with our groups and we did our brown bag activity. First Ms. Asplundh-Smith and Ms. Denison gave us an example of the activity and then we were on our own. The brown bag activity gave us a chance to learn more about our classmates, teammates, and course leaders. Individuals in our class enjoy music, cars, traveling, sports, and so much more. It was very neat to learn new things about our classmates. After finishing the brown bag bustle we took a few minutes to brainstorm team names. All of the groups were so creative and came up with names that really explained what there goal of the course would be. One group name that really stood out was Hunger to Help. Not only was this creative, but it also tells others what they are doing. Once group names were discussed we moved on to fundraising ideas. We looked at different ideas that could help us make money. The ideas ranged from bike-a-thons to hosting an all-you-can-eat potato bar. There were a great amount of ideas that many would never think of. We discussed ideas that are very common: car washes and bake sales. Then we talked about fundraisers that are known to be successful like Girl’s Scouts and weekend fairs. Lastly, we came up with new fundraisers: selling artwork and jewelry, having a dog olympics, and bringing your dog to school.

Today was the real start of our projects. We met our groups, learned what our topic of focus was, and then starting planning what we were going to do to make our money and make our goals reality. It was a lot of fun and it is exciting waiting to see the outcome and progress over these next few weeks.

Today’s class was a lot of fun. The brown bag activity really helped me learn more about my team members. I do not know my teammates very well so it was nice to learn interesting facts about their life. I learned that Hayley like music, cheerleading, and writing. She has been cheerleading her whole time at OXbridge and she loves it. She plans to take her love to writing into a career of being an author. Jenna likes Paris, NYU, and music and theater. Her dream is to one day go to a bridge in London where you lock a lock and throw the key in the water and to attend NYU. I got to know Sophia a little more and learned that she likes stuffed animals, measure things with an animal measuring tape, and to knit. She really enjoys knitting and is currently knitting a sock. In addition, I shared that I have an obsession with iced tea, I have lived in Florida my whole life and practically grew up on the beach, and that I really enjoy my family; We have an inseparable bond and no matter what we are doing we manage to laugh and have a great time.

Moving on to the next topic, my group decided on three fundraisers to start with. Our focus is hospitals and medical care. We all would like to focus on children medical services and the four of us enjoy art. Our first fundraiser is going to be to write a small (5 page or so) children’s book, bracelets,  and knit hats to sell in front of Publix or a similar store. Our next fundraiser is to host a garage sale. Lastly, we plan to have a car wash. These are our initial plans to fundraise. As time progresses we may decide to tweak our plans a bit, but this is our starting point.

I really enjoyed the activity with the MAD cards. Until this morning I had never taken the time to think about what groups, places, or things I found important. For me it was very difficult to narrow it down to six because there were several of the cards that I thought were important to care about. After finally deciding on six it was an even greater challenge to cut it down to three. At the end of the activity I believe that I successfully chose the three that were the most important to me. I am interested in working on a project that deals with hunger, family services, and/or hospitals and medical care.

I’m very excited to be able to participate in this project and I cannot wait to see the results after these next two week!