Giving Thanks for Giving Time

I just wanted to give a quick thanks to all of my superb volunteers at the University of Tulsa and Professor Diane Potts’ class at Tulsa Community College. These undergraduates are helping us better serve our parents by interviewing them about their employment, educational, and financial situations. It’s a tough topic to discuss with people they’ve never met, and these students are doing a great job of it.

Also, they deserve thanks for showing  up even when I’ve sent them to the wrong site or when they don’t have a parent to interview. I’ve felt the frustration of being ready and willing to give time only to not find a place for it, so I know how committed they are to keep coming back.

Finally, thanks to the family support specialists, site directors, Innovation Lab staff, and everyone else that is helping get this project going.

I know we’re not through yet but it’s been a frustrating day and I want all to know how appreciated you are.

P.S.: I now have an endless amount of empathy for all the volunteer coordinators I’ve worked with in my day – at Tulsa Habitat for Humanity, the Tulsa Area Chapter of the American Red Cross, and with our own Jennifer Morgan at CAP. You guys (gals, actually) do an awesome job.

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Student Research Opportunity

Image used under Creative Commons license from flickr user smiling_da_vinci

Graduate and upper-level undergraduate students are needed for a survey research project to be completed by Tulsa Initiative this spring. Click here (or the tab at the top) for more details.

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Innovation Survey

Via Innovate on Purpose, a survey on innovation pipelines (kind of business oriented, so the terminology is a little hard to decipher). As I was telling Diama, I wish I had printed it out so the innovation folks in the CAP office could fill it out and compare answers. I’d never even considered most of the issues contained here. For instance, what’s the right mix on short term vs. long term? How many innovation projects do you want to have in the pipeline for every one that’s a “hit”?

If you take the survey (it’s real short), leave some comments/reflections here with us.

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