**TRANSCRIPT:**

**Engaging with the Faith Community**

MCP Conference: September 18, 2008

**Welcome**

\[Operator:\] Good day, everyone. Thank you for holding. Welcome to the
MCP Conference on Engaging with Faith Communities with your host, Miss
Angie Hess. Today's conference will begin with a presentation followed
by a question-and-answer session. Instructions on that feature will
follow later in the program. I would now like to turn the call over to
Miss Hess. Please, go ahead.

\[Angie Hess:\] Thank you so much, Elaine. This is Angie Hess from the
MCP Technical Assistance Center and I would like to welcome you to
today's eighth virtual workshop. This is the last one \[of the grant
year\] and this is going to be on Engaging the Faith Community. I will
give you a quick introduction to the session and then turn the floor
over to Sandy Moore, who is the Director of Customer Relations, Director
of Amachi from Nashville, Tennessee and the overseer of the Amachi
Initiative in Tennessee. I will give you a little bit more of an intro
to her in just a moment but before I do that, let me quickly explain the
features of this virtual format. A lot of you are probably familiar with
it already but let us go ahead anyway. So, as I mentioned in the
E-bulletin and newsletter, you have to be registered individually for
this conference. So each user gets a unique web address so if you try to
use the same one somebody else has, it will not work for you. If you or
anyone at your office is having trouble accessing the presentation,
please call the MCP phone line which is 866-MCP-1133 and we will try to
get you connected. So, please note that currently, your telephone line
is muted. At the conclusion of Sandy's presentation, Elaine, our
operator, will give you some instructions on how to unmute your line if
you would like to ask a question live on the line. Currently, to your
right, you should see a blue toolbox. At any point during the training,
you can type questions to me. You can click on the small arrow to expand
the box and Sandy and I will address questions at the end of the
question, during the Q&A, as many as we are able to get to you or in
follow-up communications, like the newsletter. To increase your
visibility of the presentation, you can minimize this entire box by
clicking the three arrows here. You can open it again by clicking on
those same three arrows. At the end of the session, you will see an
evaluation come up on your computer screen. Please take a minute just to
write us some feedback. That helps us a whole lot as we plan for the
future and if at any point you lose connectivity, keep this number with
you, 866-MCP-1133, and we will do everything we can to help you out. So,
let us move on and let me introduce Sandy Moore to you.

**Introducing Sandy Moore**

Sandy has been with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Middle Tennessee for
three and a half years. She came on board just about a month after the
program kicked off - the MCP program that is, kicked off in Nashville,
Tennessee. She was able to build successfully their program using
Reverend Wilson Goode's Amachi model. You will hear a lot about that
today. Today, Sandy works in congregations, in BBBS' nine county service
area and also supports four partners in the Tennessee state Amachi
Initiative. Her past experience working as a church administrator for
multiple churches in Washington State was beneficial in her efforts to
build the Nashville Amachi Program and she also, at Big Brothers Big
Sisters, is the Manager of the Customer Service division and past sales
and call center experience is helpful for her as she is doing that work
and working with congregations all over Tennessee. So, let us move on
right now just before I hand over the session to Sandy and look at the
learning objectives for today. By the end of this session, you will have
learned strategies and processes that are proven already to be effective
in engaging faith communities. From that, you will be better prepared to
develop a plan for reaching out to congregations in your community. So,
Sandy, I am all done with my part for now and I will move on to your
first slide.

**Why engage faith communities?**

\[Sandy Moore:\] Oh, thanks, ladies and welcome everyone that has called
in to participate. I am excited to see so many people interested and I
am hoping that by the end of this call, you will definitely be able to
learn one other objective is how to protect your time. That was a hard
lesson learned for me, but it seemed to work well. I also want to state
upfront that these are processes that worked for the national area or
for myself as building some of the partnerships in our communities. So I
am sure with all of you out there, you have some great ideas yourself
that I would love to hear someday and hopefully, you will be able to
share with us as well. Why engage to faith communities? The Mentoring
Children of Prisoners mission can tie in to their religious mission
along with a large pool of potential volunteers and advocates. We can
definitely yield from those organizations if we do the process right. It
won't be easy to do but it will take some steps and stages to move
forward. I encourage all of you to think about what you do and why are
you contacting the congregations before you even take that first step.

**The Amachi Mentoring Model**

Our next slide, the Amachi model, of course, the way that we build it
here in Tennessee, as I stated in the opening, that I came on about a
month after Reverend Goode was here to kick off the program with several
of the church leaders in our Nashville area or Middle Tennessee area. So
looking and reviewing all of the material that Reverend Goode has
already kindly put together, him and his team, it was a lot of material
but it was well worth the time to really review it and look over it,
make some notes and really as time went on, you start really developing
your own way to do things, however, still sticking with the mission, the
vision, and the history. Also, the secular organizations partnering with
the faith communities. This came on board I would say, about a year or
so after the fact to say, "Can we reach out to other organizations and
not just within the faith community such as going to the divinity
colleges?" So really, as you start off with the program, you really
think that you are in a box and a shell but it really is an expanded
program that you can reach out to all types of organizations as well as
engaging the faith communities to serve. That is really important along
with, I believe, myself as well as others out there, if we do not
believe the mission and the vision behind the Amachi program, we are not
good advocates for the program. I think it is going to take a person
that has a lot of passion to go forward with this program. So I
encourage all of you who have not done so to log on to the
amachimentoring.org website, amachimentoring.org website to really
review that. They update it on a regular basis, so that would be
wonderful to see. At this time, we are going to have our first poll
because I would love to see how many people have actually attended
Reverend Goode's - the Amachi Institute in Philadelphia.

**Poll #1**

\[Angie Hess:\] Okay. I will click on "Open Poll" right now and you
should see the choices in front of you. It is pretty simple. This time
you do not have to think too hard, "yes" or "no." We have got about half
of the votes in already. Let us keep it open for a couple more seconds.
Okay, I am going to go ahead and close and show you the results.

\[Sandy Moore:\] Wow, 89%. That is a large number. If you can, I
definitely would be one that advocate for you to really go to the
trainings. Reverend Goode teaches at the Institute himself. He really
does a wonderful job just talking about the passion and the model and
foundation of the Amachi program. He allows you to follow him or to
shadow him into a prison so that you can see how the prison ministry
goes forward in regards to talking to the women. I think it is a women's
prison that I had the experience to attend with him. He also had a
pastor come in that will speak about how to build some church relations
as well as what pastors think or the congregation leaders think about a
church. So it is a great opportunity so I encourage each one of you, if
you have not had that opportunity, to please take advantage of that and
go. All right, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Middle Tennessee's engagement
process. Partnerships with congregations must be developed before they
are a source for volunteers and mentors. However, the keyword here is
develop a relationship first. You are going to have to go the extra mile
of course, just to really get the time with the leadership. Some
congregations, depending on if it is a small, medium, or megachurch,
some of those leaders in the churches are very busy individuals. So you
are going to have to go outside, the eight to five time clock as well as
Monday through Friday work shift. It is going to be on their time and
does it take all that? Absolutely. I came in to this, again, with my
experience knowing how to work with churches and the clergy and was
already prepared that it is not going to be a Monday through Friday
eight to five job. So I already had that knowledge coming into it and I
tell you what, it was. It was about a 70- to 80-hour work week and that
is just if I was counting those hours and then counting the Sundays or
the weekend presentations. So at this time, we also have Big Brothers
Big Sisters of Middle Tennessee has identified a number of steps in this
process. As I stated earlier, this is what worked for me, so I would
love to hear sometime if anyone else has some great ideas but this was
successful in building our partnerships and I am just very honored to be
able to share that information with a lot of you. All right, we have our
poll number two.

**Poll #2**

\[Angie Hess:\] All right. Here is the second one, it is: how many
congregations are you involved with currently? So, join right now. There
we go. We have got most of the votes in already so I will give you just
a couple more seconds. Here are your results.

\[Sandy Moore:\] Okay. Let us see, zero to five, 65%. Five to ten, and
2%. I am concerned about the 2%, just to see if that is something that
those of you are just starting. Is it just a problem of bringing more
churches on or really not having the tools to go out and to spend some
time to develop these relationships? I can, and I am sure those of you
who were in the 65% range can agree, that if you want to build a quality
relationship with the congregation, it is going to take a lot of your
time, as I stated before. But I am glad to see at least 65% has zero to
five churches built but I tell you, if we do not happen \[two\] here in
the national area, we have identified that two of our -- we yield more
volunteers and faith organizations along with our businesses. Those are
the two major components where we receive our volunteers. So if we are
missing the faith community, you are missing a whole lot of volunteers
or potential volunteers.

**Poll #3**

\[Angie Hess:\] All right. Our next poll is: at what level are those
churches supporting your program? That should be opening on your screen
now. Rank the churches from "very supportive" to "not so supportive." I
am going to close the poll at this point. Here are your results.

\[Sandy Moore:\] Okay, let us take a look here: "very supportive", 14%.
That is great, absolutely great. "Somewhat", 26%. "A little supportive",
22%. "Not very supportive", 22%. "Not at all supportive", 14%. From my
experience, what I found out is anywhere from C and E that we did not
take enough time to really cultivate that relationship, it may be months
and in some cases, I started back in \[unintelligible\] state about
2005. I was just allowed in 2008 to enter some of our mega
congregations. So it takes a long time to cultivate the relationship. In
some cases, it could be that the pastor, as my case was, he is a bishop
over multiple churches across the state so his traveling schedule would
not allow me to, as well as you come up to a lot of bumps. So hopefully,
we will talk about some of those things or we will have some question.
Well, thank you all for taking those polls. It really helps me to gauge
and see if there is some support and what can I do to help you out
there.

All right, next slide, there we go. You all will see right here, I
identified some stages that really helped me to build some of the
relationships anywhere from a small congregation and to me, I consider a
small congregation anywhere between zero and 75 members and then if you
go 200 to 1,000, on and on and on. In the last congregation we presented
to, it was over 10,000 but we do have some small congregations and some
of the faithful ones and I know back when Reverend Goode kicked out the
model, the Amachi model, he was stating to try to stay away or gear
yourself away from the larger or the mega congregations. Now, that was
true and I must admit when we first started, it was a hard challenge to
enter those because they have so many, I say, ministries going into the
church. As we go forward, you will hear me talk in a lot of lingo or
saying some words that really is we consider going into a church may be
our job to do. Well, if you are talking to a clergy or a leader at a
church, you want to present it as a ministry. They see it in a whole
different prospect on helping people so that is important to key, to
know exactly what the terms are when you are going in, talking to
different congregations, denominations as well as the clergy.

**Step One: Research**

So, we will start with research. What I do and what I have done from day
one is really just get my arms around research - tell me a little about
the denomination. I can do that by visiting the website and find out
what does the clergy like to be called. What is its official title? Some
churches go by Bob. Some go by Fathers, Reverend, Elders, Priests,
Bishop so, you really have to take time to really look and see what they
like to be called. The congregation size, how large is this
congregation? Is this going to support -- if I have 200 children on my
waiting list, is the congregation size of 25 going to support the need?
Is the church open to community volunteer opportunities? Does the church
have an active prison ministry? Who is the church's decision-maker or
how long does a church commit to projects that they are already in? Some
of these are critical because we want to make sure the church, they are
active in the community or do they just believe in a ministry within
these four walls. And believe it or not, folks, they do. We have several
churches that have told me, literally told me that they only have
ministries and support the ministries that are within their church
walls.

If you want to make a bad impression at your first meeting, call the
leader of the church outside his or her title. In most cases, you will
lose them right away and the meeting will continue on but you will lose
them, their vision there \[up\] because they will think, "Okay, they did
not take enough time." It is just like going to an interview. You are
going to go prepared. You definitely want to go prepared to meet with a
title or a clergy person because they have really taken out their time.

Do they have an active prison ministry? Our goal here is mentoring
children of prisoners to get people of faith to come on board. So, we
want to see if they have a prison ministry. Or is the church well-known
in the community for their service work?

Make sure you protect your time and theirs by scheduling a meeting with
the right person the first time. This can be tricky but researching
beforehand and have open and closed questions will help you
tremendously. If you take time to build the relationship with the church
and follow up on our end, as well as any information they will tell you
as you do the phone calls such as, is the clergy or the leader the right
person to speak with? You are going to have to have some good questions
but keep your time to a limit to make sure that you are getting all the
answers because you could speak to Deacon Jones who has nothing to do
with decision-making in the church and spend two weeks talking to him,
so you want to make sure that you look at that.

If the church is committed in the project or in the community and it is
a large church, you should hear about them in meetings, luncheons,
somewhere that you will attend in a community. They should be well-known
in the community. You will also hear a similar message if the church is
not a great asset to the community. So, you want to listen carefully to
your surroundings and it has really, again, when I attended a meeting
with 50 to 60 pastors, they meet on a weekly basis in the inner city.
Let us say, 85% of them are African-American pastors but they come
together on a weekly basis just to mingle, talk about community issues,
talk about what is happening in each other's church. My opportunity to
stand and bring the Amachi program and talk to them and give them
updates, those who are in that meeting to also share what is going on
with our program and give updates but it is amazing to sit at the table
with someone who has done something in the community. You will hear
positive comments or you will hear a negative one. So keep your eyes
open. We want to definitely encourage our program to be a benefit in the
community. I know our CEO, as well as all of our folks here at the
Tennessee office believe that we do not want to be just in the
community, we want to be of the community.

**Step Two: Culture**

Slide number two, we will talk about culture. It is important to know to
visit a mid-week or a weekend service to try to get an idea of what the
church make-up is. You want to look for things like, are the church
members young adults or the more mature group? Is the church a diverse
congregation? How is the information communicated or do they schedule a
lot of meetings after church? Does the church communicate announcements
by presenting DVDs? I know these days, everybody is so technical but you
want to make sure and see how that is. Are there weekend program
handouts or do they have somebody stand and provide their announcements?
This is important, since your goal would be to get in front of the
members. So, even maybe on a weekend service or a weekday service going
to Bible study, prayer groups, Sunday service, whatever they will allow
you to come in to, that you want to know how that information is
communicated so you can prepare yourself to go in to your meeting with
your leader.\
\
This is also important to know how often and what happens after
everybody has been dismissed, and the reason I say that and this was
really a red flag for us is because we have volunteers that have several
meetings after church. They would want to take their little to church
with them but they would stay the entire day for meetings, to have
dinners, lunch, breakfast. Well, of course, we had to look at our match
retention to try to figure out some ideas and ways and what was
happening and some of these folks were just really keeping their little
after church all day. Of course, we asked them to do activities outside
the church but in some cases they spend -- you have somebody that may be
the pastor. He is the pastor of the church so he took his little to
church. We do not encourage that. We do ask the church if they have some
fun activities going on but we definitely do not encourage that. We want
to make sure the child has a great experience outside building that
one-on-one relationship. I know there is a lot of things and a lot of
stuff I have told pastors about that. The first thing, in some of the
meetings they will say, "We can. Our members bring their children to
church." Well, of course, they can if it is the approval of the parent
or the guardian. We do not encourage that but if they ask, that is
between them and the parents, however, what we do say is if you are
coming, there is an activity. At the church for instance, they are
having a carnival. That is just fine to bring that little. I think they
would enjoy that but if you are planning on bringing the little and just
take the little to their Bible study class and you go to yours, that is
not by no means considered a one-on-one outing together. So, we hope
that they would get together and really enjoy something outside of the
church.

**Step Three: Meeting Preparation**

Okay, slide number three, meeting preparation. You need to know why are
you going and what do you need to take away from the meeting. Spend some
time to plan your meeting. Value your time and theirs. Again, you will
hear that time thing because I spend a lot of hours upfront just really
saying, "I could have eliminated this and this and this and got in more
of that, that, that." So why are you going and what do you need to take?
For me, it was really I need somebody I know that I could work with
within the church. Now, those small churches or medium, pastors may say
or the clergy may say, "You know what, work directly with me." Well,
that is fine but you definitely want to leave there with a name. I also
wanted some type of person, if they wanted to be or if the pastor will
allow us to have a church coordinator, as what we call them, to be my
liaison within the church.

What materials do I take to the meeting? What materials do I leave
behind? When will I be allowed to present and to what groups? How can I
make the first meeting memorable? I took a lot of time on really
debating on how to make the first meeting and the first contact
memorable so they will not forget us because there are so many
nonprofits out here. The churches are busy, the community is busy, but I
wanted to remember Big Brothers Big Sisters of Middle Tennessee so, what
is something that I could do. In our case, we did a lot of fun things. I
asked my CEO to join me and a member and then I am going to the
megachurches. Some of the small churches worked well but the megachurch,
I decided to go another way and try to go after some members that were
already active within their church.

In this case, one of our board members, Blaine Bishop, who was a former
little brother with our program, this bishop married him and his wife so
it was great -- a former Titan, I am sorry -- married him and his wife
as well as was at the hospital when they had their first child. So I
know, gosh, that would be a great opportunity to get Blaine to go with
me along with our CEO. It turns out they all had met up in the
community, never had the opportunity to really talk together, so that
was just a plus on my end but it definitely left that meeting memorable.
They were able to reminisce about a couple of things but the attention
span was there. So my ask was a little bit more easy and you all will
probably crack up at some of my ask because I not only went in and once
I knew that he was open, it was like, "Okay, here is what I would like.
You have a large congregation. I know you have four services going,
different locations outside of town, how about if we do an infomercial?"
And that means he was really technically inclined at their church, so he
agreed. No cost to us. Let us do a filming of the CEO, himself, and
Blaine Bishop to show at all four services.

**Step Four: Post Meeting**

Well, going down to the next slide on the post-meeting, I had to follow
up immediately on those promises and those directives because he is one
that was very, very busy in the community and he was talking to our CEO.
He happened to mention that he will be traveling for the next three
months. Well, I needed to move fast on this so if I would have waited
and just say, "Okay, I will do this next week or next month."\
No, everything became on hold and this became my priority.

What happened first is to send my thank you. That is critical. I send it
to everybody that I first talked to, his assistant to the secretary and
to the clergy to say, "thank you" and I tell you, that was a big hit. It
was a big hit. I got phone calls just saying that how appreciative
because normally, the leader will get something but not everyone that
really has talked to you and made it a point to really walk you through
this process. I contacted the designated person that the bishop had
allowed me to talk to. In this case, you guys, it was the bishop that
had allowed me to call and to get all this set up. I also went over some
responsibilities of this person that he had directed me to work with to
ask, "Is there something you can do?" That really takes some time out of
a couple of weeks to help me get this all planned and scheduled. We had
the plan. He had his own production team. We had to schedule time, not
only for the bishop to be in town but around the production team, our
CEO, and our former Titan, so that was a challenge but it worked quickly
with the support of our marketing team here. They supported me by coming
out, taking some pictures, and just running some articles with me.

**Step Five: Event Preparation**

All right, slide number -- let me just see to make sure -- slide number
five, I think we are on. It is event preparation. Event preparation,
find anyone who attends -- I stated that early, the church. I think that
is a great way to always get in. Sometimes, it just depends, and make
sure you know what kind of relationship they had. Review event detail,
just making sure that you have everything that you would like to do when
you schedule that event at your post-meeting with that contact person.
You want to make sure everything is intact. Agree to a congregation
follow-up. Well, that is critical. Not only did you want the event but
you want to continue to build this relationship and cultivate it so you
want to know exactly how the church plans to support you on providing
information to the congregation to say "thank you", because that is
important for them to put it back on the screen. In this case, what they
did is I called them immediately that Monday. We did the presentation on
Sunday. That Monday morning, they knew that over 200 people had signed
up to be mentors are broken down by men and women. I also broke it down
and called them the week after that or I would say about two weeks after
that to let them know, just keep them updated on success. They went the
extra mile. Put that all on their screen. They ran it for a couple of
weeks. They added us to their Web site to be a link to anyone else
coming inside of their congregation that would love to see what took
place that Sunday, so it was a great, great success. Prepare the details
for the presentation. Again, we went the extra mile and got that
PowerPoint set up.\
\
I had the CEO, as well as the board members, I invited them to come out
to help work at the booth or the table that day. I had some of the board
members come just sit in the audience so that the bishop or the clergy
-- because I have done it several different times, whoever wanted to
attend would email me back. I have it all set up. There will be an
audience and some work at the booth. If the pastor, bishop, whoever, the
leader would like to acknowledge them, which in every case they have
done so have a board member stand up to acknowledge them. I have staff
just to make sure they are there ready for this event and to wear their
shirts and keep all of their faces with big smiles on them. I send out
event reminders to all participating parties just to make sure that
everybody was on the same page. I do not want anything to affect the day
of the event. Everything that was going to happen needed to happen way
before the day of the event happened.

**Step Six: Day of Event**

The day of event, which is slide number six, of course, you would want
to arrive early. That is critical to make sure you are not just getting
there and just setting up. In this case, the first service started at
7AM, so I had my team, myself, we were there. Everything was set up
before the first person walked through the door. I did not invite staff
members or encourage staff members that I knew weren't morning folks to
come---you need to have a smile on your face at 7AM. You need to be
ready to greet and to meet and to represent the agency and sometimes, we
know that we do not want to smile everyday but I tell you, on this
particular day, you want to make sure that you have fun people. Somebody
that loves people, want to talk and have a good time. Set up the booth
and smile. Arrive early. Those are the key facts for the day of the
event.

**Step Seven: Post Event**

In number seven, we had the post-event. The post-event was to update the
contact person and of course, whoever my contact was on the church, with
any results that I have. I want to continue to keep them updated on a
weekly -- it went from weekly to bi-weekly, monthly to quarterly
updates, just to talk a little bit more, to find out what we can do to
keep going out for any update on their end, what have they done? I hand
delivered the clergy a plaque. I ordered one and I have done that with
several different people that I have worked with over the years. I think
it is important. In some cases, if you do not have that budget for it,
to order a real simple plaque just saying, "Thank you for your continued
support and partnering with the Amachi program" or just being a partner
for us overall. Make sure the church communicates to the congregation
how grateful we are. I always encourage them to, when they start having
some fun activities going on, if we do have a church coordinator there
when we planned the first activity, to be excited about it. Get the
littles involved in it. That is a great opportunity for future
recruitment efforts that they see how excited the people are. Those
church coordinators do not get off lightly. They have some requirements,
they also must meet such as know when the big birthday is, acknowledge
their match date, do something fun so that they know the church supports
them and they support this program.

**Step Eight: Cultivation**

That leads right into our final step that I had, which is cultivation.
Your long-term goal is to place material in the church new membership
orientation packet, which means you are now and officially part of that
congregation so any new member comes in will identify and be aware of
what partners they are partnered within the community, and Big Brothers
Big Sisters will be one of those. I tell you, you have hit it out the
ballpark if you get to that role and as well as being -- I am pleased to
say and I mentioned it before, that we were actually placed on a Web
site so that any of their members going on to their Web site that looks
for updated information, mentoring opportunities, they have Big Brothers
Big Sisters there, so we just did a wonderful, wonderful job with the
support of just everybody that worked with me to go out and build those
relationships with this particular congregation. We actually are
planning our first match activity out at the church. So, that is going
to be a success as well but cultivation, you want to continually work
with your church coordinator to recruit new volunteers and place updates
on the church bulletins. Now in some cases, we are going to have to bite
the cost such as in our area, what I asked our CEO, "It might be a peer
program and so allow me to have or order some of those corkboards so
that it will only be designated for Big Brothers Big Sisters material
that will keep the church updated about how and who to contact for
recruiting, for future recruiting, or how do they get involved." What
types of events are going on in our organization? It is just a good
visual for them.\
\
Match activities, we can put pictures up there so they could see what is
exciting about the matches and if they went walking or fed the ducks, we
may have taken a picture of some fun things that will, again, reach out
to someone else who may just be thinking about it or on the sense about
making that decision. Scheduling next recruitment event, what I asked
the church coordinators to do is on a quarterly basis, to invite us out
or they themselves will do something to either place an update on the
bulletin board, always with the last statement, "We will love to have
you be a part as well." How can they come on board? To always do
something and have a table set up outside with the information. Just
really keep it in front of the people because if it dies, it is not the
fault of the folks and the congregation members. It is really the folks
that implemented the program that let it die. Send the clergy a
volunteer match success story with quarterly updates, I think that is
critical. We need to keep the clergy, although we have a volunteer
liaison person to work with, it is always important just to send a
little email or deliver a little message or drop off a thank-you card or
some sort of communication piece just to let the pastor know or the
leader of the church, "Thank you. This is what is going on now."\
\
In some cases, the pastors are calling me. One pastor on one of the
Churches called me and said, "I knew 23 people signed up and you should
have made contact with 23 people." I had to say, "No, sir, I have only
been able to contact eleven of those people." Well, you better believe
he got all of them on the phone. They actually called me within a week.
So, did they all follow up? Not a hundred percent but 92% of them, I
would say at least, went to interviews. So that was great just to hear,
but he really believed and his message was that if you commit to this,
this is something you are representing our church for, so really think
about it. Some pastors may even ask you to see the referrals that come
in. They want to make sure if they are not active in doing some
ministries within the church, they know that they would not be good
mentors. So we would love for them to put them down as a reference. They
are good references for them. Work with the church coordinator for
approval of the place information and the new member orientation packet.
As I stated earlier, that is knocking it out the ballpark because we
really, really -- that is our long-term goal, to always be there,
especially if it is a stable church that has been there. We do not want
any of those, I would say, the smaller congregation that they have been
there for a year. That may be a hard thing to accomplish but that should
just hopefully still being your hindsight. Supply the bulletin board, as
I stated. Some pictures of the matches and activities to keep those in
front of the folks. Hey, Angie, how are we doing on time?

\[Angie Hess:\] We will have about fifteen minutes for Q&A at this
point.

\[Sandy Moore:\] Okay, good. Good, good. Well, let us recap. I have put
in here some research. We talked about research, culture, meeting
preparation -- I think it is the next slide too, Angie.

\[Angie Hess:\] Okay. Hold on. There you go.

\[Sandy Moore:\] Yes, we talked about the research, the culture, meeting
preparation, event preparation, day of event, the post-event, and
cultivation. Actually, I did not put in there post-meeting so
post-meeting is left off on there but it is on my slide. So at this
time, I can take a couple of questions and then we will move on a little
bit further.

\[Angie Hess:\] Would you like to do either of these other polls that we
had prepared or would you want to do the Q&A.

\[Sandy Moore:\] I would. That would great.

\[Angie Hess:\] Let do those quickly and then...

\[Sandy Moore:\] Yes.

**Poll #4**

\[Angie Hess:\] Okay. So, the first one that I am going to open right
now is about whether you have developed a relationship...

\[Sandy Moore:\] With prisons, local jails, and your state Department of
Corrections office.

\[Angie Hess:\] All right, I have got some votes coming in. And I close
and show you the results.

\[Sandy Moore:\] Oh good. That looks wonderful. Wonderful, 61%. Only 39%
had said "no." I don't know if that is because of staff purposes or what
is the hold-up on those. It could be, of course, several things, but I
encourage you to build those relationships with the prisons and your
local jails. Of course we know what the MCP program, State or Federal
institutions, but I guarantee you those county jails are holding some of
those state and federal inmates if the prisons are overfilled as they
are in the Davidson County, Tennessee area here. Also, your Department
of Corrections. It is key to get them right on board with you to really
talk to them. Go down there, meet with the case managers in the
facilities and ask them to place inserts of ideas in the checks to see
if some of the internal employees would love to be mentors and really
build those relationships and cultivate those relationships. The
Department of Corrections here is outstanding. We have a great, great
relationship. We have developed a relationship with a director of the
MIS there. I do not know her official name but she is a director of what
they call the MIS Department. She is the one to able to pool reports, to
gather how many inmates in what prison, what bed, what county they were
arrested in, how many, what is the race, how many children they have,
all of that fun stuff. So she allows me to just email her whenever I
need a report and in this case, because we are a state initiative, I was
able to contact her and ask, "I would love to see how many children and
how many inmates that we have in all of the prisons and what counties?"
How long have they been there? Are they state or a federal? So they
supplied us that list and I pass it out to our state partners. It has
been a great success going out and really talking and using those beacon
points when you go to -- maybe somebody you have tried to, like I have
for a couple of years, this opportunity would prevail itself that you
can go out and really just use those numbers and say, "Did you know that
within a five-mile radius of your church, you have such and such and
such?" So, it really, really builds that. We are trying just to prevent
building additional prisons. Our goal here is to mentor these children
so that they do not sit in the same place where their parents were when
we did that presentation.

**Poll #5**

All right, the next one. We talked about that, again, about the recap
but here we go, have you conducted outreach to a state or federal
inmates?

\[Angie Hess:\] I have got half of the votes in right now. Okay. Closed
up with about 70% and show you the results.

\[Sandy Moore:\] Okay. We had 23% on "yes." "Just state inmates," 31%.
So hopefully, some of that, when I was talking about some of the jails,
you want to check with your county jails because in most cases, they are
holding some of the state or federal inmates. Indeed that is, I am just
not too sure but if you have not stretched your arms out to that
direction, I encourage you to do so. I think that you will be pleasantly
surprised and some of them will allow us to come in very easily where
others may shut the door but you just keep on knocking again. The
prisons, I tell you, the jails and the prisons are just -- I have never
had a problem in the state of Tennessee or so far in the Middle
Tennessee area -- let me rephrase that, that has not allowed us to
really come in to the prisons, come in to the jails, talking to anyone.
I love the staff members, getting a list of who are the agencies that
supply their food at the prisons. Who provides healthcare at the prison?
You can gather as much information working and building rapport as much
as you need, so I encourage you to do so. I think that the state and
federal inmates are everywhere and of course, find out where your state
has a federal prison. They do exist. We do have one in the Tennessee
area. Of course, you want to find out who has the state.\
\
Now, if you are state partnership, you definitely do not want to do
duplicate the effort so, what we do here is we go to the prisons here
and all of our partners do the same thing, that if we go in the prison
right here in the Nashville area, we have three, every time we go, we
will send that referral over to the partnering agency if it belongs to
their jurisdiction or their service area. We also tell the inmates right
at the presentation that we are a national company so we may have
agencies all over so we let them know that that referral that they send
to us, we will contact the caregiver. If they are instate or out, we
will make sure that we get that to the right agency, but we provide them
a one time status report, only with the information that they provided
us along with what happened. Yes, we try to contact the caregiver of the
child that you referred us to. Not interested. So it is really yes and
no, we have the questions all printed out, so we just have to really do
a click on it. If we submit it over to another agency, they know that as
well because we put the agency or the state where we sent that referral.
In some cases, we ask the states to please let us know so we can get
updates. You have to move quickly when you are working with this
population, just because they are in and out if they are at the
classification stage. All right, well, that ends that. I do not know,
Angie, do you want to...

\[Angie Hess:\] Yes, I actually just wanted to make one little addition
to what you are saying about conducting outreach to people in jail and
then state and federal prisons. Going back to Sandy's earlier comment
about the Amachi training, that is an opportunity where you have a
chance to go directly into a prison, usually a women's facility.
Usually, Dr. Goode, who leads the training, will talk about mentoring
children of prisoners and then give you the opportunity directly to
reach out and speak with inmates; it is just a phenomenal opportunity to
get your feet wet. I think it can maybe be a bit of an intimidating
experience first time. So just to give another plug for the Amachi
training in terms of this question---I very much encourage that.

\[Sandy Moore:\] In some prisons, when you get to a prison, they want
you to go through the chaplains. So again, it is just like the churches.
You need to find out who is it that you need to speak with. In our case,
we have a great commissioner who has already built a relationship with
our Memphis team. He came, moved down and relocated down to the national
area, became friends with our CEO. Invited us out to the Tennessee
warden's meeting. We were able to present in that. That was our first
introduction to all of them and then it takes a lot of follow-up,
getting them to schedule meetings with them, talking to them, and really
get into their orientation. I am pleased to say we are actually involved
in their orientations. As the new inmates come in, in that second week
of their orientation, Big Brothers Big Sisters' Amachi presentation is
included, and that is at all of the three state prisons we have here. We
can go to all of them, but we are just limited staff. I encourage you,
if you just don't have that opportunity to get involved to the state
prisons, you are going to definitely yield some children out of there
that will benefit your program.

**Live Q & A**

\[Angie Hess:\] I will close this poll and at this point, as you will
see on your screen, you can press "1" on your touch tone phone if you
have a question for Sandy and I will also pull up a couple of the
questions that have come through online. Elaine, do you have a question
in the queue?

\[Operator:\] I do. I have Joel Trout. Your line is open.

\[Joel Trout:\] Thanks a lot. I am in San Diego, California. I have a
question about stipends. Does the key person in the church get a stipend
or do you give a stipend for every match made to the church?

\[Sandy Moore:\] If it is a church coordinator, I really do not
encourage it. Let us put it that way. I want to make sure that I am
partnering with the churches that has a sense of ministry that really
want to be involved. However, I do have some church coordinators that
what we ask them to do is it does not go to the church at all. What it
is, is a stipend that is determined between my VP of programs, my CEO,
and I got together and say, "If you, for instance, turn in and recruit,
and turn in ten people, those ten people have to make it to match. They
cannot fall out during the process. If they make it to match, you will
be allowed to send the invoice to me for \$75.00 per se." That money is
to be used for a match activity that is one of their qualifications that
they need to commit to doing an activity with the matches at their
congregation with just those matches. So, it does not go to the church.
It definitely has to have a name and a social security number attached
to it and we do say it is a stipend and I am glad you asked that, Joel,
because along with that is when you are going to build these
relationships with these congregations and really approach them, have a
church coordinator. What I did here is look at our waiting list for
children. I want to make sure that I am not just going out to one part
of town and we do not have any children there to build that
relationship. I want to go back to the churches that really, really show
some interest to me and then present that as a wonderful opportunity for
the church to have a long-term relationship with us.

\[Joel Trout:\] Can I follow up that question?

\[Angie Hess:\] Yes, go right ahead.

\[Joel Trout:\] Your background checks, because when you are doing a
large group of people, I was just wondering what procedure you use
because we seem to be bulked down trying to get people to go to this
school site to have their fingerprinting done and it just causes a lot
of delay. I was just wondering, how do you do your background checks for
a large group of people?

\[Sandy Moore:\] We do our background checks on individuals. Is that
what you are saying, individual basis?

\[Joel Trout:\] Yes.

\[Sandy Moore:\] We do ours. We use our system. It is called the
ChoicePoint, our volunteer select. Each person must go through a
criminal background check and we base that individual's background on
our eligibility requirements such as, if they have abuse against a
child, they will never become a volunteer in our agency. They know that,
so we offer them other opportunities.

\[Joel Trout:\] Okay.

\[Sandy Moore:\] Now the key point you want to tell those especially the
faith community, because you will get hit with that question, Joel, is
they will say, "You know what, we believe in deliverance." Well, we
believe in deliverance. We feel that everybody and I, a hundred percent
agree, I am a Christian. I understand that this could be the case.
However, there is something to do for everyone and volunteering with us
when you have an abuse charge against a child will not work, but you
definitely can support us in events. You can even be a speaker for us.

\[Joel Trout:\] Do you use a social security-based...

\[Sandy Moore:\] We use National Criminal Check. We do national criminal
checks, sex abuse references, as well as interview and training.

\[Joel Trout:\] All right.

\[Angie Hess:\] If you do not mind, Sandy, can I give you a question
that has come in online?

\[Sandy Moore:\] Sure.

\[Angie Hess:\] This is from Tosca Cheatham. If you already had a
partnership with the church and it failed, how do you get the churches
involved and then this brings up a little bit of what Joel has just
said, keep in mind that many of the churches want money.

\[Sandy Moore:\] Right, right. I would not mention money at all but what
you want to do -- in Nashville or Tennessee, we have 19,000 churches.
Really get your arms around how many churches, what zip code, what
counties, and base that on -- it is so many churches out there, I would
leave that one church that you are having a hard time getting in and go
to the next one. If they are giving you that hard of a time and it is
all about the money, that is not the partnership you want to develop.
For one, they should not even know about the money. If we bring that up
-- I encourage you not to bring up and mention the money issue because
that is going to be a problem when the grant runs out, what is going to
happen? They are not going to support us any more volunteers? So you
really want to think about that. As I stated, when we first started, it
really was an opportunity to say the first year, develop the
relationships and make sure that they are really going to be long-term
relationships. The second year, go back and identify those churches who
have supported us and make sure that we have children in those areas but
I would encourage you, if you are having a hard time getting to a
church, there are many other churches out there.\
\
If it is a particular denomination such as a Baptist Church or a
Methodist Church, there are a lot of those churches out there. You may
want to try some other ways of getting into the church such as going to
another pastor in the same denomination, building that great rapport and
then asking them, for instance, "Do you all have a monthly gathering
that I can come to? I have met with such and such or I have talked to
such and such." And mention it because they will talk. If you do not
mention it and you try to go to five same denominations, they get
together and those clergies talk, so you want to mention that. "I went
over to Brooks Memorial and we talked a little bit but they were really
hesitant so I am still excited that you are on board, is there a way you
can share your thoughts with us on getting your church involved in
partnering and can I come out to a meeting? Who do I contact?" And try
some of those angles.

\[Venessa Mendenhall:\] This is Venessa Mendenhall from the MCP TA
Center and absolutely, what Sandy is saying works for a lot of programs
and some other things that we have seen to work is actually, if you ask
your current mentors, volunteers, or even caregivers, where they go to
church and start there. Start at the places where you have natural
connections, where you have folks who are already members who can make
introductions for you and can be advocates for you. If you do have any
pastors on board in another church, see if those pastors can introduce
you to other pastors. That can make a huge difference for other programs
as well.

\[Operator:\] Ladies, I have a question.

\[Angie Hess:\] Go right ahead.

\[Operator:\] Thank you. From Reverend Michael Bond, your line is open.

\[Rev. Michael Bond:\] Good afternoon, all. Can you hear me?

\[Sandy Moore:\] We can.

\[Rev. Michael Bond:\] I just want to thank you so much because you're
really on point to this presentation. I am presenting my program in an
area where my church is not located and I am meeting with a pastoral
alliance and it is taking almost eighteen months to really get to the
place where volunteers will accept the call. Can you tell me, what is a
good timeframe? Or is there a timeframe where you will initiate and then
if nothing comes to bear, just in case, you look for other opportunities
elsewhere?

\[Sandy Moore:\] Right. That is a great question. What I look for is how
active is the church. Do they even have time to add on another ministry?
So, look at some of the key factors before you decide to turn it away
but I tell you, after a few calls, I remember myself and another
part-time recruiter, I would make contact or we would make contact with
the church or a clergy leader and three to four weeks later, we will get
the call. Well, we already wrote that church off as they were not
interested. You will come up to billets where the screening, you cannot
get through the door. So, you definitely want -- if it is something
worth going after, as far as the congregation I would say, use your time
wisely. If you made a few contacts, I did what we call a site visits or
field checks. I took a packet of information and just stopped by and my
process was I would call twice, wait a week, try to get them to -- and
see if they return my calls. If they did not, I would do a drive by and
I call up those or I stop by, a field check, and I call those a stop by
or a field check. I would do a site visit or a field check and take out
a packet and I ask them to pass that along to the person in charge and
who I need to talk to. I would leave all the information, my business
card, and then I would follow up one more time about a couple of days
later. If I did not receive any response, I will move on to the next
church.

\[Rev. Michael Bond:\] Thanks so much.

\[Sandy Moore:\] You are welcome.

\[Angie Hess:\] Do we have another question, Elaine?

\[Operator:\] Currently, I have no more questions in queue.

\[Angie Hess:\] No more questions. Let me bring up one more question
that we've got online and then I think we will have to call it quits for
this afternoon. If we did not get to a question that you have typed in
online, we will either get back to you one-on-one via email or your
question will be addressed in the upcoming newsletter. So, here is the
question from Olga Sanchez: how can we keep the church excited once they
have accepted to help us with the MCP program?

\[Sandy Moore:\] That is a great question. Again, if you have somebody
internally working with you, that is going to help you. Just keeping
them updated on what is going on with the matches and activities, that
bulletin board, if you can put that up there. Ask them to continually
run something in their program. I will say monthly or maybe even
quarterly, keep something in there. It is going to take that internal
person and yourself to really cultivate that relationship. And then,
once I connected the matches to some of the members in the congregation,
I do just stop by and visit that church. I guarantee you, the pastor or
whoever you visited the first time will see you in the audience. You do
not even have to come officially. They will know that you are there.
They will ask you to stand. If you know in advance, you can call the
volunteers or the matches that have already been placed and ask them to
stand. If they acknowledge you, you acknowledge them. You ask the
liaison person or one of the volunteers to ask the pastor, can they
stand and have a word. You have to keep in front of the congregation
members.\
\
Otherwise, if there is nothing active, church members themselves will
feel that the church is not supporting them, maybe this is not a good
program; and what we found in some of our matches within the church,
that was the case. That they felt like the church was very busy. They
had a lot of activities but this was important to them and of course,
our match support team will call them with the resource for them and
supported them in every way they could but they were still missing that
church support component. So, if they talk to you or if you feel like
you do not see them at events, really look around and go back to the
congregation. Try to keep them engaged in what we are doing and let them
know that they are partnered with us. It is not something that we just
came out and said thank you for letting us in to talk to your members
and now, you are off to face to the Earth. We want to keep that in front
of them.

\[Angie Hess:\] Thank you, Sandy.

\[Sandy Moore:\] You are welcome.

\[Angie Hess:\] All right. Well, we do have a lot of great questions
that came in online so we will have our work cut out for us afterwards,
Sandy.

\[Sandy Moore:\] Okay.

\[Angie Hess:\] Let me just let you all know a little bit of what is
next in the upcoming newsletter, which will be out in about two weeks.
You will get a bunch of information, some follow-up materials that Sandy
and I have already communicated a little bit about. We will select a few
that are the best for you guys and send those out along with the
PowerPoint slides from today. Also, a transcript from today's
presentation and a link to an audio recording from Sandy's virtual
workshop today. So you will have lots of chances to follow up on these
materials, so keep your eyes open for the newsletter which comes out the
first Wednesday in October. If you have got any questions and in the
meantime, I do have Sandy's information, her contact information for
you. I am sorry I do not have it on this slide. I have nothing on this
slide but let me just tell you what her email and phone number are and
you can write that down if you got a pen and paper in front of you. So,
her email address is <sandy.moore@bbbs.org> and her phone number is
615-329-9191 and she is at extension 219. So the next thing you will be
looking for, actually as I close that, is an evaluation and you will
receive that as soon as you have logged out of the webinar. We will ask
you just to take -- it will probably take you about 90 seconds to fill
that out. If you do that for us, that will be incredibly helpful. That
is all we have got for you today. Thank you so much, Sandy, for being
with us.

\[Sandy Moore:\] You are welcome.

\[Angie Hess:\] And thank you all for being with us, too.

\[Operator:\] That concludes today's conference. Thank you for your
participation. You may now disconnect.

-End of Conference-