Plugging Into a Community

Editor's Note: Through a collaboration with The Patterson Foundation (TPF) and Indiana University Indianapolis Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, TPF Immersive Impact: Through Engagement and Consulting provides undergraduate and graduate students attending the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy a professional growth opportunity using The Patterson Foundation's initiatives. This semester-long course culminates with a weeklong spring study away experience at The Patterson Foundation in Sarasota, FL.

TPF's Digital Access for All (DA4A) initiative consulting project for Study Away Week focused on closing the digital divide by strengthening device accessibility for underserved communities. Students from Indiana University Indianapolis Lilly Family School of Philanthropy analyze and provide recommendations to enhance the device pipeline in collaboration with the Sarasota Technology Users Group (STUG) and the Women's Resource Center (WRC).

When I first arrived in Sarasota to consult with the Sarasota Technology Users Group (STUG), I wasn't quite sure what I could contribute. Here, I was a master's student who went back to school to transition career fields and had never done any type of consulting work, and I was expected to provide recommendations to a real organization. Up to this point, most of my schoolwork had been merely hypothetical thought experiments with very limited hands-on experience.

What I soon learned is that everyone's unique life experiences and strengths meant we all had something to bring to the table. After our site visit and speaking to the fine gentlemen at STUG, my partner and I came up with a list of several recommendations for the organization moving forward. These recommendations are what we provided STUG, but I would like to talk about what my experience consulting with STUG provided me that I will take into my life moving forward.

One of the things that stuck with me about my visit with STUG and the later visit the DA4A group took to the Women's Resource Center is how plugged into the community each organization was. Their lists of community partners were astounding to me. Both organizations even worked with each other. STUG partnered with local schools and other nonprofit organizations and even told us the marketing of their organization was done primarily through word-of-mouth marketing by community members.

They explained that they advertised in local churches and had some but not a lot of media coverage, yet they had refurbished over 1,600 devices in the previous year. This information had me in shock and awe, and as I pondered it, I grew to recognize the importance and significance of community in organizational success. This might seem like common sense, but it was truly something I had never considered.

I then began to think about my own life and the experiences I had up to that point and realized I had not been putting enough stock in the value of community in my personal life. Attending the Lilly School of Philanthropy, I was present in my classes and present at my graduate assistantship in the office of the Dean, but I had not been investing in the community and building relationships with my fellow students and the faculty and staff of the school.

As someone who has always struggled with the somewhat awkward nature of networking, I realized all networking boils down to is plugging into one's community and investing in those relationships. You can never know how these relationships might be mutually beneficial for both parties in the future. This is something I plan to carry with me. Embracing one's community strengthens it, and everyone benefits.