# Council Social Services Committee - May 12, 2011 > Auto-transcribed civic record · May 12, 2011 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/2005 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/2005?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2011-05-12 - **Last revised**: July 17, 2026 - **Length**: 14,545 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Special Social Services Committee met on May 12, 2011, at 2:30 p.m. in the Council Chambers, with Myers presiding. The committee addressed two agenda items during the session: a presentation on a Partner Agencies Funding Proposal and a discussion regarding next steps and the Request for Proposal (RFP) process. The presentation was informational in nature, while the discussion on next steps and the RFP was deferred to a future meeting. The committee heard six public comments during the meeting and took one motion to a vote. Overall, the meeting focused on gathering information about the funding proposal while postponing further action on the RFP process. ## Attendance The following individuals were present at the meeting on May 12, 2011: * Myers * Henson * Steve Kay * Chris Ford * Diane Lawless * Kevin Stinnett * Jay McChord No absences or late arrivals were recorded. ## Votes and Decisions **Motion to Proceed with Combined Proposals Discussion** A motion was made by Myers and seconded by Ford to proceed with the next meeting to discuss combined proposals from Bluegrass Community Foundation and United Way. [timestamp: 1:32:14] The motion passed by voice vote. The following members voted in favor: - Myers - Henson - Steve Kay - Chris Ford - Diane Lawless - Kevin Stinnett - Jay McChord No members voted against the motion, and there were no abstentions. ## Public Comment Six speakers addressed the meeting with concerns about funding, outcome measures, and collaboration among agencies and funders. **Outcome Measures and Transparency** Lindy Cain spoke in strong support of outcome measures, noting that her agency has used them for 30 years [timestamp: 1:09:40]. She emphasized the importance of using data in budget decisions and criticized the lack of access to outcome information during budget deliberations. **Funding Challenges** Karnes highlighted that both city and United Way funding have declined over the past decade, forcing agencies to become more entrepreneurial [timestamp: 1:11:22]. He called for better collaboration among funders to increase overall community fundraising. Walter May raised concerns about grant writing capacity, questioning whether one part-time staff member could effectively manage grant writing for 27 agencies [timestamp: 1:16:51]. He stressed the critical need for city funding to support emergency shelter operations, which are not covered by grants. Jack Birch noted that community organizations bring in far more funds than government appropriations [timestamp: 1:20:43]. He warned that federal grant dollars are shrinking and stressed the need for better collaboration and realistic expectations about funding availability. **Solutions and Growth** Kevin Stinnett advocated for a dual focus: improving the current system for allocating existing resources while building mechanisms to grow the overall funding pie through collaboration [timestamp: 1:24:59]. Diane Lawless suggested launching a public donation campaign to increase city revenue, citing strong community support [timestamp: 1:26:37]. She encouraged collaboration to find external funding and avoid cutting essential services. ## Contested Items **Perceived Lack of Transparency in Funding Decisions** [timestamp: unavailable] A heated discussion arose regarding transparency in the city's funding process. Councilmember Ford challenged Chair Myers' assertion that agencies must have a personal relationship with the mayor in order to receive funding, characterizing the statement as inaccurate and potentially damaging to the city's reputation. Chair Myers responded by clarifying the nature of the concern. Myers explained that the issue was not one of access to the mayor, but rather the practical difficulty of removing items from the mayor's budget once they had been approved. This distinction addressed the underlying tension about how funding decisions were made and communicated to the public and to city agencies seeking resources. ## Presentation: Partner Agencies Funding Proposal [timestamp: 00:04:30] Commissioner Beth Mills and her team presented a comprehensive framework for reforming partner agency funding. The presentation was delivered by Mills along with team members Craig Benez, Lisa Adkins, and Barbara Fischer. **Key Elements of the Proposal** The funding reform framework emphasized several core principles: * Alignment with community needs * Streamlined application processes for partner agencies * Outcome measurement and accountability * Enhanced collaboration with external partners **Implementation Strategy** The proposal outlined a multi-phase approach to implementation: * Advertising of funding opportunities to potential partner agencies * Pre-application meetings to support agencies in the application process * Committee reviews of submitted proposals * Integration with GoodGiving.net as a platform for funding management and distribution **Partner Organizations** The framework included plans for collaboration with: * UK College of Social Work * Bluegrass Community Foundation These partnerships were designed to strengthen the funding process and expand the reach and effectiveness of partner agency support. **Outcome** The presentation was informational in nature, providing the meeting attendees with an overview of the proposed funding reform structure and its intended mechanisms for improving how partner agencies access and utilize funding resources. ## Discussion: Next Steps / RFP [timestamp: 1:04:30] Committee members and partner agency representatives engaged in a substantive discussion about improving funding allocation processes and accountability mechanisms. The conversation centered on three primary concerns: the need for greater transparency, the importance of outcome-based data, and the limitations of existing funding models. Key speakers in this discussion included Myers, McCord, Ford, Lawless, Henson, and Stinnett. Participants emphasized that any future funding approach must prioritize outcome data to demonstrate effectiveness and justify resource allocation. The committee acknowledged that current funding models have inherent limitations that constrain their ability to achieve desired results. A significant point of discussion involved the necessity of pursuing external grant funding to supplement existing resources. Committee members recognized that internal funding alone may be insufficient to meet program needs and that external grants could provide additional capacity and flexibility. The committee reviewed two separate funding proposals—one from the Bluegrass Community Foundation and another from United Way. Rather than making an immediate decision on either proposal, the committee determined that a comparative review would be more beneficial. Members agreed to bring both proposals together at the next meeting to allow for side-by-side evaluation and discussion. **Outcome:** The agenda item was deferred, with no final decision reached at this meeting. The committee's next steps involve preparing both proposals for comparative analysis at a subsequent meeting. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed: Motion to proceed with next meeting to discuss combined proposals from Bluegrass Community Foundation and United Way --- ## Full transcript The End Thank you. The Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 2.30. So we'll go ahead and start the meeting. Yes, please, Commissioner. What I thought we'd do today is just open up and have the Commissioner present with her group, and then after that let anyone from the community that wants to speak come up and do so. And then after that, if it's the committee's pleasure, what I'd kind of like to do is have both groups come back at the next meeting together with anybody from the community who wants to come in, and let's kind of just have a conversation about the two plans, how we can maybe meld them together and merge them together or steal from each one, however we do that, and come up with the best plan as we try to move forward. But, again, there's no hurry. It doesn't have anything to do with the budget, so we're not on the same timeline that the budget's on. So that's kind of what I thought we'd do today. Thank you. Thank you all for listening to our proposal today. I will tell you that we wanted to make sure that the partner agencies knew our proposal. So on Monday when we sent you all the packet of the proposal today, we made sure that I hope all of you all got a copy too. We want to make sure that all the partner agencies got a copy and we wanted them to come today. So we'll try to keep our presentation as brief as possible. And then you all could ask questions at the end would probably be best so that the partner agencies will have a chance to speak if that's the committee's pleasure. There's two issues on the table that we're going to present today. One real briefly. All the LFUCG departments that oversee partner agencies need a more systematic funding approach, not just social services. It's consistent with the administration's idea to have a business plan for government and to move towards performance management standards. We have to figure out how we're going to do that because some of the departments have different kind of tasks and needs for their partner agencies. But today we're going to spend a bigger part of time talking about what we propose to do in the Department of Social Services. I'll tell you first, in our department, we depend on our partner agencies to complete our mission. Our mission is to provide easily accessible human services throughout Fayette County. We can't do it. We can't do it without our partner agencies. In fact, some of our partner agencies are mandated by Kentucky statute to do services in Fayette County, and some were created in the local government's code ordinances. So we are obligated to fund those agencies. In the Department of Social Services, we have thought about improvement in partner agency funding for quite some time. It was a goal even before I became commissioner. And when the United Way brought forth their proposal, that was an impetus for us to look at, And we appreciate that because they presented some options that made us think and made us come up with this proposal today. So we appreciate Mr. Farmers coming forward with this. And today we're going to show you a different option. Now, I think we have some experts in our government who can do this very well, and I want to tell you a little bit about them. First, I'd like to introduce you all to Craig Benz. I was the benefactor of getting Craig Benz. He was recruited before I came. He came with his wife from Orlando, Florida. He's an administrative officer. Craig has a master's in public administration. He's done urban planning and private planning for 15 years. And it has been very beneficial to me as we've started down this path. And Craig was assigned partner agencies from the day he came in the door. And he has said to me since I started work, you know, there's no rhyme or reason to the way we're doing partner agencies. We need to do it in a more standard way. So he was about this before we even did this approach. So when we decided to present this proposal, Craig also met with Sheila Hupp, and Sheila also came with her spouse here from North Texas. And Sheila also did strategic planning in Irvin, Texas. So they both know how to do this and do this well. They're going to come up with some of the things today. We've also invited Lisa Atkins and Barbara Fisher here from the Bluegrass Foundation. They have a website called goodgiving.net, and there's information on there that we might be able to access when partners are applying, the partners that are on there so that it won't have to be produced twice. So with our proposal, I think we have three goals. The first goal is we want to align the funding with the identified social gaps in our community. We want to make sure that we prioritize where our money needs to go, and then we want to measure the outcomes that we're getting through those funded programs. The second goal is we want to give every social service agency in Fayette County an equal opportunity to apply for these funds, and we want that application process to be as painless as possible for them. We want to streamline that process. And then the third thing we want to do is we want to work with our partner agencies and with the U.K. College of Social Work to make sure that everybody's getting as many funds that are available to them. It's going to be more and more collaboration, more and more grants, those kind of things in these economic times. So those are the three goals we're going to try to reach. This is a framework. It's not going to have all that in detail, but it's a start. So I'm going to turn it over to Craig first and let him show you what he's got. Good afternoon. There are four objectives for this presentation. I'm going to provide a brief overview of the funding history for our partner agencies, and then we'll be presenting the tasks and timeline for the overall improvements to our partner agency review and funding process. We'll be discussing specific application of expected improvements to the process of funding social services partner agencies. And finally, there'll be a discussion of items we'd like the committee's guidance on at the end of the presentation as we move forward with this process. This slide shows total partner agency funding for this year and the mayor's proposed budget for the next fiscal year. The chart on the right side of the screen shows funding levels for partner agencies over the past 11 years. Funding levels have generally fluctuated between about $15 million and $18 million over the past eight years. There's a couple of drops on there I did want to address on that chart. You'll notice between 4 and 5, there's about a $4.4 million drop, and that was the result of Board of Health funding no longer coming out of partner agency funds. And the subsequent year, between 5 and 6, the transit authorities funds were no longer funded through the partner agency funds, and that was another $3.4 million. So that's why you see those drops on the chart. This slide shows some of the challenges of the current process that we'd like to address as we move forward. Staff reports for social service partner agency funding requests are narrative-based right now. They're not using a scoring system for objective evaluation of the requests. Also, more than half of our social service partner agency funding requests include funding for overall agency operations, which creates challenges for outcome measurement. Our reporting also requires improvement in order to better measure outcomes. Each report should be focused on how successful our partner agencies are in achieving the outcomes proposed in their applications. Although we understand that our partner agencies are providing valuable services to the community, we don't specifically tie funding recommendations to past performance in the current process. And then finally, there are no funding limit guidelines in the current application process, process, which could be implemented in terms of a percentage of the overall agency budget to ensure that LFUCG funding doesn't result in the agency's reliance on the urban county government as their primary irreplaceable funding source. source. This slide shows our proposed process improvement timeline moving forward. In May and June of this year, we proposed to have internal meetings with the commissioners as well as with the mayor to discuss the process. While that's happening, we're asking our liaisons to meet one-on-one with our partner agencies to get their input as well. And the results And the results of that in around July of this year, we'll have developed draft standardized measures for the application document, scoring and evaluation, as well as reporting templates. And in August of this year, we'll be bringing all of these items forward to you for final approval. This is a preliminary example of how the process may look when we bring it back to you for approval. The general timeline for applications and approvals is unchanged. That is, applications will still be due every January, and they'll be evaluated consistent with the budget approval timeline. We anticipate the addition of three new components, which will result in the more thorough objective process that responds to community needs. The first major change in the process is that we'd like to advertise the funding process in September of this year, and probably earlier moving forward. on the website, local newspapers, GTV3, and other media sources in order to get the word out that the partner agency funding opportunities are available. Second, as a follow-up to advertising, we'd like to hold an annual pre-application meeting to introduce new applicants to the process, discuss changes to the process for existing partner agencies, and just to simply answer questions from the partner agencies. And in order to, or as a carrot, to get the partner agencies to attend this meeting, we'd like to add points to the scoring system if somebody does attend that meeting. And last, we propose a committee review process be implemented for partner agency review. Several committees would be formed and would be made up of community experts, social services staff, social services advisory council members, and members of this committee and the council. Five to ten partner agency funding applications would be reviewed by each committee, and the committees would provide each partner agency with the opportunity to present their proposal as well as ask questions. We believe that this process, if it moves forward this way, will result in increased accountability, clear measurement of program outcomes, and greater opportunities to fund innovative partner agency programs. We'd also propose that, and Beth mentioned this a little bit, We propose that special consideration be provided to applications that address gaps in essential community services. The list on this slide is a list developed by our senior staff and their knowledge of our community programs and critical service needs. Those needs, in very brief summary, are services to senior citizens, mental health and substance abuse services, alternatives to detention for youth, and other youth services programming. It's not an exhaustive list, but it gives us a starting point for identifying community needs. There are a number of partnerships that we'd like to explore as we move through the process as well. The department has a long history of partnering with the U.K. College of Social Work and providing internship opportunities throughout the department. We'd like to continue that relationship through several different approaches, through internship for course credit, which we're currently using, as well as class projects at the graduate level to assist with updates of our needs assessment. That document was created in 2008, so it's coming due for an update. And also exploring the possibility of identifying a single point of contact or a liaison with UK to identify partnership opportunities for program evaluation, community meetings, and other initiatives. In terms of grants, we may act as co-applicants or partners for grants that address gaps in service or maximize opportunities to bring resources to the community. We'd also like to consider allowing partner agency funding for grant matches to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. We're exploring streamlining the collection of agency information through partnering with one or more community resources, such as GoodGiving.net, a program administered by the Bluegrass Community Foundation that connects funders with nonprofits. Lisa Adkins and Barbara Fisher with the Bluegrass Community Foundation are here today to provide a brief presentation on goodgiving.net. And with your permission, I'd like to turn it over to them for just a few minutes. Thank you. Okay, great. Thanks. Good afternoon. I'm Lisa Adkins. I'm the President and CEO of Bluegrass Community Foundation. And I'm here to tell you a little bit about the Community Foundation and about goodgiving.net. At Bluegrass Community Foundation, we strive to be the region's go-to source for charitable giving and civic engagement. We're 43 years old. We're founded here in Lexington in 1967, and we're a nationally certified community foundation. But we're also, as all community foundations are, we're a 501c3 public charity. At community foundations and at Bluegrass, we work with individuals, families, businesses, and nonprofit organizations to help really empower their charitable giving. We can help all different kinds of people and organizations and businesses establish charitable funds, charitable endowments, scholarships. And we also very much work with nonprofits. We want to help raise their profile. We want to help grow charitable giving throughout Lexington and the Bluegrass. So really it's our mission to make this the most charitable community that it can be. We have today more than 250 individual charitable funds, and when you aggregate those assets, it's $45 million. Cumulatively, since the Community Foundation started, we've awarded more than $19 million in grants back out into the community and region. Last year, that meant $3 million in grants. was awarded by the various charitable funds of Bluegrass Community Foundation. We also convene and facilitate on community projects, do quite a bit of work in the East End and work on East End Renaissance activities. The Legacy Trail is a project that the Community Foundation helped to facilitate and convene and is still doing that as we go into Phase 3 of the trail, as well as Isaac Murphy Memorial Art Garden, to note a few of the community projects we work on. We have a staff of three, including three attorneys and two certified public accountants and two grant-making specialists. So that's a little bit about us, and if you have any questions, please let me know. Goodgiving.net is a new initiative of the community foundations, and we launched that December 1st of last year. We're the 11th community foundation in the country to bring this resource to our region and, frankly, to our state. And it's part of our mission, as I said, to make charitable giving easy, effective, quick, and simple, and also to raise the profile for nonprofits and make charitable giving simple for everyone in the community. So goodgiving.net is an online tool. It is a website, and it's really there to inform, empower, and enrich charitable giving. It is a way to connect both donors and any interested community member, grant makers, and, as I said, the community at large, with nonprofit causes by sharing consistent, validated, objective information. The whole purpose of goodgiving.net is really to provide knowledge and competence around charitable giving. The research and our practical experience telling us that when both people and organizations and institutions can give with confident knowledge, they give more, and so we're trying to help folks and organizations be informed, charitable givers and grant makers. This absolutely, a driver for this was to help promote nonprofit transparency and capacity, and Critt Llewellyn, our state auditor, helped us with the public launch of GoodGiving.net back on December 1st. So this very much lines up with her recommended standards around accountability and transparency for nonprofits. It is a completely free community resource, Bluegrass Community Foundation, and so it's made available free of charge to the community, to all nonprofit participants, and funders or grant makers that would like to use it. And I'm going to take you in and just tell you a little bit more about what you can find at GoodGiving.net and how it works. Essentially, any nonprofit in the state of Kentucky is free to participate in goodgiving.net free of charge. And I will tell you that we thought, as I said, the public launch was December 1st. We pictured success as having 100 completed nonprofit portraits by July 1 of this year. And, in fact, there are 125 completed nonprofit portraits today. 123 of those have been published live to the site, and another 80 nonprofit portraits are in process. So they have gone through the information and training process, which we also provide free of charge all the technical support nonprofits need to complete their portrait. And then when it is fully complete and reviewed, it can be published live to the site. So we hope that soon, 125 will turn into 200 and beyond as we get started. So there are four buckets of information in goodgiving.net. There is significant general information. There's complete contact information for the particular agency, a direct link to their website and to their personnel, information that's detailed about their mission, their impact, their needs, the geography and population that they serve. So that's in the general information category. The next category is management and governance. Again, very comprehensive information about that agency's board, about their staff, about their infrastructure, and about their governance, both board and staff. And throughout goodgiving.net, there are more than 65 points of national nonprofit best practice. So essentially, nonprofits are going through a list of 64 questions. They are responding with information. They're inputting all of this into a database. They're both providing narrative information to get to this. They're providing actual documents that are uploaded into the system. Moving on to the financial section, there's very detailed budget information for each nonprofit, if they have an endowment, if they're currently in a capital campaign, and a breakdown of their revenues and expenses for the last three years. Non-profits input their own information into GoodGiving.net except for the financials. The CPAs on our staff actually take those audited financials and the three most current 990s as pulled down from GuideStar and actually input the financial data. So that is taken directly from audited financial information, reviewed by our CPAs, and put into the format that I'll show you in just a moment. And then finally, there is a bucket of information that goes into great detail about the programs of each nonprofit, including outcomes, target population, and there's quite a bit of narrative room for the nonprofit to go into detail about the programs that they have. I'm going to just switch over to the site and take you into it live. I will say about 75% of the government partner agencies already have completed portraits in goodgiving.net. Right now, about once to twice a month, we offer information sessions to any nonprofit board or staff member that wants to come and learn more, as well as community members are welcome. But we also have provided trainings for particular audiences. So it's a very simple sort of information and overview. It takes about 90 minutes. Barbara Fisher right here, who is our director of nonprofit services, will then do group trainings or train them one-on-one so that they can get right into the system and start working on their portrait. We give all of the nonprofits very detailed information about what they need to collect up to answer all of those questions and in what order that should be. And it takes four hours, typically, for a nonprofit to complete this information. Once it's in this system, on an annual basis, it literally takes a few minutes to tweak that information that changes on an annual basis. So once you get into goodgiving.net, which it's a completely open system, So any member of the public can put goodgiving.net into their web browser, or they can go to the Community Foundation's website and click straight through. We selected, just so that you could see, one of your partner agencies. So this is what the portrait online for the NESS Center for Women, Children, and Families looks like. You're looking at the first page of their portrait. And, Craig, I might have you help me just scroll down. So what you're seeing is the agency's logo, that spot where you see the photo. An agency can upload YouTube videos or photos, and they can switch them out as they would like to. And this front page gives you overview information. It gives you information about programs, which you can click on and look in more detail. As you scroll down on the left, you're going to see complete contact information for that agency. My point in mentioning that is it is not the intention of the Community Foundation to be any kind of fence or gate between the community and these nonprofits. Anyone, as I said, can get on, and they don't need to go through the Community Foundation to connect with these agencies. They can call them or click right through to a staff member of the agency. What you're seeing there are, I think, one of the really great features of goodgiving.net. what you're looking at is comparative financial information pulled from audited financial statements. So it takes pretty complex information and makes it quite usable. And then there's any number of additional information buckets that you can hit by scrolling down on the left just to show you what a program page looks like. This particular one is about the child care program at the Nest, and it gives you very detailed information, In particular, as you look towards the latter half of the screen, you will see program short-term success, program long-term success, how they monitor those programs, and all those little question marks that you see out to the side that perhaps appear to you like little yellow circles, if you scroll over those, it explains exactly what that category looks, what kind of information is being looked for and what that means. So if you don't know what short-term success means when you're reading the narrative response, you can scroll over the question, and it lets the reader understand the detail of what you're looking to have answered in that section. And then finally, we've clicked on financial information, and this is where it gets very, very detailed. You can click through directly to the past three years of that agency's 990, and it just breaks down their financial information in a very detailed way. We were asked to make an analysis of the current application for your partner agencies, which I believe has to be submitted in paper, five copies of the complete application. And every single piece of what you look for is available online at goodgiving.net. What I will say is that I've explained that we're new, And now we run about 12 competitive grant cycles a year on average at Bluegrass Community Foundation. And beginning January of this year, about five months ago, it is a condition of agencies that want to apply for competitive grants at Bluegrass Community Foundation is that they need to have a complete portrait in goodgiving.net. Now we've greatly reduced the application process as a result because so many of those things we would ask for on an annual basis. It's all in goodgiving.net. The closest neighbor to us that has been using goodgiving.net, the very same platform in partnership with GuideStar as we do, is the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee, which covers 50 counties in and around Nashville. And today they have, I want to say, close to 1,200 complete nonprofit portraits in their system. There are 50 funders and grant makers throughout their region that have all reduced their application process but in exchange require their applicants to have a complete portrait in what they call giving matters. Same thing as goodgiving.net. And that does include the metro government in Nashville. So for several different kinds of funding that they do, including social services, arts, they utilize this tool but have simplified their application process. I'm happy to answer any questions if you have them. Are you going to go over the last page? Just to be clear, with goodgiving.net, we're looking at this as an opportunity to streamline the process, but we're not looking at it as a requirement. If the agency would like to still apply, we do want it to be a digital format, but they can still use our traditional application or whatever that ends up being in a few months through email. Goodgiving.net is just an opportunity for them to streamline the process so we can pull that information down for them. They don't have to repeat it and recreate it each time they apply. There's one more page in the consideration item. There is. This is the last slide, and this is just to help facilitate discussion of the committee. We'd like the committee's input moving forward on all of these items. And, of course, it doesn't all have to be today, but these are some of the things we know we're going to be addressing moving forward. The frequency of partner agency reporting, requirements for reports, what those are going to look like. funding caps, whether we want to create a percentage funding cap. The research I've done so far has suggested that about 20% is the maximum an agency should have from any one source for diversification. Most of our partner agencies already meet that criteria. There's only one. That's more than 24%. That's 24%. We'd also like your input on funding for programs versus overall agency funding, how we should go about handling scoring. There's discussion whether the committee should have 100% of the scoring versus possibly something like 80%, and then council and the mayor have some discretion with 10 or 20% or whatever is decided for scoring. And then finally, centralization of the partner agency review and reporting process should be discussed. Right now we have our partner agencies are spread out over seven of our departments, and there's not necessarily a standard process for reporting or how those applications are reviewed. And at this time, we'd be glad to answer any questions. Thank you. Thank you very much for your presentation. Committee members, any questions? I'm sorry, we've got Councilman Lawless. So this is for, I guess, probably Ms. Adkins. Hello. We've seen a lot of each other lately. So what you're offering is free of charge. That's right. We were the first funder to use this as part of our process. The Keeneland Foundation has determined that they're going to, again, simplify and tighten their process, but have their applicants have a complete portrait in goodgiving.net. But that's the intent. It's part of our mission and part of our community service to make this tool available. So it's meant for the community, but it's meant for funders, and we hope others will also utilize it as well. Okay. And I guess my second question would be for Craig. Is there any reason that a partner agency wouldn't be required to have this profile online? I mean, I'm hearing that the Bluegrass Community Foundation will assist the agencies in completing their information and their profile. So what would be a reason that an agency wouldn't do this? Most of them already have profiles, about three-quarters of our agencies are already on goodgiving.net. It's to their benefit. It allows them another fundraising mechanism. but preliminarily we're looking at providing other options just because we haven't gone that far into the process. It's possible that we could make it a requirement of our application process. So down the road, Commissioner Mills. I'll take that right quick. The thing I think we were thinking about, Council Member Lawless, in the past we've always funded the same agencies And the only reason we wanted to leave an option that wasn't with good giving, if you've got a grassroots agency that maybe is just getting started, they don't have all the information yet. They may not have three years of funding, and I don't know if good giving can accommodate them. We didn't want to exclude them from the application process. I would see where that – now, if it's the council's wish that in order to apply you have to be a partner, we could go that route. But we just want to make sure that we didn't exclude any agencies that may not be ready to file all that with Good Giving, not .NET. Yeah, yeah. There's some faith-based communities, faith-based agencies, some grassroots organizations that are getting started. Maybe they've only been around six months. They've just got their 501c3. So I want to look at if they're eligible or not. Would they be eligible? Yes. Okay. Yeah, tell us about that. Yes. If an agency doesn't have three years of audited financials, we will put up the information they do have, and there's just a note about that. That they've only been in existence. And a faith-based agency that has a 501c3 is not excluded. We also understand that you have, I believe, some C4s or maybe quasi-governmental entities that you fund, and we do have a way to accommodate those. They could have a public profile as well, but they would not have the option of having the Donate Now technology, which I probably failed to mention. One of the benefits of having a profile in goodgiving.net is that, again, free of charge to the agency, and you probably saw it as we were scrolling through, there's a Donate Now button on each page of the agency's profile. It allows anyone to click on that, make a secure credit card, charitable contribution. For the community foundation to process those, we can only process charitable contributions for C3s. So a C4 or a quasi-governmental entity can have a profile. They just can't have the Donate Now technology. So like LexTran, for instance, wouldn't have a Donate Now. They would not have a Donate Now button. But if we, say, had a quasi-governmental agency such as the Downtown Lexington Corporation that also has a foundation, If they have a C3 arm, then the C3 can have a portrait and can have the Donate Now technology. Okay. Thank you. I just wanted to let everybody know that there's a sign-up sheet somewhere in the back. Please sign up, and then we'll bring you up as soon as the council members are done with questions. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Chair. Lisa, I had a quick question for you. Yes. I know I think everything I've heard about you guys, I was familiar with the services you offer previously before today. Not real familiar, but somewhat familiar. Sure. And it just seems to be so well run and organized and all that. Thank you. Was that a question? No, thank you. And I know it's free. Which makes it even better. But I just wanted to know if you charge for any of the services that you offer, like with applying for the grants or accepting donations. There's no fee affiliated with any part of goodgiving.net that the Community Foundation receives any revenue from. If someone chooses to make a charitable contribution through goodgiving.net, If you click that Donate Now button, you can make a donation of any size. But what happens, we take no fee. We will pass 100% of that through to the nonprofit, but the credit card processor and bank vendor does not. So there is all told, it's about 5%, Barbara. So five cents of every dollar, if someone makes a contribution that way, is taken by the credit card processor and bank vendor that's affiliated with that. But what remains, 100% is passed through to the nonprofit. Now, on our charitable fund side, if you wanted to set up a scholarship, an endowment, a donor-advised charitable fund with us, there is a community support fee for that. Typically, that's about 1%. There's an annual fee of 1%. That's our community support fee, and that's how we do our work in the community. But there's no fees associated with goodgiving.net. Okay. Thank you. Now, my next questions are for Craig or the commissioner. Councilmember Lawless asked about why we couldn't require them, and you answered that, Commissioner Mills. But I was curious if we're going to help an agency get on their feet and they have a great idea, after a period of time, could we require this? I think you all can require anything you want. We're just starting down this road, and that's what we're looking for, something that's standard. So if in the process of putting this partner application together, we wanted to say, if you want to apply for our money, you have to apply for this. I certainly think we could do that. We can set whatever kind of standards we want as far as going down this path. Do you know of any other reason that an agency wouldn't take advantage of this? I can't think of one. I mean, I didn't know about the new agencies, and we just want to make sure everybody had a reason to apply. And as long as all those questions are answered, you know, we'll make sure that everybody can apply. We just want to make sure it's open to the whole county. And unless something comes up that's unforeseen, we could make that requirement. I mean, I think it sounds like a great deal. And also, can you give us a breakdown of our partner agencies that we fund that we're required to fund either by state or federal law or by ordinance? I don't know all of them. I do know a few. I do know that every county is required to have a community action agency. Right. And you can either do it yourself, contract to do it with it. And we've had the partnership with the community action agency for years. Our ordinance did create the Hope Center. So we're funny. Is there any other agencies here that can help me out? I do know. Yes. The Nest, yeah. Those are the two I know of. There may be others, and maybe the partner agencies can share, but those are the only two that I'm currently aware of. We have to have community mental health. That's a requirement. Okay. That's all my questions. Thank you. Council Member Stennett? Thank you, Chair. Commissioner, before you sit down, I just want to get you. We haven't heard from you since the presentation from Bluegrass Community. In a nutshell, give us the benefit of partnering with them versus United Way or someone else. And why did we choose to bring them in with you today? Well, we brought them in because we knew they had a lot of items we would want on the application. That's not to say we wouldn't also need information from the United Way. When we started looking at this thing, we didn't really want any agency to have oversight. We wanted to have oversight. We just wanted to go to the United Way and say, how do you all measure agencies? What are your outcome measures? We knew that goodgiving.net had a lot of information that we would need when we worked with partner agencies. And so they were kind enough to share all this with us. It was always our intention that urban county government would set up a more streamlined process and use information. So these were the two that we were most aware of. Craig has spent an afternoon with both of them, figuring out how could we fit this into a schematic to do it ourselves. So I guess what I'm hearing is it's just more of an organization to gather data for us more than anything. And, you know, the United Way said we can use their outcome information on any agencies that we co-fund. They were not going to charge us for that either, and neither were they. The thing about outcomes is every agency in here has written outcomes. You've got to do it to get grants. We just want to have it. Community Action has shared their ROMA format with us. That's another one Craig's looked at for their outcomes. I think Craig and Sheila have the ability to come up with this is the way we want our outcomes to look. Without getting great detail, it would be great if once a quarter they only had to submit a report instead of once a month. That's a lot of paperwork and a lot of checks going out. And that report could be a one-pager. Now, the application may be very big, but the one-page report could be any changes in your agencies, what's your current financials, and then show us what's happening with your outcomes. So our idea is to try to get it simplified so that you can really, instead of getting a big old report, as we had ten of these this month, that you can look at that one page and figure out where they are and what they said they're going to do. And that's the challenge is how do you all want to get there, and we can help with that. Very good. Thank you. And then I have a question for Ms. Ag. Mike Adkins, and thank you for being here and sharing what your organization is able to accomplish through the good giving. Two questions. One, you said you have grant writers on staff. We have grant-making specialists. We also have staff that do grant writing. So how many grants do you all are able to obtain a year for your agencies you represent? Well, a community foundation, what we do is we're not primarily a grant writing organization, although occasionally we do. What we do is we are much more working with, as I said, individuals, families, companies, and organizations that want to establish charitable funds, and we help them set up those funds. We help administer those funds in terms of IRS compliance. We also help with all the grant making. So that is more of the grant making active side of our foundation, but we do have a number of grant making specialists. As I said, we run probably a dozen competitive grant competitions where we're putting out RFPs, taking those applications in, and, you know, again, scoring those and awarding, as I said last year, $3 million in grants. Sometimes we get grants, and sometimes they're very large, but we are not an entity that is, it would not necessarily be common for a community foundation to be constantly writing grants because we really also don't want to be in a position to compete with the nonprofits that we're serving. Well, and that's the point I'm trying to get to is, you know, the nonprofits that we give money to, we would hope you'd be a – we're looking to establish, or at least I am, a partnership for someone to help them get more grants. We'd have to be able to leverage the dollars. It would be the only benefit I would see in using someone from the outside. And if that's not your all's primary focus, I'm still trying to get my hands around, what can you really offer us besides information gathering? Well, I mean, goodgiving.net, I mean, it is about information. I mean, it is a tool specifically intended to do a number of things, but one of those is to absolutely streamline the process for both nonprofits applying for funding and for grantmakers and funders who are making those decisions. So, I mean, that is one significant part of goodgiving.net. I think the other is transparency. It struck me as I was thinking about this that I don't know how simple or how difficult it is now for members of the public to essentially look at the applicant information for all of the agencies that apply to you and then to look at the information for all of the agencies that are awarded money by government. But if they, in fact, were in goodgiving.net, it would make it a very transparent process that any member of the public could access and see what you all are seeing. And how many organizations do you currently work with that we fund? About 75% of your partner agencies already have complete profiles. Now, we, I think, awarded grants to 300 different nonprofits last year, so probably I would assume that perhaps all of your partner agencies, at least that are C3s, 501C3s, have received a check from us at one time or another. We also work with – we also probably have another 25 nonprofit endowments, so we help nonprofits with their endowments or other charitable funds. Okay, very good. Thank you, Chair. Councilman McCord acknowledged that he wanted to speak, and he's – so I'm going to get him in here now. Councilman McCord. All right. I think more I just want to make a couple statements as to where I come down on this. You know, it's proposed in the mayor's budget to cut $350,000 out of partner agencies, And the other day we hear from Hope Center saying, hey, you know, we need 75,000. This is what we do with it. I hear from the commissioner that, you know, we've cut these positions out of your office and you're already stretched, you know, across a blue mile. And so what I think today is all about is that government is now realizing it cannot do it all. In government, we can do anything. We just can't do everything. And we've been doing everything for a long time as far as trying to keep all these plates spinning and keep people happy and fund this and fund that. And my seven years up here sitting on the Social Services Committee, every single year we see some of the same issues. And so, Council Member Myers, to your credit, you wanted to get at this. And I think this is the bottom line for everybody sitting in this room. It is painfully obvious that we need to get more money into these agencies. You need funding. And what the goal should be from everybody sitting in this room is how can we get more money from the outside in? There's only so much in this pie, and when we keep slicing it different ways, somebody's going to get hurt. And what we're trying to say, what at least this council member is trying to say is, I don't want anybody hurt. I want everybody funded. And what we've got to figure out is that if goodgiving.net is a great way to get resources and information, and United Way can mine that information and do this, that, and the other, that's awesome. But at the end of the day, who is going to step up to the plate and go get more resources that are out there? All I ever hear about is how much there isn't out there. Well, that's not true. Prime example, if you do anything with children right now, the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation has a half a billion dollars out there to put towards childhood obesity, reversing that trend of childhood obesity by 2015. That's one entity on one issue. What we don't have, what we are woefully inadequate with, is that we have got people stretched and stressed over so many different areas. And what I would like for everybody in here and everybody up here to realize is what we're after is, who's going to go get some more money for this community? Where can we get it? And let's go get it. Put a plan together. If Bluegrass Community Foundation has an awesome tool, and I love you guys. You know I do because I'm a part of a group that's inside you. I know the good work you do. Then let's utilize that. And I applaud you, Commissioner, for putting a plan together. But at the end of the day, the only thing that's going to satisfy this council member is when you all come with a plan that says here is who's out there that's going to write grants for us. We're not going to try and pretend like we can do it all anymore. We're going to go put this army of people together and fundraise. And we are going to bring money into the resources and resource these people who desperately need these resources. And at the end of the day, I spent seven years on this council finding outside money. You can ask anybody up here that when we stepped onto this council, I recognized that there was only so much in the city's budget, and we built trails with outside money. We built a lot of stuff in this town with outside money. It did not come from just general fund dollars. And I think that we've got to step up to the plate and stop nickel and diamond and trying to rob Peter to pay Paul and recognize that there are sources of money out there, There are people in this community that are good at getting it. Let's go engage them and spend the resources to go get the money into this community. So, again, I appreciate everybody's willingness to chip in and what they're bringing to the table. But at the end of the day, Chairman, the only thing that I'm interested in is when somebody comes with a plan and says, here are the people that are going to go look for resources and are on a full-time watch to do that. because we've reached a point of no return as far as we can't do it all. We just can't do it all, and government can't do it. So I would just challenge everybody in this room to just look a little bit bigger, and what resources can we all bring to the table to find those people that will go get those resources for this community? Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Chair. Chairman Myers. I'll keep my comments brief because we have the great fortune to have some of our partner agencies here today that will hopefully give some input to us. I want to thank all the presenters. I want to particularly thank Ms. Atkins and Ms. Fisher from Bluegrass. Your presence and Commissioner Mills mentioned it, I believe, is a testament to how great this community is. We don't have a problem attracting talent. We have Ms. Huff from Texas and Craig, and Lisa is still yet new to our community, I think Kansas City area. So we have great attraction to our community. It's what makes Lexington special, that these folks will come and provide services and blend into the programs and structures, good residents we already have. I want to ask before our partner agencies talk, I'm a little confused. I will admit I think that the agenda has kind of gone here and there. So I want to call the question, if you will, to give a guide for our partner agencies to speak when they come. What's the purpose? If we can zero back in on what the purpose is today, I think we're talking about funding or are we talking about programs and outcomes? or are we talking about processes? It's not clear to me, and if it's not clear to me, I would guess it's perhaps not clear to most folks in this room. It takes money to do what we need to do. Money in and of itself is not the answer to our problems. We can have a boatload of money right here. We need programs and we need services. I want us to get back to this committee being a social services committee. And to me, it's an issue of priorities. Let's talk about what these partner agencies do for us. Government is a service provider, and we partner with agencies to carry out some of those services for which we can't get on street level to do. So I guess clearly, Mr. Chairman, before we have our partner agencies come up, what are we talking about? What is our true discussion? Are we talking about processes? Are we talking about outcomes? Are we talking about chasing dollars, to be chasing dollars? If you would give me some clarity, I would really appreciate it. Okay. Are you done? Do you want more time? Because I want to speak, too, on the presentation that we heard. But if you want me to answer your question now, I can do that. I guess it's, and I don't mean to call you out, I guess it's just a clarity for the committee. We've been graced with two presentations over the last two meetings. This was a special call meeting. We have two very important meetings to follow. We don't have much time, but I want us to maximize the time we have left in a constructive conversation. And so just kind of committee members, help me. What is it that we're discussing and what is it that we're striving for? Okay. So with committee's permission, I'll respond to your question. I think that we're after all three things that you mentioned. We're after chasing dollars, but not for the purpose of chasing dollars. We're chasing dollars because right now we have a $350,000, $385,000 cut in partner agency spending this year. That's not a knock against this mayor. It happens every year we have a tight budget. It's normally 10 percent across the board. You have agency representatives here, but that's their main concern is that they're getting cut once again. I agree with everything that Council Member McCord stated. We've got folks out there like Robert Wood Johnson with a half a billion dollars in grant money. There are a lot of agencies. I see some folks here that could probably write a grant to Robert Wood Johnson, but there's a whole lot of agencies that can't write a grant that big to that type of organization. That's why when the first presentation came forward, it was really the three parts that you talked about. It's looking at the process. It's looking at outcomes. and it's looking at bringing more non-tax dollars into this community to be able to do the things that you said need to be done. Well, and I appreciate all of that, but I think it really, to me, zeros to the point that we're talking about general fund dollars. We're talking about the allocation and appropriation of general fund dollars to our partner agencies. We recognize that there are not enough general fund dollars to appropriate all of the needs of our partner agencies. our residents and our businesses all across this county do it all the time when you don't have enough money you prioritize and i think for the council that's our job i think that our partner agencies are smart enough and capable enough to go find the external resources that they need i don't think any partner agency here is asking for government to foot the whole bill And so I think our focus needs to be on our dollars. And we would encourage our partner agencies to seek external sources of funds, but let's talk about our dollars and our relationship with these partner agencies as it pertains to general fund and how we prioritize the appropriation of those. I think if we zero that conversation down, it will get us where we're going. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Council Member Lawless? Thank you, Chair. First of all, I'd like to say that I, like Council Member McCord, since I've been on council, have partnered with UK and several other places to write grants in combination. I think to say that our partner agencies are, you know, many of them may or may not be, but many of them are out there absolutely wearing the leather off the bottom of their shoes, writing grants, doing fundraisers every day, and the Hope Center, rape crisis, domestic violence. Many of the grants that, many of the partnerships when I was in the social service area, it was a combination of both the government and maybe the university. I helped write part of the HOPE VI grant, which was a partnership of many agencies, a grant with Apple Corporation, with agencies, several agencies, both locally and through Indiana. The problem is I do agree that, you know, oftentimes there are grants out there that because we don't have the match money, we can't apply for them as a government. And we heard that in the transition team meetings. So I agree that maybe our focus needs to be, if we're going to put money out there, is to see how we can, if we're going to spend the money, let's possibly spend it helping research what grants and what agencies and other communities even, or other entities we can partner with to go after the Robert Wood Johnson grants or the Kellogg Foundation grants or many of the others. And I'd also like to announce that as of now, if you make a contribution to an endowment, you get a 20% tax credit. So I just thought I'd throw that out there for those of you that have endowments. But I think that, you know, there are some kind of mixed messages here, and I hope that the people on behalf of the agencies that come up here will kind of stay on point because I know everybody I see in this room from a partner agency, I believe I know almost all of you personally, I know you work hard, and I know that you do good work. So let us know how this presentation and the previous one applies to you and helps you all. Thank you. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Chair. Just real quickly, because I would like to hear what the folks out there that want to speak have to say, but I think it is about accountability. I think our agencies that we fund need to be accountable because this is taxpayer dollars that we're spending. And we need to be, as representatives, we need to make sure that that money is fit appropriately. I don't really think that we should be in the business of writing grants. And, I mean, if we see grants available, I'm sure we would assist the partner agencies. But like Council Member Lawless said, the agencies, when I look around the representatives that are in the room, I know that they work extremely hard to get every dollar they can to help the people they serve. And maybe what the LFUCG gives them is just a drop in the bucket. compared to other monies they receive. And it would just be our job to make sure that they're accountable for the money they do receive. Thank you. Thank you. If I could speak just a second, too. First, I want to say let me be clear. No one is suggesting that because we're talking about outcomes, that the agencies that are in this room and those out in this community are not doing a good job. There are agencies here, and if I can use the Hope Center for an example. The Hope Center writes tens of thousands, if not, I don't know, maybe millions of dollars worth of grants every year. They have the capacity to do that. They do a great job of that, and they're bringing great dollars in. I guarantee you, though, you're going to hear from the Hope Center today that they're not happy about that cut that they're taking in the budget this year. So if we focus only on our dollars, what we're talking about is our tax dollars. And when we look at 74 cents out of every dollar that comes into this government comes from employee payroll tax or from net profit from businesses, And we look at Dr. Trotsky told us, I think, and someone can correct me if I'm wrong. I may get the numbers wrong. But in the last, I forgot what he said in that presentation. It comes from an extent you might remember about how many white-collar jobs we've lost in the last six years in this community. I think it was like 6,000 jobs we've lost. Maybe 10,000 total, 6,000 were white-collar, I think. So when we start talking about our dollars, they're going away. because our dollars are coming from tax money that we tax our citizens. And when we lose 10,000 jobs, that's a whole lot of our tax base that's gone. When you talk about white-collar jobs, it's really a part of our tax base that's gone. So the vision here was to find a way to bring the outcomes into this picture so that at the end of the day, if we're spending $2 million in social service-type partner agencies a year, and that gets cut every year, My ultimate goal would be that with these outcomes and these measures, we have the analytics behind this thing so that we can go back to the citizens to say, instead of spending $2 million on partner agencies, we need to spend $3 million. But without that, we're never going to get there, because right now all we get is a 10% cut every year when the budget's tight. So what I'm talking about is not that you guys are not doing a good job, but let's do the analytics behind that. So now we have an argument to make to our citizens that when we look at this budget, we're not cutting social services anymore. If we're going to have to take a cut, we're going to take the cut someplace else. And so that's what my goal was in trying to find outside dollars and the outcomes. And then, of course, the process is right now we have a closed process. Our process begins with if the mayor puts you in the budget. And, again, it has nothing to do with this current mayor. That's just the way it's always been. If you know the mayor and you're in the budget, you're in the budget. It's very difficult for the council, if you look historically, for the council to take something out of the budget that the mayor put in. It's also historically difficult for the council to put something in that's not in there because once that process has happened, if the council votes to put something in, then somebody else has to be cut. That's what Council Member McCord was talking about. We're robbing Peter to pay Paul, and somebody's going to get hurt. So the reason that partner agencies, oversight committees, started down this road, I realize I may have jumped a few pages ahead when we bought the vision of this bigger proposal to the committee the last time. But that's the goal, is to bring more non-tax dollars into the system, to find the outcomes and the metrics and analytics behind it so that we can make the argument that, like we were talking earlier, if at the end of the day you have 15 groups that their metrics proves that they ought to get maximum funding, but we don't have enough to fund all 15, what do we do? That's where the outside dollars comes in, and that's where the argument behind analytics comes in to the community to say, we need to step up our spending in this area. So I look forward to hearing from the partner agencies. I look forward to continuing to work on this. As I said at the beginning of the meeting, I think what we do next is bring these two groups or these two plans together to the next meeting, discuss the differences, the similarities, and how we can come up with maybe one plan that we can then begin to discuss. I'm not suggesting that in that next meeting we solidify what we're going to do, but that we begin to have that conversation around the two different plans and whatever anybody else brings in in the meantime, and then we start from there and then take the next four, five, six months to look at this process and see what we can come up with. That concludes my remarks. Councilman Ford. Mr. Myers, this is my last comment before we allow our partner agencies to start. I recognize that I'm new here, have some familiar area with government. I think you made two statements that I think are borderline, to say the least. I think, and I'm not certain that they're accurate, so I want to present those to the folks in this room and to the folks that are watching. You indicate that in order for a social service or partner agency to get general fund dollars, you simply have to know the mayor. And you did clarify that it's not personal to Mayor Gray or any man. You just say you simply have to know the mayor. I think that that's not accurate. It's not that simple. So, secondly, you also said that once you're in the budget, that it's nothing the council can do to take you out. Now, that's not true, because we know that when the mayor proposes a budget, yes, that's what I thought you said, Mr. Myers. I just want to clarify those. If that's not what you said, I interpreted it that way. Therefore, maybe others could have also. I just think that that's not accurate. I don't think the process is that simple. And you put government in a bad light when you do that. You also put these foreign agencies in a bad light as well. Thank you. I guess I'll respond to that by saying you might want to get the tape. Because it's like, let me finish. No, that is not what I said. First, I'll let you speak. What I said was the process starts with getting in the mayor's budget. If the mayor puts you in the budget, then you're in the budget, and it's very difficult for the council to take you out historically. I did not say there was nothing the council could do to take you out. You can wash the tape, George. Let's get the comments from the foreign agencies. Mr. Myers, excuse me. I have the floor, and I was polite to you when you spoke and didn't interrupt even though you were misquoting me. I said it's very difficult historically to look at it to see the council take something out of the budget that the mayor has put in the budget. And I said, also, it's historically hard for the council to put something in that wasn't in there, because when you do that, you end up cutting something else in the process. So I don't – you didn't quote me properly, for one. I didn't put the government in a bad light, and I didn't put the partner agencies in a bad light either. So if you want to follow up, you're welcome to a follow-up. If not, then we'll hear from the first constituent. Would you like to follow up? Thank you for allowing our partner agencies to speak. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, sir. The first person on the list, unless any other council members want to speak, is Lindy Cain. Yes. Could I just very quickly make a comment? Absolutely. I am a huge fan of outcome measures, and our agency did outcome measures 30 years ago before anybody was talking about them. If we want outcome measures, that's all we need to do is require that to be part of the funding process. We haven't asked them for them. So that being said, I would like to hear from the audience. And thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you for your efforts. I know that you're absolutely trying really hard to make the best of a very bad financial situation that the city has found itself in. Thank you. Thank you. If I could clarify one thing, it's not that we haven't asked them for the outcomes. Partner Agency Oversight Committee over the last six years has worked to get outcomes put into the application process. We do get the quarterly reports and the monthly reports. The commissioner may have mentioned those reports earlier. What we're not getting, though, either from the council, and I asked the commissioner in the last meeting, did the mayor receive those applications or those outcomes as he deliberated on what to put in the budget and what to take out of the budget? And I also asked if the council received that information, and the answer is no. And that's not, it really doesn't have anything to do with the commissioner because she wasn't even here in the beginning. So none of my comments are about a particular person. What we don't have and what the other presentation provided was those students that were going to analyze that data and do all the other things that they talked about in that presentation that we can get into in the next meeting. So did I pronounce your name right, Ms. Keynes? Karnes. Karnes. I'm sorry, on here it was spelled. I have horrible handwriting, I understand. Okay, okay, I apologize. I'm just here again because, as I indicated last time, I'm the former treasurer of the United Way, chair of their audit committee. I'm on the board of the Bluegrass Community Foundation. I'm the upcoming president of Chrysalis House. I'm the treasurer of the Salvation Army and treasurer of Divine Providence, which is another social service program here in town. And I would just want to make clear that when we go out and we engage other people to do grant writing for us, whatever agency we're with, we want to be sure that they are good at it, that they know how to do it, and that, you know, one of the concerns you've expressed is, and I'm a CPA, so I get the money part. One of the concerns I think that's been expressed here and is a valid concern is, yes, the city has given probably each of the organizations I represent and many others here less dollars every year. But quite frankly, so has the United Way. And that's just part of what seems to be a lassitude in our community in terms of fundraising. Agencies have gotten much more entrepreneurial. There is not a weekend in Lexington, Kentucky, that you cannot go to a fundraiser for somebody because everyone is entrepreneurial in terms of getting their money. I understand that the Robert Woods Johnson, you know, the United Way is focusing on health issues, including obesity, certainly an issue in our community. But when you're on the Salvation Army Board and you have people dropping in who have no place else to go to live, you know, their obesity issues are kind of far, you know, making them thinner will not solve their problems. We need unfettered money for operations. Every one of these organizations needs money that will come to them for the operations of their current program. And the major funding sources, which have been the city and the United Way, have not been able to increase their giving over the years and in fact have decreased that giving. That is the issue. Now, and we can bring all kind of grant money in here, but most organizations, and I think what Chris Ford has alluded to, is there's grants and there's grants. If it's grants, you know, Crystal's House enjoys a wonderful grant for pregnant and postpartum women, we have a ton of them. We will be giving them services whether we have a grant or not because this is an issue that we treat. So that grant is very productive. But there are grants that if you get them, require you to do more work. And if the administration is taken out of those grants by other organizations because they're administering the grant, it doesn't really help you because you've got to do what you're on the ground doing. And I think a lot of times when people don't work with organizations on a daily basis, They don't understand that what we need, what every one of us needs, is for the United Way to raise more money from the community and give us some of that money, for the city to give us some of that money to do what we know how to do and we're trying to do. The United Way has three focus areas now. The city should be focusing on the agencies that do the things the city is concerned about getting done, which may be a different focus. I mean, I don't know the answer to that, but as we explore this, I only suggest that we try to keep in mind that two of the primary funding sources of these organizations in our community have given us less money every year, on the average, over the last 10 years. And so we've had to get more entrepreneurial, and we have. You know, we're still housing people at the Salvation Army. I mean, we're still treating women with addiction issues at the Chrysalis House, but the money that we're getting here is not doing it. We're getting our grants. We're doing our things. So we would really ask if there is collaboration among these agencies, these organizations that help raise money, like Bluegrass Community Foundation has brought money into the community that wasn't here before. We need not to have declining monies, but more monies. And how can the city and the United Way perhaps collaborate to do better fundraising in our community? Because that's where the shortfall is. It's not just the city. It's everyone who is giving us less money. And maybe I overstate that, and maybe other agencies feel differently about that. But, you know, when we get cut every year by both the United Way and the city, we're going to struggle to find those dollars. Okay. So that's my emotional point of view, but I think there needs to be some clarity about that because it's not just you that's giving us less money. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Walter May, please. Can we start the clock with three minutes? Thank you. I haven't said anything yet. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for allowing us to speak here today. Thank you and everyone on this committee for their deep, sincere interest in seeing that the social service work in this community is accomplished because it is really needed. Thank you for that. I also want to thank Commissioner Mills and the people in the Social Services Department. I think they've done an outstanding job of making a presentation here today that makes a lot of sense. I want you to know we have no objection to people looking at our outcomes. We're proud of them. And so that's not a problem to us. We're glad that someone wants to include us in the process of putting this together. We think that's important to us and all the other agencies. We support doing this in-house because we think the people in the social services division here are people who know social services. There are other agencies that are out there that are really broad-based that may be doing eds and meds, I think they're called, education and medicals and hospitals and art collections and museums and things like that. These people know social services. They know the agencies. They know the target population, and they know what the issues are. we have every confidence that they can do the job. I also like the proposal of doing it in-house because it just doesn't add an extra layer of bureaucracy that I don't think is needed. On the timeline, you know, we would like to not be working quite so hard on this at the moment and working harder on the budget process over the next six weeks or so because we think that's the most important and most immediate challenge right now. I'm glad, Mr. Chairman, you said the timelines are not tied. I think that's good. But the mayor's budget proposal is really the most immediate threat to social services work in this community. You know, we write grants, and we write a lot of grants, and we get a lot of grant money. We leverage what you give us. But one of the areas there's not much grant money is emergency shelter, okay? We get the grants to deal with people who have addiction, who have mental health issues, all of that. And we get the grants for that. But you have given us a building with 118 beds. This year we have averaged over 220 homeless men a night. And the money you give us is what pays for that shelter. And that's why it's so critical. Grants are what we do. We do an outstanding job of it. I have yet to see a proposal that I think is really a plausible one for doing a better job. The proposal I've seen is for one half-time person to do all this work for 27 agencies. You know, to write grants and research them, you've got to have detailed knowledge of an agency's history, capabilities, mission, and population served, the ability to judge which grants could be useful and which would not serve the agency well and the experience and talent to write the grants? Is it really realistic to conclude that one person working halftime for anybody could provide any meaningful support for 27 vastly different agencies? That's a question, I think, that we need to look at going forward. Thank you all very much for the time. Thank you what you do for the people in this community who need you to do it for them. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Mr. Jack Birch. Good afternoon. I want to start out by thanking the commissioner and her staff for what they have been doing since your last meeting and acknowledging the role of the partners in the community. I don't know if you realize it, but the partners, agencies, some total dollars that we bring into this community far exceed anything this government has ever appropriated. and to have the commissioner acknowledge that role is really appreciated. I also deeply appreciate the fact that we all got advanced copies of the proposal and were able to interact with the commissioner and her staff before you all got the presentation, and I hope it helped inform the process. And I deeply appreciate the fact that they promised to do further discussions and consultations before they bring back a proposal to you. I think it will be essentially a proposal not only from your commissioner, but from the organizations that meet the social service needs of the community. Goodgiving.net, we were one of the first organizations to join it. We did it because when people outside our normal government funding streams are talking about giving us money, they ask us a whole bunch of questions. Goodgiving.net answers every possible question anyone could ever possibly want to ask about a 501c3 corporation. It is an excellent tool. For us, it's like the good housekeeping seal of approval to say, you want to know more about us before you write the $5,000 check, go look at that site. As Craig mentioned, we have shared with them our process for outcomes. There are lots of good processes for outcomes. It's not magic. We started working on that in 1991, and I think we have a very good system. I wouldn't pretend it will apply exactly to their needs or to all agencies, but I think if they just simply look at all the systems, they will come up with a good one for our community. I think we need to be honest about this whole thing about go find this money that somehow is not coming to this community. I would hazard a guess there is not a nonprofit in this community that has not written at least one grant last year. I don't believe there has probably been one social services grant in the government field that someone has not applied for. We apply for them all the time. Last year, the fiscal year ending last June 30, we brought $30.2 million new dollars to the community. We allocated 1.8 million of those 3.2 to other agencies in the community, and we're only one part of it. I'm on the board of the Hope Center. Lord, every time I go to one of CECILs' meetings, he's announcing another grant he's brought for this community. We do that well. I don't think there's anything out there that we don't know about, and I'd be surprised if anyone has any better grant writers than we do. And I welcome the role of the United Way because I think they can help us solve the three problems we do have about grants. we need more focused and organized collaboration. Right now it's sort of ad hoc. We call Hope Center, they call us, Housing Authority brings somebody in. It's very ad hoc. I think if the commissioner can sort of provide leadership to when we see something, get all of the interested agencies together, we can apply our talent to go in for the funds and providing the services in the best way. There's a bit of an issue of alignment between the community's needs and dollars out there. Sometimes there are federal dollars out there, for example, that, well, they just don't align with what we need in the community or what else they expect of us doesn't align very, very well. We just have to be frank and acknowledge that sometimes we don't want that money. And then let's be also very honest with ourselves. There's not a whole lot of that money left out there. I have to watch what's going on in Congress on a weekly basis. This is the most depressing thing I have been doing since the first of the year. They are taking billions of dollars out, and they are taking them out of people programs. There will be, I would hazard a guess, a third the amount of federal competitive grant dollars for social services in the new federal fiscal year. What we're going to have to do is learn how to work better, and the rest of us are going to have to come in here and tell you all what community needs are, and you're going to have to decide how much of it you can afford to support. Other than that, there are no magic bullets. Thank you all. Thank you, Mr. Birch. Is there anybody else that would like to come up and speak? Is there anything else from the council or from the committee? Oh, okay. Council Member K. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you all of you for being here today and paying attention to this issue. As with some other things, sometimes with council, this started, I think, in one place and has moved a little bit to some other places. But I think there's really two parts to the question. And to put it in metaphor, it's how to slice the pie and how to grow the pie. And the first question, I think, is what brought people here to the table. The question was how do we have, how can we modify the system for evaluating needs and making decisions about the allocation of existing resources, whether that's government resources, United Way resources, or any other resources. And I think that's still the primary question. But related to that is the question of how to grow the pie. And a system that works well should also enable the community to grow the pie. But I think it will take the combination of all the resources that are sitting in this room. So I applaud the Chair for bringing people together and for suggesting that the outcome of this meeting is really to encourage people to go back and work together and together figure out a system of how to take advantage of the resources that we do have, put them together, and come up with a system for evaluation, assessment, and decision-making that makes sense to the partner agencies and that makes the best use of our resources. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Councilman Lawless? I certainly agree, and I would like to address one thing that Ms. Keynes said. Karnes, I'm sorry, I can't read somebody's writing. We are in the business as a government to collect our taxes, provide services, and allocate the money for the needs. We're not in the fundraising business. So however we can, and I certainly like to assist that in every way I can, I think that especially some of the agencies like the Hope Center that because the CDBG funds that come to our city were cut got a double whammy. And I think that we need to all think outside the box. And frankly, the city needs to be, I mean, we are in dire financial straits. We're laying off our own employees. And it's very difficult. And I remember in a meeting, it was probably about 1980, I was sitting before a committee of the state appropriations committee pleading up my case for my agency and there were several others. And finally the chair said, okay, I agree. So here's how much money. Do you want us to take it away from prenatal care, sick infants? You know, it's hard decisions to make up here. And I've been on both sides of this. So I do think a collaboration of everybody, how can we think outside the box? How can we have more income for everybody? And frankly, I think we need to do a fundraiser for the city so we have more money to allocate to you all. And I think I might just start that because I think there are a lot of people out there that are employed that know we're in trouble. And we had a place on the city websites that said, if you have $10, $15, $25 extra dollars to help the city out of the spot we're in, click here and donate, we could probably get people to do it. I was speaking to the Rotary Club a couple weeks ago, and I said, how many of you all would do that? And everybody in the room raised their hand. If we have more people that would volunteer to give us money, we could give it to you all, not have to lay off our employees and boost the economy. So if any of you all want to donate $10 to the city, bring it on. But I applaud you. I appreciate your work. I hope this will bring outcomes, better outcomes, better ways to make decisions, thinking outside the box, and more collaboration amongst everybody. and I so appreciate the work of each and every person in this room and all the council members that are sitting here and the mayor that are facing heartbreaking decisions about the financial situation our government's in. Thank you. Thank you. I would say in closing, thank you everyone for coming today, and thank you for being a part of the process here. I would say the government is in the process or in the business of fundraising, because everything from community development, the police department, fire, parks, social services, corrections, all these departments have grant writers and write grants. So we are in the business of raising funds. We see we have a shortfall that needs to be provided for. The commissioner said in the last meeting that she doesn't have enough staff to do the things that she's currently tasked with doing and that she's going to have to start limiting the number of people that we see. That's not what anybody around this horse she wants to see happen. So I think if we go back to what Council Member McCord said, it's really about how we bring more dollars to the table. And so as we move forward to the next meeting, what I'd like to have happen in the next meeting is both organizations or both groups have put together a proposal, come in. they're welcome and encouraged to talk between now and then, but to come in to this next meeting. And one thing I'd like to be able to see is if we can do it, the two different software programs, I know we saw a part of giving.net today, but I'd like to see the software that the United Way uses displayed up here so that we can see what it is it does and how it does it. But essentially what I'd like to see if the committee's in agreement is for the two proposers, if you will, to talk about the differences between the two proposals so that we can start to grasp what's missing from either one and then how we fill that gap as we move forward. So let me ask the committee, is that something that's amenable to the committee? Yeah. Okay. So that's what we'd like to see happen in the next meeting. Thank you again for everyone who came out today. Thank you for the partner agencies that do what you do. Thank you for the commissioner and your team as well. Do you have a motion? Motion and a second. All those in favor, say aye. We're adjourned. Thank you. Thank you.