E7: Feat. Shterny Steinmetz from My Extended Family

Change The World Podcast - Ep. 7

[00:00:00] Guest: [00:00:00] Hi,

Tzivia: [00:00:08] my name is Tzivia Cohen. I'm the founder of 14 minds, a marketing agency that specializes in developing strategic campaigns to help nonprofit organizations connect with their audience. I've had the privilege of meeting some inspirational nonprofit leaders and doers who have devoted an untold number of hours to achieving their mission.

Many of these incredible individuals that shared a similar frustration repeat along these lines. [00:00:30] No one knows what we really do. Not even our own volunteers. It's so hard to explain all of our different services. People think our organization is a lot smaller than it is. That's why I created this podcast to give non-for-profits a platform to share their mission with the world.

I hope these conversations inspire you as much as the inspire me.

Hi, everybody. I'm so excited to have with me. Today's 35 minutes. [00:01:00] She's the founder of my extended family and organization. I'm really excited to learn more about, and just also the CMO of Lucy, the surfaces. Thank you so much for being here. How

Guest: [00:01:09] are you? Yeah, thank you. I'm going great. Thank God. I'm so honored to be here.

I guess it's like one of my second or third time being on a podcast. So out of my comfort zone, doing it. Lucky

Tzivia: [00:01:22] me. I'm so excited. This is going to be fun. So can you tell me, let's just start by telling me a little bit about the

Guest: [00:01:28] organization. Okay. [00:01:30] So my extended, the family was started actually, while I was a cinema.

I felt like we live in such an amazing community where we have services for every kind of person, children that are sick, anyone that struggles with anything, we really, our community really lends itself to being a community. And I felt like when it comes to single parenting, there really wasn't much before.

So I was just going to mama for children, something. [00:02:00] So my other family started, we never had any idea what we were getting ourselves into. We didn't realize how great the need was until we jumped. Basically started about almost nine years now, I brought the idea to rep a yes, you Bigler. He was the rabbi of mine, still in thought Bush, very close to them.

And his wife actually credit Ram today to them, they really guided me and basically said like, we have to do something. And it was right before Hanukkah time. And he was like, [00:02:30] you know, unless they want to go party a single mom, we decided we'll do it in his house. You can imagine this house in Flatbush rabbi.

It's not that. And we thought like, we'll have, you know, 10 funny kids, like how many kids are going to have to put the word out. It was just word of mouth. And before we know it yet. Oh my goodness. Okay. Now, um, so we took a hall and we threw this huge $25,000 party, which we had no idea we were getting the money from [00:03:00] like, we laid out the money, but you had no idea how we were going to work with.

And that's how I spend the family was born. Yeah. So that's what we started today. We operate in Flatbush. Muncie five towns. I, we just opened the Teaneck and we're on track. Been find out another relocations within the next year. And then the tri-state area. Uh, the kids come once a week, obviously a separated boys and girls.

They come once a week for the center, whichever in their respective center [00:03:30] and their sound they're provided with social work staff. A big brother or big sister. So basically like a mentor within the Sheba or B staff kind of system. It's that high school girl or boy that. Becomes their big brother, big sister there serve suffer.

They do activities. We provide all of my trips. We make sure that any need that they have is filled. If we stick to that from the boat, we will take care of that. We take care of school supplies. We can evolve when children [00:04:00] are struggling in school, we can help tutoring really anything you can imagine when it comes to the actual child, we step into.

Tzivia: [00:04:08] That's incredible. And that's really fast growth. I mean, in nine years to have gone into so many locations, that's, that's really unusual. How much of it is staff?

Guest: [00:04:18] So the staff is basically everyone except for the big brothers and big sisters. Actually, I should take that back. You have a lot of moms who come separators families in the community.

We have people in the community [00:04:30] volunteer to give rides, to hang on to the kids, to the program. Um, but basically our staff consists of her I'm director is social workers, assistant program directors. Um, the rest is on what are the ages of the kids in the program. So they run depending on location between six and seven, all the way up to 12 or 13.

We are really, really working very hard on coming up with a teen program. It's our next big project. We got a lot of requests, but when the [00:05:00] kids graduate from the program, then. Interestingly enough, we have our first two kids that were part of the program that are now big brothers and big. Wow. One of them is my daughter and we have another one, a boy who graduated from the program and is now giving back, which is beautiful.

That's so special. I love that. Wow.

Tzivia: [00:05:20] So you're a very busy mom. You're running a company. How do you do all this? How does this organization,

Guest: [00:05:28] right? I have a [00:05:30] lot of help. I couldn't do without that. Like, my kids are not two teenagers, two teenage daughters who are amazing. I do have full-time help. Uh, husband is super hands-on. I guess it's all about finding time for what's important. Well, my kids are priority. I would say organization and business are neck and neck in the business.

And in the organization, I have amazing teams and I'm, I've learned to really, you know, give over. And allow other people to do the work they [00:06:00] need to do micromanage. That makes it a lot easier to know that. Okay. I trust my team to get adopted. So we did

Tzivia: [00:06:07] running up the organization, went in to see your primary

Guest: [00:06:09] role.

So actually when I started, I was doing everything. We opened the flappers and I was literally doing everything, like setting the table. Everything at this point, have a huge team. So I really transitioned into two roles, community affairs. So I basically I'm the community liaison between the community and the organization.

[00:06:30] Let's meet other organizations and our organization also do a lot of the fundraising. Wherever I can help. I do step in, but those are my two primary functions at this point. Awesome.

Tzivia: [00:06:41] Okay. So tell me, like, if you have, is there one specific story that kind of sticks out in your mind? Something that was like really special moments you and anything

Guest: [00:06:49] like that?

Sure. I'll tell you one story. We had a child in order to visit an organization that was sadly thrown out of school. For a lack of female and that's [00:07:00] upon actually a lot from me. She's pretty, she goes system. They're not so, uh, they're not easy about not getting paid. And therefore, a lot of constants, we get phone calls like kids are home or not in school.

And when we did find out, we figured like we got to step out and we got to get involved and there were two things. Number one, getting the kid back to school and number two, paying up. We ended up making a phone call to a donor. And you finished up in fully paid up. The child is back in school. After [00:07:30] being out of school for six months, six months.

A lot of this is about pride. Like sometimes the parents don't tell us it's our job to try to find out, but sometimes, you know, that falls through the cracks and, um, the parents didn't want to say, you know, tried to call us or. And when they finally did, it was a huge belt wrapped up. I think it was three years of tuition that wasn't paid.

And at that moment I felt like how amazing is our community? We [00:08:00] had a phone call, a man doesn't know this boy doesn't know, this family just said, okay, listen, this kid has got to be in school. I'm stuck in today. The kid is doing amazing, caught up with mutual. The child tutors he's caught up. He said he needs in the school.

And you know, that changes the kids. It's stories like this, that literally go on. Every day, when you're able to see that transformation, you know, when your child is not feeling well and you get to the doctor or you can go to whatever, and the [00:08:30] next they're feeling better, you can see that transformation.

And that's what I, what keeps me going is actually being able to see a child who's out of school for six months, clearly having issues socially, because they're not in school falling behind academically. And then within a few months being back up to par, being popular in their class, I mean, friends doing lock

I mean, what more could anyone who runs any organization?

Tzivia: [00:08:54] That's amazing. So I'm curious in a situation like that, how do you decide, is it based [00:09:00] on prior relationships or experiences the person?

Guest: [00:09:03] So we're really lucky enough to have a group of supporters and donors that really bad. I'll be honest when you start it, it was not easy.

I went to people, I had some connections from the business that was in that I was perfect real estate and had a lot of clients then. And I would go to them and say, Hey, I need your help. And a lot of them will be like, give a tremendous amount of, to DACA, but we don't want to get involved in divorce because it's like the two grads got divorced, figure it out.

Like, why is this my problem? And it was [00:09:30] really hard. I got told no many, many, many times. Today or stem. You really listen. Fundraising is always a struggle. I'm not going to tell you to make phone calls and fill our $3 million budget. No, it's a struggle, but the community has opened up so much more and actually recognizes how big this need is and they step in.

So yeah, I do have certain donors that I know have a feeling for a child who wasn't in school and maybe they got thrown out of school. Maybe they didn't do well in school. [00:10:00] So I will call that donor for that thing. Or if I need money to help pay for therapy for a child, then I'll call a different donor who maybe has a feeling for that.

So it's really about relationships knowing your donors, knowing your community, and then figuring out what works best. Sometimes all I have to do is put it on my WhatsApp status, meet a child that couldn't get into a souffle cap also because there was no money. And really the child could not be at home.

Like it was just, was not healthy. I put out my WhatsApp status [00:10:30] two weeks before camp and within one hour won't get out. So, you know, you never know where the money's going to come from. What do you predict the

Tzivia: [00:10:37] change in attitudes over the last few years? You really feel like people are more open to helping.

What do you think that's about

Guest: [00:10:44] awareness? I think we've done. I think our team has done a tremendous job within the front community. Opening up people's eyes and showing them yes to parents. They get the worst, but at the end of the day, the child is innocent. The child did absolutely [00:11:00] nothing wrong. You don't want to help with a parent's lawyer bills, I guess.

You don't want to help here for the parents, whatever, any of their needs. Like I totally get that this child is innocence. And I think the community has come around to recognize that. And I credit a lot, a lot to our team. I credit the community for being open minded enough to hear us and to listen and to pick up, you know, they took a chance with us.

We were new. So I think [00:11:30] that's, you know, I think also social media plays a huge role, single moms or single dads for that matter, you know, to get onto social media, they talk about their struggles and they talk about their. And you know, that that always brings awareness. So that's a use the

Tzivia: [00:11:47] cheap ways to share and make people feel connected to a situation where maybe they didn't really have that.

Guest: [00:11:53] Someone that, well, actually, when I was divorced, I didn't know too many other divorced girls. Like I really didn't. [00:12:00] And, uh, I think a lot of that, no social media. Amazing. I

Tzivia: [00:12:03] love that. What would you say is your biggest challenge running the organization? So it seems like you've overcome certain challenges now, but I'm sure there are.

Guest: [00:12:11] I think there's two big challenges. Number one is finances. I think for any non-for-profit finances, a huge struggle, especially for an organization that's trying to grow. And we have such big dreams and hopes and goals for these kids and, you know, requires a lot of money. So finance is definitely a big struggle.

And the second struggle is really getting [00:12:30] in every child who can use these services. Sadly, there's way more children out there than we're tapping into. Even though we see approximately 400 children. But there's still a tremendous amount of kids out there because of the stigma, because of the parental stigma or the child doesn't want to be stigmatized.

So they're not joining the program. And I think that's, you know, it's a challenge and we try very hard to reach out to the community and to the community. We're not looking to make [00:13:00] these children. We're actually trying to show them that they're the same. I only bring them all in a room together. They feel the same as another child and that empowers them.

So that's definitely something that we work on and something that's been a struggle from day one. It's definitely gotten

Tzivia: [00:13:14] easier. So how do you work on it in a situation like that, where, you know, the child needs help and they just are resisting? What, what can you do in a situation

Guest: [00:13:22] like that? It's hard because with the child, you don't have that much influence because usually it's a child [00:13:30] didn't come into our program.

And so I don't have influence over the. I can only plead to the parents, either the mom or the dad, or both, and says, listen, your kid needs this and your kid will grow from this. There's not a doubt in my mind, we've been around long enough to have proof of concept, the children that join our program, walk out way more confident, secure, much more emotionally aware of themselves, aware of their surroundings, aware of their struggles, learning how to deal with the Sheryl.

So we really keep to the parents. [00:14:00] Obviously, once the kid is in our program, Trying to think over the last nine years, maybe, maybe there were five kids. I joined our program and left because they felt like, oh, they don't want to in front of a divorce proud, but in general, we don't have that diploma is so much fun and there's so much love that goes into it, that these kids are anyways grieving that they love to be there.

So it's really just getting them in the door. You know, that's really mostly the parents that have with. So it's like a [00:14:30] partnership. We're definitely, we actually, especially being that I was a single mom though. We have a lot of our team that were either come from a single parent homes or are single parents themselves.

We work really hard to make the program respectable. It's not another program. It's a place where kids come to feel safe and secure. I know that everyone else in that room gets it, like they understandable. [00:15:00] And so then when they walk out that door at the end of the evening, or at the end of the program or whatever it is, they feel so much more confident.

How much do you feel like your own

Tzivia: [00:15:08] experiences as a single mom? Really kind of set up how you. We run it on a day-to-day basis, you know, has it evolved beyond

Guest: [00:15:17] that? So it definitely started out that way. That was the only experience I knew I come from, my parents are still married, you know, I don't have really divorced in my family.

So the first [00:15:30] exposure I had to divorce was being divorced. So I definitely used my experiences, what I felt my kids needed, or my kids laughed to sort of jumpstart the program. As the organization grew, you know, I was introduced to so many other single parents and children from single parent homes and started to figure out what their needs were and then, you know, slowly brought in those things within the program.

So yeah, definitely [00:16:00] it started based on my own experience, but today, no, you know, and, and here's the thing because we operate in so many different communities. Every branch is a little bit different based on what their needs are. I think every community has their own challenges, their own struggles, their own advantage points as well.

You know? So let's say in some communities. People in the community to clip suffers in some communities that's really difficult. And so we order it [00:16:30] in some communities, the children need, let's say a Hanukkah program. And in some communities, there are so many clinical programs already that they don't need it.

Right. That's really a

Tzivia: [00:16:42] case-by-case

Guest: [00:16:42] basis. Right. Right. So this is the question I

Tzivia: [00:16:45] love asking. Anyway, I guess I just love hearing the answers. If someone were to hand you a blank check. Huge sentiment. This is you for you, for your organization. Go do whatever you want. What would you do

Guest: [00:16:59] with it? [00:17:00] Um, so for good or for not good, I don't know.

I get phone calls from all over the world, literally asking us to open a branch in their community. And you think if I had a blank check, I would hire the proper team and open up and every major town in the world so that we can ensure that every child that's struggling with being in a single parent home.

How's the support they need, that would be hands down would be the first thing I do. That sounds amazing.

[00:17:30] Tzivia: [00:17:29] Hopefully, someday, if anybody's listening, if someone wants to get involved or contact you either to help or because they need something, what's

Guest: [00:17:39] the best thing for them. So we can reach out to either the organization straight through the website, which is www.myef.org.

I'm on Instagram. I'm not hard to find. Instagram is probably the best way to reach out to me personally, the organization through, through the website, I'm really accessible [00:18:00] and love hearing from other single parents. I'm here to listen to their struggles. I'm here to share my experience. And I'm here.

It's abused, supported anyway, that I can, you know, I, I was a single mother for seven years with three little babies, and I always promised like how to pack the thought literally how to pack the thought,...