If you don't work at an organization that doesn't specifically work with people with disabilities, you don't have to worry about making your fundraising events accessible, right?
Wrong.
So wrong.
As our guest Christy Herzing from Paraquad says, "Making your event accessible speaks to a level of inclusion that can increase your donor base." That's something we all want, right?
Christy was joined by her colleague Sandy Jones also from Paraquad to talk to Marjorie about what basic accessibility accomodations you should look for in planning events to save yourself time and trouble in the long run and how to think outside of the box to make sure that all of your guests feel comfortable and welcome.
Connect with Christy at cherzing@paraquad.org, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, or by calling her at 314-289-4264.
Connect with Sandy at sjones@paraquad.org, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, or by calling her at 314-289-4274.
Connect with Us!
Natalie on LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/in/nataliejablonski
Marjorie on LinkedIn- http://www.linkedin.com/in/marjorie-moore
501Crossroads on Facebook- http://www.facebook.com/501crossroads
501Crossroads on Twitter- http://www.twitter.com/501crossroads
501Crossroads on YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC06RxW8CDSTZF05S9bK9UoA
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Transcript:
Marjorie: 00:02 Welcome to 501Crossroads, your show all about nonprofits and the people that make the mission happen. I'm Marjorie Moore, President & CEO of MindsEye and my personal mission is to make nonprofit stronger by identifying and fixing the rubs that so often come up between people and the mission. Natalie is at the dojo again today.
Marjorie: 00:15 She's taken a lot of days off here for training, but I am excited because today we have two guests in the studio with us. We have Sandy Jones who is the community relations and events coordinator for Parquad here in St. Louis and Christy Herzing, the community access coordinator, also at Paraquad. Sandy, Christy welcome.
Sandy: 00:38 Thank you for having us.
Marjorie: 00:39 So Sandy tell us a little bit about you and what you do at Paraquad maybe introduce Paraquad a little bit because I'm going to guess most of our listeners are not in St. Louis and have never heard of it.
Sandy: 00:49 So Parquad is St. Louis a center for independent living. We work with people with disabilities to empower them to live their lives as independently as they choose. I have the privilege of planning events for Paraquad. So I work, ah, we have several different events throughout the year every year though you're pretty much guaranteed to have our Shine the Light Gala and our Ramp Up for Accessibility Day which actually just happened yesterday.
Marjorie: 01:13 Awesome. And Christy, what about you what do you do there at Parquad.
Christy: 01:16 So I am the community access coordinator and I manage our Accessible STL program. And so through our Accessible STL program we're working with businesses and organizations to provide a site survey so we're looking at their facilities and determining if they are accessible based upon the Americans With Disabilities Act standards and then we also provide training and education on being more inclusive for people with disabilities as well as. A whole lot of other services just for businesses that want to be more inclusive, consulting, you name, it we kind of do it on the business end of things and we also have what Sandy's talking about with the events. We also have a training on how to make meetings and events more accessible.
Marjorie:
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