-: I'm Sue Godfrey, and I'm the Executive Director
for Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Delaware County
in Muncie, Indiana.
We are a mentoring agency
and as the Executive Director I set policy,
I manage a board of directors,
I'm responsible for our finances,
and then for setting the vision for our program
and making sure who we target to be mentors
and to be our littles, are the children,
and how we recruit them.
So all that is visioning, as all part of my role.
We look at what our opportunities are
within the boundaries of what are mission is,
and we collaborate, definitely,
with other people within our network,
but then also I talk to people within our community
to see where the gaps are and the needs are.
We're a small agency, so I have four staff
and so everything from answering the phones
and answering inquiry questions
to resolving issues when the budget doesn't balance
or the profit and loss doesn't balance,
writing thank you letters to donors,
and having a meeting with the board meeting about vision.
So lots of different things in a day.
We talk to the children and the parent
in the first year every month
and then ongoing years quarterly
to just get an idea of what they've been doing
and if we're making an impact.
One family in particular, they're five children,
and so by the time the youngest child graduates
we'll have talked to the mother
quarterly or monthly for nearly 20 years.
The oldest son just graduated from high school
and he and his big were matched for 11 years.
And so one of the things that we're trying to address
is how do we really add value for 22 years
of conversations with the mom.
When our staff doesn't necessarily
stay the same for 22 years.
But the mom is, so what are we doing
to really make those conversations in addition
to being about safety and what's happening,
how do we add resources and help the families
to grow too.