Rico Zavala and Rylee Waters Talk Nonprofit Partnerships

Tune in to a special episode of Let's Talk Talent, in honor of Giving Tuesday. Mark Epp chats with guests Rico Zavala, CEDARS Director of Development and Rylee Waters, Client Strategist and CEDARS Pillar Lead at Talent Plus.

CEDARS is a child-service organization that provides support to children and their families, from foster care to emergency shelter and prevention services.

In this episode, they discuss: 

• The importance of organizations partnering with and supporting nonprofits in their community.
• How giving back can include many avenues besides monetary donations.
• Why understanding what your colleagues care about is essential to finding an organization to support.

Learn more about CEDARS here.

Learn more about our pillar program and how it’s making a difference for our colleagues and in our local community here.

Contact us today to learn more about how we predict performance and maximize human potentiality. Let’s Talk Talent!

Transcript

Mark Epp:

Welcome to our listeners. I wanted to let you know that it's been the belief of Talent Plus that to whom much is given, much is required. And we recognize the importance of giving back within the communities in which we work. Because of this, more than 10 years ago, we created our Pillar program and every spring colleagues here at Talent Plus vote on four organizations or pillars that they're interested in supporting through the next fiscal year. So today we're privileged to welcome to our podcast, Rico Zavala, CEDARS Director of Development, and Rylee Waters, Client Strategist and Social Responsibility Lead at Talent. Plus. Thanks for joining us today on Let's Talk Talent. Rico, our listeners may not know CEDARS or what your organization does. Now I remember, and this is going back a number of years, CEDARS was called CEDARS Home for Children. So, tell us about your organization and what you do for children and the communities you

Rico Zavala:

Well, sure. First of all, thanks again for having me, and I definitely want to say thank you to the entire organization of Talent Plus. You guys have been great supporters of ours and we can't thank you enough for that. But to really talk about that, you got to go back a long ways. We were established in 1947 over in the Belmont area town. There was a couple by the name of the Reverend Charles and his wife, Alberta Danner. And they first started out by taking in one child and they cared for that child. And before you know it, they had 22 new kids living inside their house over on Benton. 

You know and things haven't really changed since then. It's really about taking care of those kids that may not have any other safe place to stay at night. You know our core programs are going to be our foster care program, which people hear about and our shelter, emergency shelter program, but we offer so many more services than that, you know, go from our independent living services to our prevention services to our early childhood development centers over there on 27th and Holdrege. And so we have a lot of different services under the CEDARS umbrella that we're able to help these families.

Mark Epp:

So you've told us a little bit Rico about your job. Tell us a little bit more about your role and how we can really support your role and also CEDARS.

Rico Zavala:

Sure. As the Director of Development, my role has really turned into a fundraising role. Our sole purpose of our foundation is to support CEDARS Youth Services, which is doing the hard work with the families and the kids. So what we want to do is ensure that our programs have the ability and the capability to work with the kids in the best manner possible. And sometimes that means dollars to do so. 

If we want to have those education components to our programming, those mental health components to our programming. That takes money to hire those people. And it is part of my responsibility, it's part of our foundation's responsibility to ensure that that money flows over to those programs.

Mark Epp:

Thank you for that. Rylee, you serve on our Social Responsibility Team and you're the pillar lead for CEDARS. Give us a little bit of background into Talent Plus's partnership with CEDARS and how we help support their mission.

Rylee Waters:

Yeah, great question. So as I was preparing for this podcast, I realized that 2022 marks a special birthday for CEDARS. So this is 10 years of us partnered together. So we started back in 2012. CEDARS also just celebrated their 75th birthday. So 2022 has been a really exciting year, and you know we really help support their mission by donating our time, our talents, and our treasure. And so as I think back over the past 10 years, a lot of things that come to my mind is our colleagues helping out at Power of the Purse, we've opened up the doors of Talent Plus to host the CEDARS graduation party for the kids. We’ve held staff appreciation events, which are really fun. It's a time to put time back into the staff that's always pouring into the children of their community. And then you know the list could go on and on. But we think about donating our time, think of about how we can help identify the talents of the young children, and then of course, how can we give monetarily to the organization as well?

Mark Epp:

Rylee, as the lead with our social responsibility team for CEDARS. What resonated for you to work so closely with CEDARS? What hit your heart in terms of working with CEDARS?

Rylee Waters:

Yeah, great question. So I've been on the Social Responsibility Team since I was an intern in college. And one of my roles here as an intern was directing kind of all of our events. And so at that time, CEDARS was having a lot of onsite events at Talent Plus. So I just became really close with the staff and built deep relationships with them. And then of course over time, seeing the kids come in for their graduation and seeing what an impact CEDARS made and helping them get to that graduation day and just how excited and thankful the kids were to go through the food line. We usually had, I think, a taco party and it was like, can we take the leftovers? It was just so fun. And so when the role became available and we needed someone to step up, it was just very easy decision for me to step in to help make sure that we're providing CEDARS all the support that we can. So, it was a no brainer.

Mark Epp:

Wonderful. When I was reading the CEDARS mission statement, what really grabbed my attention was this. And it said, CEDARS will be successful as an independent leader in the protection and development of vulnerable children and the strengthening of their families. So that's so important, when you think about young kids that don't have necessarily the strong family to fall back on to learn great values, but also the protection, and development of these children. What does CEDARS do specifically in terms of protecting and developing children and their families?

Rico Zavala:

Sure. Well, I would point first to our shelter when it comes to protecting families. We pray and we hope that there's never an abusive type of situation going on, but we all know what happens. But we have so many loving foster families and we have our shelter that can help and step in those instances. But as I mentioned earlier, we have so many different programs under the umbrella of CEDARS that we can go in and work with families to educate them on how to be a proper parent and how to properly discipline their child and give them incentives and how you do that in a manner that's going to lead to success. Everything that we do is to ensure safety, stability, and to build inter-family relationships. That's everything that we strive to do. That's everything that we want to continue to do for years to come.

Mark Epp:

So, Rylee and Rico, I'd like to hear your thoughts about this. From then the non-profit side as well as our organizational side. Why do you believe it's so important for organizations like us to partner and support non-profits such as CEDARS Rylee?

Rylee Waters:

Yep. Well, first and foremost, you know it's obviously rewarding work when you get to work with CEDARS staff and the kids and the families. And like you said, it doesn't always have to be monetary. A lot of things that we do, especially around the holiday season, is around donating our time. You know for special events I think about something that's coming up is gift wrapping. So you have the adopt families, but then we also have to wrap all of those gifts so the kids have something to unwrap on Christmas. 

And what I think about it provides a great space as an organization to take your teams outside of the four walls of Talent Plus and build relationships when you're not on Zoom meetings, you're not talking about work, and really just building that rapport and you can feel good about the impact that you're making within your community. So that's something that really sticks out to me in terms of making an impact and leaving a larger footprint than just what our mission statement is at Talent Plus. 

Mark Epp:

That's so wonderfully said Rylee. Terrific. Rico, same question.

Rico Zavala:

Yeah, so 75 years is a long time, and we're fortunate that CEDARS have been around that long. As Rylee said, we just had our 75th birthday celebration and without support from organizations or companies like Talent Plus, we wouldn't have been here for 75 years.

Mark Epp:

Rylee, say an organization wants to support a non-profit organization such as CEDARS, but they don't know where to start. Can you give our listeners some steps on how they can begin giving that support to an organization they may be interested in?

Rylee Waters:

Yeah, that's a great question. I think one of the most important things is you have to understand what your internal colleagues care about. So just ask the question you know in our community, what organizations are important to you that we support? And just start with one and find a few different ways that you can give back. I know a lot of organizations right now are trying to do a lot of team building or team happy hours and instead of a happy hour, maybe make it an impact hour where you go somewhere in the community and find a way to give back to some of those nonprofits.

And you just have to start with one activity and find within your teams who's passionate about nonprofit organizations and helping your community and let that person lead this initiative. And that gives someone more responsibility in their role, but also will start to create some internal engagement and motivation to get something off the ground.

Rico Zavala:

If I can just add onto that, I've said Talent Plus has been amazing to us and they have. But I want to make it clear that yes, their financial contributions are very much appreciated. But even going back further than that, the opening of the office to our staff and to our kids for the graduation events, that means every bit as much as the monetary donations because it gives us opportunities that we normally wouldn't have, specifically the kids that we're working with. They wouldn't have those opportunities. You know and I think that just starts that relationship that turns into so much more when you think creatively like that, it's not always just about the dollars. Don't get me wrong, as a fundraiser, the dollars are great but there's so much more to a relationship than money being exchanged.

Mark Epp:

Absolutely. So Rico, as we enter the holiday season, we'd love for you to share with us some ways that our listeners can give back to CEDARS and support your mission. What are ways that they can do either in person here in Lincoln or remotely if they don't live in Nebraska?

Rico Zavala:

Remotely, I think the easiest way is going to be get on our website and cause we have wish lists and items like that. Our adoptive family is also located on our website as well. So you can do a lot from a long ways away. So please take some time and look at our website. But again, I think going back to what we talked about earlier is adopting those families, being willing to pull an ornament off a tree when you're walking by one of our establishments here in Lincoln, you know whether it's CEDARS or not, just be a part of something. Be a part of giving back. It's one thing that you're never going to regret is giving back, I promise you that. 

Mark Epp:

Love that. Thank you. Thank you so much. And again, for both of you, beginning with Rylee, mentioned this earlier, the protection of children and strengthening of families takes more than a mission statement, right? It takes action on the part of all of us to do something. So Rylee, as you think about that, what are three things that we can do today to help bring the CEDARS mission to life?

Rylee Waters:

First, I was going to say something about the adopt a family. So that is one of my very favorite things. I'm obsessed with Christmas. I love buying gifts. And I remember the last couple of years, I'm almost more excited to buy my adopt a family gifts than I am for the other people on my list because you know the other people on my list are getting gifts regardless if I buy them one or not.

Mark Epp:

And they expect them from you. 

Rylee Waters:

Yes. It's an expectation. And the adopt a family is just so rewarding to know that the kids who may not have gifts are going to have them because I went out and got those. So I think as we're nearing the holiday season, that's one thing for sure that comes to mind is find a way to just do something for families in need.

Mark Epp:

Rico, same question.

Rico Zavala:

Yeah, so I think there's three things that immediately pop into my brain and maybe even in this order. One is consider being a foster parent. I know it's not something that's directly holiday related, but I can tell you right now that the need for foster parents is tremendously high. Specifically, those that are willing to bring in a teenager. So that would be one is consider or at least learn about what it means to be a foster parent. 

Two, I'd say volunteer your time. Look on our website and look on how you can make an impact on our kids this holiday season. And then three would be donate. Our biggest push during the holiday season is to make sure that every single kid in our care has a great Christmas, great holiday season, and it takes a village and it's important that we can fall back on those supporters that we have and we look forward to the holiday season and it just gives us one more opportunity to give back to these kids and families.

Mark Epp:

That's awesome. So just to reiterate here, Rylee you talked about adopt a family and how meaningful that is for you. Talked about what we're going be doing here at Talent Plus to really support our pillar CEDARS across the street from us and around the community and around the state. Rico. You talked about considering being a foster parent, and that we really need help with teenagers today as well.

Rico Zavala:

We need it drastically; we need a lot of help. 

Mark Epp:

Okay. That's really important to do and to know for us. Also volunteer time, any time that we can give it makes a huge impact to the kids as well. And then donate. If it's a dollar if it's five bucks, whatever we can do to support that. It's going to have a ripple effect that makes the world a better place, which is something really important to Talent Plus. So, one more time, I would just like people to know the CEDARS website. It's www.CEDARSKids.org. Check it out and make a difference this year. Make a difference for the holidays because the most important thing this holiday is that every kid has a great holiday season. Thank you both so very much. 

Rico Zavala:

Thank you for having us. I really appreciate it. And thank you so much for what Talent Plus does for CEDARS.