Executive Director, Big Brothers Big Sisters of East Central Indiana

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.