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My name is Mary Beth Collins; I am the current Executive Director of Dane County CASA, Inc. (“CASA”), a non-profit organization based here in Madison, Wisconsin.  To my great pleasure, and that of all others involved with our organization, CASA has been selected by the Madison Social Media Club as its annual charity.  Through that relationship, I am hoping to work with MadisonSMC members to build more awareness in our community about CASA and what we do, through cutting-edge, smart social marketing techniques.

As a part of our CASA-MadisonSMC relationship this year, I was asked by the good folks at the MadisonSMC to do a regular blog for the website, informing visitors and members of the work that we do in our small non-profit, including challenges, goals, daily tasks, and all the various ingredients that make up the very special mix that is running a non-profit organization.  In addition to believing strongly in the work that we do at CASA, I am also a strong believer in the “third sector” (the non-profit sector) and all of its potential to – at the risk of sounding cliché – make our world a better place.

I am thrilled to take advantage of this opportunity to blog for MadisonSMC as a way to illuminate the complexities of non-profit management and to emphasize the need for community support for organizations like ours, which survive on the elective support of individuals and grantors.  This type of support is not cash-only (although cash is always good).  Our organization in particular relies heavily on community volunteer involvement as well.  So, awareness-building is one of the most important things we can do – it results in understanding of our organization and the kids we serve, donations, and volunteer support.

I think we at CASA are going to learn a lot from MadisonSMC this year, about how to build awareness about CASA through new methods.  I hope this blog will allow us to reciprocate in this learning exchange, and that all of the MadisonSMC website visitors will begin to understand more about CASA and about some “days in the life” of running a small non-profit from my postings.  Hopefully, we’ll be able to track progress on our awareness-building objectives as we, together with MadisonSMC social media experts, apply new strategies for spreading the good word about CASA.

Let me begin “spreading the word” right now by giving you a short explanation of “who we are and what we do”.  The “Court Appointed Special Advocate” program was born in Seattle in the late 1970s when a judge decided he needed more information on and oversight of kids who, due to situations of child abuse and neglect, were under protective orders in his court.  As you can imagine, the types of situations that kids are in when they come under protective orders in the court system can be extremely complicated.  Making a decision about what is best for kids and where to place them is extremely difficult, particularly if the decision-maker (the judge) does not have a lot of detail about how kids are faring in a temporary placement, how they are doing in school, how the parents are doing with goals/requirements that might have been set for them by social workers or the court, etc.  This judge in Seattle several decades back realized that it might be possible to leverage community volunteers (“Court Appointed Special Advocates”) to provide additional oversight and information on these vulnerable kids’ situations, and to engage those community volunteers as official parts of the child protective process, in addition to other professionals like lawyers and social workers.  The first CASA program was born.

Since that first CASA program was put into effect, CASA programming has proliferated and taken hold in many communities all across the U.S.  Each local program is a little different from the next, depending upon local legal contexts or the need of individual communities.  The National CASA organization provides guidance and requirements on best practices, but each individual local CASA organization is, for the most part, its own entity that applies the National CASA model to its own local context.

Here in Dane County, we have been around since 1994, providing CASA volunteers to kids who are under the authority of Dane County Courts due to situations of substantiated abuse and neglect for fifteen years.  Our volunteers come from all walks of life.  They undergo an interview process and must complete a background check, and  must go through over thirty (30) hours of CASA training and be sworn in as official servants of the courts before they can be assigned a case.  The amount of time and care that they give to these kids is something to behold.  They visit their assigned kids weekly – in the home of a biological parent or relative, or in a foster home.  They stay in touch with social workers and attorneys on the case.  They talk to school social workers, therapists, and teachers to find out how their assigned kids are doing in contexts outside the home.  And, they provide much-needed reports to the judge on their kids’ case to inform the judge about how things are progressing.  They are also able to monitor the children’s safety, and alert child protection professionals if there is any concern.  Last but not least, they are a stable, caring visitor who takes an interest in the life of children who are often in extremely difficult situations, and who are suffering from changes in placement and the trauma of past abuse or neglect.  They are advocates who focus solely on the safety, permanency, and well-being of the children to whom they are assigned.

I can tell you that our volunteers are amazing!  We are currently training a new class of volunteers (in fact, this evening is our final training session before they will be sworn in), and each is from a different background, but all are wonderful, caring people who sought us out because they wanted to help kids in extremely difficult situations.  They are willing to take a part of their own lives and busy schedules (about ten hours per month) and get involved with a kid who really needs their help.  They are real-life heroes.

I want to discuss further the work that we do, and the needs for our organization to grow, but for now – I’ll leave you with this thought:  If we take the type of motivation and commitment of our CASA volunteers, and apply that kind of goodwill and volunteer spirit on a larger scale in our society – doesn’t it seem that there is a staggering amount of potential to make things better?  I will tell you that I have never believed more fervently in that potential than since observing the commitment of our CASA volunteers.

I look forward to continuing this discussion in future postings.  Please feel free to contact me any time – marybeth@danecountycasa.org.