Inaugural Edition

This is my first attempt at a blog. Ever. So, if I’m lousy at it at first, bear with me – it should get better. I am, after all, paid to write so it stands to reason that at some point I’ll be able to make this interesting.

I am the Assistant Communications Director at TrueNorth Community Services, which was, up till a few weeks ago, known as NCCS (Newaygo County Community Services). Why the name change? Well – that’s a story for another day, or you could just check out our C.E.O.’s blog at www.truenorthbev.blogspot.com, she covers it pretty well.

No, the purpose of my blog is to give you a behind-the-scenes look at what goes on in an average day at a place like TrueNorth. Maybe you know a little bit about us because you’ve accessed one aspect of our services. Maybe your kid participated in our Student Theater program in middle school. Maybe you had to get food from our Food Pantry that one time you just couldn’t make ends meet. Maybe your grandmother wears one of our LifeLink pendants just in case she… you know - falls and can’t get up. Whatever.

Locally, almost everyone knows a little bit about TrueNorth. At the very least they might say something like; “Oh yeah, that’s that place where they do all that good stuff.”  BTW – I, unsuccessfully, suggested that as our official tagline more than once. Most people though, have no idea what goes on in that big building on M-82, just south of Fremont. If you’ve ever wondered – you might really dig this blog.  For example…

We tend to get real busy on the first of the month, particularly over the fall, winter and early spring. Heating and energy cost have gone through the roof (just in case you haven’t noticed), and people who are struggling financially tend to live in houses that aren’t exactly “energy efficient”. Most of the funding we get for heating and energy assistance runs on a monthly cycle, so essentially there is a “new pool of money” available the first of each month. It’s actually a lot more complicated than that, but this blog is not called a day in the life of a CPA, so…

It doesn’t take very long for people to figure out that if you’re not here early on the first of the month, there’s a chance there won’t be any money left to help you. All April Fool’s Day jokes
aside, April 1^st was very busy. Like… crazy busy. I can guess what you’re probably thinking; when I say we were really busy, you think I’m exaggerating, a little, right? I know exaggeration – I used to work customer service for a large West Michigan shoe manufacturer and once received a 25 minute voice mail from a client who owned a bait shop in Louisiana. On this message, he hastily informed me, in his very thick Cajun accent, how incredibly busy he was and that he didn’t have time to be calling me to check up on his shoe order. He then set the phone down without hitting the hang-up button and unknowingly left me 24 more minutes of his discussion with a gentleman named Skeeter about the best bait to use for catfish. “A wiggly worm!? Ya can’t catch the big ‘uns with no wiggly worm… yer crazy!”  Busy, indeed.

According to the Assistant Director of our Housing and Family Services Department, by 10:30 AM that morning we had between 75-80 households that had come in for assistance, and we had to turn away everybody else for the rest of the day in order to assist everyone who was here. We spent close to $48,000 on utilities in that single day. Like I said – we were busy.

At one point, near noon, one of our Case Managers walked through the lobby and overheard a woman say – “Where is she going? She better not be taking a lunch… there’s people still waiting here!”  ...I know, right? A group of us heard this story over lunch that very day and as everyone (myself included) was grumbling and making jokes about it, this thought entered my mind; we’d all like to believe that in the same situation, we would be gracious, and patient, and thankful. And maybe we would. Then again, perhaps we wouldn’t.

Either way – that’s what happened in a day in the life of TrueNorth.