Connecting Across Generations for Nonprofit Success
How can nonprofits effectively communicate with diverse age groups? Nicole Mandarano of the Oregon Lions Sight & Hearing Foundation joins us to discuss bridging generational divides and crafting messages that resonate with multiple audiences. We’ll explore adapting to younger digital natives while still engaging older donors and volunteers. Tune in for tips on intergenerational marketing, social media, staffing, and more to further your mission.
About the guest
Nicole graduated from Lafayette College in Easton, PA then lived in Paris to learn French and pursue her study of the WW2 Occupation. Ever restless, Nicole moved to San Francisco in the early 90s and started a translation business and started teaching entrepreneurship to youth. That interest brought her to serve as an AmeriCorps VISTA member in Paterson, NJ with foster teens aging out of state care. To fund the teens’ project to create an urban farmstand, Nicole started grant writing in 1997 and secured funding from Rutgers University. Winning that first grant fueled a drive for proposal writing since then to help nonprofits in NY, NJ and for the past 12 years in OR.
She and her partner John met at CUNY Law School in 2001. In 2011, they co-founded the Homeless Youth Law Clinic where they practiced movement lawyering for unhoused youth in Portland, Oregon. They created the clinic with youth and advocates from the community, those in the foster care to youth homelessness pipeline, immigrant youth and many others with lived experiences. HYLC concentrated on the civil legal rights of homeless youth and the consequences of the criminalization of homelessness.
Currently Nicole focuses on grant writing, funder relationships, donor stewardship, development, marketing and event planning for the Oregon Lions Sight & Hearing Foundation, a statewide nonprofit based in Portland that offers access to vision and hearing healthcare.
One of her grant highlights? Capital funding from the Lions Clubs International Foundation to build & furnish an optical finishing lab that edges high quality, low cost new eyeglasses to Oregonians who qualify. Women trained in paraoptometrics while formerly incarcerated at the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility manage the lab and its for profit optical shop, Eye Promise.
Resources
- https://nonprofitaf.com/
- https://www.learningtogive.org/resources/foundation-center
- https://candid.org/
- https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/
- https://www.freewill.com/
- https://www.techsoup.org/
Contact Nicole