By Chelsea Teixeira
As other classmates and I have discussed previously on the blog, our nonprofit giving class is extra special, from the dedicated students to the amazing organizations we have contacted to apply for our grant. Our class is exercising our duty to give back by not only carefully selecting a nonprofit to receive the $10,000 grant from the Learning by Giving Foundation, but we are also actively fundraising through various measures for a nonprofit organization called Future Chefs. Professor Silver introduced our class to Future Chefs and its founder, Toni Elka, through his book, Giving Hope, but on Wednesday March 13, 2019, we took a bus from Framingham, MA to Boston, MA to see firsthand the wonderful work Toni and her staff are providing for teens in the Boston area.
What is Future Chefs and what is their story?
Future Chefs is a nonprofit organization that helps provide high school-aged children and young adults with skills in not only their main focus—culinary arts—but skills that will be easily used in other fields. The founder of Future Chefs, Toni Elka, discussed her story with us briefly in person but more in depth in Professor Silver’s book. Toni’s young adult life was not picture perfect, but after years of experience in the culinary field and a passion for helping cultivate meaning and purpose in children and teens, she created Future Chefs, a model program that combines both of her missions into one.
What does a site visit entail?
As I said before, we knew a decent amount about Future Chefs before going into their headquarters, however this was our class’ first site visit and I think we all weren’t 100% sure what to expect. Professor Silver advised us to bring a few written questions for Toni and the staff and students, that way we could ask them anything we wanted to know about their organization, how NPOs work, grant proposals, and pretty much anything else we wanted to know.
With our questions in hand, we arrived in Boston after a 40-45-minute bus ride and found ourselves at Future Chefs. Upon walking in, I personally noticed the motivational messages around the space and how open and inviting the large dining table area is. While it seemed a little small, it’s important to note that Future Chefs is moving locations to a much larger space within the next year or two, so I kept that in mind. Toni and two of her lovely staff members, Tawanna and Sam, greeted us and made us feel so welcomed, even giving us home-made cookies.
We toured the entire space, including the industrial grade kitchen you can see a little bit of in the picture below.
One major thing that stuck out to me was Toni’s approach to the students that come into this space and how much they are recognized and valued. I truly felt appreciated throughout the entire site visit and the staff made it clear that they care so much about young people and learning, while recognizing the hardships and everyday problems people deal with. While we introduced ourselves, Toni requested that we share one “attitude” and one “gratitude,” an exercise the educators and staff start each day/shift with the students doing. We went around telling the group our names, majors and one stressful or bad thing we were leaving behind before this site visit (“attitude”) and one thing we were grateful for (“gratitude”).
What we learned
Throughout our site visit we asked questions, laughed, discussed the opportunity divide and learned a lot about both the behind the scenes of the work done at Future Chefs. Our class is currently waiting for grant proposals from the 25 organizations we invited to apply, so we took this site visit as an opportunity to ask questions about the receiving end of the grant proposal process and how organizations view grant proposal opportunities. Toni and Sam gave us a lot of helpful insight surrounding this topic and told us about how they allocate and use funding they receive from donors and foundations. I think we can all agree that this insight was super beneficial in understanding the entire grant process and helped us have an even clearer view of what to expect when looking at the proposals we will receive in the upcoming weeks.
On top of all of this useful information, we learned a lot about Future Chefs and where the money we are raising for their organization will be used. We met four students in the program and asked them questions about their experience and it was a great way to see how the recipients of this service and program are utilizing the skills they are learning at Future Chefs. I loved this portion of our site visit and if appropriate, I would love to speak to clients of other organizations we visit in the future.
Final Thoughts
I genuinely appreciated meeting Toni and the staff and students at Future Chefs. They are all doing amazing work and I learned so much about philanthropy, the site visit made me even more motivated to work harder to raise money and support the work they are doing for young adults.
