Starting Point to host free Caregiver Resource Event
May 12—A new organization created to connect nonprofits is hosting its first public event on Tuesday.
Starting Point, which includes a variety of nonprofit organizations, was created thanks to grant funds from the Texas Health Resources Foundation.
The Center for Non-Profit Management and Starting Point are working together to host a Caregiver Resource Event from 3-8 p.m. Tuesday at the Cleburne Conference Center.
"The goal is to connect overwhelmed caregivers with the resources that might be needed to assist someone with mental health issues, veteran disability assistance, food instability, prescription assistance, domestic violence assistance, etc.," Children's Advocacy Center of Johnson County Executive Director Tammy King said.
There will be several organizations participating in an effort for Johnson County to bring resources together in one place for those in crisis/need. It is a free event and the first 200 attendees will receive a free hot meal. There will also be door prizes and raffle give aways.
CNM Strategic Consulting Lead Sam Hamann said the term "caregivers" is used informally, as well as formally.
"Whether it's a parent, the child, a spouse, a cousin or whomever," he said, "we're really trying to put ourselves in those shoes like, I'm a caregiver — and especially if I wasn't expecting to be a caregiver in terms of like an adult child care of a parent unexpectedly — what are the things that are going to be most useful to those individuals."
The event is kind of two ways of serving as a starting point, Hamann said.
"On the one hand for the nonprofits this is the first step to helping them tie together a little bit more cohesively and strengthen those bonds," he said. "That's one of the things so we've been working in Johnson County for about two and a half years now.
"As Johnson County continues to grow and the needs continue to get more complex, and the nonprofit sector continues to get more complex. I think they identified the need for a more robust way of referring folks from one place to another."
To kick off Starting Point, CNM hosted a dinner where nonprofit leaders could sit down together and visit about each other's needs.
"If you think about a lot of the resource events that you might go to, if you have a table, you talk to the people that come to your table. You don't talk to the other vendors about the resources," Hamann said. "So we intentionally had a dinner on April 23 that was for the folks for the resources themselves, so that they could have an opportunity to talk when they're not trying to network or meet new clients or kind of do all of that. It's an opportunity for them to get to know each other."
Follow-up events are planned after Tuesday's event to get feedback from the organizations involved.
