We spent the month of October highlighting our value of Community on our social media. We showcased the Scholars, Alumni, volunteers, and corporate partners who have all played a role in shaping our community over the past 20+ years. Even after a month of sharing different aspects of the Greenhouse community, we barely scratched the surface.
The Lifetime Community
A statistic that we often use to showcase our impact is the number of people our community directly impacts – 300,000 people per year (and only going up). At first, this might seem a little far-fetched for an organization that has had a little over 500 Scholars and Alumni over the past 21 years.
However, our support only begins in college. It continues for life. And we truly mean for life.
Earlier this month, we shared a video of Greenhouse Alum, Holly Ajala, talking about her dreams while she was a Scholar in 2012. Earlier this year, Holly was the keynote speaker at our Glass Half Full Colorado event where she shared how Greenhouse has supported her over the past 14 years. What she initially thought would be a Scholarship organization 14 years ago has turned into a community that’s played a key part in every major life decision she’s had since starting college. And we are just beginning. Holly is now part of the Whole Community Program for our Alumni in their 30s, and she has been working on scalable community change solutions through the Community Change Summit and the other program components.
We highlighted Holly in that video, but Holly is not the story. She is part of the story, and she is part of the greater movement of changemakers that make up the Greenhouse community. She is one of hundreds of changemakers who are all focused on the same goal – evolving the communities of the world.
Building Community Through Immersive Gatherings
We showed a snippet from Ignite, which is one of three immersive gatherings that we host in Boulder, Colorado every summer. These immersive gatherings, the Summer Symposium, Ignite, and the Community Change Summit, bring together hundreds of members of the Greenhouse community from across the country to learn, grow, and connect with one another. At the Summer Symposium, 120+ Scholars form lifelong friendships with one another, which translates into becoming peers in the professional world as they graduate. So many of our Scholars end up working together, helping each other find career opportunities, and become friends for years.
Our Alumni graduate with networks 3x larger than their peers
These connections begin while they are in college at the Summer Symposium. After college, our Alumni in their 20s join us for the Ignite conference, which brings in world-class speakers and workshop facilitators from within the Greenhouse community to share their expertise and help these Young Leaders thrive in the early parts of their careers. Once our Alumni reach their 30s, they can join our newest immersive gathering, the Community Change Summit, where they work with our broader community to create our next scalable community change initiatives.
All three of these immersive gatherings form the tight-knit bonds that make the Greenhouse community so strong.
The Broader Community of Greenhouse
Outside of our Scholars and Alumni, our community is made up of amazing volunteers, donors, and corporate partners. We have a relatively small staff and limited resources. Without the immense support we receive from our broader community, none of our work would be possible.
Two examples of our broader community in action highlighted during the month come from our corporate partner, The JD Foundation, and our volunteer community during New Scholar Selection. The JD Foundation is the philanthropic arm of the Global Sportswear brand, JD Finish Line, and they have been an incredibly impactful part of the Greenhouse community for years. Through the foundation, they are a consistent top sponsor of our immersive gatherings and Annual Inspire. Outside of the very important financial resources they contribute, they also give their time, expertise, and their connections to the Greenhouse community. JD Finish Line employees are: speakers at Summer Symposium, mentors to Scholars, coaches to Alumni, professional networking contacts, Glass Half Full attendees, New Scholar Selection hosts, and more. It’s through these types of deep partnerships that Greenhouse is able to create such a large impact with relatively few resources.
Outside of our corporate partners, Greenhouse also benefits from a vast network of volunteers from across the country. The biggest example of that network of volunteers working together is our New Scholar Selection process. Every year, the demand for our services grows larger. Last year, we had over 1600 applicants to our Whole Person College Program. With just three staff members who work on our Whole Person College Program, there is no way for our staff to properly vet and select the top candidates to join Greenhouse from the pool of accomplished applicants. However, every year, the Greenhouse community steps up to the challenge. Last year, over 600 volunteers worked together with our staff to read through applications, watch videos, and identify the candidates with the largest potential to be catalysts for community change. This is no easy feat, especially with the quality of applicants who apply to our program, but the Greenhouse community steps up each year to select some of the country’s most promising high school seniors to join Greenhouse.
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The Ripple Effect of the Greenhouse Community
So back to the original question: how does a community of 500 Scholars and Alumni directly impact over 300,000 people every year? On average, each of our Scholars is directly impacting 1500 people every year. Additionally, our Alumni are impacting thousands of people through community change initiatives, businesses, and nonprofit organizations they’ve founded. They are catalysts for change in their communities. If you’ve gotten to know our Scholars and Alumni, this probably isn’t a surprise to you. If you haven’t yet, we hope we were able to paint a picture for you of our community, what kind of people they are, and the kind of people they attract to join them in their initiatives for community change.
If you still need to be convinced, we encourage you to get involved so you can see for yourself!
Follow our social media to see what Leadership means for Greenhouse during the month of November