ROBERT HAND: what's happening now is we have about 45 minutes and Kimberly and I will be sort of tag teaming through some of the areas either that you have questions in, and we'll try to read those questions when we get to that area, or just parts that we think it's important to remind everyone about.

Please feel free to ask questions during this as well, because the point now, as I've said, to me there's, the other measurements are wonderful and they certainly need them for funding and they provide information, but what matters is six months from now do you have a group of people with disabilities and potentially some others that you are teaching this course to?

And a year or so, do you have people on boards and councils and are they making a difference in your community?

That's it.

That's what really matters.

And so for us, and I think we're both very enthused and we have had such outstanding experience with both of our organizations, that I really feel like if we can get these going, they are going to make a crucial difference for independent living centers and for people with disabilities across the United States and potentially beyond.

As I said, in South Korea, I went there twice and they had their own version of the Leadership Academy that they do there.

And I'm trying to promote it in Dubai, although I haven't got them quite to buy into this part of it yet.

So we are going to start going through, and the other part of that then is as you do it, as you have yours and you have your graduates, we hope they all become sort of alumni of Leadership Academies as a whole and, you know, can eventually connect with each other and form this whole support group for all of us doing this kind of work.

So, again, the concept of the Leadership Academy as we developed it over several years, both our own academy and then the training manuals, that decisions in our community that affect people with disabilities to a huge extent are being made without the participation of people with disabilities and without the philosophy, the IL philosophy, the accessibility, the inclusion.

Every day of the week these kind of decisions are being made, whether it's how a nonprofit that helps people is going to be using their funds, what kind of programs, or how the city or county or state or whoever is going to carry out certain programs without, often without even one thought of people with disabilities and how it's going to affect those.

And so that's always the motivating factor behind this and behind its development.

And understand this is a very, very specific program.

It's not general advocacy.

It's not personal leadership skills, to a great extent.

It's how to be an effective board member of a nonprofit, how do you be an effective member of government councils.

And that has its strengths and, of course, it has its weaknesses.

Now, you can modify that.

You know, we had a question about wanting to do more training in advocacy.

And you could add one component, two components, whatever you like, within that.

This gives you the framework.

Quite frankly, years ago when we started it, it was always the idea that this would just be one class.

Like I've been asked numerous times and I just haven't gotten to it to develop a class in basic management skills, because often people with disabilities get entry level jobs and no one's willing to invest in them to teach them the skills they need to move up.

So we would like to see a class on that and that could then become another class under your Leadership Academy, in effect.

So it would be very significant to develop other ones that could be add-ons or could supplement or could even be a separate class that people would take to go with it.

So this one is developed basically in mind with, as I said, either a 15- or 18-hour three hours a day, once a day five or six weeks.

Now, one of the questions we had was what time frame would be more effective and productive?

Three-hour courses or, that would be five to six weeks, or an hour or hour and a half once a week for 12 or 15?

And others, like I say, it could be two days.

The bottom line is you have to decide in your community what's best.

As I said, I did a two-day one.

I can't remember, it was seven hours a day or eight hours a day, in Oakland for their advisory councils because that's what they needed in order to get people in.

They couldn't be bringing people in from these different councils for three hours a day once a week for several weeks.

But a couple of things.

I don't think like an hour a day for 15 weeks, an hour a day once a week would be good because every time you start a course, you lose a little bit of time in the beginning, you lose a little bit of time in the end, and it means people have to make that commitment to come every single time or they're going to miss out.

So you want some form of blocks.

You know, you could do four-hour blocks for four weeks and get 16 hours.

I think personally that's the best, either three or four hours.

It gives people enough time to get in and get involved.

It gives you time to present on a topic and still have time for a speaker to come in and present and to have questions.

By spreading it out, it also gives people time to observe it.

It gives people time to study the student manual, if you're using that.

And it gives them time to go see other councils and other boards and get that information throughout.

So, to me, that would be the best design.

But you may have particular issues within your community that would determine, you know, if transportation is hard to get, then you may want to do that two-day one where you only have to get people in twice rather than having to get them in four or five times.

So you need to decide what's going to work best for you as far as the design of it.

KIMBERLY TISSOT: and talk with your consumers about what input they have about the courses and get, you know, make sure that's an evaluation question at the end of your CLA, did the time frame work.

To get your consumers committed to this program, you also need to have them commit to it.

Let them know that they're not going to be accepted to CLA unless they can commit to all of the classes so that they can gain all of the information that's required to be a CLA alumni.

ROBERT HAND: and you had a question on modifying and dealing with, KIMBERLY TISSOT: with the courses that disability rights?

ROBERT HAND: right.

KIMBERLY TISSOT: and you make your CLA what you want it to be.

To be a CLA, though, you do need to follow the outline that's provided in the handbook, but you can add components like Bob said.

We have a section on disability rights and history that we feel like it's very powerful and we talk about advocacy efforts, barriers that the disability community face, but we also incorporate those issues within all of the framework of CLA.

So we give, in our scenarios for boards, we have scenarios about, you know, the organization that you're serving on the board is buying a building.

There's steps to it.

What would be your recommendation?

And just getting them to kind of know how they can serve better as, and be an advocate on that board.

ROBERT HAND: so, again, there is within that manual you'll see and in the student manual there is the history of the IL movement and there is the idea about the IL philosophy and what that means, but it isn't a really strong, aggressive section of it.

So if that's what you would like or if there's some other area, as you said, adding it on to any part of it is always something you can do.

The other thing in the structure, let me mention again, the board mock scenarios we did, you guys did actually very well at it.

I've ran them where people stumble through every step of it.

And, you know, that's understandable.

Most people have had no experience of it at all.

So one of the reasons we expand, as I said, from 15 to 18 hours, part of it had to do with getting university credit, but the other part was in our evaluations in our early academy courses people said we need more time to do this.

So one of the things we do in our design is whatever the topic is for that day, for that particular course, we have the three hours.

If they get done with it a little early, rather than just stopping, we go back and do mock scenarios again.

So by the time the people have graduated, they've probably stepped through it four or five times rather than just the one time and the one class on it, because that's the area that tends to give people the most difficulty.

I don't know if you guys do that as well?

KIMBERLY TISSOT: oh, yeah.

ROBERT HAND: yeah.

Okay.

So what we're going to do then, is cover a few of the things that we need, we believe you're going to need to do to get started to keep in mind, and then, as I said, the second part of the morning we'll be walking around as well and we're hoping that you'll make the exact plans, because, as I said, I've done this a dozen times or so, those who go back and say this is crucial, yeah, we're doing all these other things, but we're going to get started on this, they have academies.

Those who go back and say, and believe me, I've heard them say it, they say, wow, this is great! We're absolutely going to do it! It's wonderful.

Then they get back and they say I've got this grant we have to get in and we've got this to do and this, and I check back with them four months later and it's, oh, we're going to get to that.

I check back eight months later and it's lost.

So if you want one, make your plans today and when you get back, start the process.

So the next area we're going to talk about is commitment.

KIMBERLY TISSOT: so let's talk about a little bit of organizational commitment.

To be able to start a CLA, you have to have your executive director interested and invested in the program.

The ED really sets the tone of the organization.

And when an ED does not support all the programs, they're not always successful.

So make sure that if you're not the ED here today, make sure that you go back and really talk to your ED.

If you feel really positive about this program and want to start it, get their commitment.

Show them the value and show them how it connects with the five core services and independent living philosophy.

And it's an inexpensive program, so it should be an easy sell.

ROBERT HAND: and I'd throw in at that point, again, if your ED isn't here and you want to get them on the phone and call one of us and just say this is the huge difference it made in our organization, we'd be happy to do that.

KIMBERLY TISSOT: get your board committed to this as well.

Your board comes with community connections.

They should be out networking for your organization.

They should be able to help get community organizations to your graduations and help with placements.

So get them involved with CLA.

And they should be exceptionally happy about it because it's teaching individuals with disabilities how to serve on boards.

They're serving on a board right now, so everyone should definitely commit to this.

Staff.

You've got to have excited staff to implement this program and to help spread the outreach of this program.

So you have to identify that coordinator of who is going to facilitate this training.

Have you all all been thinking about that during the last couple of days?

I hope so, because you all are going to have to present about how you're going to plan.

But these staff members or a staff member who's going to facilitate this is going to have to really be enthused with this program and get commitment from the consumers.

They are going to have to make sure these sessions are fun.

These sessions are exciting and getting individuals pumped about going and being leaders in the community.

Do you want to start going into maybe accommodations and accessibility as well?

ROBERT HAND: okay.

KIMBERLY TISSOT: we had a number of questions about accommodations.

And as a center for independent living, we have no option.

We have to provide accommodations.

That's what we believe in and that's what we advocate for.

So there is, that's not an option.

So making sure that, finding out that the accommodation is reasonable.

And I'm thinking that might be some of your questions on this is maybe people are requesting unreasonable accommodations.

We've had requests, especially from the youth community, I think we had a request for a car before.

And you all guys know what to do with that.

That's not a reasonable accommodation.

We can't buy you a car to come to the CLA.

But remember that.

ROBERT HAND: what?

KIMBERLY TISSOT: I know.

Darn.

Remember that accommodations are going to allow somebody to participate in the CLA that would not be able to participate without that accommodation.

And as CILs, naturally that should be happening with providing that.

Yes, ma'am.

[inaudible] 

AUDIENCE MEMBER: as we've gotten, we have a little bit of a head start at my CIL because we knew we were coming.

And so as we've gotten into it, there's some question as to whether or not providing personal assistance at CLA training is something we should do.

And I'm kind of on the side of the fact that if we have applicants who use personal assistant services, we can help them to advocate to manage their hours differently.

But I kind of feel that providing set apart personal assistant services at our programs is not encouraging those individuals who need that support to manage their own supports to get there.

How do you feel about that?

KIMBERLY TISSOT: I mean, we do not provide the PCA service.

We teach them how to manage their services and accommodate.

The only time we do provide the PCA service is if it's an overnight experience, like a youth leadership forum or something like that, or an all-day function for our young adult group.

But, otherwise, we teach them how to manage their own and pulling in their own PCA services.

ROBERT HAND: yeah, and I would agree with that because if you're going to get them on a board somewhere, I can't imagine that being considered a reasonable accommodation that that board of directors would have to provide them with a personal assistant.

KIMBERLY TISSOT: unless it's a retreat or something, a board retreat.

ROBERT HAND: yes, a retreat or something like that.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: when it comes to, like, grant writing and things like that to start implementing this, could we, the accommodation, could we also include transportation, that, you know, during this, you know, when we are writing grants, that transportation to be provided to those who need the accommodation?

KIMBERLY TISSOT: absolutely.

We've, in some of our grants we've included transportation or reimbursements for bus fares and paratransit fares.

So you can write that in.

But also in all of your grant writing, as you grow as an organization, you should be including accommodations in every single grant that you're writing.

Interpreting fees.

Any common requests that you all receive, you should be including that in all of your budgets, because we have to, again, we have to prepare and also provide these accommodations that are requested.

Make sure that your program is fully accessible, and that should be happening within your CILs.

Make sure that whatever documents that you are providing are fully accessible, any electronic documents are accessible before you send it out, that you're providing alternative formats in your program.

And then even the place that you're holding your CLA, making sure that it is fully accessible, that's very important.

We did have a question about the website platform.

Yes, you definitely want to make sure that any type of website platform that you are using that it is fully accessible.

We personally use Adobe Connect, but I also know that Talking Communities is accessible.

All of those are pretty inexpensive programs.

And we can give you some guidance on that, because that was a little bit of a learning curve.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: what was the second one?

KIMBERLY TISSOT: Talking Communities.

ROBERT HAND: and while you're looking at that, let me, again, reinforce that concept of accessibility for these.

If you're holding a meeting about a law that might effect your consumers, that has to be fully accessible and you have to make whatever accommodations are needed.

You know, if you're going to hold a rally somewhere, that should be accessible.

And if somebody needs accommodations, you need to provide those.

So this isn't anything different than any other kind of activity you're providing.

Accommodations and accessibility should be in everything we do.

KIMBERLY TISSOT: absolutely.

And to get an idea of maybe the accommodations before folks just come to the first class, you're going to be having contact with them via application or a telephone conversation.

So maybe that would be a question you might ask, what reasonable accommodations or if they need any reasonable accommodations they might need.

Or if you want to include that on the application.

I know we have that on our application process.

And any dietary accommodations as well because remember you may be providing food or snacks at that graduation.

ROBERT HAND: and that kind of, because you talked about it, that, yes.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: question.

Are those two, Talking Communities and Adobe.

KIMBERLY TISSOT: Adobe Connect?

AUDIENCE MEMBER:, websites or for like accessible meetings?

KIMBERLY TISSOT: those are online accessible webinar type of things and we have a CLA that is online.

We serve 23 counties, so it's very difficult to have a CLA in every single county that we serve, so we have opened it up to an online component of that.

But we do come together and have a graduation ceremony for those participants and making sure that they get arrangements to get to the graduation so that they can connect with community members.

ROBERT HAND: and if someone wanted to sit in on one of those online courses, they'd get ahold of you and experience that.

KIMBERLY TISSOT: yes.

Let me know, because I believe our next CLA online is very, very soon.

So please let me know if you all would like to observe that.

ROBERT HAND: so for the funding of it, just a reminder of a few things.

We had had a question of making sure does 7c and 7b, can those funds be used?

And, yes, absolutely.

There's independent living skills.

There's community integration skills.

Leadership skills.

Those are all within the allowable services that you can provide.

So, like for us, and I think it might be for you, our systems change advocate is our point person on this and runs most of the programs.

We're using our facility for a lot of the meetings, not all of them.

So a lot of those expenses as far as personnel and stuff already come out of, in our case, 7c, and that is a totally allowable expense.

So what I'd say on funding is there's kind of two ways to look at it.

There's the minimum funding that you need, and that's where I would say maybe about $25 per person.

And you could probably do it for less than that, you know, if you didn't want to buy the student manual, you want to use your own bylaws and articles and write up your own description of parliamentary procedure.

You could do all of that and probably do it for $10 a person if you wanted to do that.

But you can do it fairly minimally for a few hundred dollars and just use existing 7c funds and get it going.

You also obviously want to look at grants and you want to look at business sponsorships and that sort of thing.

And the way we've done that is a couple, basically two primary types of budgets.

One budget is just, when we very first started we hadn't even developed these.

We were just developing the things we were using, and, so, again, it was an extremely minimal expense.

But beyond that, I would recommend developing two kinds of budgets.

One budget is, are you going to go for $2,000, $3,000 and include as much as you can get in there?

And the other is, are you going to go for $15,000, $20,000?

And like we got one $20,000 grant and within that we bought, and we have to buy these ourselves at RICV even though they then get royalties on part of it.

So RICV bought a whole bunch of those, a whole bunch of student manuals, a whole bunch of the.

KIMBERLY TISSOT: these are the student manuals.

ROBERT HAND: yeah.

So they're the part that's in that very last section of it.

But, anyway, you can put in larger budgets and develop a whole lot of things.

And that is where we put in accommodations, for that one we also put in some stipends for some of the speakers.

So you can look at it from a broader standpoint and get as much money into it as you can of things that you might regularly pay for yourself, but if you can get them to pay for it, the grants, that's even better.

Yes.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I realize that this might better fall under the head of a grant training workshop, but just briefly, if I'm applying for a grant from four different sources, what happens if they all give me the money?

KIMBERLY TISSOT: you will have a very large CLA.

ROBERT HAND: no, but what you do is when you write it that way, and we've had two grants that both came in on it, we do different ones.

So like we used one to do the ones in Visallia and Merced, and another one to do the ones, and we expanded them out.

So it actually funded the costs for CLAs over several years.

That's a good problem to have.

KIMBERLY TISSOT: a great problem to have.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I was just thinking in terms of ethically.

You obviously don't want to double dip.

I mean ROBERT HAND: right.

You don't want to pay for the same thing with two different grants, but you can pay for multiple things.

So, in other words, you could hold two academies instead of one.

You could buy a lot of extra manuals that you're going to use for other academies.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: so you can essentially, like, repurpose a grant if that happens?

ROBERT HAND: mostly you can do that.

That depends on the foundation, and you have to work with them on it.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: okay.

Thanks.

KIMBERLY TISSOT: and definitely always fulfill your grant goals.

So whatever you wrote the grant for, if you wrote it for four CLAs, you will do four CLAs and.

ROBERT HAND: but, like I said, maybe you say, well, we're going to do four CLAs and we're writing these two different grants and we get both of them.

Well, spread it out and do four under one grant and four under the other grant.

So you've still done that.

And one of the specific questions, which I think I kind of answered is: can a CLA still be productive and successful on a low budget?

I haven't actually discussed how much to spend.

And, yes, I think it can be.

It's like everything.

The more funds you have to put into it, the larger it can grow.

But, again, you need some basic materials.

If you want the student manual, those are going to be about $18 apiece.

So if you have 12 people, what, that's just over $200.

But if you want to develop your own instead, you can do that.

You know, you might need some tablets to give people to write on.

If you want to buy the abridged Robert's Rules of Order, what's that, about $6 or something?

I mean, they're not expensive.

So that's minimal.

Costs beyond that are really very minimal.

I mean, if you have to do accommodations, yes, that, if you have a sign language interpreter, there's an expense to that.

But, as I said, that should be something that you do regularly anyway and you should have funding that you've set aside in your budget for it.

You may want to provide snacks.

We provide snacks at each of ours.

So I don't know what that costs.

$20 each time or something minimal.

Or you get them donated.

KIMBERLY TISSOT: we get them donated.

ROBERT HAND: you want invitations, which you may well get a printer to print.

But if not, it's not a large cost to do that.

So, again, for a few hundred dollars maximum, you can put on an academy.

And I'll tell you if you put on a good one and you get some people placed, if you can't get funding after that, you're doing something wrong and you need to talk to us, because we both had the experience that communities and foundations and corporations are very, very impressed by that.

And so you should be able to, if not right away, at least once you have one and if it's done well and successful, even if it doesn't cost a lot of money to do it, that should allow you to generate funding for it.

So those were those questions.

KIMBERLY TISSOT: I'll tell you just a brief example of this.

We had a grant that it's federally funded, but it's through the University of South Carolina, and the grant was not originally called Community Leadership Academy.

But since we started Community Leadership Academy, now when they're writing for their federal funding, they're calling it Community Leadership Academy.

So, I mean, it's a big deal.

That same funder came to us and said, hey, we have extra money for you.

Can you put it towards CLA?

Yes, we can.

We can always do things.

And so we did promotional items with the video and brochures, and did another CLA academy and bought more supplies.

And so you can get very creative with funding.

And once you do a really good program and once you have a great reputation, I really think the funding just starts coming to you.

ROBERT HAND: we get so much money we just have to throw it out.

KIMBERLY TISSOT: that's not the case.

We never have enough money.

ROBERT HAND: the other thing is make sure you look at, as you should for all of your programs, that possibility of mixed funding.

So, you know, maybe some of it is your 7c funds.

Maybe you can't get the $2,000 you want to get it kicked off, but you can put in 500 and you can get this corporation to put in 500 and then you can get 1,000 from a foundation.

So look at all of those options.

Or you can get a number of things donated, printing and food and stuff, so that comes right off of your budget.

So you can do these kinds of things by mixing your resources, either income or in kind.

Okay.

I think that's most of the funding stuff.

Do you want to talk about staff or do another one?

KIMBERLY TISSOT: I think we did talk about staff already.

Promotion.

Making sure that your promotional materials are going to attract people who are really wanting to be leaders.

But the way you want to make your promotional materials is for not only the consumers, but also for professionals in the community.

So make it in a way that it's going to attract potential boards that are going to want to recruit from you all.

Spend some time with your outreach materials and make sure that it's really representing your organization well.

Make sure it's something that looks professional.

Make sure that obviously it's accessible if you're sending it out online.

We're pretty much giving you all branding with the CLA logo, so that's something that that would be less cost for you all now because you don't have to get a logo made.

Because I think I was talking to a group earlier that was talking about how expensive logos are.

So we're giving you all something with the branding already existing.

Now you just have to write the content and what not that goes along with it.

But we can assist you with that as well.

So if you want to see some examples that we have, and Bob has some examples in the book as well.

ROBERT HAND: right.

I'm going to piggyback on that because under the funding parts of it, sorry to interrupt here, but you not only get the logo, but you get to try to sell a program that you already know is successful.

I mean, unlike when we did it, it was, yeah, we've had one and we've done this, but now there's numerous ones, not as many as I'd like.

So I'm sure you can get ahold of Kimberly and she'll say, yeah, you can use this data.

We've had this many people go through.

They're on all of these boards.

I can give you RICV's contact, although I think it's in the trainer's manual in there, too, and get hold of Joseph Cody, and he can give you data that they've collected.

And I had mentioned that through those interns we called several others.

So you could have a pretty good solid bit of data to say these many people in a half dozen places have gone through it, they've gone on, they're on these kinds of boards, these kind of councils.

And so you have some basis for foundation or corporation grants already.

KIMBERLY TISSOT: and making sure that when you're getting your information out maybe about your graduation mixer, making sure that you're connecting with organizations that can send this information out to other non-profits to make sure that they're at the mixer.

So connecting with, we connect with our nonprofit organization, but they send it out to the hundreds and hundreds of non-profits in South Carolina.

So we get folks, they do some of our recruiting to get folks at our mixer.

And make sure, and I always stress this to CILs that I'm working with, make sure that you're using language that people can understand.

I know that in the CIL world we use a particular language that people are, like, I do not understand what you're talking about.

So make sure that when you are recruiting that you're not saying, you know, CILs, independent living philosophy.

You have to explain what the independent living philosophy is in your materials.

ROBERT HAND: and I mentioned this before, but I would strongly suggest, assuming you've committed, assuming you get back and you say we are going to do this, we don't have the exact dates and stuff, then right away send out announcements.

You know, coming to our community.

Start that little excitement.

I mean, movies do that all the time now.

There's a movie that's not going to come out for six months and you're already seeing trailers about it or you're seeing announcements about it.

You can do that as well.

Yes.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I hate to be the spokesperson for the media over and over again, but I used to work for them and they will come to the mixer.

They will come to these, they will come to the CLA, a reporter or a news station, a reporter from a newspaper or a representative from a news station will film it.

And even better than a press release sometimes, because they often get lost in the mix, is looking at the website, looking at the different editors and what their interests are and inviting specific people who jive with what you're doing and it can be really valuable.

They're always looking for these kind of stories and will gladly come and help boost all kinds of recognition.

KIMBERLY TISSOT: be careful with the media as well because you do want to provide some guidance when the media comes that they report about people with disabilities in the right way, instead of that pity model.

We don't want to have that.

National Disability Rights Network, NDRN, has a great guide for media and you can look on their website.

I think it's actually called Disability Etiquette for the Media.

We print that off and give that to media folks all the time when they are covering our events.

And then we'll give them a little pep talk.

So you're not going to say wheelchair bound and you are not going to say, awww.

You know, we give them a little pep talk to make sure that they are representing the disability community.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: one thing you can actually do that they would love is train them.

Have them actually be part of learning these things, tend to make it not be a pity model and to use appropriate language, because they could take that back to the news station and change the entire dynamic of what they're doing.

KIMBERLY TISSOT: that's a great fee for service to offer too, professional trainings.

ROBERT HAND: and you can often get your elected officials to put it in, too.

Most of them send out newsletters or online letters and stuff.

If they have a representative there, they love to get a picture and have a little article and send it out with that.

But as you say, you have to watch, RICV actually operated a park that the city owned where every single thing in it was accessible.

But when it was opened up, when they were having ribbon cutting, the mayor and the city people started saying: this is so wonderful.

We have this park for disabled people.

And I had to say, no! This is not a park, this is a park for everyone.

And so I got them to change what they were saying.

So you do have to watch it, but there's lots and lots and lots of opportunity. 

KIMBERLY TISSOT: if you see them reporting like that, let them know, because if you don't educate them, they're going to continue exposing the disability community in that way.

ROBERT HAND: shall I say location?

KIMBERLY TISSOT: yeah.

ROBERT HAND: we've talked about location before.

Obviously, if you have a room, a conference room or meeting room that's large enough to do it for your first one, that's probably the best option.

It gives you more exposure and it makes it easy for people who already know where you're at to come in.

Again, make sure, obviously, that it's totally accessible and stuff.

Down the road if you develop, I think you said all of yours are at your center so far.

We found it very helpful to have them at other places.

So, as I said, we have it at the university.

We've had it at the city college, deaf and hard of hearing center.

We have to go in and look at it first and make sure it's all accessible.

Sometimes you have to make special accommodations.

At the university there's parking issues and where the bus drop off issue, so we had to look at all of those.

But it exposes you to a whole new group of people.

Now, I think one of the questions somewhere along the line had to do with rotating locations, and I wasn't clear about it, but when I say we do it at different locations, that'll be that whole cohort.

So we'll have six sessions all at the same site at the university.

We'll have six sessions all at the same site at the community college.

I wouldn't have five or six sessions and have them meet in different places because you will always get people confused.

If I even change the board meeting, I had a hard time getting board members there.

So, you know, I would have all sessions for one course in the same spot.

But as you develop, finding other spots just puts you out there that much more.

And gets those other organizations to really buy into what you're doing.

So I would certainly look at that.

But if you can do the first one at your place, and, by the way, I don't know how other places are, we never pay for a spot.

We've got connections all over, like at the university and the city college, as long as one of their programs are sponsoring it, then we can have it there for free.

If you're an outside organization and you want to use it, you have to pay money.

But if I get rehab counseling or I get the Office for Students with Disabilities or one of the others to sponsor it, then we can be there for free.

So, often you can look at options that way that can get you into those. 
KIMBERLY TISSOT: and we had a question about social media.

Our alumni association created a Linkedin page and really what that was created for was just to provide that support and networking opportunities to the CLA graduates, but also to connect them.

They can ask questions with each other.

They can talk about successes that they have seen with serving on boards, challenges, and just ask questions.

And one of our staff members is the administrator of that page, so they can also ask technical assistance, what to do on serving on this board, and our staff member will send a response to them.

So it is a good, but you definitely want to stay connected with the alumni.

That will help with your tracking so that you can keep really great data so that you can continue to grow this program.

Definitely make sure you have a plan for that.

Do you have a question?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: yes.

Do you have, did you develop a job description for your, for staffing, the folks that you eventually hired to do the leadership academy?

KIMBERLY TISSOT: our director of advocacy and community access and our outreach and consumer rights coordinator, we have very long titles, they're both in charge of this program.

And a lot of the work, their job description really already entails the CLA, developing leaders, networking and community interactions.

So it was just a really good fit within our organization.

And we did not hire anybody specifically for this.

We already had the staff on board to help do this program.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: because you know how staff feel about just adding on to their jobs.

ROBERT HAND: I can't hear you.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: you know how staff, somebody would feel about adding something onto their job.

I was just thinking to do this well it might do well to have a dedicated full-time staff person.

And since, you know, at least with the small office that I direct, I have no, I would need to hire someone to do this.

So, yeah, we'd need to develop a job description.

So that might be some- thing I need help with.

KIMBERLY TISSOT: yeah, I can share.

ROBERT HAND: we have applied for a $300,000 grant that I thought I was going to get that was going to have just a dedicated staff over several years do things.

So RICV, if we can get them, probably have a job description that might, although that was also for expansion, but it's great if you can do it.

Most of us do it with existing staff.

Or you may be able to get a really dedicated expert volunteer on it as well.

KIMBERLY TISSOT: and the time commitment is not that significant to do a CLA because you have, it depends how many CLAs you really want.

Our staff, I do not remember right offhand how many hours we have allocated to this program, but it really is not that much, because once you have already created your curriculum, you've really done the hard part.

And if you're using the same curriculum, you know, throughout your different CLAs, you know, you will want to modify it here and there.

But the time commitment is not.

ROBERT HAND: we only have a few minutes.

Let me take this question.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I know when I bring this back home I will not want to give this to anybody else.

I would choose for this to be my baby.

When grant writing, I can include my salary as.

KIMBERLY TISSOT: yes.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: okay.

Perfect.

ROBERT HAND: now, be careful if you're funded, you know, you can't double pay your salary, so you have to pull out part of it and stuff.

But, yeah.

KIMBERLY TISSOT: we can help you with wording on grants as well for it, so feel free to contact us.

ROBERT HAND: so one other question that I had I wanted to make sure is: what criteria would it be helpful to know to recruit for the CLA?

Again, I think we've talked about that some.

There is some application things, but the main thing to think about is most of you are experienced with at least some boards and government councils.

Who would you want to be on that council or that board?

What kind of criteria?

If you were on that board and looking for a board member, what would you want, what kind of attitude and skills and things would you want?

And that's what you're looking for.

So it's not really, I mean, when we say a screening process, for us that's no huge thing.

I mean, 95 percent of the people or 98 or something, we do bring in because we promoted in a way that says what it's about and therefore draw, those are the people we draw to it.

So I don't think it has to be hugely critical as far as the review.

It's just primarily make sure that when the person graduates, it's someone you're going to be able to say, yes, I can recommend that person.

Otherwise, you can teach them the skills and things.

So we have just another minute or two.

Did you have other critical things or.

KIMBERLY TISSOT: I think we talked a little bit about graduation already.

Remember when you do a graduation, this really becomes a time where community members learn more about a center for independent living as well, so make sure that you do, you really plan this out.

And so day one of starting a CLA, you're already looking in weeks to come for the graduation and starting to plan that, because it does take time to plan a graduation, too, because you definitely want to make sure you have the right individuals there and get any in-kind donations to help make that graduation successful.

ROBERT HAND: okay.