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Engagement and Awareness

Engagement and Awareness

In our recent eNewsletters and into the next month we are sharing our goals as they relate to our work as a Center of Excellence. We are doing this to build awareness and then, to inspire the reader by demonstrating that Dixon Center for Military and Veterans Services is accountable for something big. One of Dixon Center’s seven goals, and one of two focusing on awareness and engagement is: Steward and build strategic relationships that support partner organizations & advance their fiscal results.

Our goal is not to create new programs. Rather, the goal is to enable the integration of military and veteran services into existing programs to increase impact. As a Center of Excellence, we provide and coordinate technical assistance/training, resource sharing, and strong leadership to our partners, who, with our ongoing support, develop and operate direct service programs.

This includes working at local and national levels in five focus areas: workforce development and career placement; housing solutions; wellness research and development; expanding funding streams for veteran entrepreneurs; and advancing impact via service networks.

Despite the pandemic, our team during Fiscal Year 2020 has been able to maintain meaningful engagements with social, civic, private, and public sector decision-makers and people of influence to expand services by our partner organizations. One of the lessons our team has learned is that to have the greatest impact these engagements must be documented, interactive, and includes a follow-up based on a prescribed timeline. We have also determined that attendance tracking tools; pre and post gauging of activities; online survey tools; and follow up communications (email, phone, in person) to track change/outcomes assist in our accountability, as well as our partners.

Leveraging technology, we have increased outreach and awareness of more than 100 new partnerships in FY 2020. These support organizations, who with our help or encouragement, are including veterans and their families into their existing community-based service programs. This is different than the 300 organizations we referenced last week whose work we are promoting. These are 100 new partnerships who have been encouraged at the community level to include veterans and their families.

Our outreach and awareness are assisting organizations in adjusting their programing to focus on the evolving needs of veterans today, shaping their organizations goals and objectives, and helping them adjust to a new fiscal landscape created by COVID-19. While many organizations have hunkered down and adopted a fortress mentality to ride out the impacts of COVID-19, Dixon Center’s collaborative approach has kept a keen eye on opportunity and emergent needs while leveraging existing community-based programs that have national reach and local impact.

For more information about Dixon Center and our outreach and awareness efforts, please contact Duncan Milne, President, dmilne@dixoncenter.org.

Also, be on the look out! Our newsletter will start going out on Tuesdays instead of Fridays. We hope you continue to look for it on its new day in your inbox.

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Enabling the Enablers

Enabling the Enablers

Dixon Center for Military and Veterans Services is enabling the enablers. One of our goals for the past eight years is to leverage & strengthen the Center’s network of partners, supporters, and community-based programs serving veterans and their families.

In 2020, Dixon Center has been working, despite the pandemic, to increase brand awareness, engagement, philanthropy and program impact of our national network of community-based partners. Many of these are service providers, who with our help, are now including veterans and their families in their direct-service programs. Most of this work has been in workforce development and career placement, affordable housing, and financial, emotional & physical well-being.

As a Center of Excellence, we are leveraging our communications and marketing reach to showcase the work of others. Case in point is the production of our podcast series, Service Before Self.

We are using this podcast to build public awareness, encourage community involvement and promote community-based services. These biweekly broadcasts are addressing the evolving needs and solutions improving the quality of life of veterans and their families, the leaders who are creating impact, the innovative ideas, and philanthropic change agents.

Since October 2019, via multiple mediums every week, Dixon Center has promoted and increased the collaboration of over 300 organizations and individuals now serving veterans. Much of our communications and marketing strategy includes webinars, virtual panel discussions, conferences, convenings, collaborative video conferences, blogs, movie screenings and now podcasts. We also utilize social media and host receptions and award ceremonies. These partner organizations come from all sectors of society including business and industry, direct service wellness providers, training institutions, philanthropists, faith based organizations, and nonprofits that we have helped develop and operate direct service programs for veterans and their families.

We have more to do. Yet the fact is that we continue to validate our founding premise, we are much stronger together than apart. Dixon Center’s approach to breaking down barriers and making connections works. Since 2012, our collaboration and capacity building has impacted nearly 1.7 million individuals and organizations at the end of 2019. As we prepare to end the 2020 Fiscal Year watch for our operating highlights which are part of The Fedcap Group’s comprehensive financial statement package. Based on audited financial statements ending September 30, 2019, 86% of Fedcap’s total expenditures went directly toward programming.

Dixon Center for Military and Veterans Services is a subsidiary of The Fedcap Group, a global network of top-tier nonprofit agencies. The Fedcap Group serves as the fiscal agent for Dixon Center and as a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. The Fedcap Group is committed to promoting transparency and integrity in our fiscal practice and we are proud of its GuideStar recognition with the 2019 Silver Seal of Transparency.

For more information about The Fedcap Group or Dixon Center, please contact Duncan Milne, President, dmilne@dixoncenter.org.