A letter to DCV members and Volunteers:
Amy Gyau-Moyer took over as executive director of the Dupont Circle Village on Aug. 10 and will spend much of August meeting the Villagers and the volunteers.
She will be seeking your ideas on ways to grow our Village: through activities, targeted membership drives and building a donor base.
Many of you have said that, right now, you don’t need services -- you want to know how you can help to build the Village. Now’s the time to share your ideas with Amy! She also will tell you about some specific areas where we need help, including leafleting apartment buildings and condos about the Village, but also in planning and helping carry out more activities.
This is the start of a new era for Dupont Circle Village. We have taken a different path than most other villages in this new national movement.
There are about 120 Villages in formation with about 40 of them already operating. Most of them did years of planning and fundraising, then hired an executive director and only then began offering services and planning activities -- and signing up members.
We did it differently. We have been in a “soft launch” for nearly a year. Our board was elected last September, chaired by Gerald Schwinn. Soon after, Rick Busch agreed to be our first volunteer coordinator. He talked to many of you back then and some of you volunteered, others received services. We eventually signed up and vetted more than 50 volunteers, ranging in age from 25 to 75. Elaine Rand took over as volunteer coordinator from Rick and, when she was hospitalized with double knee surgery early this summer, Judy duBerrier offered to continue this important work of putting volunteers with Villagers needing help.
Meanwhile, the board put in hundreds of hours of work on building the Village infrastructure: getting us certified as a nonprofit, lining up health&wellness partners, forming committees to do much of the planning and decision-making – and working toward a day when we could afford to hire a part-time director.
Our membership launch in February marked a significant step forward. We agreed we would offer free services to non-Village members for another two months but limit them to members after that.
We estimated we would need to sign up 75 members by the end of August, halfway toward our long-term goal of at least 150 members, in order to hire an executive director. We began advertising for candidates in June, did interviews in July – and were able to bring Amy Gyau-Moyer on board as of Aug. 10.
As of Aug. 10, we had 68 members, with others almost ready to join. We’re still shy of that end-of-summer goal of 75 but are confident that with your help we can reach that. We on the board want to thank you for your faith in us and your commitment to the Village, as we put pieces in place and move forward.
The board received more than 200 applications for the job. We concluded that Amy had a rich mix of the skills we wanted: experience in health care and aging; a real appreciation for the wealth of talent and energy Villagers can contribute to an “aging in community” outfit and experience in management, fundraising and marketing.
One thing she said during the interviews impressed us: why, we asked, would you give up a job with national reach with the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging to help build a very local Village?
Because, she said, she really missed hands-on work with real folks. She wanted to use her ideas, energy and knowledge of national “aging” issues to work with the board, the Villagers and the volunteers to build a vibrant Dupont Circle Village community.
We look forward to all of us doing just that!
Peggy Simpson
President, Dupont Circle Village