First You Talk

The S of PSAFg and 100 Women Strong Grant Announcement

Sandi Vidal, Laurie Crocker Season 2 Episode 14

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It's the new craze: PSAFg, right?!

We're (sort of) kidding on it being the hot new acronym, but there's no denying the importance of what these letters mean. Piloting, scaling, accelerating and filling gaps is a crucial part of our grantmaking strategy at Central Florida Foundation. In this episode, Sandi Vidal and Laurie Crocker discuss scaling, CFF's new publication called Thrive Magazine, and 100 Women Strong's 2025 grant focused on upstream teen suicide prevention.

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As our region’s community foundation, Central Florida Foundation serves as a launchpad for high-impact philanthropy. Championing the collective power of head, heart and dollar, we coordinate the commitment and investment of philanthropists, nonprofits, and community partners to target today’s most critical challenges and those on the horizon to truly transform our community. The Foundation also offers expert giving advice, a personalized approach to managing charitable funds, and the capacity to convene collaboration across sectors. Learn more at cffound.org.

Transcript

00:00:05 Laurie Crocker

Welcome to Central Florida Foundation's First You Talk podcast.

00:00:09 Laurie Crocker

Here you'll gain a better understanding of society's toughest issues at the end of each episode, we'll summarize the main points and offer deeper dive options. If something piqued your interest.

00:00:20 Laurie Crocker

So ready to demystify a complex issue and up your knowledge game.

00:00:24 Laurie Crocker

Let's get started.

00:00:26 Laurie Crocker

Welcome to another episode of the First You Talk podcast.

00:00:30 Laurie Crocker

And today I have brought Sandi into the studio with me.

00:00:35 Sandi Vidal

Hi, I'm Sandi and I

00:00:37 Sandi Vidal

Serve as the vice president of Community strategies and initiatives at the foundation working on grant scholarship and community leadership.

00:00:46 Laurie Crocker

Yeah. So I'm super excited to have Sandi here today.

00:00:49 Laurie Crocker

We're going to 1st talk about a really I'm going to call it cool publication that we did recently called Thrive Magazine. And this was kind of our take on an annual report, but more of an impact report. What have we been doing this past year and actually goes.

00:01:03 Laurie Crocker

Little bit into 2023 as well.

00:01:06 Laurie Crocker

And what have we been?

00:01:08 Laurie Crocker

What are the partnerships we've been working on?

00:01:11 Laurie Crocker

What have we accomplished and kind of summing up so we can always look back at it and see how our 23 and 24 went and and yeah, I was really.

00:01:20 Sandi Vidal

Proud of it? I thought it was a great.

00:01:23 Sandi Vidal

Way of looking back at what we've done over the last couple of years and really even the.

00:01:29 Sandi Vidal

The article about the 30 years I think was really great because I've been with the foundation now nine years, so I joined in 2015 and the foundation in 2015 and the foundation in 2024 going into 2025.

00:01:47 Sandi Vidal

Are so very.

00:01:48 Sandi Vidal

We've just grown and evolved.

00:01:50 Sandi Vidal

And really, I think it's the result of having an amazing team, an amazing community partners.

00:01:56 Laurie Crocker

Yeah. And that article on the 30th, there was a little bit of my personality in there because I called those years from like 04 to 2014, something like that are teenage years.

00:02:09 Laurie Crocker

And then in the past 10 years kind of coming into our own.

00:02:13 Laurie Crocker

We're young.

00:02:15 Laurie Crocker

We're in our 30s and I think that now, I mean we're getting better and better and better and honing our skills more and more and more as we we go into the next.

00:02:27 Laurie Crocker

30 years of the foundation and.

00:02:29 Laurie Crocker

And it was also a great way to get to know.

00:02:32 Laurie Crocker

I've only been here since 2022, so I had a lot of homework to do. A lot of people to get to know and one thing that that stuck out to.

00:02:41 Laurie Crocker

When talking about the 30th anniversary and going back to the 90s in the early 2000s

00:02:44 Laurie Crocker

Is that

00:02:46 Laurie Crocker

Everyone has like like such a positive good feeling about the foundation.

00:02:51 Laurie Crocker

And it's just a great feeling to know that, you know, there's a lot of support, even the people who are here, who might not be actively working with the foundation right now.

00:03:01 Laurie Crocker

Remember the time when they did work with the foundation and it was always marked by collaboration and partnership and working together, and all of those fun things.

00:03:10 Laurie Crocker

I thought that was kind of nice.

00:03:11 Laurie Crocker

Do you have any other favorite parts of the magazine?

00:03:14 Sandi Vidal

I think there was so much in.

00:03:16 Sandi Vidal

It was. It was really great to, you know, look at the philanthropy side of it.

00:03:22 Sandi Vidal

To talk about rally and the relationship with the City being the first customer.

00:03:26 Laurie Crocker

Yeah.

00:03:28 Sandi Vidal

Also, you know celebrating our CFO's 20th anniversary.

00:03:33 Laurie Crocker

Snuck Meghan in there.

00:03:34 Laurie Crocker

You know, sometimes I feel like so our side of the.

00:03:38 Laurie Crocker

So Sandi's in the grantmaking side, obviously, and I'm more on the philanthropy side, even though I kind of touch both sides.

00:03:45 Laurie Crocker

We often talk the.

00:03:47 Laurie Crocker

We are chatty Kathys for the most part.

00:03:50 Laurie Crocker

We're out there, but I felt like we needed to give a nod to our financial leader who does so much, but a lot of it's in the background. So Meghan.

00:04:00 Laurie Crocker

Celebrating 20 years, which is incredible with the foundation.

00:04:04 Laurie Crocker

I'm glad we snuck her in.

00:04:05 Laurie Crocker

She didn't know she was in there, but I was happy to get her in there. So. So yeah, so I wanted to kind of hone in or or zoom in on a specific part of it. And that was your article that you wrote. I had asked Sandy if.

00:04:18 Laurie Crocker

Wouldn't mind writing about our grant making strategy.

00:04:21 Laurie Crocker

Because there are four kind of areas that she focuses on on her team now.

00:04:27 Laurie Crocker

Did talk about this in a recent.

00:04:29 Laurie Crocker

So it actually the Giving Tuesday episode and it is piloting, scaling, accelerating and filling gaps. And the reason I can say that so eloquently now is because I created an acronym. Everyone needs to learn.

00:04:45 Laurie Crocker

PSAF, lowercase G and guys, this is going to catch on like wildfire. I can already tell it, but that is going to be what we're going to talk about, about each one briefly, and then we're actually going to take a deeper look at the.

00:05:01 Laurie Crocker

The scaling so Sandi, can you just give a brief overview of those four different things?

00:05:06 Sandi Vidal

Absolutely.

00:05:08 Sandi Vidal

You know, to back up a little bit, one of the things I think that is fundamental in our grant making is that we rely a lot on research and data and we look at what are best practices. But we also listen to the Community because often times.

00:05:26 Sandi Vidal

Our nonprofit partners know what?

00:05:28 Sandi Vidal

They, you know, I often get reminded by some of my nonprofit friends that we don't always have to look outside of our community.

00:05:36 Sandi Vidal

For what's going right, a lot of times.

00:05:39 Sandi Vidal

We have great programs and things that are going on.

00:05:42 Sandi Vidal

Close to home and we need to remember.

00:05:44 Sandi Vidal

But really, the acronym that you have going on the P is for piloting and piloting is really about bringing new things to market.

00:05:57 Sandi Vidal

It's about testing things and trying something in a different way than it's been done before.

00:06:02 Laurie Crocker

Mm.

00:06:04 Sandi Vidal

Could be something that's been tried somewhere else and.

00:06:08 Sandi Vidal

Has been successful and so we're adapting it for use in our area or it could be an idea that came out of research that we're trying to see if it will work.

00:06:19 Sandi Vidal

And so that's where piloting comes in.

00:06:21 Sandi Vidal

The s s for.

00:06:23 Sandi Vidal

And we'll be talking a little bit more about that, but.

00:06:26 Sandi Vidal

Scaling is really when something is going right and we want to do more of it. We want to be able to reach more people.

00:06:32 Sandi Vidal

Want to have a bigger geographic footprint?

00:06:36 Sandi Vidal

Those are the things.

00:06:38 Sandi Vidal

Look at when we are scaling.

00:06:40 Sandi Vidal

And then with accelerating the A, It's really about getting something to market quicker.

00:06:47 Sandi Vidal

Something that we're seeing?

00:06:48 Sandi Vidal

Maybe it's something from out of the?

00:06:50 Sandi Vidal

We've helped nonprofits that are out of the area to come into the area to provide their services, and so it's getting that to market faster.

00:07:00 Sandi Vidal

And then the filling gaps is exactly what it sounds like.

00:07:03 Sandi Vidal

The.

00:07:04 Sandi Vidal

Lowercase G It is really identifying where there is.

00:07:10 Sandi Vidal

A gap in the systems that we have in the strategies that we have in the resources that we have, it's really looking at how do we get from point A to point Z.

00:07:26 Sandi Vidal

Without skipping the things in between, it's filling those things in.

00:07:30 Sandi Vidal

The rest of the alphabet.

00:07:32 Laurie Crocker

And you gave a really good example of that, and I think it was a Thrive healthcare grant where?

00:07:38 Laurie Crocker

The the gap that was identified was community health care workers were needed for when people left the emergency room and then found care outside the emergency.

00:07:49 Laurie Crocker

So there's a gap when people leave the emergency room. They either don't know how to find the the help, don't find the help, don't don't find the the care outside of the emergency room, and ended up back.

00:07:59 Laurie Crocker

Emergency room. And so there was a grant for community health care workers who connect.

00:08:06 Laurie Crocker

The connectors after leaving the emergency room.

00:08:08 Sandi Vidal

Right.

00:08:09 Sandi Vidal

And that's not to say that everybody needs a community health.

00:08:13 Sandi Vidal

There's many people who navigate the system just fine, but there's a lot of people.

00:08:17 Sandi Vidal

People who get paralyzed, they don't know how to go from the emergency room to finding a primary care doctor if they don't have one, or they don't have insurance, they might need to connect with one of our federally qualified health care centers, or.

00:08:35 Sandi Vidal

Nonprofit organizations getting prescriptions sometimes can be expensive, and so it's filling those gaps.

00:08:42 Laurie Crocker

Absolutely.

00:08:45 Laurie Crocker

So one thing that we'll kind of talk a little bit more about is the scaling piece of.

00:08:49 Laurie Crocker

So you just explained what scaling was, and I think we can, whenever this airs, we'll be able to share that 100 women strong was.

00:09:01 Laurie Crocker

They they sent a grant recommendation after a year's worth or almost a year's worth of research and education, and learning about the different areas within health and well.

00:09:12 Laurie Crocker

Being they decided on mental health as their first focus for this three-year focus and they set in a grant recommendation this month in December to our board, which was approved and now we can share about it.

00:09:25 Laurie Crocker

Sandi, you want to share a little bit about that?

00:09:27 Sandi Vidal

We can. And so, Laurie, you've you've shared a little bit about the process 100 Women Strong

00:09:33 Sandi Vidal

Is really focused on that research and data. They wrote a white paper

00:09:38 Sandi Vidal

They really dove deep into several areas of healthcare and what they what they do is they look at the data and then they bring subject matter experts around the table.

00:09:51 Sandi Vidal

And they listen to what's going on.

00:09:56 Sandi Vidal

Through the lens of those subject matter experts.

00:09:58 Sandi Vidal

And so they're represented by different nonprofits or organizations within the.

00:10:04 Sandi Vidal

Some of our hospitals as well and they provide the what's going on right now.

00:10:11 Sandi Vidal

And what are the things that we've seen that are working?

00:10:14 Sandi Vidal

One of the things that we saw that was working is peer

00:10:19 Sandi Vidal

Really looking at peer led mental health and it is all about a support system of people that are like you or have been through similar experiences and so.

00:10:34 Sandi Vidal

The grant ended up being.

00:10:38 Sandi Vidal

To Nemours Children's Hospital and it is focused on scaling a program that is a partnership between Nemours and the Boys and Girls Clubs.

00:10:50 Sandi Vidal

To train some.

00:10:52 Sandi Vidal

Teenagers around peer support and then some adult leadership as.

00:10:58 Sandi Vidal

And so it's expanding that program and it's a really neat program and we're very excited to get that started and to be able to see what the outcomes and results are.

00:11:10 Laurie Crocker

Yeah. So a couple couple things there. I immediately pick up on a one thing that I appreciate.

00:11:16 Laurie Crocker

About the approach 100 Woman Strong takes is that they're not trying to solve at all, they.

00:11:22 Laurie Crocker

They want to make the biggest impact with what they have and what they can accomplish and the tools that we have in our community and so they're not going to do a project that isn't something that can carry on past that grant likely. So it should.

00:11:37 Laurie Crocker

Right. That was one of the things that we looked at.

00:11:40 Laurie Crocker

Looked at me.

00:11:42 Laurie Crocker

I was not a part of that, but that's also important.

00:11:45 Laurie Crocker

Then also with this, what's the name of?

00:11:49 Laurie Crocker

Program?

00:11:50 Sandi Vidal

Sources of Strength. The SOS solution.

00:11:51 Laurie Crocker

Yes. And like Sandi said, it's peer led.

00:11:54 Laurie Crocker

So there is going to be training done with kids who are in middle school and high school and what I what I love about that I I was not.

00:12:03 Laurie Crocker

It makes sense that you would train the kids to also.

00:12:07 Laurie Crocker

Talk to other kids because they are their peers.

00:12:12 Laurie Crocker

It's funny because when I was in high school many years ago, mental health was almost like a new thing that we were talking about in the schools.

00:12:21 Laurie Crocker

But it was top down.

00:12:23 Laurie Crocker

You know, it was coming from adults talking to the kids and I could totally see why that could be alienating and not as effective when you have kids talking to kids.

00:12:33 Sandi Vidal

Is is it's a. It's an evidence based purely suicide prevention program.

00:12:38

Mm.

00:12:39 Sandi Vidal

It's a model that has been used.

00:12:42 Sandi Vidal

Very successfully and it's really focused on buildings, socioeconomical protective influences among the youth, training youth to be the peer leaders, reducing the likelihood of that vulnerable high school students will become suicidal, which.

00:13:00 Sandi Vidal

Is really.

00:13:00 Sandi Vidal

We take for granted that students you know are in school.

00:13:07 Sandi Vidal

They're adjusting to.

00:13:08 Sandi Vidal

They're adjusting to their environment.

00:13:11 Sandi Vidal

But the reality is we do have students that sometimes unfortunately ideate to suicide and so.

00:13:20 Sandi Vidal

Being able to identify those things early on, having somebody to talk to, to talk through things with, to understand I think is really important.

00:13:31 Sandi Vidal

And so it's really focused on carrying positive.

00:13:35 Sandi Vidal

Diverse mentors who are serving as adult advisors and then that peer support system as well.

00:13:43 Laurie Crocker

I was recently visiting my old high school and.

00:13:48 Laurie Crocker

Screens are.

00:13:50 Laurie Crocker

You know, a lot of people blame phone time, but even when you're in school now, you're on a screen, you're on a laptop, you're looking at a smart board or a laptop or your phone.

00:13:59 Laurie Crocker

And so I think that it's it's really easy to say that, oh, kids just need to get off their phones.

00:14:06 Laurie Crocker

It's not that easy.

00:14:08 Laurie Crocker

It's required for so much of life and and even now when when I'm working I'm I'm. You know we we are attached to our phones. But a lot of it is work related.

00:14:17 Laurie Crocker

Corresponding, we're talking to people, so it's not as simple as simple as just getting rid of the screens.

00:14:21 Laurie Crocker

So it's nice to see programs that are human based.

00:14:26 Laurie Crocker

Which is.

00:14:27 Laurie Crocker

And then the.

00:14:29 Laurie Crocker

So can you talk a little bit about the partnership with Boys and Girls Clubs because they already have some locations with this program?

00:14:37 Sandi Vidal

They.

00:14:37 Sandi Vidal

And this will expand to an additional 1200 students.

00:14:43 Sandi Vidal

Hopefully through this program and.

00:14:48 Sandi Vidal

So you know, again you have something that is working and we're trying to expand that to more locations and that way hopefully affect more people. And you know we this isn't the first grant that we've done in mental health.

00:15:05 Sandi Vidal

We've done quite a few, one, several years ago that.

00:15:09 Sandi Vidal

Actually has been ongoing is with the Mental health association called.

00:15:15 Sandi Vidal

That you are a lifeguard program and that really focuses on that suicide prevention as well. And you can get that from their website. But there's really a focus on identifying that somebody may be going through a crisis or a problem. And I'll tell you, you know, middle school.

00:15:17 Laurie Crocker

Mm.

00:15:34 Sandi Vidal

Tough.

00:15:35 Sandi Vidal

It's it's been a long time since I've been in middle school. Even that my kids have been in middle.

00:15:41 Sandi Vidal

But I remember it very clearly because it is such a tough transitional time and then, you know, referencing those screens when you're thinking about social media.

00:15:52 Sandi Vidal

And other things, you know, we always had in in my day, you know, magazines and TV and all the things to show you what the perfect you should look like and so.

00:16:04 Laurie Crocker

Yeah.

00:16:05 Sandi Vidal

Really having to measure yourself up against these very unrealistic and we know now airbrush and other things.

00:16:12 Laurie Crocker

Yeah.

00:16:15 Sandi Vidal

Models. It's not something that's sustainable for you as a person.

00:16:21 Sandi Vidal

So helping kids to be able to get through those times of crisis and really understand that they don't have to live up to this unrealistic expectation.

00:16:31 Laurie Crocker

Think some adults need that message too.

00:16:33 Laurie Crocker

Like it's just we're all on social media some more or less than others, but it's so true.

00:16:39 Laurie Crocker

And the you are a lifeguard.

00:16:41 Laurie Crocker

We actually had Marni Stahlman on for a mental health episode about a year ago now.

00:16:47 Laurie Crocker

Where she talks about that program. So if you wanted to listen to, I think it's episode 3, I could be wrong, but check it out.

00:16:54 Laurie Crocker

About mental health and we we talk about that program.

00:16:58 Laurie Crocker

So this is an example of scaling because it's a program that is present in our community.

00:17:03 Laurie Crocker

There is research that shows.

00:17:05 Laurie Crocker

It has positive effect on our community and so 100 Women Strong decided.

00:17:12 Laurie Crocker

Their grant their 2025.

00:17:15 Laurie Crocker

This would be considered can push this along more because people need it and it's proven. And as Sandy already shared it, this will expand it to about 1200 more kids, which is amazing.

00:17:28 Sandi Vidal

I think what?

00:17:29 Sandi Vidal

What's great too with Nemours is you're working with doctors.

00:17:33 Sandi Vidal

Know you're working with doctors and healthcare professionals.

00:17:37 Sandi Vidal

And they are able to take.

00:17:41 Sandi Vidal

Their experience, their knowledge, their brilliance over to this program and to really be able to make sure that the both the peer led group and the adults are.

00:17:56 Sandi Vidal

Very well trained, which I think is important.

00:17:58 Laurie Crocker

Yeah. Which brings me to a question when we think about Nemours or any of the large hospitals anywhere doesn't have to be in Orlando, but any of the large hospitals.

00:18:09 Laurie Crocker

We don't typically associate large hospitals with needing.

00:18:14 Laurie Crocker

Charitable gifts, right?

00:18:16 Laurie Crocker

So how does that fit?

00:18:17 Laurie Crocker

How is that kind of thought about in this process?

00:18:20 Sandi Vidal

Well, I think it's important to look at the structure of how the hospital works. And so with Nemours, they do have an endowment that helps with their operations and obviously health insurance, Medicaid, all of that.

00:18:34 Sandi Vidal

But when they're looking at doing community based projects or.

00:18:40 Sandi Vidal

Research in a lot of different.

00:18:42 Sandi Vidal

It does require outside funding and so for this they do have a matching grant.

00:18:48 Sandi Vidal

It's a portion of the overall grant, but that'll be coming from the Ginsburg Institute over at Nemours, but.

00:18:57 Sandi Vidal

To do community projects, they need to have that outside funding.

00:19:00 Laurie Crocker

Yeah. And you know, we're working on an episode and I'm really excited about it. We just haven't.

00:19:04 Laurie Crocker

I have to put a few more pieces together to make it happen but.

00:19:08 Laurie Crocker

The social determinants of health and we won't go into it right now because we are working on an episode of it, but it's it. It reminds me of the concept that, you know, hospitals or hospitals, they're there when you are injured or sick or need some sort of.

00:19:22 Laurie Crocker

Physical help medically in some way, right?

00:19:26 Laurie Crocker

But hospitals also have kind of reached their fingers out because other things affect people's health and obviously, mental health is a part of that.

00:19:35 Laurie Crocker

So they also, I think have and I don't mean they as in one particular hospital. I think all the hospitals are thinking well.

00:19:43 Laurie Crocker

how to the community that could help.

00:19:45 Laurie Crocker

You know, prevent some of the stuff that we're seeing inside of.

00:19:47 Sandi Vidal

Our hospitals, most hospitals have some sort of community benefit or give back to the community if they're nonprofit hospital.

00:19:56 Sandi Vidal

Not all hospitals are, but three of our area hospitals are and so.

00:20:01 Sandi Vidal

They're engaged and involved in the community and I can tell you I see folks from those hospitals at a lot of the different community meetings and convenings that I'm.

00:20:11 Sandi Vidal

And they really are very concerned and passionate about our community. And so it's really great to work with them.

00:20:20 Laurie Crocker

So yeah, so we'll be able to on the note of 100 Women Strong just before we wrap up here.

00:20:26 Laurie Crocker

This grant is going to have a grant celebration coming up, and then even further down the line we will have our Elevate Summit.

00:20:35 Laurie Crocker

Will be happening in the spring time, so lots of things to watch out for with 100 Women Strong.

00:20:41 Laurie Crocker

And that we're all we're really excited.

00:20:44 Laurie Crocker

Excited to follow this.

00:20:45 Laurie Crocker

We followed this past year's grant, the 2024 grant, to Women on the Rise, and that we need to share more about that too, because we haven't, and it's just been a great outcome and they're going to continue on with another cohort in the in the.

00:21:00 Laurie Crocker

Spring so.

00:21:01 Laurie Crocker

Yeah, we'll share more about that if people are interested in hearing about it.

00:21:04 Sandi Vidal

That sounds great.

00:21:05 Sandi Vidal

And you know what's really lovely is that this is a group of volunteers and.

00:21:11 Sandi Vidal

Not only are they volunteers who are really engaged in.

00:21:16 Sandi Vidal

Wonderful things in the community.

00:21:18 Sandi Vidal

They donate their money and it's $1100 a year that they donate and those dollars are pulled together to make the grants that you're talking about with Nemours and with Women on the Rise. And and we've done.

00:21:21

Mm.

00:21:33 Sandi Vidal

A variety of grants over the years, and it's really amazing to watch how passionate these women.

00:21:40 Sandi Vidal

About the community, but also how interested they are in digging down into the data and really understanding what is the problem. Developing a problem statement and then looking for solutions to that problem and investing in them.

00:21:56 Laurie Crocker

100% and you can actually go on to their website, put in the show notes, but it's cffound.org/100womenstrong.

00:22:04 Laurie Crocker

There's a link that you can see all their past grants.

00:22:07 Laurie Crocker

Excited to see this grant come to life and we'll be sure to continue sharing about that, but just to reiterate, that was an example of scaling from our larger grant strategy of piloting, scaling, accelerating and filling gaps.

00:22:22 Laurie Crocker

Tell your friends that that's the new acronym to know.

00:22:24 Laurie Crocker

OK, if you have children who keep talking to you in a language that you don't know anymore, it's OK.

00:22:30 Laurie Crocker

Going to come back at them with psaf.

00:22:33 Laurie Crocker

They won't know a thing about it, but that's OK.

00:22:35 Laurie Crocker

It's ours.

00:22:36 Laurie Crocker

Now we're going to use this acronym and it's going to be great and I still have to get my CFF team fully on board, but that's okay. We're going to love this acronym.

00:22:45 Laurie Crocker

Okay, thank.

00:22:46 Laurie Crocker

For being here.

00:22:49 Mark Brewer

Thank you for listening to the.

00:22:51 Mark Brewer

First You Talk, as an engaged listener of this show, we encourage you to check out our podcast website at cffound.org/podcast to learn more about the complex issue.

00:23:06 Mark Brewer

There you'll find more context to the voices that you've heard today, links to any supporting materials mentioned during the episode and resources to help you explore additional perspectives to draw a fuller picture of the issue at hand, through curiosity and collaboration.

00:23:22 Mark Brewer

We can all make our community an even better place to call home.