If you have been following our journey at Seasons, you will know it has been one wild ride! We are now, as of January 2023, reopened as a nonprofit center in our community. We have even welcomed our first baby to the new Seasons Community Birth Center family. For those of us involved, it has been a true whirlwind. We have gone from a staff of 15 “permanent” people plus many more “prn” folks to a total of 4! The four of us are wearing ALL the hats, doing ALL the jobs and are making it work. As back ground, in late September of 2022, we were informed by our corporate ownership that we would be closed in 30 days. You can read more about this here. It was traumatic and tragic, AND we are creating something even better from the ashes.
Today, 1/22/23, we had our first official Strategic Planning meeting for the new center and to dream the new nonprofit birth center ecosystem for the entire state of Colorado, cause you better believe that we are not stopping here!
I have lots of folks asking me about how a nonprofit works and what it looks like. I adore this description, found on the National Council of Nonprofits website:
“They provide a way for people to work together for the common good, transforming shared beliefs and hopes into action. They give shape to our boldest dreams, highest ideals, and noblest causes. America’s 1.3 million charitable nonprofits feed, heal, shelter, educate, inspire, enlighten, and nurture people of every age, gender, race, and socioeconomic status, from coast to coast, border to border, and beyond. They foster civic engagement and leadership, drive economic growth, and strengthen the fabric of our communities. Every single day.“-National Council of Nonprofits
As a nonprofit, we will still bring in revenue from the services we provide by accepting Medicaid, getting contracts with private health insurance companies and accepting self pay clients. We do still need to sustain ourselves, we must pay our bills and our staff of course. However, any profit that we do make cannot go to any direct individual but rather will be invested back into the center. We will also have more flexibility to offer services through grant funding and autonomy in deciding the type of services we provide.
Today’s planning meeting was attended by powerful and passionate folks from many groups and interests. There are many more people who have been involved and will continue to be involved who were unable to be present. And we will be bringing in more people soon. The future is bright and we have massive plans for our state birth equity ecosystem…we are only just beginning!
Special thanks to Elephant Circle for being our visionaries, support and backbone.
To Color Latina, Soul2Soul Sisters, Birth Center Equity and other dedicated individuals for supporting and empowering us as well.
