So, at the beginning of the year, we asked our Fellows to blog as a reflection on their year of service. Much like my own blogging, many of them have stopped, mostly due to other time constraints (almost all of it work related). But thinking about our original intentions for our Fellows' blogs and rather than this blog being a running commentary on eating bacon at 4am (It was Trader Joe's O's today, by the way), I figured I should actually offer insight into what the operations side of the nonprofit world (the tiny bit that I know, anyway) looks like.

On Monday, I'm sitting in the office, trying to catch up everything that fell to the wayside while we worked on our AmeriCorps grant. Midway through an email conversation with our site director, said site director says "oh, the Fellows' subway passes expired yesterday. They want to know if they're getting reimbursed?"

"That's funny," I say to myself, "I made a calendar of when the subway passes should be distributed (*insert me opening calendar while I say this*) but they shouldn't be distributed until...(*actual words removed due to the mixed company-ness of readership*)". Due to the 30-day duration of these passes, plus 31-day months, plus not having been to our partner school due to said grant and shortened pre-Thanksgiving weeks, I've apparently forgotten to deliver next month's subway passes. Oops.

So I rush out of the office (without a coat, since I biked to work, but that's ok, it's warm when you're not walking in the shadows) and ride the subway an hour up to Washington Heights (thankfully it's express and skips all of the Central Park stops), drop off the subway passes to minimal scolding by the Fellows ("I was CURSING Blue Engine!" one says jokingly. I change the subject and walk away), poke a few of them until they turn in their timesheets, then jump on the subway back to the office to I cram in another hour of work before biking home.

So that's your small (tongue-in-cheek) insight into what I know of nonprofit logistics (disclaimer: not much): you pay lots of attention to detail and, even when you have systems, you have to double/triple/quadruple check them or they go awry and people get stranded in subway stations. :) Still wouldn't trade it for anything else in the world, though.