We recently connected with Julie Reiskin and have shared our conversation below.

Julie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear you experience with and lessons learned from recruiting and team building.

We did have some employees but most of us were volunteers until about 2015 and we transitioned to being paid staff. Almost all our staff have disabilities.  Until 2015 we could not work and earn money without risking losing our Medicaid.  Medicaid is how we get services that enable us to work such as personal care, wheelchairs, medications, etc. No private insurance serves people with disabilities. So, we had to get the law changed to make it so we could earn money and pay into Medicaid. This is called the Medicaid Buy-In Program for Working Adults with Disabilities. Most of our staff still come from our volunteer base, but sometimes we hire the traditional way. We do not have any unnecessary qualifications such as degree requirements unless it is necessary (e.g., our lawyers have to have a law degree). Moving from a volunteer staff to a paid staff was challenging, both in terms of having to raise a lot more money while maintaining the same programming and having to change expectations. However, our staff are incredibly dedicated because they are members of the community, and we are all affected by the issues we address in our work. We probably need to do more training than we do for new people because our organization and work is complex. We have a very low turnover rate. I have been at CCDC a long time but am not the founder.  One mistake I have made (and still make) is agreeing to do too much because the needs are so dire.  We want to say yes we will engage in different fights but we have to have the money to hire staff to do the work properly.

Julie, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I think I was born to do social justice work. I got into disability work specifically through health care advocacy. becoming disabled as a young adult I saw how horrible our health care system is for people who have more significant needs and how it forces people into poverty. I decided I was going to dedicate myself to this until we could earn money. We can now earn money in Colorado but there is a lot of work to do before we are close to having an equitable opportunity. I am very proud of our organization and team. We are hardworking and get a lot done. We focus on changing systems using several strategies. We hear from individuals about the problems then we design a campaign or figure out how to address the problem. We do both proactive and reactive work. We lobby, engage in grassroots organizing, provide individual advocacy, and litigate if necessary. We are statewide and our organization is made up of and represents people with all types of disabilities. This includes visible and hidden disabilities including mental health and cognitive disabilities. We are led by people with disabilities. Our motto is Nothing About Us Without Us EVER. Our mission is to advocate for social justice for people with all types of disabilities. Our vision is that people with disabilities are fully participating and leading in Colorado policymaking.

Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?

In 2009 we were in a financial crisis. We had not paid rent in months, were $200,000 in debt, and while we never missed a payroll, we had many close calls and had to borrow money from a board member. Our payroll was small in those days but those were scary times. The worst day was when our copy machine was repossessed. We met with a bankruptcy lawyer; we discussed shutting down. Then the Colorado Health Foundation out of the blue sent us a letter saying they would give us $5,000 for an Executive Coach. I had never heard of an Executive Coach but was on a committee with someone who I thought might know and I asked her.  She said that she did that work. I hired her as my Executive Coach.  She worked with me along with my board and key staff. We had to make many changes and “grow up” as an organization. We had to put structures in place, recruit new board members and create a sustainability plan. It took us time, but we dug out and are in a much better financial position today. We now have more than 25 paid staff. We still do not have many benefits, and some of our staff are still below market, but we are much, much more stable. I was so focused on the issues we work on that I did not pay attention to the infrastructure needs or finance and was saying yes to everything without thinking about how each project would be funded.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

The best source of new clients is word of mouth. We also get calls when we are in the press for any reason and people see there is a disability organization available and call us.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ccdconline.org
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CCDC.CO
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/juliereiskin
• Twitter: @CCDC501c3 @JulieReiskin
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6WhyWFSLUzYW8MXAB_1GZg