CRC names new director
L: Laura Seyfried and R: Carol Wotring. Photo by Marsha Chartrand
by Sara Swanson and Marsha Chartrand
It all started with cucumbers.
Last summer, Bridgewater Township resident Carol Wotring was taking a year’s leave from a stressful job in the mental health field. She discovered beekeeping and gardening, and it turned out she had an overabundance of cucumbers in her garden.
Trying to decide what to do with them, she Googled “food pantries in my area,“ and from that she learned about the Community Resource Center (CRC) in Manchester.
“It’s funny; I had lived in Bridgewater for 25 years, and I never heard of the CRC,“ she says. “But when I came in to donate my cucumbers I decided this would be a great place to volunteer, and I soon fell in love with the place. When I learned they were in the middle of a director search, I talked it over with my husband, Glenn, and I decided to apply for the position.“
Wotring was a little intimidated by the job description at first, but she says her husband — who by that time was also volunteering weekly at the CRC — was highly supportive and told her that after 25 years as a social worker, she would be using a lot of the same skill set.
Outgoing Director Laura Seyfried says that the CRC’s search committee had interviewed several candidates by that time, and they hadn’t yet found someone who seemed like the right fit for the position. “We really started to wonder, would the right person ever come along?“ she recalls. “And then, when we received Carol’s application, both Lesley (Dearhammer, administrative assistant at CRC) and I were thrilled! I called the members of the search committee right away and let them know that this was a candidate with great potential!“
The search committee agreed and so, with little further ado, Wotring went from being a beekeeper, gardener, and volunteer to the next Director of the Manchester Community Resource Center. (Her husband, by the way, remains a volunteer. His favorite reason for helping out at the CRC? “Everyone’s gotta eat.“) She’ll be keeping the beekeeper job on her horizon as she plans to split her currently single hive into two this spring. “It’s become a passion for me,” she says.
She’ll also be keeping in close touch with their son, Jesse, who lives in Ann Arbor after receiving his PhD in Medical Chemistry from the University of Michigan. So she’ll have plenty to keep herself occupied in the year to come!
The CRC started 35 years ago, when Double A Products shut down its Manchester operations at 715 E Duncan St. As Manchester’s largest employer at the time, Double A’s closure hit Manchester residents hard. A few relocated, but most workers were left unemployed. Dianne Schwab, who also began as a volunteer, put her organizational skills and persuasive powers to work and helped pull together resources that could help workers and their families through a difficult time. After all, she, too, was among those affected — her husband, Bill, was one Double A left behind. A representative from the state unemployment office was assigned days at the CRC office, a small food pantry was created, and other amenities were added as needs arose and services became available.
Over the next few years, even as the crucial needs of unemployed Double A workers waned, the CRC became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit under Schwab’s leadership, and she became a paid employee. The CRC even became an umbrella agency for other newly forming local committees and organizations. A Recreation Task Force that organized a variety of events in the community (including the Gazebo Concert series and early street festivals) even led to the beginnings of the Riverfolk Music and Arts Organization in the late 1990s. The original Worth Repeating store also started under the auspices of the Community Resource Center.
After Schwab’s retirement, several others served as Director of the CRC and each put their own signatures on the community with the work they achieved during their terms. But it was when Seyfried joined the CRC 12 years ago that things began really happening.
Seyfried realized from the beginning that it would be essential to reach out beyond just Manchester to create outside connections. “We really needed a change in mindset,“ she said. The CRC up to that point had relied almost completely on local fundraising; while the community is still a major contributor, she was able to bring in outside funding through grant writing. In fact, she is leaving the CRC in a very comfortable position as the CRC has recently received multiple large grants.
A large grant from Washtenaw County will provide $150,000 to be used for “safety net services,” which almost all of what the CRC does is classified as. This amount will actually cover the operating costs of the CRC for the next two years. While they will still fundraise as usual, this will take some of the pressure off Wotring in her first couple of years as the CRC won’t be completely reliant on fundraisers to operate.
Additionally they received a separate $40,000 New Human Service Partnership mini-grant from the county for safety net services. This grant came out of money the county had initially set aside to pay for broadband but was freed up when the county received ARP money specifically earmarked for broadband. The CRC also received a $7,200 grant through the United Way, funded by Consumers Energy, to be used to fund basic needs for community members who live in areas served by Consumers.
Lastly, they received a $25,000 United Way of Washtenaw County Opportunity Fund grant along with Saline Area Social Service, Faith in Action in Chelsea and Dexter, and Aid in Milan, which serve similar functions to the CRC in these nearby communities, to do Diversity, Equity & Inclusion training. This shared training will serve as a good opportunity for Wotring to get to know the other directors under any circumstances, but it is especially timely as all three other organizations also have new directors!
While Wotring doesn’t plan to make a lot of changes in her first year, there are exciting changes she will be executing that have been in the works for a while. One service the CRC offers is free tax help for senior citizens and low income residents. In the past they’ve always had to go to the CRC, but the CRC has received permission to go to Woodhill apartments this year and offer VITA services to the seniors there! They have just now begun offering grocery deliveries from the food pantry to Woodhill apartments using their twice-monthly access to a van they share with Aid in Milan. They are currently working on setting up a monthly pop-up food pantry at a location still to be determined in Sharon, Bridgewater, or Freedom Township — possibly at a township hall or church. Additionally, they will likely be expanding the current part-time administrative assistant position to a full-time position.
Wotring began working full time January 3, shadowing Seyfried, who will continue in her role through the end of March.
1-17-23 Editor’s note: This article was updated with more specifics about the grants
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