Laura Seyfried retiring from CRC
Seyfried gives a tour of the CRC food pantry when it was located in the Ackerson Building to a Daisy Girl Scout troop.
by Sara Swanson
Laura Seyfried. Photo courtesy of Tamara Denby.
Laura Seyfried is retiring after 12 years as executive director of the Community Resource Center.
“Self-diagnosed” as a connector, recognizing needs, people, strengths, who can help, and how to use that for the greater good, comes naturally to her. She put that strength to use not only for individual clients, but for the whole community as well, acting as bridge between local organizations and between county-wide and state-wide agencies and the community.
As a non-Manchester resident (she commutes from Chelsea), Seyfried was surprised when she got hired. She found out shortly after being hired that she had been up against active community members. Although this could have resulted in resentment, she found the opposite — that everyone was welcoming and ready to chip in. “People were appreciative and willing to help!”
The CRC is now located in the Riverside Intermediate building, but when Seyfried was hired it was located in the Nellie Ackerson Building on City Road in two rooms across the hall from the Co-op Preschool. And it was quite different from the setup they have today. The room that served as the office was full of stuff including dead plants, old books, a sofa, a microwave, and a coffee pot (although the room did not have water), with minimal office equipment and furnishings. It did have desktop computers, but they were dated and running on open-source operating systems that weren’t compatible with software used by other agencies. Seyfried remembers that when she started in May there was still a handwritten note on the office door dated in February that said “Called away for family emergency.”
The food pantry room was half-filled with a computer lab for Michigan Works volunteers and clients. The food selection was limited to canned/boxed foods on a couple of shelves and a small refrigerator/freezer. Built-in wall cupboards held odds and ends. Everything in stock was donated by community members, which resulted in random offerings at any time. Clients called for groceries and volunteers helped bag them up once the customers arrived.
The Ackerson Building was owned by Manchester Community Schools (MCS) and housed the district’s administrative offices and early childhood education programs, in addition to the CRC and Co-op Preschool. But it was old, needed constant maintenance, and because of shrinking student populations was no longer necessary. Over the summer of 2018, the district relocated all of the building residents, including the CRC, to different school buildings. In summer of 2021 the school district sold the empty Ackerson Building to Caife Aspire Inc., which has reopened it as a home base for the robotics program and student entrepreneurial programs, and is renting space to different community groups, including the Manchester Area Senior Citizens Council Inc. for a senior center.
The old building had all sorts of excitement like old plumbing, loud boiler noises, and, occasionally, bats. But one of Seyfried’s most notable memories of her time in the Ackerson Building was in her first year there. On March 15, 2012, she was working at the CRC table at the MCS Preschool Extravaganza in the gym. This was a large event where organizations that help families with young children came out from all over the county to give information to local families. The first indication she got that something was wrong was when all of the Sheriff’s deputies who were doing car-seat checks got a call and left in a hurry. Shortly after, they found out there was a tornado warning and that an EF-3 tornado had torn through a Dexter subdivision. Many families who lived in the village chose to go home, but everyone who lived outside of the village sheltered in place in the windowless hallway well into the evening.
Some of the first changes Seyfried made were to increase the amount of food the CRC was able to give away, and to increase and make regular the hours the CRC was open. She found that making these changes increased the number of clients that came to the CRC for help. In addition, helping more clients and professionalizing how the CRC operated helped build trust in the community and increased donations the CRC received.
Building trust also came through building connections. She built relationships with partner agencies like Manchester Family Service, Faith in Action, Aid in Milan, and Saline Area Social Services, learning about valuable resources from their longtime directors and sharing stories that were only understood by others working in rural Washtenaw County. She built relationships with outside funding agencies like Chelsea Hospital, United Way of Washtenaw County, Washtenaw County Community Economic Development, Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation, and Area Agency on Aging 1-B to bring more program and operating dollars to the CRC and Manchester. She built relationships with local church groups, civic/nonprofit groups, community members, business owners, and school staff, which brought countless opportunities to the CRC — including volunteers, event partners, and business ventures.
Like partnering with Food Gatherers to greatly expand what the food pantry was able to offer, under Seyfried’s directorship, the CRC partnered with VITA (tax services), MiBridges, Catholic Social Services, MIWorks, and WIC (Women Infants and Children) to bring these services to Manchester residents more efficiently.
But working with agencies and organizations outside of Manchester was where she encountered the persistent challenge of explaining where in Washtenaw Manchester is located, and sometimes that it is indeed located in Washtenaw and not in Jackson County. And then, even when they knew where Manchester is located, they didn’t always understand what it means to be rural. Seyfried states that in every meeting that consisted of mostly or all Ann Arbor and Ypsi residents, she would have to interject and explain at least once the lack of public transportation, low-income housing, senior housing, reliable/affordable internet, and/or cell phone service in rural areas. For example, Manchester now hosts VITA right here in the Village, where seniors and low-income residents can bring in their taxes and have them done for free. There are county-wide VITA services that take place in Ann Arbor. Seyfried had to argue that, no, Manchester residents aren’t going to go all the way across the county to get their taxes done for free “even if they get free bus tokens!”
Seyfried lists earning the trust of the CRC board members, the volunteers, and the community at large as one of the accomplishments she is most proud of. Likewise, earning the trust of funders and teaching herself how to write successful grants are achievements she prizes. Her skill in grant writing was very evident as the CRC was recently awarded four large grants, including two very large ones from the county, which will take some of the fundraising pressure off of Carol Wotring, Seyfried’s replacement, in her first couple of years. Part of the successful grant writing and fundraising was learning to tell the CRC’s story in a compelling way.
Telling the CRC’s story can be challenging as its focus has changed multiple times over its 35 years of operation. It started when Manchester’s largest employer at the time, Double A Products, closed down, leaving many residents unemployed. It started as an office for a state unemployment office representative to see clients and a small food pantry. After the unemployment crisis waned, the CRC became an umbrella agency for other newly forming local committees and organizations, including a recreation task force, Riverfolk Music and Arts Organization, and the original Worth Repeating store. Nowadays it is a central location for all services that support a diverse population of people with varying levels of income who are in need. Throughout its history one thing hasn’t changed, and that is that the CRC is always striving to meet the current needs of the community.
In fact, Seyfried has seen the needs of the community shift just in the time she’s been here. When she started at the CRC, one of the biggest problems clients had was losing their benefits. Once the CRC began acting as navigators for MiBridges for clients, they averted problems preemptively. The needs she sees now that are more pressing than when she started? Services for older adults and the housing situation. More seniors are choosing to age in place than even 10 years ago, and fewer resources (like a local pharmacy) exist than 10 years ago. Many services seniors need the CRC can’t provide directly and they have to refer seniors to outside organizations. On top of that, finding affordable housing, especially houses for rent, has become much more difficult for residents of all ages.
Serving as an umbrella organization for local nonprofits may not be how the CRC operates anymore, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still working as a connector between local organizations! Another accomplishment Seyfried is happy with is establishing the Nonprofit Roundtable with Anita Herman (which is currently on hold but hopefully will be resurrected soon). Beginning in 2014 and running up until COVID, the CRC organized and hosted roundtable meetings for all of the nonprofit and civic organizations in Manchester to meet and talk about their needs and current plans. Seyfried explained that even though the community is small, we had so many groups doing so many things that they didn’t always know what the other groups were doing. She gave the example that when the Civic Club dissolved and the Lions Club took over the Christmas Shop for children in low-income families, they were in need of donated toys; meanwhile Manchester’s Toys for Tots had an excess of donated toys — but neither knew about the other’s situation. On top of giving local groups a platform to communicate with each other, the CRC would bring in outside groups to present, like when it brought in the County’s emergency manager who talked about what Manchester can do to be prepared for an emergency.
No amount of emergency preparedness could have gotten the community ready for what was coming in 2020, though, and keeping the CRC running through the pandemic was a huge accomplishment. Seyfried stated, “Just like everyone else, we had to shift quickly to continue our services with limited personal contact.” Seyfried communicated with Food Gatherers and other area food pantries to discuss how to keep things running. With Seyfried and two volunteers, MaryAnn Sahakian and Joy Mathews, working in person, and an administrative assistant, Lesley Dearhammer, working from home, they shifted to a phone-order/pick-up system and were able to continue to provide essential services during the pandemic. On top of that, they became the “go to” site in the community for PPE, test kits, vaccine appointment assistance, and clinics. Seyfried noted that the pandemic allowed the CRC to help residents who never would have needed their help under other circumstances. They worked with the county to distribute PPE and supplies while they were still scarce and worked with the Chelsea Hospital to schedule Manchester residents for their first round of vaccines at a time when it was still hard for the general public to get vaccines. Dearhammer called residents and personally scheduled hundreds of vaccine appointments. On more than one occasion, upon finding out there was an appointment for them to get the COVID vaccine, they cried. As the vaccine became more widely available, they worked with the County Health Department and Michigan Medicine to bring both COVID and flu mobile-vaccine clinics to the community.
Seyfried’s hopes for the future of the CRC include expanded space, programming, and service hours. She is also hoping for a return of in-person/onsite resource partnerships that ended with COVID and haven’t restarted, like hosting a mental health professional for in-person counseling, tax preparation, social hours, employment assistance, benefit application assistance, and financial empowerment workshops. And as it is always adapting to fit the needs of the community, she hopes the CRC policies and procedures continue to be updated to help guide the success of future services and programs.
Seyfried has a lot of memories she will take with her. Some of her favorites include talking with a former client and hearing how the help of the CRC allowed them (and their family) to achieve important goals and move forward, hearing that someone referred to a counselor years ago is still checking in with them once in a while to boost their mental wellbeing, seeing the face of a tax client when they see the credits/refunds on the tax return and hearing how they will utilize the money to improve their situation or that of a loved one. Not all of them are memories with clients either! Seyfried will remember sharing stories about hobbies/interests with volunteers and staff (like jigsaw puzzles, hairstyles, gardening, and bees!); brainstorming with board members, fundraising committee members, staff, and volunteers to come up with the “best” of whatever they were working on; and meeting and working with peers from around the community, county, and state toward a better future for everyone. And lastly, she will remember fondly hosting CRC tours for Manchester elementary and intermediate school students and hearing how much they know about helping others in the community.
Seyfried has quite a few funny memories as well!
In summer of 2021, she was giving a presentation at Community Bible Church during their Mission Sunday, and as she was talking, a spider, at least 1/2” in diameter, lowered itself in front of her face. Hoping it wasn’t a sign from above, she finally had to stop the presentation and explain to the congregation what was happening, and then took the spider down and squished it.
Back before the Chicken Broil had drive-thru, they took large carry-out orders ahead of time, and as a remnant of its earlier iteration, the CRC took the phone orders. Likewise, if it looked like rain, the CRC would get phone calls asking if the Chicken Broil was still happening. Every year they got at least one call, but on cloudy Chicken Broil days, it would sometimes be dozens. They always answered by saying, “Let me look out the window … Yes, there is smoke coming up from the grills … so there must be chicken.”
Although funny now, this last one was more scary at the time. One afternoon during the summer, a disheveled-looking young man showed up at the office wearing a trenchcoat and a backpack. Seyfried and Dearhammer went into “defensive mode” and blocked the doorway so he couldn’t enter the room based on his demeanor. After several minutes of confusing conversation, it turned out he was working for the Census Bureau and was out recruiting workers for the 2020 Census!
Seyfried is retiring from the CRC but probably not fully retiring yet. Her husband, Marty, and she are building a home in northern Michigan near her family. They will be moving there later this spring to begin a new chapter in their lives. She said, “I will miss everyone I’ve met through the CRC and will certainly have many good memories to recall.”
Seyfried explained that she has bonded with so many different people working together on different projects. She stated, “Manchester is a very giving community. So many people have helped the CRC over the years that it is hard to imagine how we could have accomplished so much without their support. There are some very dedicated folks who give so much to the community through their involvement with specific groups, their churches, their businesses, and more.”
She is leaving the CRC in the good hands of the new director, Carol Wotring, and the same, fully committed CRC board. Seyfried states no big changes are coming and it should be a smooth transition with no noticeable differences.
Her last day will be Monday, March 27, if anyone wants to stop in to say goodbye.
In 2018, Seyfried was one of seven food pantry representatives from Michigan invited to fly to Washington, D.C., for a Farm Bill Fly-In to meet with U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow. Photo courtesy of Seyfried.
In 2015, Seyfried was one of seven recipients of the 2015 Beacon of Light Award given by the Food Bank Council of Michigan. Seyfried was nominated by Food Gatherers of Washtenaw County for her outstanding leadership in providing a choice pantry offering “dignified and reliable access to food for those in need.“
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