In July, Emily Treadaway was named the first director of the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith’s Center for Nonprofits (CNP). At the time of this writing, mere days into the job, it was too early for Emily to feel properly at home; she seemed more like an excited buyer who’s just gotten the keys to the best house in town.
“It’s a dream come true, for sure,” Emily said, and none of it would have been possible without the anonymous donor who gave $7.5 million to UAFS. With that money, the university set up the CNP, with plans to further the work of charities, starting with a boots-on-the-ground analysis of exactly what’s needed.
“One of my first goals is to go around to the nonprofits, and listen to them,” Emily said. “What do they need? What are they struggling with? I want them to know that this will be a help to them.”
The first time Emily heard about the center was at a meeting of the River Valley Nonprofits. Blake Rickman, the UAFS vice chancellor for university advancement and executive director of the school’s foundation, was describing the mission of the CNP.
“I literally heard a voice in my head that said, ‘You need to apply for this.’ As a Christian, I took it as God’s voice,” Emily said. “As soon as I heard about the position, I started formulating what the CNP could be… After my first interview in April, I started putting together a presentation, even though at the time I didn’t know if there would be a second interview.”
She did have a follow-up meeting, which lasted all day. Emily gave her presentation to a group of area leaders in the charity sector. She’s been in the nonprofit world for years, so many in the audience were familiar faces. “Luckily, I knew most of them. A lot of them were my girlfriends, so that was fun.”
With more than 1,000 nonprofits in Sebastian and Crawford Counties, the need for this program is vast. While some of the nonprofits are comfortably staffed and have many volunteers, the majority work with lean staff and even leaner budgets.
“Nonprofits deal with so many things: resources, fundraising, volunteers. Many smaller nonprofits lack sufficient resources, making it nearly impossible to spend six months preparing for a fundraiser. They’re already serving their clients, doing the work, and for them to pause to plan a big event is nearly impossible.
“They don’t have time to do a five-year strategic plan… They’re just trying to get from one crisis to the next. I hope the center will help them breathe a little easier. That they’ll have the time to formulate a plan, set goals, and do the things that genuinely make a nonprofit sustainable.
“I think we have a lot of people in this community who want to volunteer, although there might be a barrier. They reach out, not really knowing what they want to do, and the organization might not have a system in place to easily plug people in, so it takes a long time to get started. Again, that’s a lot for a small-staffed nonprofit to deal with.”
To that end, the CNP will offer assistance to nonprofits through support such as training and education, workshops, peer-to-peer group meetings, and networking events. “I want to raise awareness within the business community about what we’re doing,” Emily said. “Get the two groups familiar with each other.”
Additionally, CNP will coordinate with UAFS students studying social work, providing a stipend for them to work in certain nonprofits. The partnership will enable the nonprofits to provide services while offering students real-world experience in their field. And finally, the CNP will gather and collate local data and statistics to prioritize the community’s greatest needs.
Emily is herself a graduate of UAFS. She studied marketing, and might never have ended up where she is, if it weren’t for her college internship at Bost, Inc., a longtime Fort Smith not-for-profit that provides services for Arkansans with developmental and intellectual challenges.
“Before Bost, I hadn’t even considered that you could get a job at a nonprofit. That opened my eyes: you could have a job and help people… The person I was assigned to was planning a fundraiser, networking with the community, and working with her advisory board.
“It was also the idea that this group of women [on the board] were volunteering who had nothing to gain personally, but were showing up every month to help her plan this event, that they would make that kind of commitment, I found that really inspiring.”
Later, Emily joined the Junior League of Fort Smith. One of their missions, in conjunction with the Arkansas Department of Human Services, was to help teens living at the Girls Shelter learn life skills they’d need once they were on their own, such as cooking healthy meals, budgeting, and even changing the engine oil in a car.
That was just the beginning of Emily’s civic engagement. One day at Grace Community Church in Fort Smith, she and her husband, Chad, signed up to take training from The Call. The Call is an organization that works with churches to recruit, train, and support foster parents. Halfway through their classes, three of the Treadaways’ young relatives were placed in foster care, and they stepped in. The children stayed with them for as long as they needed.
They fostered other children after that, and Emily volunteered at The Call in Crawford and Sebastian Counties. In 2017, she became the county coordinator. “When I started, there were over 800 kids in foster care in our two counties. We were always number one or number two in the state of Arkansas. People in this area came together: business partners, nonprofits. That number was cut in half before I left, and that’s due to the collaboration we had.”
Emily is proud of the response she saw, and said the effects ripple out. “Strong families are the foundation of our community. Without them, we lose vital contributors to our economy, and kids miss out on the education they need to lead the next generation.
“Because our family fostered, our son, especially, developed empathy for others. He’ll complain about someone at school being mean. But then he’ll say, ‘I don’t know what they struggle with. They could have something going on at home.’”
While Emily and her family have helped the community, she has also been bolstered by it. “I’ve learned over the last several years that it’s all about relationships. Whether that’s personal with your family, or in the workplace, or networking. Whatever the relationship, that’s the key. That provides social mobility.
“My parents were both [Northside] Grizzlies, and I graduated from Alma High School. My dad didn’t graduate high school; he was a mechanic. My mom cleaned houses when I was a kid. We were a blue-collar family.
“So how did I get to this position? It was social mobility. It was getting to know people who knew people I could grow from. I see the trajectory of my family being on a different path because of that.
“I think everyone wants that for their kids, so we want every family to have the opportunity to move upward economically and socially and live the best life they can, and for their children to continue that momentum.”
As Emily begins her work with the CNP, she hopes to find solutions to the everyday problems nonprofits face. She also encourages everyone to get involved in a charity you care about, from dog-walking for shelters, volunteering with at-risk youth, or bringing joy to our elder neighbors. Because who among us hasn’t needed a helping hand at some point? Who among us is without a reason to give back?
