Board Feature: Margaret Brueck

After a successful Women's Luncheon, I had the opportunity to chat with board member and event chair, Margaret Brueck. A JOURNEYS powerhouse, Margaret provides business savvy and compassion for her community to help drive JOURNEYS' mission forward. Take a look at what she had to say in this month's feature!

"I’ve been with JOURNEYS since 2016, and so much has happened since that time. When I was asked to come on as a board member, I was so excited to be able to give back to the community in such a valuable way. Being involved with the board makes you so much more aware of the extent of the impact this kind of work can have. My experience as an event chair for JOURNEYS’ Women’s Luncheon has been particularly eye-opening about just how many people in the community can show up and support the mission.  

Events are so important to JOURNEYS’ success and longevity. They enable our organization to grow in the hearts and minds of our community while providing the critical funds our staff needs to execute our mission every day. Ultimately JOURNEYS events are just another way for us to serve our clients, and not just because they’re excellent fundraisers. They’re also an opportunity for us to grow within our community.

JOURNEYS has so much potential right now, especially with the new building. It makes us well positioned to affect systemic change. There are so many possibilities, not only to help more people, but also to represent a beacon in our community. We're excited to be able to help build up our accreditations to allow us to do more work and bring more people into the organization. We’ll also be able to be right alongside our PADS site faith communities with the on-site shelter we can now provide. We’ll be able to do what we already do but better, more effectively, for more people.

The board is really starting to think about how we can better organize ourselves to help JOURNEYS grow as we move into our next chapter. That involves more specialized work, creating committees that will allow us to drill down into JOURNEYS’ specific needs and to see how we can optimize the resources we already have to do more for us.  

If you think about it, the goal of JOURNEYS isn’t really necessarily to grow and to help more people experiencing homelessness and those at risk. The goal is to end homelessness, to make our organization obsolete. But to do that, we grow. We help more people. There’s so much before us, and I’m excited to move forward with the team."

Transcribed and arranged by Roxanne Gentry, Marketing Associate

---