One of the greatest attributes of the Community Alliance of Sarasota County is that it serves as the collective voice of Sarasota County's network for human and social services.
Beyond regular meetings, the Community Alliance convenes twice a year to collectively decide on its legislative priorities for the next Florida Legislative Session. The Legislative Summit includes break-out sessions for nine categories of social service systems in the community, where attendees decide on their top two priorities in each category. A month later at the Legislative Breakfast, all 18 priorities are given two minutes to be pitched or outlined to local District State Representatives.
At this year's Breakfast on October 29, 2019, four district representatives attended:
In our role as Administrator for the Community Alliance of Sarasota County, and in her role as the Second Vice Chair of the Alliance, Charlene Altenhain (COO, Glasser/Schoenbaum) helps to organize both meetings, ensuring a cohesive process as our community comes together to speak with one voice.
The outcome of the meeting - the Alliance's legislative priorities for 2020 - are listed below. A comprehensive, printed version of the priorities, called the "Blue Book" for the color of it's enclosing binder, is given to all attendees, including Legislators.
They priorities are listed below in order of the nine social service categories they represent.
Real estate is one of the greatest costs in a business budget. Our partnership with The Glasser/Schoenbaum Human Services Center allows more money to go towards our mission. And what better place to house our office than on a campus with nineteen other outreach agencies.
Collaboration is key to the success of our work. The Campus of Caring is a unique space where we can easily join forces with other agencies to make the best use of our resources and maximize our community impact. The affordable rent allows us to allocate more funds to our mission of transforming the lives of students and their families.
As a small organization with a staff of two, employee safety was a big consideration when we were looking for office space. We did not want our employees to be in a place where they were alone. Being on the GSHSC campus has been great because there is a whole community of like-minded professionals.
