Hi! My name is Abby, and I am the woman behind the curtain at Buckhouse Community Consulting (S/O to Hayley Johnston, my website/media/business lady, for creating the curtain). So many people ask me WHY I started this business since I am a social worker. “Shouldn’t I be working in nonprofits?”

To be honest, when I started my social work education, I thought I would be doing this work in nonprofits. Then I actually got there, and thought, well this isn’t going so well for the communities I care about. See, to me, it looked like nonprofits were doing a bunch of work (that may or may not be working, but we will save that for another time), while corporations wrote the checks and got to go to fancy galas. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good gala, but how many galas have we had? And how many communities have been drastically changed? These two don’t add up to me.

For awhile, I was working in “my place” as a social worker, and I have a love-hate relationship with the work I did in that place. I’ve worked in politics, volunteered in the community, did typical social work, work. Then one day, I decided this wasn’t working for me, and I am in a position to make change. I thought about what I could do to ACTUALLY move communities forward. That’s where corporations came into play. I don’t think this change lies within one “sector.” I think it lies within us, as a whole.

Once I stopped dividing businesses up into boxes of what we do and how we make money, it all started making sense, the check writers can do more, and I can help them. Maybe people want to just keep writing checks and that’s great. I can help make sure those checks go into the hands that are actually making meaningful change in our communities. Maybe people want to start their own thing, that’s also great. I will help make sure that thing is a thing that actually produces change. The list goes on, and I have a degree in all of it. The fact of the matter is, we need money to be used wisely and we need to work together to ensure meaningful outcomes. Join me at Buckhouse Community Consulting and let’s get it done.