Emily Landry (00:00)
Hello everyone, welcome to Whitley Penn Talks where we give you valuable insights to help you make confident informed decisions and move your business forward. My name is Emily Landry, host of our WP CARES episode series and today we are joined by some special guests from our first highlighted Whitley Penn Philanthropic Fund recipients. For those who don’t know, the mission of our fund is to cultivate a legacy of generosity amongst Whitley Penn partners and employees for community impact.

We support local initiatives, empower underserved populations, and foster sustainable growth in our neighborhoods. Today I’m sitting down with Jake Smith, President, and Stephen O’Dell, Vice President of Neighbors Eden Project. Welcome guys.

Steven O’Dell (00:50)
Thank you.

Jake Smith (00:51)
Thanks for having us.

Emily Landry (00:53)
So Jake, I’m going to start with you. Would you tell us a little bit more about Neighbors Eden Project? How did you guys begin and how did you shape the Midland community?

Jake Smith (01:04)
Well, ⁓ we began kind of mid April and my wife and I have a little guilty pleasure of watching overgrown yard mowing videos on YouTube. And we thought, well, that would be fun to do one day because we have a pretty big property outside of Midland where we have about an acre. So we’ve got the riding lawn mower and weed eaters and edgers and blowers and stuff like that, a trailer and we thought, well, that will be fun to go do someday. And then I called her one day and I said, hey, it was like on a Wednesday. And I said, I’ve got the trailer loaded up with the lawn equipment after work. Let’s just go find an overgrown yard.

And we took our boys, one of them is now 18 and the other’s 13. And we thought, well, this will be an opportunity for them to be able to give, to see how the world is different from the way that they grow up and the way that they perceive reality versus somebody else. And so we did. just on a Wednesday, April of last year, we, after Maddie got off work, my wife, we just went and found a yard and mowed it. And then it kind of evolved from that to we were talking, we went to, my wife and I, used to go to this stretch therapy for back pain and stuff like that, which is where Steven’s fiance works. And she was asking us about it and she said, I want to go with you. So that’s how Stephen and his wife, Kate, kind of got involved. And that’s how our volunteer base started growing. Then ⁓ we ended up reaching out to a few different organizations in Midland. And they gave us a few yards that they’d recommended. And it’s kind of just evolved from that.

As far as how we’ve shaped Midland, I would say that we’re still a work in progress. We have big aspirations of how we want to shape Midland, but we’re not there yet.

Emily Landry (03:23)
That is so cool to start with a YouTube video and just a way relax watching these little videos and then think maybe this is something I should be doing on my own and then also to share that with your children. What a great, great start and fun way to get a nonprofit going.

So, I’ve got a couple of follow-up questions for you. So how would you typically identify who needs assistance?

Jake Smith (03:57)
So we have several different avenues, okay? Originally we wanted to target elderly or disabled people, you know, because we feel like they’re probably the most at need. And so we would try to identify the little bird pictures that they have in their windows. It’s, and that’s for their drivers to identify their houses as well. And then we ended up reaching out to an organization called senior life Midland who runs the meals on wheels ⁓ program here in Midland. And then we started getting reports back from their drivers, know, of people that might be in need of lawn care assistance. And then we reached out to a couple of other organizations. Adult Protective Services reached out to us once. Another organization, a nonprofit here in Midland called Casa de Amigos, which is kind of a general care, you know, for elderly people that need assistance for just kind of random things, I think they do things like if you need an air conditioner, a window unit or something like that, you know, kind of things of that nature, but nobody was really filling the niche of lawn care. So it was just kind of a natural progression and it really worked out. It’s really working out great. I’m not gonna say we’re done working, but we’re in progress.

Emily Landry (05:16)
That’s really neat. So Stephen, I’m going to ask you another follow-up question. So what does a typical volunteer session look like? And what should they expect from a volunteer session?

Steven O’Dell (05:31)
You can expect several things. Well, firstly, Thursdays, it’s our consecutive day that we do every week. So we’ll get together after work. We all work jobs. Some kids go to school, some volunteer, they’re still school age, right? So we all get together about 5.45, 6 o’clock. Meet up, we have about three, four yards and we go bang them out together. you might do a weed eater one day, you might be picking up trash one day. You might be trimming up bushes, trees, removing the whole tree that needs cutting, right? Lots of different tasks that you can do so you can expect that. But then also you get to expect, you know, just building friendships and that, you know, to have that fellowship afterwards.

And we take all of our volunteers out to kind of get together and go eat and have a meal together and kind of just go over what we just did and talk about how we can do it better next time or just what we liked about that day or things along those lines. But I would say the best thing for me personally that I can take away that I like is the camaraderie, meeting Jake and people like them and Maddie and their family, you know, just building those connections and those relationships. That’s really what you can take from it the most.

Emily Landry (06:33)
That’s a special touch. You’ve talked so much about working with other organizations, Jake, that have helped you get more plugged in with what Midland might need around town. And then Stephen, you’ve talked about how it’s helped you grow these friendships that you might not have had otherwise. And I think that’s something super special you’re doing besides just taking care of the people who actually need the help. So Stephen, what’s something happening in the local community you want the listeners to know about? That could be something anywhere inside of Midland or with these particular families you’ve worked alongside.

Steven O’Dell (07:04)
There’s a couple. Yeah, a couple of things mainly is that there is a whole entire community. There’s a whole entire group of elderly disabled, know, veterans, whatever it may be that that go by where we just think that they don’t get thought about. They don’t get the help, the assistance. And there’s just a whole community out there that needs this service. And that just one time showing up can change these people’s lives almost in just a couple hours of work. Right. 

The next thing is, you know, we have a lot of events that happen that where you can get involved in these type of things, such as love midlands coming up here in October 4th, where all these nonprofits, all these local charities, businesses get together and they go out and have a giant city-wide volunteer day, right? And we just hit as much as we can, schools, hospitals, properties, you name it, right? So there’s just lots of opportunities to get involved and it doesn’t take tons of money. It doesn’t take any money if you don’t want it. It just takes a little bit of effort, maybe a Saturday morning or a Thursday night.

Emily Landry (08:03)
Love that. So Jake, for those who don’t know, we awarded a grant of dollars to the Neighbors Eden Project. How do you plan on spending the funds you received? I can imagine there’s lots of ways you could spend the money and that there’s way more ways you could spend more money if anybody really liked what y’all are doing and wanted to give you even more money to continue to connect with the mission. Maybe they’re not available to volunteer on Thursday evenings, but they really like what you’re doing.

Jake Smith (08:40)
Yes, ma’am. So we really have three ways that we spend money right now because we’re a very lean organization. We have no really salary overhead because every person involved with this organization volunteers and that includes myself, Steve, and all of our board members. We don’t have a paid staff. ⁓ So we spend money on equipment that we need that we could become more efficient. ⁓ We spend money on things like consumables such as lawnmower blades, eater string, fuel, ⁓ things like that. Then ⁓ we buy dinner, like Stephen had touched on, we buy dinner for all of our volunteers. Because typically when we get done, it’s around 8, 8.30 in the evening. So last thing somebody wants to do is go mow three or four yards, do a lot of hard yard work, and then go home and cook. So we do treat our volunteers ⁓ to something to eat before they go home. So those are really the only three things that we have spent money on, with the exception of we did go down to Kerrville after the floods happened. And we spent some additional funds on things like room and board and fuel to get to get down there back. But that was about it. Just to try to help with some of the relief efforts down there after their flooding situation. Other than that, yeah, the three things, equipment, food, and ⁓ consumables.

Emily Landry (10:10)
Yeah. We love that. We did a special grant to help out Kerrville too. So it looks like we’re very closely aligned in things that we like doing to help out our community together.

So for those of you who watching us online, unfortunately, Stephen had some IT issues and he couldn’t get the computer to work with him. As sometimes it goes, technology was not our friend today. We’ve still got Jake here with us. We only had one more question to go. So Jake’s gonna finish this out on this one question. We’re so grateful for Steven’s time with us today. So Jake, what do you wish more people knew about the organization?

Jake Smith (10:58)
Well, I’m glad you asked me that question. ⁓

Emily Landry (12:17)
Love that. So mow it forward if you’re in the Midland area and you just need yard work anyways. And we all know it can be a struggle to get that done or have a set of changing hands sometimes just through people moving as it is. And so it could be a great way to fulfill a need you have while also helping serve the community. So Jake’s team would love to come out, give you guys a quote, and it would not only help his team and your neighbors that would help you get your yard work done. For those of you in our Midland office, if you’re trying to figure out how to get busy season work done and in tax or audit or CAS or whatever, and you also need help getting the yard work done, Jake’s team would come highly recommended from our group. So we’d love for you to reach out to them.

And then that website address again was neighborsedenproject.org. Did I get that right? Hey, perfect. And so they would love to help you find more information about either volunteering or giving financially.

So for those listening, if you enjoyed today’s episode, please be sure to subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or Listen right on our website at WhitleyPenn.com slash podcast.

Thank you again to Jake and Stephen, and I hope everyone has wonderful rest of the day.