Beyond the League: Alice Freidline

Welcome to “Beyond the League.” In this series, we will visit Active and Sustaining members of The Junior League of Midland, Inc. We will learn how they are making contributions to the community, their workplace, and beyond, celebrating how the skills they gained in the League helped to make an impact beyond the League.

Today, we visit Alice Freidline, Sustaining Member of The Junior League of Midland, Inc. and Director of Community Impact at the United Way of Midland.

Tell us about the organization where you lead or serve.

At the United Way of Midland (www.uwmidland.org), our mission is to improve the quality of life in Midland by uniting community resources with identified needs.

What's your role?

I serve as Director of Community Impact. Through Community Impact, we strive to determine unmet or "under-met" needs in our community, identify programs or collaborative initiatives to meet those needs, and then help to provide funding.

How has your JLM experience helped you lead and serve this organization?

I credit the The Junior League of Midland, Inc. with helping me learn a number of skills that I use all of the time in my work and in my volunteer roles.  Some of these are: guiding a team of diverse volunteers and appreciating all of their contributions; facilitating meetings and planning sessions; creating an organized notebook (or computer file) that another person can follow; and, last but not least, having a working knowledge of Parliamentary Procedure. I also learned the importance of giving back to my community and how to encourage others to do the same.

How can others get involved? 

There are hundreds of ways to be involved in our community.  It's just important to find the opportunity to use your specific gifts and talents.  One way to learn about some of those opportunities is to serve on a United Way allocation panel.  This provides a way to get "up close" knowledge of 10 - 12 local nonprofits and then help determine funding for as many as 20 different programs that are being offered.  Often, our volunteers learn of new and different ways to be involved that they would not have known about otherwise.

What else would you like to share? 

Through the work of the The Junior League of Midland, Inc., lives are being changed in many ways - some that you will never know.  But when you become a Sustainer, I think it's even more important that you intentionally look for ways to give back to our community.  Experience in the League provides each member with transferable skills that you can use throughout your lifetime to make a difference for others.