A Conversation With ... Patty Ingle

You served as development director at Harmony House for nearly a year before becoming interim executive director in September and taking over the role permanently Dec. 16. What have you learned from your time at Harmony House?
We serve approximately 550 to 560 women and children in our shelter every year. But we are turning away too many, about 1,122 in 2012, 1,611 in 2013. I really have a passion for wanting to help make a difference in breaking the domestic violence cycle within Greene County and Springfield. We are the highest per capita urban area in the state of Missouri for domestic violence, over ranking St. Louis and Kansas City.

There is a task force within the community, the Springfield Police Department, The Victim Center, the Community Partnership of the Ozarks and many others who are coming together to say, “What do we need to do to take care of this problem?” The emphasis is starting with children and dating awareness. We are playing a part in that by offering classes on what healthy relationships are.

The mission of Harmony House is to provide shelter, advocacy and education to survivors of domestic violence and promote the principle that all individuals have the right to a life free of abuse. How do you plan to lead the nonprofit and be a voice in those areas?
We advocate not only on the local level and with our local governments, but also through the Missouri Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence on the state level, with our legislators and also at the federal level. We don’t travel on the federal level like we do to Jefferson City, but we lend a voice.

In education, we provide lots of different classes for the women and children who come to Harmony House, all the way from self-esteem to learning how to look for a job. It might be guiding them to an educational opportunity or helping them get their first full-time job. Many of them have been denied the ability to look for jobs or even have the privilege of having cellphones. This is a world many people don’t understand unless they have experienced it.

You oversee Harmony House’s roughly $1.1 million annual budget. What plans do you have for the organization going forward?
We operate on a very lean budget for our staff of 25 employees and our needs. We provide food, housing, some travel and some medical [supplies] for 110 people a day. We really depend on raising the funds and applying for grants.

Harmony House is the second largest domestic violence shelter in the state of Missouri and we were also the first to be established in the state 38 years ago. One of the main projects that brought me to Harmony House in the first place was our need for new facilities. We are in three buildings that we have been very privileged to have, but they are all 80 years old and extremely difficult to maintain. We are going into a capital campaign to raise a minimum of $5 million to relocate Harmony House to another location.

How would a donor-funded building improve operations?
We want an environment that is conducive to healing, better able to help the women, has more education space within the facility and more green space for the children. With 40 to 50 children on any given day, it gets really busy and we don’t have as many resources as we would like to have for them. We also would like to have an additional 40 to 50 beds.

We can’t build for all of the need, but we can at least provide some additional space. We have started the campaign, but have not gone public yet. We are working with a committee and have had land donated to us. Public fundraising is something we are facing during the remainder of this year. We’d like to wrap it up by mid-2015.

You have previous experience leading a nonprofit team as president, CEO and in the fundraising arena. How do those skills fit into Harmony House?
I love the aspect of philanthropy, whereby those who have the means to help within a community and within an organization do so at all different levels. Those who really want to make a difference in their lifetime – that’s what I love about fundraising – matching up that desire to make a difference with an opportunity to make a difference.[[In-content Ad]]