That's sometimes a really difficult sell to both the county and the city about who we are and what we do and how it has an impact.

We keep the lights on, we keep the roof over their heads, and we allow them the space to grow and thrive.

And so our professional development is one of those areas.

Our fiscal sponsorship expansion of our fiscal sponsorship is also one of those areas.

Both of those things require a significant investment of time and energy to bring together those programs from a fiscal sponsorship perspective.

What we're doing is we're lending our 501c3 status to these organizations, and we're providing the accounting backdrop for them.

And if any of you have served on a nonprofit board and looked at the books of a set of nonprofits, that's not an uncomplicated task.

So we are ensuring that funders like the city have a trusted partner to work with with these organizations who may just be launching themselves, but have a gap that they're filling in the city in terms of programs.

And so we're the trusted partner that you all recognize, and you can say, yes, we will make an award because we know that federated charities is manage helping manage these resources and manage the programs.

And then the third piece of it is really to um work within the sector.

The sector in Frederick is a robust sector.

There it is the largest professional group within the Chamber of Commerce, nonprofits, 501c3 nonprofits is the largest membership group within the Chamber of Commerce.

By any given count, asking the community foundation, the Osherman Foundation, or any of the major funders, there are easily five to eight hundred nonprofits operating in Frederick at any given time.

And some of them are teeny tiny, some of them are extremely large.

But our ability to advocate about the impact of these organizations, that's a role that we are have actively worked with the Chamber of Commerce through the nonprofit alliance to do some uh surveying of the overall impact of the nonprofit sector on the economy of Frederick.

So we've worked actively with them, but it's helping people understand what the safety net really means.

The safety net exists for a variety of reasons.

It exists for people who are truly in need on a day-to-day basis, but it also exists for every single one of our quality of life.

So each one of you is probably never going to need the services of legal aid.

But the fact that legal aid exists in and is supported by federated charities in our community means that you have a different quality of life because anybody can go and get legal services.

So that kind of advocacy about the sector in Frederick and honestly, around the country, particularly in an atmosphere where nonprofits are being weaponized against one another, and 501c3 status is being weaponized by the government, is a really critical thing, is being able to help people understand what the safety net really is.

So those are the three pillars that we're hoping to expand.

But in answer to your question, we are also looking to expand a part of our physical footprint without actually growing our physical footprint.

So we have bond bill financing to expand our first floor to make it a much more easily accessible space, not just for our tenants, but as community space.

We already accomplished that through the renovation of our front patio, which is now a public space parklit on Market Street where anybody can go.

It's filled with public art, it's available for any nonprofit in the community to use, as is our back secret garden, which most of you probably haven't seen.

But it's there.

And those spaces are available as part of our physical architecture that we are responsible for maintaining.

So our plans include, as part of that bond bill financing, an expansion within our space on the first floor to truly create the welcome mat for federated charities, the place that people walk in and they immediately, instead of stopping at a desk and going, I don't know where to go, can look at it and say, I know exactly where I'm supposed to go.

I'm supposed to go to that meeting room right there that's right in front of me.

Um we see ourselves as stewards of a couple of different aspects of life.

We see ourselves, well, we know that we are legally stewards of the federated charities property, which actually encompasses two properties.

It's the original Williams building, the garden, and then the Paris pharmacy building.

So it's a massive piece of downtown real estate.

And we have preserved that for since we inherited it in 1930.

And that is an important part of Frederick's streetscape.

But what we also do is we protect and um uphold the emotional space that federated charities represents, the space where people on the worst day of their lives go to the building with the dog because they know they can find a resource there.

And even if that is not a resource in our building, we can help them find the services that they need.

And so what we're asking for is the city's help with this.

Well, I'll I'll go through really quickly part of my packet, or I've run out of time, you tell me.

No, no, that's that's fine because there's a question I have in here.

Go ahead, Alan, by all means.

Oh, so the packet that you have in front of you talks a little bit about our impact.

And one of the things that's very easy for us to track is the financial impact of federated charities.

So around 250,000 a year is money that stays in the nonprofits that are physically in our building in their programs and services instead of paying for rent.

That's the very first thing that's important to understand about what we do.

So there's a real dollars and cents savings that they get by being in the federated charities building.

We're very proud that we're fully occupied.

We were almost fully occupied all through COVID.

Um and what we've done over the last decade is we've really tried to create a space where nonprofits want to be, which is why we typically have a waiting list.

But the other things that we can point to and say these are direct savings to these nonprofits is we have built an infrastructure, an IT infrastructure that any of our partners can jump onto that they pay far, far less than their own Comcast bill by jumping into our secure network, which is managed by our IT provider, and they're saving on top of that quarter million dollars in rent.

They're saving on their IT practices.

We have also invested over the last 10 years in three um professional copiers printers in the building that are managed through a cloud system.

So any nonprofit who's in our building can also jump onto that network at a reduced cost and be able to make printing and copying far cheaper than staples and far cheaper than them buying their own toner and maintaining their own copy or leases.

So these are full color copier printers.

Our incubate plus tenants have access to free office space for one year and a sliding scale for the next two years.

This is for emerging and brand new organizations, less than three years old, less than $50,000 in revenue every year.

And we furnish an office space for them.

They have access to the same exact things: the meeting rooms, the outdoor space, the copiers printers, the free Wi-Fi.

They have access to all of that.