Get to Know the 2016 Excellence in Nonprofit Leadership Award Winners
Mattie Rhodes Center is a nonprofit agency celebrating it’s 121st year of serving the Greater Kansas City community. They are committed to building a stronger city by working toward the vision of living in a vibrant community where all individuals and families are healthy, safe and have the resources to thrive.
Mattie Rhodes Center provides a holistic approach to individual and family well-being through social services, behavioral health counseling and the arts. Their staff provides culturally competent programming in four areas: Family Services & Support, Youth Development, Community Support, and Cultural Arts.
Mattie Rhodes Center is the only fully bilingual/bicultural, nationally accredited, and state-certified behavioral health care provider in the Greater Kansas City region; and is state-certified in intensive outpatient substance abuse therapy. Operating from five locations in the Greater Kansas City area, Mattie Rhodes Center annually reaches over 11,000 individuals.
Visit the Mattie Rhodes Center website
HappyBottoms is Kansas City’s Diaper Bank. Their mission is: working with social service agency partners to provide diapers to low-income families while raising awareness of diaper need in our community.
As the only diaper bank in Kansas City, HappyBottoms works with 35 social service agency partners at 47 locations to distribute over 1.6 million diapers per year to 7,800 babies. HappyBottoms partners with agencies who can identify need in our community and distribute diapers as part of their wraparound social services. Since 2009, HappyBottoms has demonstrated that a diaper bank is a necessity in a community where the number one requested item by families at social service agencies is diapers. Prior to collaborating with HappyBottoms, most of their partners turned diaper seeking clients away.
Through their program, children who live in Jackson, Clay, Platte and Cass Counties in Missouri and Wyandotte and Johnson Counties in Kansas receive diapers or training pants each month, as well as an educational brochure with healthy diaper changing and stress coping techniques for parents and caregivers. In 2014, they created their “Bundles of Joy” program to provide diapers and educational brochures to low-income parents who have just given birth at one of their 5 partner hospitals.
Visit the HappyBottoms website
The Kansas City Rose Society serves as the steward of the Laura Conyers Smith Municipal Rose Garden in Jacob L. Loose Memorial Park, Kansas City, Missouri. Their mission is to encourage an interest in roses, serve as stewards of the Laura Conyers Smith Municipal Rose Garden in Jacob L. Loose Memorial Park, Kansas City, Missouri, promote the Rose Garden as a regional attraction and demonstration garden and provide information about roses and their care.
The rose garden is the realization of a dream that began in 1931, when a group of citizens under the leadership of Laura Conyers Smith established the Kansas City Rose Society. The first garden contained 120 rose plants. Today, there are about 3,000 roses of nearly 150 varieties in the 1.5 acre garden.
The rose garden has been maintained through a partnership of the Kansas City Rose Society and the Kansas City, Missouri, Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners. The Rose Society furnishes all the roses while park employees provide ongoing care. In addition, Rose Society members volunteer hundreds of hours each year to assist the Loose Park staff with pruning in the garden.
