Today we’d like to introduce you to Jenna Gerdes.
Hi Jenna, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I started my career knowing I wanted to help people – that quickly led to getting my Masters in Social Work. Since that time, I have worked with many populations and enjoyed all my work including over night manager at a homeless shelter, working in home with at risk youth struggling with mental health, implementing therapy for children with autism, social worker at an inpatient psychiatric hospital for adults demeaned incompetent to stand trial, and helping women with unplanned pregnancies plan adoptions to name a few! I am currently the Director of Outreach and Development for a non profit headquartered in Kansas City at the downtown airport called Angel Flight Central. Angel Flight Central has been utilizing volunteer pilots and commercial airline partners for over 30 years to help children and adults access far away medical care, always for free. I was immediately drawn to this position over 4 years ago for 2 major reasons. First, I didn’t know about this resource as a social worker in Kansas City. I felt if I didn’t know as someone who was supposed to be an expert in resources for people in need, that there could be lots of opportunity to share the message with others. Secondly, there is hardly any barrier to accessing free flights. Anyone can refer anyone; its a simple 10 minute form you fill out online and one of our flight coordinators reaches out with 1 day to chat more about how we might be able to help. We don’t require a ton of red tape, we just simply want to know how you may benefit from a free flight. Because our over 340 volunteer pilots donate their time, aircraft, and fuel for every flight, we do not have a finite number of people can we assist, which makes my job in outreach all that more important. We are able to fly for a multitude of reasons. Our most common reasons passengers need to fly are medical; we help children, adults, and their caregivers reach care that they need such as chemotherapy, radiation, clinical trials, pre and post operative transplants appointments, rare disease specialists, and much more. I was immediately drawn to the grass roots way of simply asking how we can help and going from there. Every flight is free no matter how many times people need to go. Plus – airplanes are pretty cool!
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I have truly enjoyed every job I have had and learned so much about connecting with people and also operating within the systems of hospitals, state and federal government, agencies and more. One thing that always bothered me was how much paperwork and bureaucracy went in the business of helping people. Asking clients to prove how in need they were and fill out stacks of paperwork when they are already going through so much, never sat quite right with me. And then there were organizations that promised to help, but after filling out mounds of paperwork and jumping through hoops, we might be told “no” due to lack of funding or barely missing a qualification for service. That’s one of the things I like most about my current role. We have the capacity to serve more and can be flexible about who and when we help. We do not currently take any state or federal dollars which has allowed us to keep our questions to our potential passengers brief and not intrusive. We are solely funded by generous private donors and small localized grants. One of the hardest parts of my job currently is convincing passengers, hospitals, and other social workers that this resource is not too good to be true. We really do offer free flights and our pilots want to help!
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
The team I am apart of is amazing – we are just 5 staff at the Downtown Kansas City airport and we help coordinate and provide over 2,500 free flights for people in need every year. We assist passengers not just from the local area, but from 10 Midwest states from Kansas, Missouri and up through Dakotas, Minnesota and over to Indiana. We are essentially running a small airline and then we do our own outreach, fundraising, development, events, and everything in between. In addition to being super proud of being part of such a hard working team, we have grown our biggest fundraiser Wine Flight, from over 250 attendees when I started to over 850 last year. This event has become an integral part of our fundraising, raising almost 70% of our operating budget, freeing me up to do the good work of spreading the awareness of our mission the rest of the year. Last year at Wine Flight we celebrated our 30th anniversary as an organization and raised over $640,000. I am super proud of the hard work that has gone in to elevate this event to a premier fundraising event in Kansas City.
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
Everything – I believe that luck is just consistently showing up and doing hard work. Bad things will certainly happen, but if you just consistently show up, even on the bad days, you will be prepared when good luck finds you.
Pricing:
- No – flights are always free
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.angelflightcentral.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/angelflightcentral/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/angelflightcentral
