Check Out Mary Putman’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Mary Putman. 

Hi Mary, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself
When you live on the margins of healthy community, the path forward to stability and health is obstructed by barriers; external and internal, seen and unseen. For individuals and families experiencing homelessness, confusing and complex support systems, barriers to access due to technology and lack of understanding, lack of coordination between silos of care, lack of respect and value for their histories and humanity, all lead to an endless cycle of hopelessness and despair. In 2016, The Reciprocity Collective was founded with the idea of how an organization would walk side by side with marginalized folks to help support them: Building safe and respectful relationships and working together to problem solve challenges, obliterate barriers, fill gaps in services and to find and create meaningful connections to community resources to help move towards health and stability. Five years on, the original idea of TRC has grown and flourished. 

The Reciprocity Collective (TRC) was originally founded on providing unique and dynamic employment services through strong 1:1 relationships with participants and employers. Today, TRC has evolved into a conduit to employment, community resources, and relationships all working in concert to support participants’ long-term success. 

TRC believes that strategic connections build vibrant and healthy communities. Research highlights that social connectedness and community capacity building are vital to ending homelessness and poverty and increasing social and health equity. TRC builds trusting and long-term relationships with participants and provides a network of support through businesses, nonprofit partners, and allies. These relationships help to mitigate the intersecting challenges faced by homeless individuals, such as mental illness, violence, incarceration, substance use, and systematic racism. Those challenges often leave individuals in isolation and apart from access and opportunities to the center of community. TRC combats this through programs that focus on the “whole-person”, address their needs and dreams, and are fully collaborative with cross-sector partners. 

Over the past five years, TRC has grown to four full-time staff members, 12 board members, six interns and eight paid participants, and over 80 nonprofit and employer collaborators. In 2021, TRC helped 272 participants achieve permanent employment and served nearly 2,000 individuals through basic needs navigation and connection. The Reciprocity Collective is a voice in the community, empowering those we serve, challenging the status quo of service to the homeless, and driving cultural change 

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Starting a nonprofit with a non-traditional business model and service delivery and no funding is not an easy road. Surviving the first five years to “prove” your idea means that one has to figure out how to enact your services with little or no money. Once you begin serving the community the way you hope then you start to have the stories and data needed to prove to potential funders that the work you do is effective, serves the population you intend and that you have developed an organization that is structured to have staying power. Too many stories and sacrifices to list as to what it took to survive financially in those early years: Airbnb renting my home, Uber and Lyft driving, and consulting work helped it along and as Executive Director, I started receiving a salary in 2019, three years after TRC was founded. 

Along with developing the actual organization and work, one needs to take your initial ideas and develop them into fully-fledged actions and put time into what your culture is; what you stand for and hold as value in your work. 

It is a LOT to juggle and move forward. But then I think of the challenges faced by those we serve and their resiliency. 

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I was a hospitality professional for 35 years before entering the nonprofit sector and what I call the realm of Social Justice. The move was highly intentional as I had been looking for several years for an opportunity to utilize my skill set and experience for greater purpose than “feeding and serving the 1%ers a lot of fancy expensive food”. 

I attended UC Berkeley with the intent to go to law school and found my way into the restaurant business, where I flourished. Had a natural talent and took my first Executive Chef position at the age of 24. My career evolved into restaurant and business ownership as well additional Executive Chef and General Management positions, consulting, catering, teaching and private estate work. In 2010, living in Denver at the time, I took a position with Colorado Coalition for the Homeless to develop and manage a restaurant Social Enterprise that would hire and train individuals who had been homeless to work in all elements of the restaurant business. The rest, as they say, is history. I recognized that all of my professional and personal history had brought me to a place and passion that was so fitting for me. It was life-changing. 

Through the 5 years of the Social Enterprise, my entrepreneurial brain worked hard to problem solve the challenges that I observed in front of me: in the personal challenges of the individuals, I was working with, the landscape of poverty and homelessness, and the structure of Human Service nonprofits. 

I identified gaps in services and thinking that I felt did not serve folks well and felt there was a better way to approach this work. Greater respect for the experiences and voices of the folks we served, building 1:1 relationships to bring success to goals, and more collaboration throughout the entire community for all to take ownership of what needs to be done to mitigate and perhaps end homelessness and poverty. From that, I created The Reciprocity Collective. 

Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
We all have a place in solving the challenges of Homelessness and Poverty. These are incredibly complex and layered societal issues and with a variety of factors responsible for the state, and as many needed to solve. Recognize the humanity of a person experiencing a life so different from yours…or maybe not. Remove the thinking of “us” and “them” and see what we all share: dreams, love of family and friends, the desire to live a safe and fulfilled life. 

Contact Info:

• Email: information@thereciprocitycollective.org
• Website: https://thereciprocitycollective.org
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/thereciprocitycollective
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thereciprocitycollective
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/reciprocitywork

Image Credits
Susan English