I create a wide range of content for nonprofits, including fundraising proposals, case statements and feature stories that showcase their successes.
Proposal Supporting Prisoner Education at the University of Nebraska at Omaha
When Minds are Opened, the Walls Fade Away
In this classroom, the students are attentive and respectful, and the instructor is engaged. She challenges their minds and inspires them to share their stories. The students write autobiographical essays and read complex literature. It’s a tough course. But that’s what’s expected at the university level. These are University of Nebraska classes provided by elite faculty and instructors. The surroundings — the bars over the windows, the sound of clanging gates and jostling keys — all fade as each student listens to the others read. Here, what matters is the work. This is a classroom where people are learning to think critically and open their minds to higher education. The surroundings don’t matter. They disappear, even if it’s just for a moment.
Proposal Supporting Creation of the Samuel Bak Museum at UNO
Thank you for your consideration of a generous gift to support the creation of the Samuel Bak Museum and Academic Learning Center. Your generosity will ensure Bak’s profoundly moving work is viewed and experienced by thousands of people in Omaha and the Midwest, while the history he so hauntingly and beautifully captures permeates the curricula across disciplines.
Proposal Supporting the Formation of the Women’s Cancer Center at the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center in Omaha, Nebraska
Cancer stirs our deepest fears and provokes our loneliest moments. As a woman copes with the emotional upheaval of a cancer diagnosis, her experience at the doctor’s office can leave her feeling even more intimidated. Conventional cancer care involves numerous specialists separately working on her disease, often in different buildings, leaving her to navigate her treatment alone.
At the Women’s Cancer Center, we will not be bound by convention.
Proposal Supporting LGBTQ Students in Need at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Every student at Nebraska should feel he or she has a home. A team of students, faculty and staff that will advocate for them, an administration that will listen and look out for them. This is the promise of Nebraska — a welcoming place where every student deserves a voice and a helping hand.
The Front Lines
How UNMC and Nebraska Medicine Became the Nation’s First Responders in the Fight Against COVID-19
For 15 years, the University of Nebraska Medical Center and Nebraska Medicine prepared for this moment.
They trained their physicians, nurses and staff to wear personal protective equipment — the heavy hazmat-style layers that protect against dangerous pathogens — perfected medical procedures under the weight of those layers and ran drills on providing care in areas of deadly contamination.
Few could have predicted how necessary that training would prove to be — the devastating scale of what was to come as COVID-19 began to ravage communities around the world.
Hope in the Darkness
Students Learn the Art of Moving Forward Through the Work of Holocaust Survivor Samuel Bak
The boy stands with his hands in the air, despair and fear in his eyes. His body, scarred and pitted in stone, seems to emerge from a gravestone riddled with bullet holes. He holds a sling shot in his hand, a doomed defense against crushing force.
Hate Has No Home Here
UNO’s National Counterterrorism Center Aims to Understand, Track and Stop Homegrown Terrorists
It began on a clear morning in 1995, when Timothy McVeigh demolished a federal building in Oklahoma City and killed 168 people. For the nation, it was a watershed moment — the deadliest act of homegrown terrorism in U.S. history. But for the residents of Oklahoma City, it was woven into the fabric of their identities.
After Years of War and Constant Fear, Iraqi Family Finds Peace
It was 4:30 in the afternoon; people were getting ready to leave work and head home. The bustle of the city hummed in the background — pedestrians shuffling through crowded sidewalks, yellow taxis honking in staccato bursts. On a tree-lined street to the north, foreign aid workers busily prepared for a late-afternoon news conference. It was set to take place at the United Nations headquarters — a three-story converted hotel that loomed above Baghdad’s Tigris River. Amid the flurry, no one heard a cement truck pulling up to the side of the building.
Robyn Murray 