As Mary-Margaret Marks of Little Rock prepares to say adieu in May to her year as president of the Junior League of Little Rock, she reflects on the nearly 100-year history and heritage of the women’s nonprofit organization. More importantly, she looks to its future.
Under the 33-year-old Little Rock native’s leadership, which began last June, the theme has been women in motion - moving within the community and moving forward.
“I think it’s such an exciting time to be a part of an organization that has re-evaluated itself and has moved the needle and is set to be a vibrant and relevant part of its community,” Marks says of her tenure.
In years past the organization, now in its 92nd year, was widely known for Riverfest and its annual massive secondhand sale, Bargain Barn, which evolved into Bargain Boutique before ceasing after 2012. Marks and league leaders have realigned its work and missions to better serve this 21st century. Members currently have their sights set on three projects - launching a $1.1 million capital campaign to make their historic downtown building more energy efficient and effective; creating a nonprofit center on the building’s currently unrestored and unused third floor; and launching the inaugural Downtown Dash 10K/5K race.
The women have been quietly working on the capital campaign for more than two years now.
“We’ve been raising funds since 2011,” Marks says. “And we have just reached the $800,000 mark of the $1.1 million needed.”
Construction is set to begin this summer and last through the spring.
“The building improvements allow us to better fulfill our mission of serving women and children in Little Rock and beyond in a more efficiently run and safer facility,” Marks explains. General improvements will include exterior work, including repaving the parking lot, improving the property’s landscape, installing masonry columns and iron fencing, and adding security lighting and pedestrian pathways.
The league, which rents out its restored spacious ballroom for various events, has already converted the building’s basement and is now using that space to a fuller potential.
The main emphasis of the improvements will include transforming the building’s third floor, which is currently uninhabitable and used only for storage, into a center for small and start-up nonprofits.
“The nonprofit center will enhance job creating, economic development, and create social change,” Marks says.
Decades ago, when the building was owned by the Woman’s City Club, the third floor housed half a dozen apartments that single working women could rent. Today, most of the spaces still include their original screened wooden front doors and metal addresses - numbers 1 through 6 - above them.
Filled with light streaming in through its numerous windows and roof skylight on a recent day, the area awaits its restoration. Peeling paint and wallpaper dangle from ceilings and walls. The league anticipates that, at full capacity, the floor could be a work space for 17 employees, with a shared workroom, conference center, kitchen and bathroom. The new center will offer the groups higher visibility, the opportunity for increased collaboration and cost savings.
“In the workroom, we’ll offer the groups printing and postage services as well as audiovisual equipment,” Marks says.
The league expects to begin taking applications in January. An advisory council for the center, made up of the league’s active and sustaining members along with community members, will serve as the center’s governing body and oversee the process for selecting tenants.
“It’s really amazing that when we purchased this building back in 2001 and 2002, our original goals for it were to buy it and renovate it, update the kitchen into a commercial one, which we completed in 2011, and to also create a nonprofit center,” Marks says. “In 2006 and 2007, we had a big boom around the country of these types of centers springing up. … Prior to that, we already had a plan for this. It just was not the right time for us until now.”EACH ONE TEACH ONE
In a related project, the league, working in partnership with the Arkansas Nonprofit Alliance, has also created the Nonprofit Board Institute. The Institute will offer a five-week evening training session to teach individuals how to be effective nonprofit board members. Topics covered will include basic board responsibilities, leadership, communication, cultural competency, financial responsibility, fundraising, and strategic planning. The inaugural training session will be held in April with a limit of 40 participants.
“We already have 15 registered for the training course,” says Marks, adding that all sessions will be held from 5:30 to 8 p.m. Tuesdays in the Junior League building. Registration, which costs $125 for league and alliance members and $175 for all others, remains open through the end of March at jllr.org/npbi.
“The Junior Leagues in New Orleans, Los Angeles, New York and Atlanta all have similar programs,” Marks says. “We’ve worked with them to see what’s worked and what hasn’t. And last year, we enlisted a graduate student at the Clinton School for Public Service to examine their programs and how they’ve evolved to determine what best suits our needs here and fine-tune the curriculum accordingly.”
Marks adds that there is a need for a similar program to be launched in Northwest Arkansas and hopes that one is eventually established there as well.
Among the goals of the organization’s 10-year strategic plan is to decrease childhood obesity in the community by increasing access to healthful foods and opportunities for physical activity. That meshes well with the league’s third new project, establishing a new 10K/5K race in downtown Little Rock.
The inaugural Downtown Dash is set for 8 a.m. Saturday, with entrant fees at $20 for spirit runners, $25 for the 5K and $35 for the 10K. Participants can sign up at jllr.org/downtowndash.
“The race allows the league an opportunity to connect our mission with our money,” Marks says. “Last year, the Junior League adopted a four-point strategic plan that includes a focus on nutrition and wellness, and our organization is excited to offer another opportunity for the Little Rock community to race and embrace physical fitness and personal wellness.”
It is her love for the projects she undertakes that makes Marks excel in her leadership roles, says longtime friend Ashley Caldwell of Little Rock.
“The thing that I love about Mary-Margaret is that she is the same person today as when I first met her the first day of our freshman year at Mount St. Mary,” Caldwell says. “I love the energy and enthusiasm she brings to everything she does. It’s what makes her such an accomplished leader. She is very passionate about the Junior League and that motivates others within the organization to do their best as well.”
A TWIST OF FATE
When Marks first joined the Junior League in 2003, it wasn’t in Little Rock but Charlotte, N.C., where she was living, working at her first job, and planning to set down roots. An unexpected reunion would bring her home to Little Rock.
Coming back for a high school friend’s wedding, she reconnected with Matthew Marks, whom she’d first dated in high school back in 1995 when she was 15.
“We hadn’t seen each other in years but we had kept up with what the other one was doing,” Marks says.
The pair had followed similar paths in their educations and careers. After graduating from Mount St. Mary in 1998, Marks attended the University of Virginia at Arlington, receiving a degree in economics in 2002. She then entered a two-year program in investment banking with Wachovia (now Wells-Fargo) in Charlotte. Meanwhile, Matthew, who now works at Stephens, Inc., in mergers and acquisitions, attended Washington and Lee, obtaining a degree in commerce.
“We just started talking that night at the wedding and then dated long distance for a year.”
The two married in 2006 and have two children, William, 4, and Charlie, 2.
Her first year back in Little Rock, Marks worked at Stephens, Inc., but then was offered the opportunity to do fundraising for her high school alma mater and later decided to become a stay-at-home mom.
“Ironically, that’s the year I became even more involved in the Junior League,” she says, laughing. “But fortunately, we have a strong network of family members who help out and allow me to be as active in the league as I am.”
“In the past, we’ve had a great model of annual and three-year plans, but last year, the league made more long-range plans, implementing a 10-year strategic plan,” Marks says.
The aims within that plan include improving literacy skills among Pulaski County students, securing a stronger financial future for the organization, and establishing the league as a premier source of female leadership development in Little Rock.
COMING FULL CIRCLE
Marks says ultimately, the goal of the league is to build Little Rock, and with more than 1,000 active and sustaining members, it has the woman-power to do it.
“We are serving the women and children of Little Rock, and through our service, we are hopefully enriching the lives of those we serve,” Marks says.
That mission isn’t new to the 21st century, but one that dates back to the league’s very beginnings nearly a century earlier.
“Our very first program was delivering diapers and milk to moms and babies in need,” Marks says of the Baby Welfare Station, the Junior League’s first community project in the 1920s. “It’s amazing to look at where we are now and realize we are still serving mothers and children.”
Marks has spent the last four years serving on the league’s board, and when her tenure as president concludes in May, so will her 10 years as an active member.
“We’ve done a lot of good work through the years,” Marks says. “But there is still a lot of good work to do.”
In recent years, as more and more nonprofit community groups spring up, the league’s competition for members has increased. In response, it has changed to become more accessible and accommodating to today’s professional women who have careers.
In addition to reaching out within the community to partner with others in the community such as Arkansas Children’s Hospital, the Little Rock School District, Camp Aldersgate, Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance, Arkansas Department of Human Services, Clinton School of Public Service, and more, the league has also widened its membership.
It’s no longer the closed, exclusive group it once was. More members are older, ethnically and religiously diverse, career-minded and unmarried.
“Our faces may have changed, but our commitment to the community has remained the same.”SELF PORTRAIT Mary-Margaret Marks
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: Aug. 5, 1980, Little Rock
WHEN I WAS LITTLE, I WANTED TO GROW UP TO BE a teacher, soap opera star, mom, and maybe a professional ballet dancer, too.
MY FIRST JOB was as a dance teacher at the Little Rock School of Dance working with the younger students and baby-sitting in high school.
MOST PEOPLE DON’T KNOW: I’ve actually walked the trails of [Geoffrey Chaucer’s] Canterbury Tales from London to Canterbury Cathedral as part of a college class I took one summer in Oxford. We did it over the course of three days and when we’d stop to rest, we’d read from the book.
ONE THING I WON’T EAT: Liver.
THE LAST BOOK I READ WAS Rules of Civility by Amor Towles, but before that, it was Giraffes Can’t Dance by Giles Andreae and Dinotrux by Chris Gall with my boys.
ALL-TIME FAVORITE MOVIE is The Sound of Music.
THREE PEOPLE I’D INVITE TO A FANTASY DINNER: former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the late Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, and retired United States Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.
I WANT MY CHILDREN TO REMEMBER that they are loved, and to go out and make this world a better place. Hopefully this is the example their dad Matthew and I have set for them.
IF I WERE STRANDED ON A DESERTED ISLAND, I WOULD HAVE TO HAVE: Iodine drops so I could drink the water, a really good Swiss Army knife and my family.
A WORD TO SUM ME UP: Sincere.
High Profile, Pages 33 on 03/09/2014