Lake Doctor | A Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams Podcast

Lakes, Streams and Stewardship: The Role of Charitable Giving in Conservation

• Lilly Center for Lakes & Streams • Season 1 • Episode 6

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Discover the secrets of transformational leadership and community impact with our special guest, Stephanie Overbey, CEO of the Kosciusko County Community Foundation. Stephanie's journey from being hired 24 years ago by Susie Light to now leading the organization provides a wealth of insights into formal philanthropy and developing a servant's heart. Learn how her childhood experiences of frequent moves and her family's house-flipping adventures shaped her perspective, and gain valuable knowledge about the foundation's grant-making process and its role in supporting local nonprofits.

Get an insider look at charitable giving and volunteer engagement dynamics, with a special focus on the Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams. Stephanie discusses the essential need for diversifying revenue streams for nonprofits, establishing sustainable donor relationships, and turning contributions into lasting partnerships. Understand the meticulous process of vetting volunteers, managing scholarship funds, and how the Community Foundation aligns donor passions with community needs. We also provide important contact information for those looking to make a difference through donations or volunteer work.

Find out how nonprofits can grow while maintaining a balance between operational demands and personal life. Stephanie shares her experiences of raising triplets while leading a significant organization, highlighting the importance of strategic staffing, financial planning, and the invaluable role of board members with financial expertise. Explore the critical parameters for measuring lake health with experts from the Lilly Center and discover meaningful steps to improve your lake's ecosystem. This episode is a must-listen for anyone passionate about community service, environmental sustainability, and achieving personal and professional balance.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening to the Lake Doctor podcast. I'm your host, susie Light, and I get to share some stories and talk about our beautiful lakes with my friend, dr Nate Bosch. Nate, you have a doctorate degree from the University of Michigan, is that correct?

Speaker 2:

freshwater aquatic systems. On this podcast, we'll dive into lake science. We're going to meet the folks who are passionate about our lakes, just like Susie and I, and have some fun together along the way.

Speaker 1:

You can learn more about the topics of this episode or support the Lilly Center's work by visiting our website lakesgraceedu.

Speaker 2:

In today's episode we're going to be joined by Stephanie Overby. She's the CEO of the Kosciuszko County Community Foundation. We're going to talk about how they partner with us here at the Lilly Center and also about charitable giving.

Speaker 1:

We are so excited about today's episode. The doctor is in. Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Lake Doctor. We are so excited that you're here today. We are so excited that Stephanie Overby is here today. Stephanie, tell us a bit about yourself, thank you, Susie.

Speaker 3:

So Susie knows me pretty well. Susie hired me 24 years ago when she was the CEO of the Community Foundation and I was mostly fresh out of college back in those days. But I'm the CEO of Kosciuszko County Community Foundation now. I moved to Warsaw in December of 1996. Always mostly from Indiana, born in Syracuse, New York, my dad was in the Air Force when I was young so we moved a little bit, went to lots of schools. Warsaw community, Kosciuszko community is the place where I've lived the longest, so it is definitely home to me now.

Speaker 1:

So tell us a story about moving around a lot, especially the time that you were in college.

Speaker 3:

Oh, my mother hates this story so much so my mom and dad moved a lot. They truly did. And so when I was in college, I had gotten married, my senior year of college and still needed to finish out my year at Ball State, and my parents lived in Muncie at the time. So my dad was always flipping houses and then he would fall in love with the house that he flipped and move into it. My mother is a saint but so, and my grandfather lived with my parents at the time. He was, he was aging and pretty frail and lived with them and never left the house.

Speaker 3:

So I left on, you know, a Thursday morning for class, finished class, went home to Warsaw for the weekend, came back and did class on Monday, monday night, went to my parents to stay for a few days that week, as I had been doing, went to the house, locked up, no cars, dog not in the yard, looked through the windows. They hadn't moved. Even grandpa was gone. Grandpa never left. I sort of knew generally where the new flipped house was you know, a few miles away and so I drove down the road. I thought it was on, until I saw all the cars. That house was, you know a few miles away, and so I drove down the road. I thought it was on, until I saw all the cars that I was familiar with knocked on the door and my mom answered and she was like oh, I forgot to tell you we moved.

Speaker 3:

So, I teaser that, like Mom, when you were ready for me to move out, you could have just said, Stephanie, like it's not working out, but you didn't have to move away.

Speaker 1:

Your mom is a saint. I know her, so one of the questions we want to ask you is where does your servant heart come from? You do such a good job of serving your faith, your family, your friends, your work, your community. Tell us a bit about how that came to be in your heart.

Speaker 3:

Well, thank you. Well, I mean, I will definitely reference my family, but I have to say that all the things I know about kind of formal philanthropy and formal service I learned from Susie. No joke, I really didn't have any experience or background in formal philanthropy at all. My parents were certainly giving people. Their giving was a lot less formal. I mean, they believed in tithing and were faithful to that. My mom is the first to make sure that somebody has a dinner if they're recovering, going to volunteer to babysit your kids, do your laundry, clean your house, Like she epitomizes someone with a servant's heart. But they don't really know much about formal philanthropy or endowments or giving outside of church really, and so I definitely learned service from my mom. My dad, for a brief time, was a pastor at a small church and so when you're a pastor of a small congregation, everyone's needs are needs you need to respond to. So we just learned by watching, I think, how they lived their lives and reacted to the needs around them.

Speaker 1:

The foundation has been around since 1968, and you've been around for 24 years of that since 1968. Tell us about the work that the foundation does with not-for-profits, not only in our county, but nonprofits that serve our residents.

Speaker 3:

Sure. So we serve donors and donors allow us to serve nonprofits, and the nonprofit services we provide are what most people think of as our grant-making. So certainly we respond to grant requests from nonprofits and we also serve nonprofits that don't competitively apply for grants because donors have let us know at the front of their gift that there is a particular organization that they want grants to go to from a fund they establish. But we also, outside of grant making, we hold endowment funds that benefit those organizations. It provides a perpetual stream of revenue for them to accomplish their missions forever because they're endowed. And then we provide technical assistance in the form of workshops around how to do nonprofit work well board governance, fundraising, financial management, that sort of thing and we have some resource library materials to help them in everything from how to market your mission to run a good board meeting and issue a proper tax receipt. I mean, those are some of the things that we can provide a nonprofit.

Speaker 2:

And I know at the Lilly Center we've benefited from several of those things. Both we have a fund there set up and an endowment, and there's been several specific donors that have set up funds which, uh, which helped the Lilly Center. And we've also taken part in a lot of workshops and gotten a lot of insights from from you guys along the way.

Speaker 1:

Coaching.

Speaker 2:

Coaching. Yeah, I like to say Susie's my number one coach and cheerleader, Um and Stephanie, with your role there at the community foundation. We've talked and you've given good insights as well. So Well, thank you.

Speaker 3:

I have to say really quickly, this is probably not, this is totally off script probably, but I have to say the very first time I heard you speak, nate, that I can recall was at a Rotary Club meeting and you were talking about the health of a lake, and can I just tell you that I hated science in school, like it was the class that was painful for me to get through, you know, like I just didn't register with me. It was honestly the first time that I felt engaged in an educational presentation that had some kind of science relationship, and so kudos to you for taking somebody who was like boo his science boring time for my nap to, making it exciting and engaging and helping me understand how important the lakes and the health of the lakes were. So that was my first. I'm glad the community foundation has provided some education resources for the listener, but you've also been just hugely valuable, not just to our community but to me personally, to help me understand what's happening in our local environment. So thank you for that.

Speaker 2:

Honored to do it.

Speaker 1:

So you both talked about the importance of nonprofit support that comes from the foundation and donors who contribute to nonprofits. Why is charitable giving so important to the Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams?

Speaker 2:

Yeah well, I learned this partially from Susie early on is when you're running a nonprofit organization, you have to think about sort of the different revenue streams that come in which allow you to continue to move your mission forward. And so sure there's grant income, sure there's maybe fee for service income that's coming in. But then there's this other part of charitable giving which is really important and can be a very stable funding mechanism for your organization. It's important not just because of the financial input, but it's also important because these folks are gaining ownership in what you're working on and are buying into your mission, and they're often helping as volunteers, they're experts that are giving advice along the way, and so the charitable giving part is really important for nonprofits.

Speaker 1:

You know, I think a lot of people think that if an organization is a not-for-profit entity, that they don't have to operate in the black. And you've heard me say this how many times. Not-for-profit is a tax code, it is not a business model, and if we're operating in the red we aren't around for very long. So kudos to you both for understanding that and making sure that charitable giving and carrying the banner to do what donors want us to do it is so important. Thank you you're welcome.

Speaker 3:

I think nate does a tremendous job at stewarding donor gifts and I admire that. It's something that I think successful nonprofits do well is stewarding a gift, making it not a transaction but a relationship and ongoing back and forth, and I've seen you personally do that really well, so kudos for that good work.

Speaker 2:

That's probably the thing that I've come to enjoy about my job, and specifically the fundraising part of my job. Most is the relationship. Right, it's not a transaction, it's getting to know somebody. What are they passionate about? Oh hey, we're doing these three things over here that really fit what you're passionate about. Would you like to invest in one of those things? And so it's kind of matchmaking rather than sales pitch for making a gift.

Speaker 3:

It's funny, the radio station had a Facebook question today that said describe your job in one word. And I responded and said matchmaker because I really do feel like that's what the Community Foundation does. It brings caring people who want to do something good and impact their community together with needs that are there and need to be met. So we just sort of matchmake what people are passionate about with the needs.

Speaker 1:

So, Stephanie, our listeners, I'm sure have many different passions. How does somebody donate or work with the foundation on what they're interested in accomplishing?

Speaker 3:

It really starts with a conversation. We'd love to sit down with donors and really better understand what they care about. Sometimes a donor doesn't have to come to us and know how all the different giving vehicles work or the jargon you know endowments or charitable remainder, trusts or really what is it you want to accomplish and then we work with the donor and often their professional advisor, like an attorney or a financial planner, to understand the best kind of gift for them to make. And then, because the Community Foundation is there to serve a donor's dream, we are not selling a particular nonprofit need, not just kids, not just the environment, not just animals, not just the arts, it's really whatever the donor is passionate about. We're their professional staff to manage and steward that gift. So they just come to us with a dream and our job is to package it in a way that it can be accomplished, so that their dollars go and do the good work that they want to do.

Speaker 1:

And you have a volunteer board. We do, and tell us about how does that process work, about serving as a volunteer, any kind of volunteer for the Community Foundation.

Speaker 3:

I am really, really proud of our committee and board selection process because I've been a part of really great nonprofits really well-meaning nonprofits who when it's time to fill a position, kind of sit around a room and say, well, who do you know, who's got time, do you think so-and-so would do this. And long before I became the CEO of the Community Foundation, we really did have, and continue to have, a robust process for vetting members. So I'll let out a little bit of our secret sauce, which is that it almost never happens that someone would be invited to be on our board if they haven't served on a committee first. It's really kind of like dating somebody before you ask them to marry you. Right, I mean, do they believe in our mission? Do they like us? Do we like them?

Speaker 3:

Do they come to the meetings they said they'd come to? Do they read the packet before they get there? Just, you know, just getting to know people. And so we really look at a matrix of skills that are missing, perhaps geographic areas that we want represented, areas of diversity that we want to make sure are covered on our board, and so we have what we call a pipeline and so we have a database of people. We're kind of watching and looking for positions for them to fit into the community foundation so that they can get to know us and we can get to know them, and then at some point they'll be invited to serve on our board when we have a spot. That is just the right fit for the skills they bring.

Speaker 1:

So initially, when the foundation was first started, it was pretty much only scholarship funds, and you've talked about the different types of funds you have, but still there's a lot of community engagement in scholarship awards. How many volunteers did you have this year on your scholarship committees?

Speaker 3:

It's been over 200 for several years, so I'm guessing somewhere between 210 and 220.

Speaker 1:

If our listeners want a short-term gig doing some volunteer work. Scholarship committees are good. How would somebody get a hold of you?

Speaker 3:

So 574-267-1901 is our phone number. You can also email us at kcf, at kcfoundationorg, and let us know that you're interested in serving ona scholarship committee, and we would be very happy to allow you to do that if you meet some basic criteria.

Speaker 2:

Maybe some bright scholars coming to the environmental science program at Grace College too.

Speaker 1:

You know I'm pretty sure that Grace College receives a lot of scholarship dollars from the Community Foundation because donors had this philanthropic desire. I can think of a couple stories where donors who didn't have any children decided that they wanted to impact children in education and so they would make a planned gift to the Community Foundation. Planned gifts are pretty important to you. Can you explain how somebody plans a gift?

Speaker 3:

Sure. So usually when we're talking about planned giving, it typically is estate planning, and so planned giving is really what do you want to happen to your assets after you're gone, and is there something charitable that you want to accomplish with a planned gift, and it's not just wills? I mean, we think of that, right. Well, I'm going to leave a certain percentage of my estate in a will to my favorite charity, and that's great. But there are lots of ways that you can do a planned gift. You can leave the charity of your choice as a beneficiary of your IRA, as an example, and so there are tools where people can leave the remainder of a gift to charity and still have an income that they receive during their lifetimes from the asset that they gift to charity, that they'll get paid for during their lifetime, but when they die, the remainder of that value of that asset goes to charity. It's also a very becoming more and more popular way for people to make a planned gift.

Speaker 1:

I like to think about my estate and how I have two children and I think of charity and my philanthropic desire as my third child. So my estate will be divided up between my two kids and my charitable intent, which happens to be represented here.

Speaker 2:

And we're very thankful for that.

Speaker 1:

As are we, oh golly. Well, plan giving is something that the Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams is working on.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and that came a lot with some of the coaching from you, susie, I remember early on. Hey, we need to start thinking about endowment, the sustainability of the Lilly.

Speaker 2:

Center for Lakes and Streams, and then back a few years ago. Then, okay, now let's start thinking about planned giving and, as Stephanie was pointing out, thinking more about legacy and how are these things going to carry on even past the lifetime of one of these donors? And so we've developed what we're calling our Founders Circle, which is kind of our kickoff into the planned giving, the estate giving arena, and so that's open to the first 20 individuals or families that put the Lilly Center in their estate plan. And so excited, susie, to have you and your husband, steve, as part of our Founders Circle, and I think we still have five more spots open for that.

Speaker 1:

So they're being snapped up pretty quick, huh. Yes, okay, anybody listening, and they're interested in being part of the Founders Circle. They're going to call you.

Speaker 2:

Yes, that would be great.

Speaker 1:

Stephanie, what do you see in the future? How do you see growth in the community foundation in our community, in opportunities for organizations like the Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams in the next 20 years? What do?

Speaker 3:

you think is going to happen.

Speaker 3:

Nonprofits will survive, and I think the good news is is that you're among them.

Speaker 3:

The nonprofits that pay attention to operational capacity are we staffing correctly? Are we forecasting for the future? Are we planning ahead? Do we have a reserve that we're building up and protecting? Are we aware of trends that impact our work and our mission? So I think the future is really really bright for those nonprofits that are paying attention to the details, because it's so important, of course, to have people on your staff and your boards who share your vision and your passion for the lakes and the environment. It's equally as important to staff and have on your boards and your committees people who have sound financial experience, who understand a little bit about laws that govern the types of missional work that you do, who are paying attention to like the bottom line and your ability to recruit really talented staff, which you're so fortunate to be at Grace College and really have this influx of talent coming in every year, which you're so fortunate to be at Grace College and really have this influx of talent coming in every year.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 3:

So you're really well positioned, nate, to do well in that space, and I think the good news is that donors are becoming more and more savvy and expecting that their nonprofits make a return on their investment. Not that they're getting paid back financially, but they want to see that every dollar they give is doing something good, that there's a result at the end of it. It doesn't mean we can't take risks or make mistakes or have a fail every once in a while, but overall, nonprofits really need to be on point and on mission. You're doing that really well, so I think the future is bright. I just think it's going to become more and more important that nonprofits, in a way, act like a business. You know, really thinking smartly about where they're investing their time and their talent and their resources. Nate, what?

Speaker 1:

do you see?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I see lots of opportunity ahead. As we look at our lakes, we see certain challenges there and our streams likewise, but there's also a lot of opportunity to move the needle and see positive change in those lakes and streams for our community. But also the impact that we're able to have can spread beyond just our county as we create a model for other communities to be able to utilize as well, which was part of our founding as an organization.

Speaker 1:

So, stephanie, you remember long ago when a donor came to the Community Foundation and said I'm interested in impacting water. It needs to be data-driven, educational and replicable. Data-driven, educational and replicable. And when I hear things like Chesapeake Bay water, people came to see what was happening here to learn about the work that you were doing. It's like oh, man check off all those things, isn't that?

Speaker 3:

awesome. That's amazing and I think that's a beautiful illustration, susie, of how the Community Foundation is really there to facilitate and convene, to serve donors and to act as a grant maker. I like to say we're not the program provider, so we're funding the soup kitchen, we're not serving the soup is an illustration that is easy to understand. And in the case with Susie and I think you guys are going to have a podcast later that really delves into the origins of the Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams and the connection the community has with that but I think the beauty of that is just that ability to convene the right people around the table to say, okay, the community foundation, we aren't lake experts and we're not going to operate a lake quality program, a water quality program, but we can at least gather the people around the table who know how to do this kind of work and figure out how it can be done and how it can be funded.

Speaker 1:

You know something that that you didn't talk about? You have a family. You have a wonderful growing. Now they're all 16 triplets I do. So one of the questions I want to ask you is you know balancing life and work and the fun stuff that you do? Tell us a bit about challenges of being a mom and working.

Speaker 3:

I think that you know, sometimes I do it well and sometimes not so well. And it's here's the thing, I think, for me, when, when we found out we had long wanted children and so I was an older mom and so, compared to many of my children's mothers, as I'm often reminded for a funny story in daycare, one of a little girl came up to me at daycare when I was there to pick up my kids one day and she said are you Maris's mommy? And I said yes, and she goes you're really old and I am compared to a lot of the moms, um, but they were long, you know, longed for, and so when the triplets arrived, um, you know, I was ready, honestly to be like a stay-at-home mom and, um, just enjoy that phase of life. Even though I was at the, honestly to be like a stay-at-home mom and just enjoy that phase of life, even though I was at the Community Foundation and really loved my work, it felt at the time overwhelming, going from no kids to three kids and one was on a heart monitor for six months and all the things right, and so, really, there was a lot of prayer involved in that and, honestly, the reality of we couldn't afford for me to be a full-time stay-at-home mom, and so, fortunately for me, I have a wonderful husband who is an all-in husband and dad. It's never been like will you help with the kids, they're his kids, he's all in. This is a partnership situation and so and I had flexibility in those early years from a really great boss, and then I had great parents, in-laws. My friend Cindy Zare, came once a week until they went to kindergarten so I could do laundry and take a nap every once in a while. I mean I just had an amazing support system, plus Jesus, plus coffee. I mean that's really how we did it.

Speaker 3:

But you have to say no to things too right. I mean sometimes really good things, things you love, that just aren't the most important things in the moment. And so there are things, for example, I was a longtime CASA volunteer that is super close to my heart, but when my kids came along, casa had to retire for a while so that I could raise my own children. And so sometimes you get it right's. Sometimes you get it right and sometimes you don't.

Speaker 3:

And with triplets there are guinea pigs all at the same time. You know like we're messing everybody up equally. We think we have it figured out, we get a phase down, we're like, yes, we know what we're doing, and then something changes and we're idiots all over again and so we just, you know, extend each other and ourselves a lot of grace in this whole parenting world. But they're great. So Maris Ellis and Gage, they're 16, they are going to be juniors at Tippecanoe Valley High School, just started their very first like formal summer jobs. So getting to hear about all those stories and figuring out curfews now that everybody can drive, and fun stuff all the things hang on.

Speaker 1:

It gets better, it gets better. Grandkids get it. Make it all worth it. I hear it's a sweet gig it is. That is a sweet gig, nate. You've got kiddos at home, yeah, um, tell us about your family a bit yeah, we have four kids my wife and I.

Speaker 2:

Our oldest two are both at Grace College oh my goodness. Our uh Abby, she's going into her junior year in accounting. And Andrew, our second oldest, he's going into a sophomore year in nursing. And then we have twins, not quite triplets, but we have twins who are 16 as well. They just turned 16. They're going into 10th grade at Lakeland Christian Academy.

Speaker 1:

Oh, golly, golly, Anything else that you'd like to share with us, with our listeners.

Speaker 3:

I think the thing that I would love to end with is just something that I've learned over my career in philanthropy so far is that there is room in the philanthropy ecosystem for the Center for Lakes and Streams, for the Community Foundation, for other favorite charities.

Speaker 3:

This idea that there are just these really limited resources and we're just going to have to fight each other for that donor dollar. There's room in philanthropy and in charitable giving for all of us who are doing good work, and we are so thrilled at how well the Lilly Center for Lakes and Stream is doing, is being stewarded, and I would encourage, we would love to serve donors that have dreams around the lakes and environment, but we also believe very strongly that a direct gift to Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams might be the right thing for some donors, and so we'd love to serve the donors that are a right fit for us, and we know that there are some donors that are going to give directly to the Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams because that's right for them. So, and we applaud that there's room in the pond.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I would say we are so thankful for the Kosciuszko County Community Foundation for really birthing us as an organization, took a donor's dream and made it a reality, and we've just been really enjoying the work that we've been able to do since 2007. Thanks to the community foundation, so thank you, and you guys have come alongside in a lot of other ways since then too, so thanks, it's been our pleasure.

Speaker 1:

Stephanie, thank you so much for being have come alongside in a lot of other ways since then too. So thanks, it's been our pleasure. Stephanie, thank you so much for being here today and sharing with us. I love your servant heart. I love that you shared with us. This is not a competition for donor dollars. Donors get to choose. Thanks so much, nate. Thank you very much for being here. Stay tuned. We have a real fun segment coming up after this.

Speaker 2:

Hey, I'm Dr Nate Bosch, Director of the Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams, and with me today I have Madison, the Marketing Assistant at the Lilly Center.

Speaker 2:

All right, and we are going to talk about how do you know if your lake is healthy? So what we have here is we have a Pro DSS. This is made by YSI. I'm holding the sonde here, which has multiple sensors inside of it, and there's a housing here to help protect the sensors, but there's slits all the way around and holes in the bottom to allow water to pass through. So once we put it in the water here, all of these sensors are going to work, measuring lots of different things physically, chemically and biologically in the lake, to give us a sense of the health of the lake. And so we're going to go through those one by one and explain what the number is currently in this lake, which is Winona Lake. We're in Kosciuszko County, indiana, and we'll talk about what it means and how do we know from that. So we're gonna go in those order of physical, chemical and biological. So, maddie, what's our first measurement we have there?

Speaker 4:

First is temperature in degrees Celsius. We have 27.1.

Speaker 2:

All right, 27.1 degrees Celsius, that's our first physical measurement. So that's getting close to body temperature. So we're pretty warm. We usually wouldn't see much warmer than that in one of our lakes in the summertime, but we do see a lot colder than that in the winter months. For example. We'll get all the way down to zero degrees Celsius, where the water would actually freeze on a nice cold, crisp, calm night. And so temperature wise doesn't give us a whole lot of indication of health. That's just going to move with air temperature and with sunlight intensity throughout the seasons of the year. What's our next physical measurement?

Speaker 4:

Barometric pressure is 743.9 millimeters of mercury.

Speaker 2:

All right. So barometric pressure Again, this is a good background measurement for context. Millimeters of mercury this is using an old barometer with mercury in it moving up and down. It's giving us a sense of different fronts, moving through High pressure, low pressure. It's giving us a sense of what the immediate past and maybe future weather is going to be, based on how that barometric pressure fluctuates. But right now that's a pretty normal measurement that we would see in our lakes.

Speaker 4:

Next we have the depth in meters at 0.047.

Speaker 2:

Alright, so another physical measurement is the depth. So what is the water depth in this location? And you said 0.0 something 0.047.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and so it's really shallow. Obviously we're holding this just barely under the surface of the water. We could go out to the deepest part of this lake, which would be 80 feet deep, and we've got enough cable here that we could put it all the way to the bottom and see what all these measurements are all the way at the bottom. And that does give us some different ideas of the health of the lake, as we look at the top water layer, which is called the epilimnion, and we compare that to the bottom water layer in a lake, that cold, denser water layer that's called the hypolimnion, and comparing those to each other give us some additional clues as to how clean our lake is. So that gives us some good physical measurements of our lake. Now let's move into some of the chemical measurements.

Speaker 4:

We have pH which is 8.48.

Speaker 2:

Okay. So pH the pH scale goes from 0 to 14. Lower numbers more acidic. Higher numbers more basic. 7 is exactly neutral. Rainwater here in Indiana comes down at about 5.6 on the pH scale, so slightly acidic. In our area of Indiana and really throughout the Midwestern United States, we've got a lot of limestone in our bedrock as well as in the glacial till above that bedrock, and so it buffers the water. Even though the water comes down as rainwater, slightly acidic, that pH is going to get buffered higher because of the limestone that we have in our soils and in our rocks, and so that's a good health indicator. Having it be a little bit higher on the ph scale is going to buffer that water from some different pollutants, even some historical things like acid rain that we dealt with more on some of our lakes in the past. What's our next chemical measurement?

Speaker 4:

next is salinity 0.25 parts per thousand okay.

Speaker 2:

So salinity obviously if we were in the ocean right now or in a coastal marsh sort of a situation, we would see that salinity much higher. I think 32 parts per thousand, if I remember correctly. Here we're less than one Very low salinity levels, even with road salt being used on our roads in the winter time here in the Midwest. Still that number is not going to get to a level at least not that I've seen in our lakes where it's going to start to be an unhealthy factor in our lakes. Having that nice and low in a freshwater lake is healthy and just what we would expect. Maddie, what's our next chemical measurement?

Speaker 2:

next, we have specific conductivity at 0.519 all right and that's in millisiemens per centimeter. That gives us a sense of what the salts are generally in the water and that's a number that we would expect in our lakes Somewhere in the 0.5, 0.4 sort of ranges. We're not seeing such high salt levels from pollution, road salt, those sorts of things. That is raising it to harmful levels to the critters that live in our lakes and streams, but yet it's not down near zero either. So we do have some salts in the water. What's our next one?

Speaker 4:

Next is dissolved oxygen 12.88 milligrams per liter.

Speaker 2:

All right, dissolved oxygen. If we were only to take one measurement in our lake to get a sense of what the health of the lake is, that's the one that I would pick. Right now it's at 12, which is fairly high, and so that tells us that there's lots of oxygen, both getting into the water from the air above, diffusing down under the water surface, but there's also oxygen being produced under the water. What might be producing oxygen? Well, we have aquatic macrophytes, also known as weeds, and we have algae, also known as phytoplankton, that are down in the water doing photosynthesis, producing oxygen, and that's raising the oxygen level. And that's a good thing, because we need oxygen for zooplankton, which eat our phytoplankton, the little fish and the big fish in our lakes, our planktivores and piscivores they all are going to breathe oxygen out of the water.

Speaker 4:

Last is dissolved oxygen percent at 162.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so it's over 100%. That tells us that it's super saturated right now. And you might ask how can it be over 100% oxygen? Well, that tells us that right now, actively, there's lots of oxygen being produced by algae or phytoplankton living down in the water. It's giving the water this sort of greenish hue to it. It's a little bit cloudy, not super clear, not quite to an algal bloom stage, but certainly high level of oxygen because there's high level of algae right now in this water. Algae is doing photosynthesis, producing oxygen. That's why we have a super saturated situation right now and that's a negative indicator for the health of this particular lake currently. Now let's move into the biology, since we've been talking about that.

Speaker 4:

Now we've got chlorophyll a 2.54.

Speaker 2:

All right, so chlorophyll a, that's a pigment that makes plants look green, so that pigment reflects light off grass, leaves, algae and makes it look green to our eyes. And so that's a general sense of how much algae is in the water and the units that we have in this particular meter, rfu. So that would be relative fluorescent unit, kind of a generic unit. Relative is right in the name and so we would look for that number to go up and down, but any particular value of that number is not so meaningful. But as it goes higher we know there's more algae in the water, indicating less health in the lake at that particular time. And then what was our last one?

Speaker 4:

Last one is phycocyanin at 0.48.

Speaker 2:

All right, phycocyanin is another pigment that's found in algae, but unlike the chlorophyll which is in all types of algae, phycocyanin is just in our blue-green algae, also known as cyanobacteria. That blue-green algae we pay particular close attention to because it can produce toxins which can be harmful to people and their pets. And so, again, that number is in those same RFUs, that relative fluorescence unit, not terribly biologically useful as a number by itself, but more relative as we see it go up and down throughout the day and throughout the year. We can get a sense of how those algae levels are moving up and moving down. At the Lilly Center we take water samples and bring algae samples actually into the laboratory to very specifically identify different species of algae in our lakes as well as the quantity of those algae in our particular lakes.

Speaker 2:

Hey, you might be wondering about okay, that's great and that's a lot of numbers for that lake, Winona Lake, where you all are. What about my lake? I'm glad you asked. If you go to our website, lakesgraceedu, you'll find a lakes directory there. You can dial into your lake We've got over 100 lakes included there and you can see the most recent data for your lake specifically and you can get some analysis there, as well as to what that tells you about the health of your lake. Every fall we come out with a new beneath the surface publication which compares a lot of these measurements that we've just been talking about from one lake to another and from one year to another, and you can get a sense of how your lake compares to others over time and by location.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Lake Doctor podcast. Join us next time. It's bound to be fun.

Speaker 2:

Listening to this podcast is the first step to making your lake cleaner and healthier. Visit our website for full studies of our applied research and discover some tangible ways you can make a difference on your lake at lakesgraceedu.

Speaker 1:

We'll see you next time. The doctor is in.