SMART hires new exec

EAST COUNTY — Jody Jorgensen isn’t in the saddle, exactly, but she’s taking the reigns at a local nonprofit.

As of Feb. 1, she became the new executive director for Sarasota-Manatee Association for Riding Therapy, or SMART, a horseback riding therapy program for physically and mentally disabled people.

“I think she’s going to be a great fit,” SMART board member Darrin Simone said. “Her passion for the organization and understanding is great. We’re very excited.”

Jorgensen most recently worked as the executive director of Nokomis-based InStride Therapy, a Nokomis-based hippotherapy program similar to SMART. Although the Mote Ranch resident loves InStride, she likes that SMART also uses its riding programs to support breast cancer survivors and military veterans, among others.

“I felt it was a more diversified opportunity for me,” Jorgensen said.

At SMART, Jorgensen will lead the organization toward its longterm goals, to fund and construct a covered arena (estimated at $300,000 to $400,000) and to pay off the roughly $500,000 mortgage on SMART’s 12-acre property just north of Hunsader Farms. To do it, she will spend much of her first six months in meetings, attending functions and speaking to groups so people will visit SMART, hopefully to become donors or volunteers.

“It’s key to have people understand what we do,” she said. “It’s emotional when you see (riders) out there and their connection with a 1,200-pound animal. We all have something we fight or struggle with.”

“I’m excited about that,” Jorgensen said. “I love to go to fundraisers. I love to go out to lunch, and I love people.”

Jorgensen hopes to raise capital for the goals within a year, although she knows it’s a tall order, especially when considering SMART’s annual budget is just less than $400,000.

With work in donor relations at Mote Marine Laboratory from 2003 to 2007 and other experiences, Jorgensen is confident she can educate the community about SMART and its mission along with building donor relationships. She also will write grants and look for other ways to raise capital.

Her efforts will focus on SMART’s May Derby Day fundraiser, the organization’s largest of the year, and may eventually expand to adding another fundraiser in October, for which planning is in the early stages.

SMART, which became a nonprofit in 1987, has been primarily run by volunteers, except for a four-month span last year when the board hired an executive director. Its administrative assistant and barn manager also are paid.

Gail Clifton, who served as the organization’s full-time volunteer executive director for more than a decade, reassumed the helm when SMART restarted its leadership search in July 2015. She will stay on under Jorgensen as volunteer operations director.