social media

Nonprofit Social Media Analysis

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Organization: 
Quote-Unquote

An analysis of current social media practices at Quote…Unquote by corps member Erica Jones.

Non-profit Video & Social Media Wiki

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A Video & Social media Wiki developed by corps member Mike Ewing which acts as an overview of tools and strategies nonprofits can use to produce and distribute videos over the Internet. This includes a discussion of the use of social media and video by nonprofits generally and specific step-by-step instructions on how to distribute videos online.

Link to Wiki:
http://cantvnpos.wikispaces.com/

Technology, Social Innovation, and Civic Participation: What's the Next Step?

When: 
December 1, 2010
Where: 
The New America Foundation 1899 L St. NW, Suite 400 Washington, D.C. 20036

Disaster, fraud and crime reporting sites provide information to civic authorities. AmberAlert has more than 7 million users who help with information on child abductions, and SERVE.GOV enables citizens to volunteer for national parks, museums and other institutions. These are just a few examples of digital tools – from social networking applications, to microblogging (e.g. Twitter), to recommendation sites like Ushahidi – that represent the new frontier of technology-mediated social participation.

Social Media Workshop Curriculum

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A Social Media Curriculum created by Corps member Melissa Niiya for a train-the-trainers with small business counsellors workshop at the Little Tokyo Service Center in California.

Graphic Designer

Organization: 
Mobile Film School
VISTA Name: 
Amy Simon
Program Start: 
7/2008
Project Description: 

Graphic and layout design for all MFS website, print and media materials to increase professional look and branding of MFS name.

- Liaison between MFS and AIR interactive web designers and developers to enhance the accessibility of our current website
- Propose and implement a new, more user-friendly design for the website
- Develop methods for increasing user-interaction with our website and online resources
- Research and develop affordable streaming videos technologies to implement on website
- Research and implement a more efficient transaction processing system for online donations
- Assist in the development, beta-testing, and implementation of a customized database and business management software
- Regularly update and maintain all content on website
- Monitor our online social networking participation
- Help improve and develop our internet presence

Project Outcome: 

Amy was the photographer and photo design editor for the Bowl-A-Roma fundraising event, the Bob Bullock Video project, and the Luling documentary workshop

Amy did the graphic layout and design for all business materials, workshops and events, including flyers, postcards, promo packets, program materials, business cards, manuals, proposals, signs, newsletters, and brochures.

Amy also did website design and development; she created page layouts and templates, icons, titles, drop down menus, picture galleries, and content.

Outreach Coordinator

VISTA Name: 
Erin Taylor
Program Start: 
9/2006
Project Description: 

The VISTA will work with the Project’s support staff and VISTA Leaders to provide coordination and support to other VISTAs in the field on professional, personal, and some administrative matters relating to service.

- Assist VISTA leaders and staff in coordinating training and conference attendance/participation
- Work with VISTA leaders on the development and coordination of collaborative projects developed by VISTAs throughout the year
- Coordinate the avenues of communications among VISTAs (blogs, newsletter, website)
- Assist with organizational outreach efforts
- Coordinate outreach to educational institutions and online communities that may be good sources of VISTA recruits

Project Outcome: 

Erin Taylor has proved herself to be both hard working and innovative during her VISTA service and has greatly improved the ability of the CTC VISTA Project to accomplish its mission and programs.

As Project Development Associate, Erin was instrumental in improving our outreach and communication. Erin developed a comprehensive plan for outreach to colleges and other media technology programs, significantly enlarging our pool of qualified VISTA applicants. Additionally, Erin’s research of organizational and institutional partners led us to having one of the most successful VISTA placement rounds ever, with more than 100 organizations submitting applications. On her work on The Digest, our organization’s newsletter and review, Erin worked closely with staff and VISTAs to produce four unique and high-quality issues.

In addition to outreach work, Erin greatly improved our fundraising capacity. Erin researched more than 40 funding institutions, documenting her processes and providing a strong foundation for future development. She leaves many templates for proposals and grant language, and submitted many letters of introduction and one complete proposal.

Lastly, Erin has proved invaluable in her collaborations with other local VISTAs and VISTA Leaders. In addition to helping to bring about two successful Pre-Service Orientations and our monthly area meetings, Erin has greatly helped in encouraging discussion and creating collaborations between members and organizations.

Media Watch Team Social Media Development

VISTA Name: 
Colleen Kelly
Program Start: 
6/2006
Project Description: 

- Develop fund raising campaigns
- Develop personalized blogs for Media Watch Team members and citizen journalists
- Assist in the training Media Watch Team members and other staff in absic digital media authoring, such as video blogging
- Create a packaged curriculum for train-the-trainer workshops for digital media creation and facilitate the actual workshops
- Implement a membership system for online resources
- develop relationships with community leaders and organizations for building a strong youth media network in Boston

Project Outcome: 

Organized web resource area and assisted in the production of outreach and PR materials.

Social Media Development

Organization: 
Portland Community Media
VISTA Name: 
Denise Cheng
Program Start: 
7/2008
Program End: 
7/2009
Project Description: 

Access 2.0 is a three year project to expand access to and viewership of community media through new media channels. In this project, PCM will upgrade its technology and training to integrate new media channels with traditional public access channels to expand and enhance access to media as a communications tool for community members, community-based and non-profit organizations, government partners and other stakeholders. Through Access 2.0, PCM is upgrading equipment, improving technology, upgrading the PCM website, redeveloping the PCM database and reaching out to a number of groups and organizations in the community with an emphasis on underrepresented populations.

The Access 2.0/New Media Vista will work with PCM’s Media Educators and Media Facilitators to:

-Develop media education training projects, classes and curricula for expanding the skills of community producers, organizations and other stakeholders through in new media areas
-Develop skill building activities and materials to improve the competency and confidence of community members and other stakeholders in the use of new media
-Further develop PCM’s drupal-based website to strengthen user participation and better meet user needs
-Actively participate in and contribute to technical planning for PCM’s Access 2.0 project to develop new media opportunities and distribution channels for community members, community-based and non-profit organizations, government partners and other organizations.
-Build skills of community members and stakeholders in new media applications to increase distribution and sharing of community media including blogging, podcasting, cross posting and others
-Initiate and develop participation of PCM in PEGSpace project of the Alliance for Community Media and other collaborative development projects
-Develop new opportunities for volunteer participation, particularly related to new media

Project Outcome: 

Denise’s activities are focused around research and development of new media services and education. She has assisted with development of two new classes that focus on teaching participants how to prepare content for distribution via the Internet, and how to utilize online video and social networking tools to increase distribution of content, and to connect with target audiences. Denise also participates on the PR and Marketing committee, is helping to redesign our website with the goal of building capacity, is participating in grant research and writing, and helps with proofreading and layout in creation of new documents.

Denise researched and proposed a new project that was submitted for consideration to the Knight foundation. Denise’s proposal made it through the first round but has been dropped from consideration by the Knight foundation. PCM will continue to try to secure grant funding to realize this proposal. The proposal would create a new acquisition and distribution path for audio content via a new website portal. The focus of the project targeted increasing participation from immigrant, minority and youth groups using cell phone and Internet technology. Denise’s research identified very high cell phone and Internet penetration among immigrant populations in the Portland area. Denise’s project would also create a backbone for a large scale expansion of Internet based acquisition and distribution for PCM participants.

Denise revised our existing Media Education schedule to create a more polished document to promote Media Education classes and workshops. Denise has routinely been proofreading and editing public documents to maintain voice and consistency.

Denise was asked to submit a design mock-up for our upcoming website redevelopment. Her mock-up showed an advanced understanding of the kind of content rich site that many Internet viewers would appreciate. Denise’s research on social networking and how different groups consume information via the Internet comes through in her clean and rich design concept. Denise is currently assisting with implementation of our new open source database project being developed in partnership with Denver Open Media.

Impact Quote: 

Denise participation in brainstorming and discussion has provided me with a new perspective on a variety of topics including community media, who we serve, immigrant issues, community engagement and a millenial perspective on technology. Denise has reshaped my views on my career field because she asks questions I’m not often asked, and she brings a different perspective and set of experiences to the organization. I am very grateful for the opportunity to have worked with her.”
- Bea Coulter, supervisor

Program Development and Outreach

Organization: 
Appalshop
VISTA Name: 
Julia Taylor
Program Start: 
7/2008
Program End: 
7/2009
Project Description: 

Julia works in various capacities at Appalshop/Thousand Kites Project. She manages “StoryLine,” our online story-gathering project, for which she uploads audio to the content management system, and writes the copy for the website. She also responds to communication via our social networking sites and writes emailblasts. She works with community members (locally and nationally) to gather their stories about the criminal justice system and post them to the website. She also is currently creating a plan for a google map to document these stories using new technology. She also co-produces our campaigns. For our most recent campaign, Calls From Home, Julia coordinated the targeted outreach to radio station managers, prison chaplains, and prisoners and their families. She does the background research for the campaigns and organizes content. Including partnerships with other non-profits for viral marketing support. Julia works with community members (stakeholders) to identify community needs to inform future campaigns and communication strategies. Julia also produces our weekly radio show, Holler to the Hood, which broadcast online, as well supporting workshops that train community members and stake-holders in radio/online production.

Project Outcome: 

When Julia arrived at Appalshop, she spent the first couple of months working with staff to revamp the project’s website, making it media rich, clean, and efficient. We now have an direct model for people to call in their stories and a way to share them on the web. At the same time, Julia aided in the creation of a Facilition Guide, which helps Thousand Kites be a model for communities to take action. This document makes our work process more efficient because we can now direct people to the guide, instead of having to talk through all the details with each individual community. It is available in print and online and has greatly increased our capacity to train and garner participants. Julia has taken the lead on developing our database, updating contacts, and training staff on a system for long-term use. Overall Julia has worked at all levels of the organization to build our communication, online, and digital capacity.

Julia is able to identify key opportunities, and run with them. While looking through old email to learn more about the project’s correspondence, she found an unanswered email from a poet who was willing to volunteer his time to the project. Julia contacted him about possible connections, and now his network of poets has become a tremendous source of capacity in our project. His online community of writers has generated hundreds of audio samples for our website. Another example of this was when we received an email from a woman in the Virgin Islands who is dealing with the prisoners from her community being shipped up to prisons in our region. Julia saw this as an opportunity to really immerse in a community’s issue and help them find ways they could take action locally. The group has since produced their own radio program and hosted multiple film screenings using the Kites tools.

Impact Quote: 

Without our VISTA we would not have gotten several projects off the ground or reached the level of capacity that we have. Julia greatly expanded outreach and participation in our program by local, regional, and national communitiy members through building our communication backbone, developing a model for web-site content production, and building tools to lower the threshold of working with our program. It has simply impacted the entire organization to have someone focused on capacity building and research.

Transmission Project