Transmission Project

Julie’s work was instrumental in meeting our program goals of elevating more local residents to present media on the issues that affect their communities. We have countless blog posts, videos, photos and other pieces of issue-oriented media published on our website, and they have been seen by thousands of visitors in the course of the year. Julie’s execution of the Neighbormedia program also greatly successful in bringing our communities closer to each other. We saw many scenarios in which one citizen journalist published material about a community issue which then led to a high level of readership, discussion and participation around that particular issue. Bringing local producers together with their local audience is a massive tool for building community.

Anna took complete responsibility for the annual appeal letter in April, using the over 400 names entered into the new Exceed database which was completed by then. She was responsible for tracking the donations and sending out the thank you notes. Over $5,000 was raised for HCN.

She developed an ongoing partnership with Earth Fare, a local organic supermarket, where our first Community Recycling Event was held in the spring. It was covered by the a local TV channel and the newspaper. Over 75 computers and assorted equipment were received. She helped Nate, our new Vista, with the contacts and planning for our second one held Sept 6, 7th. This has helped raise community awareness of our organization and both events have resulted in ongoing equipment donations from local businesses.

Anna single-handedly made it possible for HCN to distribute 223 computers to low income 7th and 8th graders at Hairston Middle School and 20 more to teachers with no computer in their homes. Her desire to see that every deserving child got a computer had her making trips to the school to find the children who had no phone, deliveries to the homes of those without transportation, finding Spanish interpreters to communicate with the families of the children with minimal English. She co-ordinated the transportation and then the distribution of from 20-40 computers to the school on the 6 distribution dates. I can’t say enough how much that meant not only to the staff of HCN that were busy getting the computers ready but to the children who would not have received a computer if not for Anna’s diligence.

There are many more instances where Anna’s service to HCN was above and beyond her duties, her desire to help others through HCN is a shining example of AmeriCorp Vista service. In fact she became so indispensable we have offered her a full time position. She has taken a 8-10 month sabbatical to help her father but plans on returning to us.

There were many areas of Zumix Radio and Zumix in general to which Diana contributed. She helped prepare youth for radio work, including going on the air and journalism. She helped prepare Zumix journalists for pieces that have been posted on our blog: zumixradio.blogspot.com. She helped develop underwriting material and other publicity material. She was a full participant in staff meetings and helped contribute to staff trainings and retreats. She assisted with Zumix events such as the Walk For Music. and with gathering information necessary for grantors.

Simply extrapolate from the above, as Diana was successful at all work undertaken. She became a valued member of the Zumix community, including learning how to play the bass and participating in Zumix recitals.

With regard to challenges faced, Diana initially had little radio experience and needed to acquire some quickly, which she did.

Over the course of Sarah’s Vistaship she has been instrumental in working with our various youth training programs providing a wide variety of skills. She was responsible for helping students make the best videos possible and teaching them to think critically about media and media messages. She took the initiative to outreach to communities we hadn’t worked with in the past including GLBT and the Triangle Foundation, and solidified relationships with them and our organization. She helped plan a film festival and worked on several video installations dealing with issues such as the war and discrimination. In addition, Sarah has helped out in our theater by operating the lighting board for concerts, selling tickets and running concessions. She teaches video production and editing classes to our members and so much more.

Here is a list of projects Sarah was involved in during her VISTA year:

1.Allegan County Community Mental Health: produced, shot and edited a documentary about the stigma of mental illness.

2. G.E.T. Girls Empowering Together: since January worked with a group of High School girls in a leadership mentoring program to mentor, produce, shot and edit a documentary about the program, “Breaking the Surface,” available for viewing at www.archive.org

3. The MOLLIE Club: a weekly video club for students in middle School that provides an opportunity for them to come in and Make videos.

4. MOLLIE (Mobile Learning Lab for Information Education): Went to area schools and non-profits teaching youth how to produce, shoot and edit videos.

5. Real Pride: helped start the planning process for a film and documentary series about LGBT issues.

In a lab used mainly by young people on a daily basis we run into many technical/equipment malfunctions that oftentimes have no explanation. Reel Works Teen Filmmaking operates on a “shoe-string” budget and would not have been as successful in the past year had it not been for Micheil’s superior troubleshooting skills. Oftentimes, the members of our skeleton staff would attempt to trouble shoot errors while simultaneously running other programs and teaching a class - making for a very hectic and crazy work day. The days we were fortunate enough to work with Micheil were always the most productive. The young people in our program owe a lot of their stress-free success to Micheil.

Marilyn Taylor is responsible for developing a comprehensive grassroots database of resources in each county in Washington State. She has successfully updated quick County listings, printable directories, Shelter Vacancies, Reentry Resources and Housing Inventories. Marilyn Taylor has also worked with a number of agencies training them on the case management system, and has compiled database reports using Crystal Reports.

The re-design of 4People in 2007 resulted in increased views of services and has subsequently reduced homelessness, reduced recidivism, and helped people out of poverty. Over 314,000 views of resources were recorded in 2007. She has updated websites to increase Googleability. She has staffed booths for 4People at fairs and conferences, promoted the use of the database, and consistently provided accurate and timely information to help people out of poverty. Marilyn has assisted with numerous grants, and assisted volunteers, Goodwill and AARP workers with accurate updating of information. 4People has increased coverage of Information and Referral resources from 19 counties to all 39 Washington State counties.

Stephen was the primary link between HOME, Inc. and Brighton High School. providing technical support to four teachers and supporting teachers in two media classes by helping to develop curriculum, provide professional development support including support to the teachers as they learned new computer applications. Stephen provided additional help to some of the students and helped our Media Lab Coordinator organize his work and program at Social Justice Academy. Stephen updated our website and helped develop and update our summer Teen TV content management system for our six week long summer intensive.

Stephen is a dedicated, sensitive and creative teacher who in his low key style gains the trust of hardened and skeptical teachers and students at the schools. He has outstanding problem solving skills and accepts most difficulties with grace and a can do attitude. Stephen was able to provide a high degree of leadership during our summer Teen TV intensive, providing both technical and creative support that encouraged staff and students to excel. His work on our website has helped to ensure that the content management system will continue to be an important factor in our organization’s growth and success.

Ahsley began her service by taking part in a staff retereat in Columbus, Oh which was very helpful for team building. She was able to meet all of the people who make it possible for Grassroots to be successful and prepared her for our fundraising event in LA the following spring.

Shortly thereafter she began developing the domain Crime.org, one of the portal sites we had in mind. She scouted the field for partners that would help provide content to the website. She has recruited a number of local Professors of criminal justice for this purpose.

From July 26-28, Ashley attended the Non Profit 2020 I will be attending the NP2020: “Giving Emerging Leaders a Voice in the Nonprofit Community” in Grand Rapids, MI, for which she had received a scholarship to attend. She was able to get the people she met interested in the potential web-based programs such as egroupware and Salesforce to help their nonprofits.

http://nonprofit2020.wordpress.com/
http://np2020.wikispaces.com/.

Ashley helped us prepare for a fundraising event that took place in Seattle on August 13, 2007. She learned what goes into making such an event successful, such as creating a theme compatible with the invitations and organizing a budget. She performed public-relations functions such as preparing advertising and outreach materials.

Due to a critical blood shortage in central Ohio, Ashley represented Grassroots.org in their efforts to help recruit donors to the blood drive on October 11, 2007. I am in the process of coordinating a blood drive with the Red Cross, which will be held on October, 11. She established relationships with local businesses. She also strengthened our relationship with Strongtech, with whom we share office space, by inspiring them to recruit donors as well.

In the months following the drive, Ashley continued her web development work while helping staff market some of its new programs, such as its MBA Mentor program, which pairs Grassroots members with MBA students from the University of Maryland to provide free marketing consulting, and the Social Venture Consulting program which will begin spring 2008.

Ashley attended the She’s Geeky conference in Mountain View, CA. The conference was for women working in the field of technology. She network with people outside of the nonprofit tech world such as google reps, yahoo reps, and AOL reps. She was able to participate in a free public speaking training from an acting and speech prof. from UC Berkley.

Beginning in January 2008, Ashley isolated a number of Foundations that fund national open source technology projects. Because Grassroots works at the national level, it is often difficult to find funders who match our profile.

Ashley updated our constituent database using Salesforce’s nonprofit edition. She also attended the NTC conference March 19-21 in New Orleans, where she joined sessions about database management and how to use them effectively.

Shortly after coming to Grassroots.org, Molly created a Public Relations/Marketing plan for us and has been implementing the plan for the past 3 months. Molly created a format for writing and sending out press releases and created a network for us to distribute our media materials to (including local news outlets and nonprofit technology blogs). She launched our first public relations campaign, which landed coverage in PC Magazine, Ode Magazine and the Philanthropy Journal. Molly regularly edits and contributes to the Grassroots.org website, notably our press page and frequent blog posts. Molly has been instrumental in engaging our nonprofit membership by recruiting members to contribute to the newsletter, annual report and blog.

Molly has accomplished an incredible amount for us in the past 6 months and has been a wonderful addition to Grassroots.org. Molly’s press efforts have undoubtedly played a large part of the huge membership growth Grassroots experienced in the last year. In addition to helping us gain new members, Molly has also reengaged older members by reaching out to them for blog contributions. These engagement efforts are so important to us because the best way for us to gain new members is my word of mouth. So far, Molly has launched a “Member of the Month” series that allows us to feature one Grassroots member every month and give our other members advice on what makes a good nonprofit website. The monthly release has been standardized and will be very easy to continue to publish for other staff. In addition, Molly created our “Tool of the week” series. This feature presents reviews from Grassroots.org staff of technology tools that we think would benefit our members. This series has been extremely popular. Molly not only created the format for the series, but also came up with an extensive list of tools that we will be able to continue to feature on a weekly basis.

In addition to the annual report (which came about because Molly was self-motivated and thought that it would benefit our organization immensely), Molly has greatly extended the reach of our organization through her work in developing our social networking reach; namely our Twitter account. Although we had a Twitter account that was managed by me (Laura Benack) when Molly came on board, she completely changed the way we were using this outlet. In addition to getting all recent Grassroots.org news pushed out on Twitter, Molly also started to thoughtfully share useful articles and resources with our Twitter followers and interacting daily with other users in the nonprofit and technology fields. Molly has grown our follower list to just under 3,000 in just a few months. We will now be able to leverage this community of followers in the future and continue her methods of Twitter engagement.

Carolyn has brought in approximately $3,000 in undesignated donations, almost reaching her goal of $5000. Working with board members and other staff, Carolyn scheduled coffee or lunch meetings with past and potential supporters and asked them for money. Carolyn created a database of past and potential donors of more than 300 members. Carolyn also organized and ran a fundraising Tea that brought in approximately $1000. Considering our past best year for individual donations was about $700, this is quite a leap forward.

The Community Software lab now has the infrastructure for soliciting donations and for putting on fund-raising events. We also now have an organizational culture that values fundraising. To insure we can continue, our board and permanent staff have worked with Carolyn on fund-raising setup and implementation and pledged to continue when she leaves. Remaining work includes refining our presentation for different potential donors. We need to cultivate donors outside our existing network.

When Carolyn started we realized that her work should fit into a larger plan, a plan that we had not yet created. Carolyn has contributed to our business planning efforts and our draft/working business plan document. Carolyn has done planning work on an un-conference we are exploring putting on with another organization. Carolyn recruited somebody who is proving to be one of our better board members. Carolyn helped write two grants.