Transmission Project

Nate developed at least 5 partnerships with various businesses on his own and many smaller individual donors. These connections continue to provide ongoing computers for HCN.

He also negotiated a 200 computer purchase at a very nominal fee, picked them up, loaded and unloaded them, and found a place to have them stored.

Nate revised brochures, and a variety of new donor letters, flyers were completed.

He submitted a grant application to Leadership Greensboro which resulted in a team of four local business leaders to help him develop a marketing package, a promotional DVD (still in the works), a lead database and 3 large computer donors. One donor at a local hospital brings 25-40 computers a month.

Nate was especially successful with media through press releases, resulting in TV news coverage three times (videos on our website), one school distribution had 3 local channels show up to cover it. Another grant he submitted to a Create-A-Thon, a local marketing firm, has resulted in a large banner for use at events. It came in very handy and was used 4 times during Nate’s service.

He was instrumental in making many updates, changes and fine tuning our website. He developed the Virtual Tour and has agreed to continue to keep the HCN website fresh and up to date. Nate coordinated all computer distributions which included 71 to the families at Hairston Middle School, 77 to Newcomers School (all immigrants from 8 different countries), 60 to another local immigrant community and sometimes with the help of the Executive Director but often on his own he delivered 50 computers to Group homes (for adults with disabilities) throughout the state of NC. These distributions are very time- and staff intensive; having a Vista take the majority of the responsibility helped other staff to do their respective jobs more effectively. Just before he left, Nate submitted a grant for $30,000 for another local school distribution. We recently received the letter stating we were awarded $25,000.

We have a great website, new ongoing partners, so many computers we have to store them off site, new relationships, an inventory database that makes life easier and some big shoes to fill. (We offered Nate a job, but he declined). We are sustaining Nate’s work by hiring the previous Vista, Anna Simanovitch, in a part time Admin. Assistant role. We have also worked out a consulting contract with Nate to continue web updates, write grants, help complete the Annual Report and in many other ways we we may need to use his expertise and knowledge of our organization .

Vilmala has been extraordinary at implementing a web based presense for the A-VOYCE program. Her skill in this areana has helped facilitate more open communication amongst and between the youth. The youth have a strong bond of trust with her and she has been a good role model and capable teacher for them. She has done a remarkable job at running the radio station, something she had no experience with before she came to ACDC. She is fearless when it comes to tackling challenges and issues and she does it with minimal supervision.

Shortly after she arrived at ACDC, we had the opportunity to partner with the CITGO-Venezuela Energy Efficient Lighting Program in partnership with Citizens Programs Corporation to implement a pilot program that would provide compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) and energy efficiency education. The Program provided low-income households with educational materials on energy efficiency and energy-saving compact fluorescent light bulbs. Vimala took the project on and became proficient at delivering workshops and training to the Chinese community where she did not speak the language and faced overwhelming interest. ACDC was literally flooded with requests and the project took on a life of it’s own. Vimala handled this by recruiting chinese speaking residents to assist in teaching workshops and helping to handle the volume of people who flooded to ACDC to participate in the program. It also required a lot of community outreach, translation of materials and finding ways to communicate when there were cultural and linguistic barriers. The program was a smashing success, in large measure, because of Vimala’s attention to detail and open communication with board, staff, volunteers and community members. The program raised $22,972 for A-VOYCE which was a real boost for the program.

Laura developed a grant narrative for Monster.com for Grassroots.org’s volunteer program. This comprehensive document will be very useful in the development of future proposals. She also developed a needs statement (a crucial development document the organization was lacking) that was submitted along with five proposals this year and will be submitted along with all future grant proposals.

She helped to create and then managed Grassroots.org’s volunteer graphic design program. In five months, there were more than 20 graphic design projects completed: http://volunteer.grassroots.org/image/tid/2.

Laura built upon upon Grassroots.org’s community of web design volunteers from 90 to over 400 through social networking and volunteer requests on Craigslist, SmartVolunteer and Volunteer Match. Laura documented the process, which could be replicated by another staff member.

She developed web content and mailings for Holiday Giving Campaign, which can be publicized annually: http://www.grassroots.org/holidaygiving Helped grow the individual giving program, including handling administrative tasks associated.

Laura assisted in acquiring and managing a grant from google.com for $10,000/ month in ad words. She helped to develop and implement four significant new program service offerings. Helped reestablish our facebook presence and create a new twitter presence. We grew from 0 to 2,160 twitter followers in four months. We have grown our membership from 680 members to over 2,000. We have increased the rate of usage for our tools. In previous years, we averaged about $200,000 in free services being given away. In the past year we have given away over $2 million. We have grown our membership from 680 members to over 2,000. We have increased the rate of usage for our tools. In previous years, we averaged about $200,000 in free services being given away. In the past year we have given away over $2 million.

We were able to achieve most of our significant goals, and also to complete additional items not on the original work plan.

Four Grassroots.org tools are now fully documented with help guides and easy-to-understand information for our membership, which will be valuable as we increase our member base. Our blog content helps convert visitors to members, and there is now a framework for our blog. The positive testimonials will help boost membership and funding prospects. We have also opened up our blog for members and supporters to post their testimonials. Please find it here: http://www.grassroots.org/blog Grassroots.org now has a newsletter template ready to be used monthly. Our e-mail list has grown from 600 to 8000+ contacts, and our monthly content has produced a loyal group of readers. (We currently sustained less than 1% unsubscribe rate). Alice developed seven significant programmatic partnerships, which resulted in on going referrals for membership at Grassroots.org. The partners include some of the best nonprofit umbrella organizations in the country. For a full list please go here: http://www.grassroots.org/support/program-partners Developed a you tube channel site, include new overview videos for potential members and potential donors. Please go here to see: http://www.youtube.com/user/GrassrootsDotOrg Developed an earned media outreach plan, which resulted in multiple significant media mentions. This included ABCnews.com, PC world, Tech Soup, and the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Please see our media page for more info: http://www.grassroots.org/news We have grown our membership from 680 members to over 2,000. We have increased the rate of usage for our tools. In previous years, we averaged about $200,000 in free services being given away. In the past year we have given away over $2 million in services.

n the beginning, Katrina centered on constructing infrastructure in KKCS’s practices and procedures. She has worked with the Head of School to develop institutional policies and procedures, and worked diligently to implement effective and efficient practices in the After School Program. Through recruiting and training volunteers, she has expanded the number of people working with students, thus lessening the student to teacher radio. She has worked to build an efficient Healthy Snack Program which provides the After School students with nutritious and balanced snacks every day. Katrina also has her sights set on the long term impacts that technology can make on KKCS and has been a part of the planning process for our student and school database. Through these and many more tasks, her comprehensive understanding of both the day to day operation as well as the long term goals have helped to bring KKCS to a higher level.

For the first time, Math/English is offered in the After-School program. Katrina designed the curriculum which follows the Boston Public School standards, recruited student teachers from colleges and Boston Latin School to teach these subjects two days a week for two hours each day. Katrina has also provided additional resources such as lesson planning templates, sample lesson plans and best practices. The Math/English program continues to be offered in the After-School program.

Though Katrina drafted several of the school handbooks, none were adopted. In an effort to gain input and feedback, it was hoped that separate constituient committees conisisting of teachers, parents and students would be formed. This was not done. Time and resources were the challenge. KKCS’s website updating was not addressed by the school administration. The Parent Teacher Association had several starts, but did not get organized. This is a brand new concept to KKCS; the appropriate leadership needs to be identified.

Morgan’s primary focus has been on the complete redesign of the NAMAC website – from complex technical programming to taxonomization of data and content to social networking and blogging. It launched in the end of August and is becoming the nervous system of the NAMAC offerings. We are very happy with the results and look forward to our next phase of community building online, educating our membership in social networking through the site, and extending its reach to other nonprofits, communities and the public. Morgan has been a kind, reponsive and patient staff member throughout this process, always thinking strategically about how our online offerings can benefit new members, communities and organizations.

Morgan wrote an article about the website-building process for our member newsletter and produced a short video on how to use the site to its maximum capability. Now he is transitioning into the role of online community manager. He is managing our website content, troubleshooting any technical problems, and most importantly creating an online community of dedicated users from the NAMAC membership and other nonprofits, to the public at-large.

It was a hard challenge to solve a lot of the technical problems that the transistion to a Drupal environment posed. But we were very pleased to see that not only was Morgan a problem solver, but he was a solution seeker, reaching out continuously to the technical community and his network of programmers to find ways to deal with the small to large issues that would arise.

Vista volunteer developed our agency’s website, set up, maintained and assisted in our computer lab (open to the public at no charge to give low-income seniors and others internet access), and developed curriculums for computer classes. Also, assisted in agencywide IT issues, offering advice and providing consultation.Website was created, computer lab was opened, class curriculum was developed and classes offered.

The website that Jim developed was the first one our agency has ever had. It has resulted in more public exposure and donations.

Working independently, Rian collected examples of Web 2.0 tools, resources related to them, case studies, and effective practices. She designed and developed a website to share this information broadly. She assisted in the development of several slide presentations on subjects ranging from electronic newsletters to databases and effective practices in the use of these technologies. Rian also developed recommendations for DCN’s volunteer management program, including a volunteer manual, and created on-line resources for other nonprofits to use in developing their own volunteer management programs.

Once the resources were collected into an invaluable website by Rian, a small team of technical liaisons were able to use them in supporting five pilot organizations, including the Food Bank of Yolo County, Yolo Community Foundation, Short-Term Emergency Action Committee, TREEDavis, and Davis Community Network itself. These technical liaisons are volunteers, and it made their jobs much easier to conduct strategic communications planning with the nonprofits, identify their target audiences for the pilot period, messages they wanted to use the Internet to deliver, what they wanted their audiences to do, and finally, what Internet tools (from the collection of resources on the website), would help them to carry out their strategic communications plan. Without of all Rian’s up-front work, these volunteers could not have been immediately helpful to the organizations, to help them set up their websites in a sustainable way (so that they are not dependent on DCN’s volunteers to maintain them), to develop online webforms for simple contact management, electronic newsletters, and community calendars. In addition, Rian led a team to evaluate more sophisticated collaborative, communication, and contact management tools for DCN to use, to model potential future uses of tools such as Google Apps and Salesforce, when local nonprofits (with our help), become more sophisticated in their use of the Internet.

The major challenge for Rian was that DCN did not have an executive director during most of the term of her assignment, which meant that she was supervised, first by a team of volunteers, and then by a single volunteer. While she was able to carry out assignments once they were framed, and she worked well independently, she (and the organization) would have benefited from supervision by a staff person.

Stewart Machlyn Blair was successful in integrating web 2.0 strategies into Appalshop’s training programs and building advanced technology learning opportunities for advanced youth so they could continue to contribute to Appalshop’s overall work as a non-profit media arts and education center. Blair also was successful in initiating and testing digital delivery services, contributing to building the databases necessary to implement digital delivery.

One of the difficulties Blair faced was organizing his time among different responsibilities. This challenge was recognized early in his service and we developed more pro-active mentorship that seemed to help.

Carrie Cook Carrie has focused on developing our internal systems that support expanding services to low-income individuals. She has developed our tutorial for embedding digital stories in community maps and assisted with the development of digital stories for a Tuscaloosa, Alabama-based project supporting residents of low-income housing. She has also been involved with developing outreach materials for the silence speaks project and a blog for educators who are implementing skills learned in our workshops in their classrooms. The blog will allow them to more effectively utilize digital storytelling with their stories. In addition, she supported website development and local event organizing for the International Day for Telling Life Stories. She will also participate in strengthening our internal digital story archiving system.