Digital Arts Service Corps - grants

Month Seven: Rethinking

Melissa Niiya — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:39:53 +0000

LTSC (and quite a few other CA orgs) lost out on a big time federal grant. We're facing a pretty big budget shortfall, and a bunch of projects and plans are going to have to be slimmed down or eliminated in order to keep core programs afloat.

In the past few weeks, I've been putting together a curriculum packet to train resident volunteers in networking. The plan was to offer a small stipend, but now that we don't have that to give, I'm gonna change the recruitment strategy a bit (beg beg beg, and/or possibly find a business who'd be willing to donate something).

Was also planning to fix one of the residential networks. Without any money for equipment, this will be difficult. But rummaging around, I found a bunch of unused network equipment... hope to make this work.

My plan for the next few months will include time spent on trying to figure out how to make other tech programs and projects (ones that I previously wasn't directly involved in, such as our CTCs) stay aloft and be as sustainable as possible. I feel like CTCs are often on a knife's edge when it comes to keeping open and functional, and I think we should start to explore partnerships outside of LTSC's usual realm (there's a lot of turning inward to Little Tokyo/JA organizations, I feel).

My supervisor's replacement has been hired and is going to start working sometime in March I think. Hopefully the transition goes well.

Also, these are awesome and have been a little bit useful for residents with external wifi adapter antennas:
http://urbanwireless.info/index.php/antennas/parabolic-reflector

Piece by piece

Elizabeth Goussetis — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 14:38:29 +0000

The Youth Channel is online! Or rather, evidence of the Youth Channel’s existence is online. But that’s pretty exciting. It's one of the small but encouraging pieces that seem to be coming together with the Youth Channel.

We just revamped the Media Bridges website, and the new one is clean and easy to use. The old one looked like it was from 1994, and there was no mention of the Youth Channel. On our new site, I created a page of info about the youth channel and posted our meetings on the Web site calendar. In the next few weeks I’m hoping to set up a blog feature on the Web site so we can add updates about the Youth Channel and announce current projects and ways kids can get involved. Also, we have a Twitter account! We’ll see how that goes. You can follow us; our name is CincyYouthTV.

Currently airing on our Youth Channel time slot are several youth-produced videos from the Mobile Film School in Austin, Texas. Thanks, Amy! If anyone else has youth-produced videos they wouldn't mind having on TV in Cincinnati, please send them my way.

We have several shows in production. Whether this is my doing, or just happened without my help, or a combination, I don’t know. An adult producer here is working with kids from a performing arts high school on an entertainment show, one of our interns is putting together a youth talk show, and a middle school club is planning a regular talk show about manners (yes, manners). I also have a high school student finishing a documentary project, and I am working on a documentary with students at a local elementary school.

I am also having an opportunity every week for kids to come to orientation for the Youth Channel. The goal is to get kids in the door and show them how they can get involved at Media Bridges. I’m hoping that this will help get more youth involved at Media Bridges, hopefully some who can be peer leaders in the future.

We are starting to talk about plans for our summer camp program, which we do every year, but the funding situation is kind of up in the air, so we can’t plan too much. The program we’re hoping to do will be pretty awesome, and I’m excited about it.

It's been a long time

Victoria Edwards — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 20:08:59 +0000

Hey, it's been a while since I last wrote so I thought now would be as good of a time as ever. So the biggest thing we're working on right now is getting funding. CTI (Community Technology Initiative) at the Collins Center is completly broke. As in we have zilch to our name, and the website (which may or may not be up) is coming out of my supervisor's pocket. Last week I helped put together my first ever grant, a Children's Trust Grant asking for a substantial amount. It was incredibly stressful, even though I had previously printed out all of the attachments. The whole thing was a huge headache/whirlwind that had us rushing to get the grant in 10 minutes before it was due (we made it somehow). Anyway I'm doing everything in my power to make sure our next grant (due at the end of the week) doesn't end up like that. I want to make sure we've all learned our lesson because I can't go through that again. That might be my most stressful experience. Ever.

All I see are grants

Elisha Durrant — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 21:03:23 +0000

So we've been working on a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a digitization project in cooperation with the Spokane library's Northwest Room (which houses local history). Its enough to make your head spin. Our deadline is tuesday so its crunch time.

In the mentime I've been working on a current project to go to small museums in our area to help them digitize their collections which is funded by a grat from Humanities Washington.

I'm getting a real crash course in the world of grant writing, and am just trying to hold my own.
Next project another grant from NEH for a teacher's workshop.

Keep your fingers crossed for grants :-)

A Donation Request Letter Template

Rayna Ramirez — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 14:12:07 +0000

Just something I have been using to gain donations and thought I would share. I found a lot of companies want an explanation of who you are representing, what they are doing, and why they want a donation. Many also require you to fill out a request form as well. I took some time and wrote a simple letter that explains all of that. A master letter that we can change the statement about what we want to suit our needs. I attach a business card and proof that we are a non - profit organization to it with a paper clip. Paper clip comes in handy to attach their request forms if they have one right to the information they require. I have had great success with this so far:

To Whom It May Concern:

My name is Rayna Ramirez. I am the AmeriCorps CTC Vista project coordinator for the YES (Young Entrepreneurs Society) program located in Orange. We are a non – profit organization 501(c) (3). We fund ourselves through our FedEx and UPS shipping store. We are working to improve the accessibility of our facility, for anyone who has any type of disability through a grant from C4ALL for TechACCESS. For more information about YES and TechACCESS please see our website at:

http://yes-inc.org/

We are seeking a donation of a gift certificate(s). This gift certificate will be used to assist in raising funds for our efforts. We would like to request the value to be no less than $25.00. If you would like to donate a value greater than that amount we would be grateful.

The goal of TechACCESS is to help residents with disabilities in our 9-town rural region expand their social, academic, and livelihood horizons by making local programs, services and opportunities more accessible by removing physical barriers to facilities; equipping computers with accessible hardware and software; and helping organizations and businesses make their materials, websites, programs, products and services more accessible. It will also work to increase accessibility awareness in the community as a whole. The project will be guided and implemented by a voluntary committee of people with disabilities, staff from public and non-profit agencies that serve them, and community volunteers. The committee will be supported by Rayna Ramirez an AmeriCorp*VISTA volunteer coordinator and Alan Paige YES member liaison. It will develop its capacity through the process of making YES' facility, programs, cyber cafe and retail business accessible (May-September 2007) before putting its skills, resources and experience at the service of other area organizations and businesses.

Thank you,

Rayna Ramirez

Please feel free to contact me
Rayna Ramirez
Phone (978) 544 – 1869
Fax (978) 544 – 1809
Email: rayna@yes-inc.org

I sign with my signature then have my typed name below to make it look a bit more professional.

Small Museum Grant

Elisha Durrant — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 20:28:56 +0000

We have received a small grant from Humanities Washington to go out to all the small town museums in our area. We are going to show them how to digitize their collections and place them on the INMP website. Also if they do not have a website of their own we will help them to create a basic website to help promote their museum. Finally we are going to create a 3 to 5 minute film of the project. I'm excited and ready to start.