Digital Arts Service Corps - newsworthy

BONUS Field Report: How to Stay Financially Stress-free On a VISTA Budget

Morgan Sully — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 18:14:25 +0000

Hello There VISTAs,

As a special BONUS Field Report, I decided to write about some money management tools/tips I came across recently. As a VISTA, money can be tight. If mismanaged, then money can be REALLY tight. If you're like me, than you were probably used to subsisting at a certain standard of living before becoming a VISTA (or not). You're suddenly having to figure out other ways to get to work, find the best deals on food and sacrifice things you thought you'd never live without. Having to reorganize your spending and budgeting habits can be pretty stressful.

However, the transition in to VISTAhood doesn't have to be as traumatic or hard on you financially, provided that you use your new found poverty (or stable paycheck!) as an opportunity to develop a strong spending and budgeting regimen.

In this field report, I'll give a brief overview of an automated Monthly Budget Calculator (attached at the end of this report) I'll also share with you the awesomeness of stress-free bank account automation - a nice little series of hacks to take the stress out of paying your monthly bills, build your savings and STILL have a little left over for that *Deluxe* bowl of Top Ramen.

Understanding Your Budget

Part of staying stress free during times of financial hardship is having a clear understanding of your financial obligations and limitations. It's also nice to know where you might a have a little more 'wiggle room' for those enticing moments (or unexpected expenses) that inevitably come along the way during these times.
Included at the end of this report is a *Monthly Budget Calculator. You will notice 4 columns in it: Income, Fixed Expenses, Variable Expenses and Totals.

Income:
In this column, there are two sub columns. One is simply for labeling your income source(s) - my hope is that you take this calculator with you where ever you may go. I've conveniently entered in 'AmeriCorps Stipend' for you as well as the monthly income ($800) for a VISTA serving in San Diego - this may be different dependent on the city and state you are serving in. You can change the $800 amount to fit what ever yours is.

Fixed Expenses:
Here is where you will list each of your fixed expenses and other monthly bills, like 'Rent', 'Savings', and 'Cell phone'. I've entered in some 'filler' numbers for these - change to fit your situation.

Variable Expenses:
These are expenses that can vary by month. Food is sometimes the most variable of these which can be either a good thing or bad thing (do let your supervisor or VISTA Leader know if you are running low on food - they're there to help and there are plenty of resources out there). Transportation is another one, like if you decide to bike to work one day instead of taking the bus or you end up carpooling. I usually try to round this up a bit, just in case - any extra left over can either go to my savings or for some extra 'discretionary income' (see below).

Totals:
Here is where all the magic happens. If you've been changing the numbers around in the other parts of the spreadsheet, you may have noticed that the numbers here change AUTOMATICALLY to reflect the changes you've made. Immediately, you can see where your money is going, the total of your expenditures as well as any 'Discretionary Income' you may have left over. This is income you can use as you wish: a visit to the book store, the movies or maybe even partially back in to your savings - savings are after all, an investment in your future.
Now that you've got a tool and framework for understanding what your monthly budget is, where your expenses are going and even how much 'extra' money you have available, the next step is to ensure that the right money goes to the right places and that you can do this all on time - without stressing.

Think you can't do it? Read on.

Getting Bills Paid On Time = Less Stress = Happy VISTA

A major cause of financial stress is bills. Well, not necessarily the bills them selves, but having to PAY them - especially if there is some unexpected expense that comes up during your VISTA year. While you can't do away with these completely, there are a few things you can do to be in strong financial standing.

Hack Your Bank: Automating Multiple Checking Accounts are Key to Avoiding Financial Stress

An oft over-loooked fact about most checking accounts is that you can set up automatic withdrawals and deposits. You can divide and disperse deposits made to your bank account across multiple checking/savings accounts, pay bills to specific utilities automatically and even mail checks - all by specific dates. All of these can be further set up to occur on regular, repeating dates (which works nicely as your AmeriCorps stipend also occurs on a regular, repeating date - hint, hint).

You can also set up multiple accounts to work in concert with your saving, checking and bill paying automation. When you first got your bank account, you most likely got a checking account and savings account. Referring back to our Monthly Budget Calculator tool, you can also set up another checking account for 'Fixed Expenses' - think of it as your specific 'bill paying' account. Used in conjunction with the automatic check dispersement of your VISTA Stipend deposit mentioned above, automatic bill payment from this new account takes the hassle out of writing and mailing a check or paying over the phone close to the time your bill is due. Just be sure the monthly amount in this account matches what you came up with previously in your Budget Calculator.

Setting all this up is usually free, takes just a few minutes and can work wonders for reducing stress.
All this so you can enjoy the finer things in life, like whether to get 'Oriental' flavor Top Ramen or 'Deluxe Oriental' flavor Top Ramen.

What are some other ways that YOU maximize and manage your VISTA Stipend?

*This 'calculator' is in Excel format (but you can open it in any program that read .xls files).

10 Tactics for Growing Your Community Online

Morgan Sully — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 20:56:22 +0000

Last week I attended an NTEN Member Appreciation Webinar entitled: 10 Tactics for Growing Your Community Online. As NAMAC's Online Community Manager, I found this webinar very helpful, engaging and well worth my time.

The webinar, provided by the awesome N-TEN, can be found in context here:
http://tinyurl.com/2mtekz

The following are the main bullet points that were discussed at the *session:

1) Let the potential members of the community know why you are providing an online community, and how being an active member of a community would benefit them.

2) Use every opportunity to showcase your online community.

3) Seed the community with groups, forum postings, blogs, etc., so that early adopters aren’t faced with an “empty” community.

4) Make it as easy as possible for people to sign up and to use the community tools.

5) Designate a staff person to be the facilitator or moderator of the community.

6) Acknowledge those members who use the community frequently.

7) Seek input from the members on your organization’s agenda and other organizational issues. Take what you learn from the community and put it into practice in the organization.

8) Use wiki and/or forum functionality to publish ongoing lists of group events.

9) Announce new initiatives and other important organizational news in the community first.

10) Keep the community content fresh.

Feel free to watch the powerpoint below (click on it to go to a download page):

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| View | Upload your own

The powerpoint was provided on kind permission from Christopher Dworin, VP of Business Development at GoLightly - thanks Chris! GoLightly provides communication and collaboration solutions for community-minded organizations. [Their] social networking tools give your members the ability to interact with you and each other in powerful new ways.

To read more about GoLightly, see: http://www.golightly.com/

Field Report #8: A Leader's Visit to the Oakland Technology Exchange

Morgan Sully — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 07:21:31 +0000

This past Friday I had the quiet pleasure of visiting one of our program sites, the Oakland Technology Exchange. I had the opportunity to hang out there for nearly two hours talking shop with one of our VISTAs, Naomi Jimenez. I also got to visit a VISTA Alumni from my class, Jeff Benton AND even had a surprise visit from D.U.S.T.Y. Director and Co-Founder, Michaelangelo James, who won the 2006 Toni Stone Innovative Initiative Award at the CTCNet Conference I attended during my first VISTA year!

When I arrived, I was warmly greeted by Jeff Benton who walked me in and gave
me a brief tour of the OTX computer recycling warehouse. From OTX's website, "OTX-West is dedicated to eliminating the digital divide in Oakland, California. [They] do this by refurbishing surplus computers, educating families and providing ongoing access and support to those who have received our computers. The experiences of OTX-West over the past 6 years has [sic] demonstrated both the need for home computers in the community and the reuse model as a green way to meet the need."

Their warehouse was stacked full of old computers and hardware from all around the Bay Area. Bits of circuit boards, mice, keyboards, towers, monitors, hard drives and just about any other computer component you can think of were stacked, strewn and than stacked again about the warehouse creating mazes of a reused technological past awaiting to build the future. In deed, OTX's mission statement proudly claims, "Reusing the past...to build the future".

At the center of all of this was CTC VISTA Naomi Jimenez. Before I met Naomi, I had the pleasure of reading Danielle Martin's copious notes on previous conference calls with Naomi and was pleasantly affirmed in my positive proclivities to Naomi. From her reiterations on the necessity of recycling technology for a sound ecological, political and economic future, to her beaming proudly while explaining the so called 'grunt work' she had done there as a VISTA, it was clear that Naomi embodied the very spirit of what OTX was all about. I could tell by the way the staff interacted with her that she was a very valuable asset to OTX.

The continued tour Naomi gave me was wonderful. We walked about the warehouse and Naomi showed me many of the other rooms and spaces at OTX's facility. From the ghosting stations opposite the 'store' where people could 'pay' for refurbished computers with volunteer time to the 'mini-museum' of old Commodores and Atari computers near the kids room (where parents could leave their kids so they could volunteer and take classes!) - I was treated to a very comprehensive tour. As a former Food Bank Warehouse Operations Coordinator (who's now a CTC VISTA!), I was duly impressed by the tight integration of recycling and reusing supposed 'technological detritus' with community empowerment. OTX is in deed a wonderful example of community technology at it's finest.

As a final treat, we had a surprise visit from Michaelangelo James, Co-founder and Executive Director of Digital Underground Storytelling For Youth (D.U.S.T.Y.). I first met, Michaelangelo at the 2006 CTCNet Conference in Washington D.C. where he was presented with their annual Toni Stone Innovative Initiative Award. He was simply dropping some computers off to get looked at but ended up staying a bit to watch an innovative digital story that Naomi had created using nothing but Audacity and Open Office's Impress - another shining example of what VISTAs can create with limited resources - which as we all know, many non-profits need, D.U.S.T.Y. notwithstanding. As a VISTA myself, I of course took the opportunity to tell Michaelangelo a bit about the CTC VISTA project and the possible placement of one with his org. For now however, that shall the topic of another field report...

Until next time, this is Morgan Sully reporting straight from Oakland signing off.

peace!

post-austin

Sarah Pierantoni — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 20:51:44 +0000

The NAMAC conference was an experience. It was great to reconnect with CTC VISTA Project peeps, learn about new media arts happenings and experience a great new city. It is hard to say how the conference was overall. Each panel was completely different from the next, and hardly seemed related to the previous one. Some I attended hardly seemed related to anything I am working on at my organization, but still interesting to learn about. Being in a temporary volunteer position at a media arts organization, I attended this conference as an observer, quietly deciding if this is really what I am interested in and thinking about where the media arts could fall in my life path. This description of the conference applies to the back of my mind. The front of my mind got inspired to create Spanish camera classes to add to our curriculum, after attending a Latino media art panel. At this panel we (my supervisor and I) networked with an independent Latina filmmaker and discussed screening her film at our theater. She is interested in making an appearance, which would really turn the film showing into an event. Exciting and in the works. Texas is cool.

I am currently working on a gig at another middle school with the MOLLIE project. It has honestly felt like I am on a game show. We pile into a van loaded with video equipment and road trip it out to a school. We show up, the kids get pumped and greet us with helping hands. The topic of the video is unknown right up until the clock starts running. I meet these young people, and have 1.5 hours to interpret their storyboards, create a set with any resource I can find in the classroom, create a short storyline and remember to include newly learned facts about things such as volcanoes, earthquakes, surface water, anything that falls under the broad topic of earth science. While trying to envision the end product I am in charge of overseeing that every kid gets their hands on the cameras and mics, and that they learned a bit about production. At the end of the 1.5, a new group comes in and we do it all over again. It is a quick three hours.

I split my time between the education department and the Wealthy Theater. Duties at the Wealthy Theater are increasing. I have become the go-to girl for lighting info. I am currently working on a database for all of our lighting equipment that has been sitting and not accounted for for the past however many years. I am researching new equipment, and creating new light scenes for any event we may have in the future. I run the light board for every event we put on. There is no manual for our board, and I spend a lot of my time researching and testing to get things right. It is slow and grueling at times, but it feels great to go to work and be in self-learning mode. My goal is to have a manual ready for any new member or staff person to come in and look at to learn the lighting skills and help out with community events. Curriculum for a lighting class is in the future, too. I was also recently brought on board to the administrative team of the theater. I help with securing future events, which is necessary to sustain the life of the theater. We are currently battling with the GR police department to obtain a club license. If we win, this will ensure a longer lifespan for us.

Things are busy, and good. Happy Monday!

MuniWireless and Community Wireless

Gabriel Fishman — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 22:11:20 +0000

In late October, I flew out to San Jose to attend the MuniWireless '07 Silicon Valley conference. As a VISTA I run a project that provides free wireless Internet access to low-income residents of subsidized housing in Boston's South End neighborhood. Ours is not so much a municipal wireless project as a community wireless project, a distinction that the conference helped me understand, but nonetheless, those of us interested in building smaller-scale "grassroots" networks designed to serve smaller communities such as housing developments can learn a great deal from the MuniWireless experience.

1. What is the purpose of municipal wireless and how is it different than community wifi efforts?

High-speed Internet access is and will continue to have a transformative impact on our economy analogous to that of the Interstate Highway System after it was built in the '50s. Eisenhower sold the expensive highway project to the American public as a military necessity, a solution to the military's difficulties transferring masses of troops and equipment across a vast country during wartime. However, although promoted as a military project, the highways were of course used to carry all sorts of traffic, from passenger cars to 18-wheeler trucks. By changing the way Americans traveled and moved goods, the highways also led to major changes in the way we lived and conducted business.

Ubiquitous access to broadband may have an analogous impact. Voice and video communications can be encoded into data and transmitted via the Internet. The days when we could purchase TV service from a cable company or a satellite company and telephone service from a phone company are over. One company can provide each family with a high-speed connection capable of carrying telephone calls, TV service, and Internet access all at once.

Yet many technologists worry that broadband penetration in the United States is lagging behind other industrialized countries. One cause for this is the relative lack of competition in the American broadband market. In America, consumers can choose between a cable company and a phone company when it comes to access, and this duopoly leads to higher prices and lower speeds relative to the rest of the world. According to a study published two years ago, a 100Mbps connection in Japan cost $22 a month, while a 26Mbps connection in France cost the equivalent of $36 monthly. Today, I pay about $25 a month for a 768Kbps connection at my home in Boston.

Municipal wireless can provide an alternative to the cable/DSL duopoly for a city or region. Installing wireless radios is much cheaper than laying down fiber. Both MuniWIreless and community wireless efforts take advantage of this fact, and both seek to alleviate the "digital divide", which arises when low-income populations cannot afford the high price of broadband access. However, the primary distinctions between MuniWireless and community wireless is that municipal efforts seek to provide ubiquitous access for a large area (or at least for the outdoors areas as we'll discuss later) and to deploy infrastructure that will enable them to compete with existing Internet Service Providers. Community wireless projects serve much smaller communities, such as housing developments or individual buildings, rather than wide areas. Such small-scale efforts typically buy and redistribute inexpensive Internet connections from the same companies municipal networks seek to undercut.

One important characteristic of WiFi, the technology now in use for both MuniWireless and community wireless projects, is that it has a relatively weak signal. Unlike, say, shortwave radio, which can be transmitted across the globe, WiFi can be flaky. It doesn't travel through walls very well. As a result, municipal wireless projects have found that guaranteeing access inside buildings is prohibitively expensive, and many projects now aim to reach only up to the windows of a building, although users of the network can deploy repeaters to enhance the signal enough to provide indoor coverage. Community WiFi efforts, by contrast, typically aim to provide access throughout a building, so that resident's can connect to the network from their desktop or laptop computers.

2. What is the state of the municipal wireless market?

The conference I attended was titled "industry at a crossroads", and this was probably putting it politely. One presenter noted that his mother doesn't understand what he does for a living, but she feels bad for him as a result of all of the recent bad press about municipal wireless projects falling apart. Over the summer, some of the largest projects in the country, including those in Chicago and San Francisco were cancelled, scaled back or otherwise reevaluated.

There are a number of reasons for the recent stumbles. A new technology called WiMax will provide far greater improvements in wireless power and range when it debuts to the public in the next few years, and nobody wants to spend millions building a network that might be obsolete soon. Additionally, there are legitimate questions about whether public-sector projects should be competing with private-sector telecommunications companies, concerns that are beyond the scope of this article.

The biggest stumbling block at this point, however, is that providing ubiquitous WiFi coverage, while still less expensive than deploying wired infrastructure, can cost $100,000 to $300,000 a square mile, and without strong a business case demonstrating how the investment will pay off, funders have been hesitant to commit millions of dollars. Politicians have been eager to promise free or cheap broadband access to the public, but with Internet Service Providers already notorious for their slim margins, it is difficult to see how municipal projects can recoup their initial costs while undercutting ISPs on price and living up to the lofty civic goals that accompany public projects, such as providing open access to all partners.

I firmly believe that digital inclusion projects will have positive economic benefits in the long term. By providing free WiFi in the South End, we are enabling an underserved community to become technology users for the first time, helping to create a market that did not exist before. Unfortunately, the exact economic and social impact of what we are doing is amorphous and difficult to quantify. It is very shaky ground on which to base the rationale for building a multimillion dollar public project.

That's why digital inclusion, when it was mentioned at all during the MuniWireless conference, always seemed to be the last item on everyone's agenda. The industry has very quickly shifted to a new sales pitch for municipal wireless networks. Now, the idea is to use this new infrastructure to improve public safety and to reduce the cost of delivering municipal services. Specifically, a wireless network can be a platform for video surveillance cameras to monitor high-crime neighborhoods. Auditory sensors, such as the SpotShotter technology currently being deployed in Dorchester, can be placed around a neighborhood and can alert police when a gun is fired. The sensors are advanced enough to distinguish between a firecracker, a pistol and a rifle, pinpoint the exact location of the shot, and swivel cameras towards the scene, so that police will already have reviewed live video of the location in their cars before they arrive. A second, less exciting application, involves enabling municipal employees such as cops and building inspectors to submit reports from wireless devices out in the field, so they never have to waste time traveling to and from the office. It has always been easier to fund anti-crime projects than anti-poverty projects, making the first scenario far more attractive to funders than using a wireless network to ease the digital divide. The second scenario, offers municipalities an easy means of calculating the potential financial windfall that a wireless network will provide, and, in contrast to digital inclusion ideas that promise to increase economic activity in the future, that windfall comes directly from the city's budget.

The ambitious wireless projects that are deployed over the next few years, will be funded principally by an "anchor tenant", namely a government bureaucracy interested in using the network to achieve specific goals, such as improved public safety, or lower costs of providing civic services. But just as the Interstate Highway System was sold to the public as a defense project, but ended up carrying primarily civilian traffic, there is no reason to believe that municipal wireless networks, once deployed, cannot be useful for digital inclusion, increasing broadband penetration, and other purposes.

3. How should community groups interested in digital inclusion approach municipal wireless projects?

Non-profits and other community wireless projects should not see municipal wireless as a competitor, but as a platform for us to build on. When a municipal wireless network is built, the role of community wireless developers should be to deploy inexpensive technology that takes the municipal networks signal from the street and deliver it into the apartments of our constituents. A citywide effort of business leaders will quickly lose sight of the needs of underserved communities, which are inexpensive Internet access combined with inexpensive computer training and computer repair services provided by members of the community to their peers.

The HUD "Community Technology Centers" serve as an extraordinary resource for municipal networks. These institutions are already providing the necessary skills training, equipment donation and repair programs that will enable poor users to take advantage of municipal wireless networks. Because the infrastructure will already have been paid for by the anchor tenant, municipal network operators should be able to provide excess bandwidth at little or no cost to community groups, eliminating the need for those organizations to buy bandwidth from ISPs. The costs of providing access will then become so inexpensive (say $50 per family for a $100 router that can serve four families as well as other infrastructure, repair and training programs) that with a little grant money, community wireless groups should be able to achieve self-sufficiency with a combination of low access fees (say $5 a month) and advertising that is conducted in a tasteful and unobtrusive manner. These are of course back of the envelope calculations, but even if municipal networks refuse to provide free or cheap access to non-profits, their very existence will still help by forcing ISPs to lower broadband prices.

In the end, if municipalities and their partners can justify the cost of building municipal wireless networks, then non-profits, underserved communities and the public as a whole will be able to benefit from telecommunications infrastructure that is owned by the public and intended to be utilized for the public good.

(I intend on writing another blog post later to discuss the lessons that non-profits and community groups can take away from the muniwireless experience).

Morgan’s Manual Round-up: Resources for VISTAs Who Hate Writing Manuals

Morgan Sully — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 22:55:58 +0000

Morgan was a CTC VISTA Leader in 2007 (before we changed our name to the Digital Arts Service Corps) and while this round-up is a little dated it still contains some valuable resources.

Greeting VISTAs,
I don’t know about you but I HATE writing manuals – especially from scratch. If it has to do with showing someone how to use a computer using endless screenshots, reworked/inaccurate text instructions (that always seem to miss that TINY crucial step required to make the program ‘do-the-thing-that-you-want-it-to’) or a bloated MS Word ‘train-the-trainer’ manual - forget it. I just say DO A VIDEO TUTORIAL (plenty of them out there: http://www.socialsourcecommons.org/search/query?q=screen&submit=Search), host ‘em online and have your volunteers, tutors, managers and computer technology users watch them – much easier, always accurate and no typing – urg!

Of course, for those of you ARE crazy enough to undertake the devilish details of ‘computer lab manual creation’ - or a hardcover would simply be more fitting with your org and workplan - I present ‘Morgan’s Manual Round-up: 10 Resources for VISTAs Who Hate Writing Manuals’. Hopefully you don’t despise writing them THAT much - and it can be kinda satisfying to finish one, well, actually REALLY satisfying;)

After scouring the web - CTCnet, CTC VISTA, Stories For Change.net, The AmeriCorps National Resource Library and even our own CTCVISTA website - I handpicked these manuals based on a mix of reviews, personal use and relevance to our work as VISTAs – a hardworking VISTA in Washington inspired me (thanks Julia!). My personal fave is the YouthLearn Guide – great worksheets andwell written. Many of these guides can be found in the oft overlooked AmeriCorps VISTA National Lending Library. As VISTAs you have access to this SPECIAL COLLECTION of library resource materials to help you do what you do best as a VISTA (whether training volunteers, partnering with community orgs, or developing systems for the operation of your sites).

CTC Center Start-Up Manual
http://www.ctcnet.org/what/resources/startup_manual.htm
First published in 1997, the CTC Center Start-Up Manual is widely recognized as a principal guide for establishing CTCs and serves as an organized patchwork of CTC experiences. Toni Stone, founder of CTCNet, was principal author of previous editions of the Manual. With support from the Surdna Foundation, the manual was updated in January 2003 to reflect developing CTC experiences and needs.

Proof Positive: Developing Significant Volunteer Recordkeeping Systems, 21st Century Edition
http://nationalserviceresources.org/wgnsrclibrary/advancedsearch?action=...
Coordinate volunteers and develop computerized reports using this step-by step guide. Includes sample application forms, volunteer data files, assignment records, and time and activitiy reports. Ideas are offered for documenting hard-to-track activities. Information is provided for people doing manual file keeping as well as how to make the most out of computer software.

50 One-Minute Tips for Trainers
http://nationalserviceresources.org/wgnsrclibrary/advancedsearch?action=...
Examines the purpose and importance of training and development programs, and discusses tips to consider before training an audience. Includes determining needs, preparing a training manual, understanding how adults learn, and organizing a presentation.

The Community Collaboration Manual
http://nationalserviceresources.org/wgnsrclibrary/advancedsearch?action=...
Explores the options for building and sustaining collaborations. Discusses how to maintain the momentum of a collaboration, how to involve youth and business, and the role of the media in contemporary collaboration.

National Service Stress Survival Guide: Facilitator Guide and Training Manual
http://nationalserviceresources.org/wgnsrclibrary/advancedsearch?action=...
Provides facilitator guide and training materials to help national service programs combat stress. Group and individual exercises provide opportunities for self-assessment, reflection, and educational interaction. Includes handouts, self-tests, stress-reducing exercises, a resource list for participants, and a brief section called "Getting Things Done Without Burning Out."

Training the Trainer
http://nationalserviceresources.org/wgnsrclibrary/advancedsearch?action=...
Manual for use in workshops by trainers of tutors. Includes the training components of presentation, demonstration, practice, and follow up.

Creative Narrations Digital Storytelling Curriculum: Instructor Guide
http://storiesforchange.net/resource/creative_narrations_digital_storyte...
A guide to running digital storytelling workshops

Working with Technical Volunteers: A Manual for NPOs
http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/volunteers/page5095.cfm?cg=search...
CompuMentor has developed an effective methodology for recruiting, matching, and managing technical volunteers. You can use this downloadable guide to assess your technical needs and identify areas where volunteers can help; recruit technical volunteers and assess their skills; manage technical volunteers; document their work; and find resources that will help your volunteers throughout the process.

AND REMEMBER:

“Never doubt the importance and relevance of your efforts. The benefits to the community you are serving are perhaps only outweighed by the benefits this service will bring to you in turn.” - Brandon Rogers, former VISTA and author of “The Effective Education Award”, a guide for helping AmeriCorps members make the most of their ed award.

Writing a Federal Grant: What to Expect

Meegan Kelly — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 21:43:27 +0000

WARNING! Federal grant applications are, by far, the most difficult and the most competitive type of proposal to write, even for veteran grant writers. They require more than 100 hours of work reading/understanding application requirements, researching and writing. On the other hand, if awarded, they are extremely beneficial to your organization, offering substantial, multi-year funding and credibility in future fund-seeking endeavors. The following is my advice after completing my first federal grant.

Step 1: Carefully read the announcements and rules in the Federal Register and application guidelines.

After reviewing the RFP, make sure that your organization's purpose, priorities and geographic region are compatible with the gov'ts announcement. Also, make sure you and your staff will have enough time to meet the deadline. Usually, the funder won't allow much time to complete these "bears" or "whales" or whatever gigantic and unforgiving animal you'd like to compare these grants to.

As far as completing the actual application, the guidelines are extremely specific and the reviewers will first examine your ability to comply with their technical requirements. Trust me, they will really make you jump through hoops. If you fail here...your application will not progress to the next level of review.

Step 2: Outline the process / time line you intend to follow for the project and share it with staff.

First, make a checklist with everything that needs to be done and which staff member is responsible for accomplishing it. This will give you a good idea of who you will be working closely with, and how much work you're personally responsible for.

Then, make a calendar for just the time you have until the deadline. It's also good to share this with staff. Pad your personal deadline to account for your reliance on "briskness" of your coworkers.

Also, plan to finish several work days before the deadline.

Step 3: Begin the information gathering process.

You will be expected to gather much of the same kinds of information for this grant, just like any other (organization history, mission, staff, accomplishments, goals of your project, etc). On the contrary, you will be asked to provide "documentation" for most of the arguments you make in your narrative. For instance, you may be asked to document the project's planning/development, or perhaps show evidence of the support of local residents.

Showing documentation and attempting to quantify benefits of the project/number of people affected by project is time consuming. I accomplished this task by sending out a survey to people in the community that would benefit from this grant. Once participants completed the survey and clicked "submit," the information was sent to my email box. I entered the data into a spreadsheet, and drew statistical information to support my project from it. I suggest this as a simple/quick solution. Below is a link to the survey I used, although I don't know how long my organization will keep it posted. Other ways to accomplishing this request include community meeting minutes and public forums.
http://main.nc.us/bbsurvey/

The rest of the information gathering process should be spent digging up buried information that you know you'll need. It involves contacting various departments within your org (finance, admin, etc) and stockpiling information you'll need for reference.

Note: Letters of support take a long time to coordinate and receive. They are necessary when applying for a federal grant. It is beneficial to solicit a letter of support from a state representative.

4. Seek a peer reviewer and don't be afraid to contact the Program Officer with your questions.

Peer review is an excellent opportunity to check over your work. If you know a fundraising professional who has written a grant before, make a copy of the application guidelines and your application. Give them a day or two to make some recommendations. I guarantee you'll sleep better after the grant is submitted if haven't relied solely on your own faculties.

Here are some links:
Catalog of Federal and Domestic Assistance - this site lists the federal gov'ts standard proposal review criteria. Click on "winning grant proposals" on the left side of the homepage.
E-Grants - the master directory for Federal grant information.
FirstGov - a federal site that is the gateway for all federal and state agencies that make grant awards.

A Digital Arts Resource Handout

Kevin Palmer — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 18:13:53 +0000

Lauren Bratslavsky developed this one-page handout (attached below) detailing resources for video editing, computer skills training, free media, digital photography and more.

Resources for Good Site Aesthetics and Techniques

Morgan Sully — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 21:51:29 +0000

here are two link to fun web development stuff to look at, learn from and implement - updated daily (at least).

The most popular web development bookmarks on del.icio.us:
http://del.icio.us/popular/webdev

My favorite bookmarks on my del.icio.us account:
http://del.icio.us/memeshift/webdev

A website i go to DAILY to see what the latest trends in web design are:
http://www.designmeltdown.com

Site Planning: Tips and Resources for Planning Your Site

Morgan Sully — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 23:44:05 +0000

I cannot emphasize enough, the importance of PLANNING OUT YOUR WEBSITE. Before you can even start thinking about what the colors will be, you need to have a few things in place. 3 i can readily think of are:

A Site Plan
A Site Map Diagram
A User Experience

Sustainability plays a large part in the success of the technology chosen and implemented. In fact, it shouldn't even be 'a part' of, it should be INTRINSIC to your site throughout it's development.

Web maintenance is a pretty big one - for instance, what happens if you've coordinated a bright, fresh and dynamic team to help out on your site, but one of them gets hired off someplace else? What if your graphic designer (for banners, buttons, etc.) is having more difficulty than originally anticipated or they simpy can't finish the work? These instances are particularly taxing if your team is a group of VOLUNTEERS. Volunteers can be notorious (through no fault of their own) at 'dropping off' a project. Will you, as the sole coordinator have the strategy, skills and time in place to 'fill in'? This can often happen (as I've been taken to task to many a time). Nothing is more taxing then if a website or listserv goes down RIGHT before a critical fundraising campaign (which will happen). Have a plan for this. Have back up documentation of what they were doing, and when? How far a long were they? What did the develop/what did they NOT develop?

A key thing that can help off set these things (and empower YOU as a web team coordinator) is to have a Site Plan - any designer should be able to have this on hand and have it transparent and viewable by ALL interested parties - executive board, support staff, consultants (if you're not fortunate enough to have in-house web staff), funder$...

I'm currently developing the site for NAMAC, but it is a HUGE undertaking with A LOT of planning that's going into it - discussion, visioning, functionality, user roles, modules needed, interaction workflow, meeting with each staff member individually, pre-launch steps, live launch monitoring, sustainability and optimization - and we haven't even gotten to the design aesthetics yet.

Without further ado and blathering, here's a few notes on some things that I think are pretty basic and key to web development. This is by no mean exhaustive, but you can certainly search for other web development tips on our site...

A Site Plan:
http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dw5pg78_5cmp6ts

This is my General Plan for the current site. I've made sure to have it public so interested parties (org directors, staff, consultants) can see it and comment on it. I asked each person what they'd like to see, asked them how and if they would interact with a particular functionality and then composed a report with all of their input in it. I am in CONSTANT communication with them about how the new site will function, how the planning is going, what purpose the site/functionality will serve, and IF a certain functionality they'll want is doable and/or necessary - this part is huge - the more functionality, the more troubleshooting down the road.

A general rule of thumb when developing is the 3 T's of Site Building (or any other tech project for that matter).

Tell them what you are planning on doing (when you're planning it)
Tell them you are doing it (when you are doing it)
Tell them that you did (when you are done)

That way there's no 'What? I didn't okay this!' from a frustrated laissez-faire client/director or 'But we had talked about it before' from an equall frustrated and head-strong developer. I'd add that keeping up an online document that EVERYONE can see will also make sure that everyone is on the same page - as well as help YOU as a designer/planner be able to refer back to and track your work.

***NOTE: as a VISTA, an online accessible/public document gives your directors/supervisors a way to reference the great work that you, as a VISTA are doing - mine are sending the link above to funders to show them what we are up to***

A Site Map Diagram:
http://www.michelinag.com/agx/en-US/images/sitemap/sitemap.gif
An example of a site map diagram.

http://www.gliffy.com/
You can draw out a diagram map of your site with this tool (NOT to be confused with an XML SITEMAP by the way). This is GREAT for working with distributed teams.

A User Experience Workflow:
http://www.jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements.pdf
The above provides a great visual of the user design experience process.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1254/899914294_ab6745ac73_o.jpg
This (i like this one even better) provides another view of the design process).

Anyway, I hope this helps some of you VISTAs out there. Like i said, this is by no means an exhaustive resource of planning tips, but hopefully it's enough to get you started on your way to website planning nirvana.

peace,
m