The House Inc. has never had exposure to Web 2.0. Until recently, they had an outdated site that was basic frames and html (http://web.archive.org/web/20080127133344/http://www.thehouse-inc.com/ ).
Recently, they've realized the importance of becoming connected, if not for their own organizations sake - then the sake of the children that they seek to help.
A redesign with some basic java scripting and a modern look has given the spot new life - http://www.thehouse-inc.com/
This redesign is part of a larger step of The House Inc. step onto the virtual stage.
The next steps to involve leveraging the social networking sites for two important functions:
1. Establish and maintain an online presence
2. Setup an infrastructure for Micro-level and larger donations.
The Online Me
The importance of establishing and maintaining an online reputation cannot be understated. Indeed, you are who are, based on the info people find on the internet. All info then, should reflect the kind of organization you are, your goals, successes, and needs.
The organization should have a Facebook page, a MySpace page, a Twitter account, and an easily accessible blog. The point behind maintaining this effort is to increase the organizations social capital. Since this is a non-profit organization, they rely on donations of money, services, and labor. In requesting such donations, no one should need to ask the question, “What is The House?”
If this sounds like a lot of work - that is because it is. Organizations are routinely employing people to monitor these areas and keep them updated on a regular basis. On top of just posting organizational news - any event that the organization hosts or attends is always photographed and/or recorded to video. Anything that happens in the physical space needs to ultimately be shareable to virtual space within a reasonable turnaround period.
Dollars and Sense
Traditional sources of income for non-profit organizations have revolved around the acquisition and maintenance of governmental or private grants. These grants were sometimes hotly contested for amongst charities and social groups, so competition always meant you were never sure if your income would suddenly dry up.
The organization should have either a centralized collection point for all donations that each of the social networking venues will link to, or a distributed donation system across many different sites that is managed by the organization’s internal financial staff.
Micropayments are the concept that in requesting large sums of money, people are less likely to give. But in requesting relatively small amounts from large, aggregate populations, achieved greater earning potential than the grant system could ever offer.
Micropayments are a unique way to leverage social media. With just a link on your web 2.0 outlets, you can drive people to donate directly to a PayPal account or interface with the donations function setup within sites like Facebook.
Campaigns like Give Five by the United Way demonstrate what is possible with a cause, simple flash animation, and a donation center. As a final example - the recent campaign for President Barack Obama heavily utilized these web 2.0 sites for community outreach and micropayment collection, “In February 2008 alone, the Obama campaign raised $55 million dollars, $45 million of it online. And the candidate hosted not one fundraiser.”
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Short Paper #4
The House is a non-profit organization focused on at-risk and disadvantaged youth. Situated in Woodbridge Virginia, The House hosts hundreds of students after school between 3-6 pm. Students are encouraged to share and utilize such resources as a computer lab, an in-house gym, tutoring, meals, drug prevention and mentoring.
My main task for the organization revolved around the creation and maintenance of their computer lab, but also included a review of their overall IT structure in relationship to their business model.
If anyone had any doubts that there was a digital divide that still exists, then The House is the final answer. Lacking financial resources, they were completely stuck - no computers, no software, no publicly available link to the internet, or any virtual realm. It is as if the clock stopped in 1989 and never moved forward.
After a generous donation from the Department of Defense, the house was outfitted with a collection of desktop PCs and several servers. Although the hardware was available - there was no software and no expertise to use any of the equipment, so it was largely useless.
My analysis of their needs began in earnest at the beginning of the Spring 09 semester, and I had to quickly overcome the following hurdles:
1. Locate Operating System software and Productivity software that could be obtained at low or no cost to get the computers up and running.
2. Integrate the new equipment into the existing internet infrastructure of the building
Software Hunt
In order to make the computers useful, they would need software. Unfortunately the average cost per computer was between $500 and $750 to load Windows XP and all the various productivity programs that The House wanted to provide. With over 20 computers, this simply was too cost prohibitive for the business, and they needed a viable alternative.
As a non-profit entity, The House was eligible to get a great deal of software for free. Large software companies like Microsoft, Adobe, and Apple all have philanthropic arms that assist organizations in helping out underprivileged children. The problem of having to contact each vendor independently and negotiate the interaction between the organization and the vendor was as a very time-consuming endeavor until I discovered Techsoup.
Techsoup is an online clearing house for non-profit organizations and charitable technology givers. This site acts as a middle man that handles all interactions between you and software vendors and provides a place for those with resources to post the availability of goods or services. This greatly increased the pace of our software acquisitions and allowed us to get the desktop PC's loaded with software. It was important that we not only load the computers with Windows, but also the various other productivity programs that make computers useful to users, i.e. Office 2007, Adobe CS suite, among others.
This served not only as a technological leap for the organization but also altered their service availability. Now, instead of just PC resources, they had the ability to plan workshops and classes around teaching the children how to use the programs loaded onto the computers. Soon, they plan to have children publishing multi-media and experiencing the virtual creation process for the first time.
Making it all work together
Integrating the equipment into the existing infrastructure was something that I was already intimately familiar with. I had the executive director contact his local provider and ensured that he would have sufficient resources to run this large bank of computers.
I sketched a brief network diagram and installed several network switches that fed back into a centralized router. From that point, we were able to quickly get each machine connected to the internet. Although I had the expertise to perform this task, the greatest difficulty in this task was its time consumption. Running wires and cables in a commercial space is a physically demanding job and I had only my two hands and whatever basic tools I could scrounge up.
Wrap Up
If I had to restart this task, I think I would have demanded more tools from the startup. It was probably ill-advised of me to take such a large task, with such a minimal time frame, and try and do it alone. The staff at The House was very helpful and very grateful – they could always use more help.
If I were to recommend ways to improve the service learning, I would recommend that tools and resources be available from the service learning office. If you need extra hands to complete a project for the community – the service learning department should really have those resources available to you because, ultimately, the goal to service the community and, by the virtue of that involvement, the student. The idea that “it is your assignment, so it is your problem” is rubbish – help us to help others.
My main task for the organization revolved around the creation and maintenance of their computer lab, but also included a review of their overall IT structure in relationship to their business model.
If anyone had any doubts that there was a digital divide that still exists, then The House is the final answer. Lacking financial resources, they were completely stuck - no computers, no software, no publicly available link to the internet, or any virtual realm. It is as if the clock stopped in 1989 and never moved forward.
After a generous donation from the Department of Defense, the house was outfitted with a collection of desktop PCs and several servers. Although the hardware was available - there was no software and no expertise to use any of the equipment, so it was largely useless.
My analysis of their needs began in earnest at the beginning of the Spring 09 semester, and I had to quickly overcome the following hurdles:
1. Locate Operating System software and Productivity software that could be obtained at low or no cost to get the computers up and running.
2. Integrate the new equipment into the existing internet infrastructure of the building
Software Hunt
In order to make the computers useful, they would need software. Unfortunately the average cost per computer was between $500 and $750 to load Windows XP and all the various productivity programs that The House wanted to provide. With over 20 computers, this simply was too cost prohibitive for the business, and they needed a viable alternative.
As a non-profit entity, The House was eligible to get a great deal of software for free. Large software companies like Microsoft, Adobe, and Apple all have philanthropic arms that assist organizations in helping out underprivileged children. The problem of having to contact each vendor independently and negotiate the interaction between the organization and the vendor was as a very time-consuming endeavor until I discovered Techsoup.
Techsoup is an online clearing house for non-profit organizations and charitable technology givers. This site acts as a middle man that handles all interactions between you and software vendors and provides a place for those with resources to post the availability of goods or services. This greatly increased the pace of our software acquisitions and allowed us to get the desktop PC's loaded with software. It was important that we not only load the computers with Windows, but also the various other productivity programs that make computers useful to users, i.e. Office 2007, Adobe CS suite, among others.
This served not only as a technological leap for the organization but also altered their service availability. Now, instead of just PC resources, they had the ability to plan workshops and classes around teaching the children how to use the programs loaded onto the computers. Soon, they plan to have children publishing multi-media and experiencing the virtual creation process for the first time.
Making it all work together
Integrating the equipment into the existing infrastructure was something that I was already intimately familiar with. I had the executive director contact his local provider and ensured that he would have sufficient resources to run this large bank of computers.
I sketched a brief network diagram and installed several network switches that fed back into a centralized router. From that point, we were able to quickly get each machine connected to the internet. Although I had the expertise to perform this task, the greatest difficulty in this task was its time consumption. Running wires and cables in a commercial space is a physically demanding job and I had only my two hands and whatever basic tools I could scrounge up.
Wrap Up
If I had to restart this task, I think I would have demanded more tools from the startup. It was probably ill-advised of me to take such a large task, with such a minimal time frame, and try and do it alone. The staff at The House was very helpful and very grateful – they could always use more help.
If I were to recommend ways to improve the service learning, I would recommend that tools and resources be available from the service learning office. If you need extra hands to complete a project for the community – the service learning department should really have those resources available to you because, ultimately, the goal to service the community and, by the virtue of that involvement, the student. The idea that “it is your assignment, so it is your problem” is rubbish – help us to help others.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Google Poetry
*All items taken from Google Search and Google Image Search
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Soul+and+commerce&aq=f&oq=
Soul and Commerce
Soul and Commerce
Property and Credit <see>
Igniting Chicken Soup served to our body or our soul? <see>
Works of Art or Creative Sales? <see>
Spirit served as soul side dishes, desserts of cake at the Pizza hut. <see>
Selling the suffering soul in a chamber of commerce. <See>
Thriving tourism in the shops of misunderstanding. <see>
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Soul+and+commerce&aq=f&oq=
Soul and Commerce
Soul and Commerce
Property and Credit <see>
Igniting Chicken Soup served to our body or our soul? <see>
Works of Art or Creative Sales? <see>
Spirit served as soul side dishes, desserts of cake at the Pizza hut. <see>
Selling the suffering soul in a chamber of commerce. <See>
Thriving tourism in the shops of misunderstanding. <see>
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