|
We’ve been newly minted as a grade A, bona fide B Corporation and we couldn’t be happier with the certification. As described by the B Corporation website, “B Corporations are a new type of corporation which uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems.” That’s PICnet, in a nutshell, and we’re happy to join the growing community of 250+ B Corporations dedicating themselves to more than just the bottom line. That’s exactly the kind of folks we want to be associated with and we’re proud of the company we’ll be keeping If you want to learn more about our fellow B Corporation friends and details of what it means to be certified, check out http://www.bcorporation.net.
The new site is informative and engaging, with aggressive integration through Democracy In Action for events, campaigns, and eNewsletter sign-up and templates. It also includes liberal use of WuFoo custom forms for robust online grant and fellowship applications. One final cool feature is a Google Map integration displaying more than 100 charter schools in New York that links to more details and content within the site and to the individual schools’ websites.
When they came to us asking if we could help create an individual home on the internet for each and every one of these Discovery Shops, we had just one question: When do we start? By leveraging the power of Non-Profit Soapbox and crafting a common template for consistent branding across the network, we built 40 sites to promote each individual shop – all efficiently and easily for not much more than the cost of a single site. No fuss. No muss. Just a high quality network of easy to manage sites to further an important mission. But don’t take our word for it. Hear it straight from Steven Wirt, Director of Online and Internal Communications for the American Cancer Society of California: “I’ve been very impressed and pleased with Non-Profit Soapbox. Wrangling 40 web sites has been a seamless, pain-free experience.” This is the second post in our series about the PICnet Team’s volunteer efforts. Jamie Ozimek contributed to this post. Who: Project Manager Katie Guernsey
At AFTA, Katie serves as a member on the Emerging Leaders Council, and the chair of the Technology and Communications Committee. As a Councilmember, she helps inform the direction that AFTA takes in supporting arts administrators who identify themselves to be “emerging” in their career on a national level. What exactly does that mean? According to Katie, AFTA’s definition of an “Emerging Leader” is someone under 35 years old, or in the field less than five years, but depending on the person, these guidelines can change a little. The Emerging Leaders Council devises programming, networking, and professional development opportunities for their peers under the guise of AFTA’s infrastructure. On a local level, Katie helps to coordinate professional networking opportunities such as the “Creative Conversations.” Some of Katie’s specific duties include maintaining AFTA’s Google Group and overseeing the strategy of how to best serve their constituency through online technologies. This year, she facilitated one of the Emerging Leader Networking Sessions at the Annual Convention.
But not every child and their family starts a new school year with ease- and that’s where The GO Project comes in. Many children in Lower Manhattan public schools are first or second generation Americans with parents who speak little to no English, their families are struggling financially, and they don’t have the resources to fully benefit from the public school system. The GO Project has been addressing the intellectual, social and emotional needs of children attending public elementary schools in lower Manhattan and their families since 1968. Their support services and programs help over 300 struggling elementary school children each year build the confidence and skills they need to realize their potential and succeed at school, at home and in life. You’ve got your website. It’s your organization’s virtual front door. You work hard to lay out the welcome mat, tend the flower boxes, wash the windows, and offer enough content to get people inside for a heart-to-heart coffee table chat about you and your mission. So you’ve got curb appeal. You’ve got substance. But how do you get folks into your neighborhood and knocking on your door in the first place? Great question. Boosting traffic and attracting eyeballs to your site is key to online success. If people aren’t coming and viewing your site, it isn’t doing its job to move your mission forward. Tracking site traffic: Knowing who’s coming to your site The first part of improving is knowing how your site performs now. The easiest and cheapest way for assessing that is a handy tool called Google Analytics. This is free and tracks website traffic. Got some question you want to know about who and how people are visiting your site? How long the average person spends poking around? What search term they typed into Google to come across your little home away from home on the interwebs? How many people living in Burkina Faso visited your site on a Tuesday at 10:23 pm? The Google knows. It knows it all. And it will tell you – provided you’ve signed up for a free account and had us install the tracking code it provides. No Google Analytics yet? Interested? Check out our Tips and Tricks post about tracking traffic. You can also view an informative Google-created video there giving an overview of Analytics. If you’ve been following us here, you’ve probably seen we’re on a hiring spree. Well, here comes another new opening for our growing team: office manager in our Washington DC headquarters. We’re busy, and we’re in need of someone that can help us keep order as we continue to grow. To help us do that, we’re hiring an office manager to assist our CEO and help manage our intake process with the following responsibilities. Job Responsibilities
Interested? See if you’ve got what it takes after the jump.
An example of someone who fits this description who really wowed me recently is Rodrigo S. Spillere, a young developer I met at the FISL 10 conference in Porto Alegre, Brazil, earlier this summer. There are times when you meet a young person, and you can see their raw talent ready to rock. Rodrigo is one of those guys. He’s graduating from a university, and aside from me, he gave the only other Joomla presentation at FISL 10. He did an amazing job, and he focused on a tool he created for taking UML diagrams and having it build out a full Joomla component. Additionally, he’s been working on some YouTube integration with Joomla that I think is pretty darn slick!
As noted last week, the overall project will see a total of five Sister Community sites launch this summer. These sites empower local Communities to craft their own message for their individual audiences while leveraging the common branding and shared experience on the Soapbox platform of the network as a whole. Tonight, we launched Non-Profit Soapbox 2.0.5 to add some nifty features for our Soapbox clients. We modified and updated a number of good features as requested, including some of the following:
We’re clipping forward at a great pace using our PICnet Agile methodology, and we’re bringing in bug and feature requests into each of our releases. If you’ve got a request you’d like to see tossed into our queue, let us know, and we’ll be happy to review it in our agile process. Hop over to the Support Center to submit your request, and we’ll take it from there. Release 2.0.6 has begun, see you in a few weeks! |
Take advantage of our free 30-day trial. No credit card required.Sign Up now!
As I’ve said before, one of the greatest things about attending all these conferences is meeting people from all different backgrounds and hearing how their story of why they are in the technology field. Often, those with the most energy and enthusiasm for what they do is the young talent – those are who new to the arena or at least got started within the last few years.
In addition to the immense knowledge and creativity Rodrigo possesses, I was just really impressed with his overall presentation and attitude. He was completely professional, exuded a great positive energy, and was a blast to have a beer with, too – my kind of guy! Thanks, Rodrigo – you made my trip to Brazil that much more enjoyable – I hope we meet again!
.png)
