Please tell us what you think could be on the agenda for our first meetings. We don't want to take over the meetings, rather to provide the sharing space for everyone's ideas.
By clicking on the "comments" option below, you can contribute to the discussion. You don't have to sign in with anything, so feel free to just leave a name or click 'anonymous'.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
12 comments:
Some ideas...
- Promote the Idealist Campus Conference (March 23-25)
- Market Idealist in the Chicago area
- Stickers?Business Cards?Flyers
- Create a contact list
And then...
Where do we go from here?
- Monthly meetings?
- Post Chicago opportunities on blog?
- Our own service organization - "Chicago Idealists"?
How do you want to participate?
I really like the idea of trying to form tight-knit communities and the idea of community spaces. How many of us get to connect with our neighbors? I think that it would be a great thing to try to build community spaces within already established neighborhoods (Lincoln Park, Andersonville, etc.)whether they be online or a physical place. Ideally, the neighborhoods might even be broken down further. Some communities have something similar, I am sure, but it would be nice to link them in some way. Like a craigslist for each neighborhood, essentially, that includes services (e.g. babysitting, dog walking), events, volunteer opportunities...whatever. This is a bigger goal, but it might be something to talk about, and I certainly think it is achievable. Something that would be for both young, old, and middle-aged would be ideal, I think.
I think that's a good idea Anon. Perhaps something we'll need some more technical advice on.
Also, I think we should discuss ways of spreading the word about aggregation of event/campaign information through Idealist.org.
Lately I've been getting a lot of emails forwarded on and forwarded on from this and that foundation, organization, university, etc.
If all organizations were aware and able to use Idealist.org's free event posting and searching, we wouldn't have to deal with the missed connections involved in the Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: -type emails. Like Idealist.org' aggregation of job and volunteer opportunities, we should really push the public to use the event and campaign posting.
I think we could do it by each of us contacting all the organizations/foundations, etc. we know to inform them about it. Possibly we could arrange some kind of campaign to train organizations in posting these things.
Once everyone's on page, which is possible, it would be a very powerful resource. Especially with regards to people receiving email updates about these types of things.
Thoughts?
Katie and I are thinking about printing up a number of postcard flyers through www.clubflyers.com to help spread the word about Idealist.org in Chicago.
This would be something we could bring to the first meetings to get people started off with a first form of action- spreading the word on the streets, in our offices, and throughout neighborhoods. Idealist.org has been so useful to me over the years and I'm sure there's still so many people out there that haven't heard of it(but maybe have been looking for somethign like it!).
We're looking at cards that would cost $150 for a box of 5,000. They're of a nice quality.
If we went ahead and bought these for the first Chicago meetings, do you all think people could help chip in to cover the costs, granted they agree this is a good idea?
And anonymous 2, you mentioned setting up our own organization (Chicago Idealists).
I suggest we use this blog as a way to corner this idea- perhaps considering ourselves a 'network' organization.
Anyone who reads and particpates in this blog(through commenting) and the meetings it manifests could be considered a part of the 'organization'- named the Chicago Idealist Network.
I love the idea of bringing communities and the people within together. I think about neighborhoods like Pilsen and others who are suffering through gentrification pains. How amazing would it be to have ways for two communities/cultures/age groups to come together and meet as the neighborhood changes. They might even create a mosaic that was never imagined.
- I like the idea of the Chicago Idealists becoming a non-profit resource network, where we can all share information, resources, and help answer each other's questions. This helps - from an individual level working up - to help make our city's non-profits more productive.
The Chicago network and neighborhood networks are definitely things we can discuss at the meetings.
I'm not sure what kind of turn out we'll get for these first meetings, but if anyone would like to bring brochures, materials, business cards, etc. of any organization they're involved with, we could set up a table for browsing of such resources.
I'm also really interested in organizations and informative websites out there. Where do you work? What would be helpful to other Chicagoans? Where does everyone get their news? Where do you go for discussions on topics that interest you?
Also, could anyone bring snacks!?
Unfortunately, I just figured out that I have a conflict next Sunday and won't be able to make the meeting. Would it be possible for someone to take notes on what was discussed and post them on the blog? I would really like to be involved and feel bad about missing the first meeting...
A few more things - maybe during the meeting, you could organize a social outing - a good way for us to get to know one another better and create a cohesive and fun group.
As Dave mentioned, it would be great to find out what organizations the members are associated with. Maybe we can list these somewhere on here...maybe the meeting attendees can be encouraged to add an "about me" post to the "Who We Are" portion of the blog?
bringing information out of the closed loops of fwd'ed emails and into a more public online space seems like an important idea. one thing that i imagine we might be able to create is an interactive map of the city, where people could mark resources or points of interest. so that we'd find things around our neighborhoods that we might not otherwise have known about. also, we could discuss how we get event information (newsgroups, shared calendars, flyers, etc) and build a consensus for unifying that element of communication.
I think a Yahoo or Google group would be that unifying mode of communication. We had discussed google groups, but google just doesn't integrate the group calendar like Yahoo Groups does, which I think is so important for what this group would want.
I think Yahoo groups is still way ahead of Google- any objectors out there? I'm looking to set it up soon..
Another thing about the groups: as opposed to having everyone's emails and blurbs out there in public space, the group will allow the sensitive information to be more private- just privvy to our group. I think this is key, and another reason we might want to stray from this blog as far as information goes.
Could we keep the blog mainly as a source for less nonprofit news, but use the yahoo or google groups for discussion?
Post a Comment