This past year has been full of growth.  Thank you.  We could not have done it without you – our partners, donors and other supporters.  We hope you enjoy reading about our statewide Support And Services at Home (SASH) initiative, our newest community Thayer House in Burlington, the 80th Anniversary of the Ruggles House Foundation and much more in our 2012 Annual Report - Cathedral Square’s 2012 Annual Report. Vermont is on the forefront of change and we are happy to be a part of it with you.

Common Good Vermont invites other nonprofits to send their annual reports to us at coordinator@commongoodvt.org and share what you are doing!

The digital age has profoundly changed the function and future of media, journalism and democracy. In the wake of the dramatic restructuring of how we communicate and define our communities, what are the implications for democracy? How can alternative media awaken, educate and engage the electorate?

Don’t miss this year’s Goddard College Alternative Media Conference.

When: May 18, 2013 9am-5pm

Where: Goddard College, 123 Pitkin Road, Plainfield, VT

Register Today!

You will receive Half Off the current price of the conference by entering the code: AMC2013

Learn More

Join top progressive radio and television talk show host Thom Hartmann; Goddard alumna, former board member, and White House Correspondent and Bureau Chief for the Talk Radio News Service, Ellen Ratner; former President & Chief Executive Officer for the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, Maxie C Jackson III; and Bitch Media’s co-founder and editorial/creative director Andi Zeisler while they, and others, talk about issues of ownership, community and activism in today’s media landscape at the upcoming Alternative Media Conference at the Plainfield, VT campus.

Creating a Work Plan Without Starting from Scratch

For many nonprofit communicators, planning more than a few weeks or months at a time is a luxury. You just do the work, and roll with the changes as you go.

But that approach can leave you wondering what you are missing, and if you are doing the right things at the right times. So how can you take the time to create a real work plan without starting from scratch? How do you accept the reality that you will need to keep doing most of what you are doing now, while being more strategic and thoughtful moving forward?

I’m helping a client work through these questions right now, and we’ve come up with a basic framework that I thought might be helpful to others.

1. Identify basic housekeeping or good habit building opportunities that you may have overlooked.

Start by figuring out what basic best practices for your communications channels you may have overlooked while you were growing organically and just doing it. For example, are your email newsletter sign-up forms everywhere they should be? How about links to your Facebook and Twitter profiles? When you update your website or blog, are you in the habit of tagging posts properly so your site is well organized and search engine optimized? Are you communicating regularly internally with your program and development offices? Double check that all those basics are really taken care of and that you have good habits in place to support the fundamentals.

2. Take what you are doing up a notch.

You’ve probably been plugging along just fine with various communications tactics like your newsletter, Facebook, direct mail appeals, etc. and likely working off your intuition about what works and what doesn’t. Now it’s time to get more methodical about collecting data and integrating that into your thinking. You think certain kinds of posts generally do well on your Facebook Page? Go dig into your Insights and see what you find. Same thing for your website and email analytics. What do you see there that could help you take what you already do up a notch or two?

3. Plan to experiment

Now comes the really fun part. With your basic systems in place, and some improvements on what you are already doing, what can you experiment with to really learn something new? Maybe it’s creating a whole different category of content, or the way you share certain types of content (e.g. being more opinionated or funny). Maybe it’s exploring a new social media site, or A/B testing elements on your website landing pages. This is where you can plan to stretch a bit.

Think of it as buying an old house. You aren’t going to tear it down. First, you make sure the basics are covered — the lights, plumbing, heat, etc. all work. Then you spruce up the basic living space, maybe painting and replacing the carpet. Then you can be more creative and experiment with new home accessories or landscaping.

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I can’t decide whether the efforts to eliminate a Federal program that provides low cost mobile phones for poor people are dumb or mean-spirited. Actually, it’s pretty clear that they are both. For almost a century Americans have agreed, even when we couldn’t agree on almost anything else, that all Americans should have access to telephone service. Over decades our nation spent billions of dollars to ensure that rich or poor, urban or rural, we all would have access to telephones. But recently, a Federal program designed to help low income Americans obtain phones became known as “Obama Phones”, so of course a segment of the conservative blogosphere has become dedicated to eliminating this program. And some Members of Congress are dutifully following along.

In reality, the so-called “Obama Phones” have almost nothing to do with President Obama. I know because I was there at the inception of the Lifeline Telephone Program, as it more appropriately is known. Back in the 1980s while a staffer for Congressman Mickey Leland of Texas, I helped create the Federal Lifeline program. During hearings in the early 1980s the Congressman discovered that millions of Americans did not have home telephone service. Those Americans without phones often were older, poorer, less healthy, lived in less safe neighborhoods or had young children of school age.

Congressman Leland believed that all American families should have phones for health, safety, employment and educational reasons. Even more importantly, the Congressman recognized that phones help families stay connected to their friends and to each other. Phones contribute to our nation’s social fabric and keep communities closer. Congressman Leland noted that the Universal Service mandate at the Federal level helped to fund and to provide telephone service in high cost rural areas and he believed it just as important to assist in providing phones to low income urban and suburban Americans as to middle income and affluent rural Americans. Working with other Members of Congress and with members of the FCC, Congressman Leland helped to create the Lifeline telephone program.

The Lifeline program is a success. In just short of thirty years we have seen the national percentage of homes with phones increase from 91% in the mid 1980s, when Lifeline first was enacted, to over 95% today.  The number of homes without phones has fallen from almost 9% to just over 4% today. The percentage of low income households with telephone service has gone from 80 % in the mid 1980s to 92% today. Put another way, in 1984, 7.4 million households did not have telephone service. If not for the Lifeline program, the number of households without phones likely would be more than 10 million, or double the actual 5 million phoneless households today.

So, if this Federal program works, what’s the problem? Why are conservatives attacking it? The short answer is mobile phones. In the mid 2000s, in the wake of the Katrina catastrophe, the Bush era FCC expanded the lifeline program to include mobile phones. Federal Rules now allow each qualifying household to obtain no more than one mobile phone under the Lifeline Program. Moreover, if you have a mobile phone under Lifeline you can not also get a landline phone under the program.

Yes, poor people, just like their more affluent fellow citizens, prefer mobile devices to landlines. And that upsets some folks. Equally upsetting to folks is the popular myth that President Obama gave poor people mobile phones so that they would vote for him. This myth is, of course, an extension of the fiction that 47% of Americans are just looking for a President that will give them “stuff”. The “Obama Phones” have become exhibit A for those folks seeking to validate the claim that poor voters and minority voters voted for Obama because he gave them “stuff”. The truth is that the Lifeline Telephone Program came into existence almost thirty years ago under one Republican President and that the addition of mobile phones was adopted about a decade ago under a different Republican President. Accepting the truth, however, would spoil the Right Wing narrative that reduced rates for mobile phones and for mobile service are Obama’s bribes to his voters.

Some of the detractors of the program assert that there is fraud in the Lifeline program. And there probably is. I can’t think of too many multi-million dollar Federal programs that are free of fraud. But generally we maintain effective programs and do what we can to eliminate or reduce fraud. That’s what we do with Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and even our tax collection efforts. But not here! The call is to abolish Obama Phones!

And if that means that parents wouldn’t have a phone to contact a doctor, or to talk to a teacher about a child’s school work or to report a crime in their neighborhood, well, at least we will have made sure those poor folks weren’t taking advantage of taxpayers with those twenty dollar phones. Let them have landlines. Why do poor folks need mobile phones, even if they are more convenient, provide greater safety and are the preferred mode of communicating for an increasing number of families?

It’s going to be interesting in the next few months as the FCC and the Congress begin to look at the rural or high cost Universal Service program. It has become clearer and clearer that the only way to bring affordable advanced telephone service to rural America might be through wireless technologies. Will lawmakers who are fighting against subsidies for mobile devices and mobile technologies to connect low income urban and suburban Americans to our telephone network be as quick to condemn subsidies for wireless technology if those funds are being used to connect rural Americans, including affluent rural Americans?

The truth is that the Lifeline program works and mobile lifeline, with its increased flexibility and convenience for users, is an improvement over the original program. The switch to mobile is a common sense change to a good program and reflects how many Americans and most young Americans now prefer to get telephone service. We need to figure out what other common sense changes we need to make to ensure that all Americans, including rural Americans, have affordable telephone service. Let’s not abandon a great program because of malicious misstatements and mis-impressions of what it is and how it originated. Why don’t we agree to keep the program, but name it after the President who originated it: “Reagan Phones!” Maybe that would be a program the Conservative blogosphere could learn to love.

Interviewers are prepared to instantly spot strengths and weaknesses in a job candidate. Naturally, they want to find somebody who’s the best fit for the role and weed out job seekers who aren’t up to the challenge. However, don’t forget that the company is interviewing for you, too. It’s up to you to spot the strengths and weaknesses of a company.

To avoid taking a job that’s not right for you, look for these red flags in an interview and learn how to respond to the warning signs.

There are hints of high turnover
Whether it comes up naturally in an interview or if you ask yourself, find out about the history of the job you’re applying for, as well as the employees who formerly held the role. Hopefully, those employees have gone on to better positions or have been promoted within the company. However, Raven Robinson, founder of Veranda Lane Leadership Coaching, says that if the last employee was there for less than six months, or if there have been more than two people in the role in the past two years consider that a potential red flag. If there are signs of high turnover, further investigate the workload and responsibilities. There’s a chance the role is overburdened if employees are getting burned out quickly.

Career paths aren’t a priority
A common interview question is, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” After you’ve explained your hopes for your career path, don’t be afraid to turn the question around. Ask about the future of the role and how the company expects the employee to advance. Robinson says it’s a warning sign if “they can’t clearly and eloquently explain the future of the company and where they hope to be in five years — especially if the interviewer would be your direct supervisor. If they don’t know this now, they will probably lead you astray as you work.”

The work environment isn’t professional or positive
You can learn a lot about a business based on what the employees say or how they act around people outside of the company. Robinson says to watch out for “the tone with which they speak of the last employee. It’s possible to get caught up in thinking that the person must not have been great at the job since they are not there anymore. However, if this comes across in the way people speak about them, that shows a low level of professionalism on their part.” Another warning sign: “If the manager can’t explain with enthusiasm why they like working for the company,” Robinson says. If the interviewer isn’t excited about the work environment, why should you be?

The job begins to sound different than the role you applied for
When it comes time for you to ask questions, “Ask what a typical day looks like in that role. If possible, ask the supervisor and an employee who does that job; if their answers are vastly different, that’s a red flag,” Robinson says.

Also find out what their expectations will be for you immediately upon starting the job. Watch out “if they are looking for someone who will ‘hit the ground running,’” Robinson says. “While this isn’t make-or-break, it’s typically the sign of a company with no training process. If you require formal training, manuals and documented procedures, this may not be the company for you. The same stands if you ask what would be your first priority in the first 30 days and they say anything other than ‘Learning.’”

How to respond to red flags
If red flags are popping up in an interview, there are ways to investigate. “If you notice that an interviewer is unprepared to openly answer a valid question, try asking it in different ways or from different angles,” says Lynda Zugec, managing director at The Workforce Consultants. “Inconsistent responses are a red flag that something may be happening behind the scenes. Try to determine if the question is a deal breaker for you or whether someone else in the organization can more fully answer your question.”

If you do see red flags, is the job a lost cause? “Not necessarily, but you absolutely do have to be honest with yourself about the type of work environment you’re getting yourself into,” Robinson says. “The best thing to do in the interview process is to take in information.” Afterward, you can decide if it’s a good match, just as the interviewer will.

The Children’s Literacy Foundation (CLiF) is a nonprofit based in Waterbury Center, Vermont. For 15 years CLiF has inspired a love of reading and writing among more than 140,000 low-income, at-risk, and rural children in almost 400 towns throughout Vermont and New Hampshire.

CLiF seeks a communications professional to direct and manage our external communications and media relations, and oversee some activities related to fundraising. Communications duties include: pitching media stories and op-ed essays to local, regional, and national outlets; writing and editing content for CLiF’s newsletter, e-newsletter, annual report, press releases, Facebook, Twitter, blog, and other communications assets; participating in shaping CLiF’s programs and activities. Fundraising duties include some outreach to businesses and foundations and supporting executive director in donor relations. Work will be performed in the CLiF office in Waterbury Center Monday to Friday. Some flexibility in scheduling.

• Excellent writing and editing skills
• Proven ability to manage projects and small teams
• 4+ years in public relations, community relations, marketing, or similar field
• Success with pitching media stories to editors and developing ongoing connections with press
• Experience creating and maintaining donor relationships
• Experience with Twitter, Facebook, blogging and e-mail marketing
• Skilled with Apple computers, Microsoft Office suite, WordPress, and donor management software. Knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite a plus
• Strong interpersonal skills. Comfortable speaking with groups.

Send resume and cover letter by April 19 to clif@clifonline.org. We prefer individuals who live within 20 miles of the CLiF office in Waterbury Center

If you have a tool that you can’t work without, please email us at coordinator@commongoodvt.org. We’d love to hear what Vermont’s nonprofits are using to get their work done!

Google Drive lets you store and access your files anywhere — on the web, on your hard drive, or on the go. Here’s how it works:

1. Go to Google Drive on the web at drive.google.com.
2. Install Google Drive on your computer or mobile device.
3. Throw your files in Google Drive. It’s right there on your device.

Now your files go everywhere you do. Change a file on the web, on your computer, or on your mobile device and it updates on every device where you’ve installed Google Drive. Share, collaborate, or work alone: your files, your choice. Store the first 5 GB of your stuff for free. When your Google Drive grows, get another 25 GB of space (or more!) starting at $2.49 per month.

Stickies is a PC utility written to try to cut down on the number of yellow notes stuck to your monitor.   It is a computerised version of those notes. The design goal behind Stickies is that the program is small and simple. Stickies will not mess with your system files, or write to the registry. Stickies stores information in a single text-based ini file.

Vimeo is a video-sharing website, similar to Youtube but committed to  user-made video that allows you to share High Definition (HD) videos. There is a free membership and users can upgrade for more features.

TinyURL If you are using Twitter or Facebook, then  TinyURL is a great way to shorten links to your webpage or blog. Just copy and past the web address onto the tool’s website and it will give you a shortened web address.

FuzeBox  is a simple  cloud-based, video conferencing solution that makes it easy for anyone, anywhere, across any platform, on any mobile device to quickly and conveniently collaborate face-to-face. This platform allows you to share content and screensharing  while streaming video.

Check back next week to find more low cost, no cost tools!

Register Today for How to Move Your Target Audiences to Give, Volunteer, Spread the Word and More slated for Wednesday, March 27, 2013 at  1:00-2:00 PM EDT.

You have to connect with your target audiences to move them to act…to give, to sign, to participate, to volunteer and more. And your organization’s messages are your hello—the first step in building these vital relationships.

But without relevant messages, it’s impossible to connect.

In fact, 76% of nonprofit communicators say their messages are irrelevant to the people they want to give, volunteer or take another needed action. Their target audiences (like yours?) remain unmoved and their goals unmet.

If you can’t make it this time, register anyway. All registrants receive the video recording.

Marketing writing covers a broad spectrum of topics and becoming an expert involves methods that most of us never learned in school. But it’s not too late! Check out Marketing Writing Bootcamp and get ripped with raw writing power. Enroll now for Early Bird pricing. Use promo code PUMPED by March 29 to save $250 (even more if you’re an MPU Alum!).

The course is all-new, and it’s guaranteed to whip your writing into shape and get your marketing muscles more toned than ever. We’re offering 15 never-before-seen classes with powerful writing insights to boost your business brawn. We’ll lead you step-by-step through lessons that turn you into a lean, mean, writing machine.

Find out more information and sign-up for the Marketing Writing Bootcamp.

You’ll learn how to:

• Create a memorable and distinct brand voice
• Master writing style, techniques, and processes
• Generate awesome content at a rapid pace
• Write compelling product descriptions that result in real sales
• Tackle brand identity and positioning
• Drive results by telling the right story to the right people at the right time

This isn’t your run-of-the mill Writing 101 course. This is high-intensity strength training in all forms of marketing writing. We call it a bootcamp for a reason! And it’s the ONLY course that offers it all.

Save $250 (more if you’re an MPU alum!) when you register by March 29 with promo code PUMPED.  Register!

There are now 1 BILLION smartphones on the planet. You must make it easy for supporters to engage with your nonprofit on their mobile devices. Can donors easily make a donation to your cause via mobile? Do supporters have a good experience when they view your website or read your emails on a smartphone? If not, you may be losing donors and missing out on gifts.

It’s time to find out if your organization is prepared for mobile opportunities!

Test your nonprofit mobile readiness with this short quiz >>

To learn more about Why Mobile Matters, check out Network for Good’s  free white paper.