School supply drives around Austin

With your help, all these kids will get school supplies!

Who can resist a new box of crayons? Especially the big one with the sharpener in the back.

No one. So feel free to buy them and donate them to any of these 2009-2010 school supply drives. Or even better, keep it for yourself! Then donate the money to the school supply drives, because they can buy a lot more school supplies with your $20 in bulk than you can at Target.

Volunteers needed, too!

(Oh, and backpacks! If your organization or business has some new, logo’d backpacks lying around, these organizations would love to hand them out to needy kids. Thanks!)

Manos de Cristo
Helps more than 2,000 East Austin children get school supplies, backpacks, and clothes for school.
DONATE: Monetary donations also accepted. Just $20 can provide a backpack with school supplies for one child, and for $45 you can completely outfit a child with a new backpack, supplies, and two new outfits.
VOLUNTEER: Volunteers needed to prepare for event, sort items, help distribute items, take photos and video.
WHEN: Pre-sorting & Preparation: Monday – Friday, July 26 – 30
Distribution Dates: Monday – Friday, August 2 – 6 and August 9 – 13
WHERE: 5335 Airport Blvd., Austin, Texas 78751
MORE: Manos de Cristo

Round Rock Partners in Education
Currently, more than 30% of RRISD families in Round Rock, Northwest Austin, and Cedar Park (approximately 12,000 students) qualify for the federally-funded Free and Reduced Lunch Program. These students are eligible to receive free basic school supplies from RRISD and the RRISD Partners in Education Foundation.
DONATE: “Support-A-Student-Program” lets you sponsor a student for only $10.
VOLUNTEER: Volunteer at Stony Point High School, 1801 Tiger Trail (formerly Bowman Road,) Round Rock, TX 78664.
WHEN: Sorting and distribution August 12-14
MORE: Round Rock PIE

Communities in Schools
2,000 CIS students need backpacks and school supplies. YOU can help!
DONATE: A $20 donation provides a CIS student with a backpack and a full set of school supplies. For just $5 more, a personal hygiene kit can be added to their backpack.
VOLUNTEER: School supplies are shipped directly to CIS where volunteers pack the supplies, write personal notes to each student and deliver them to campuses.
WHEN: Individuals or teams can volunteer to help pack supplies on August 13-14 or deliver supplies on August 18.
MORE: CIS

For the Children
FTC is an all-volunteer nonprofit. 100% of your donation goes toward school supplies. Low income children from 10 Central Texas school districts are eligible for school supplies, which they receive on the first day of school. Last year, FTC supported just under 55,000 children in the 10 Central Texas school districts, grades Pre-K through 4th. This year they hope to help 9,000 more.
DONATE: For the Children

Hope & Love 4 Kids
Founded in 2006, Hope & Love 4 Kids is a non-profit based in Kyle serving the children of Hays county.
DONATE: The school supply drive will be going all summer long. Donation bins are located at: KYLE – Kyle United Methodist Church, Seton Hospital, Fox’s Pizza, Wells Fargo, Trust Texas Bank , Austin Regional Clinic, Whataburger, UPS Store and Vantage Apartments, BUDA – Body Interiors and Learning Squared, AUSTIN – Champion Toyota and Haverty’s Furniture.
MORE: Hope & Love 4 Kids

SAT JULY 17: Fitness Fair to introduce more kids to sports

FitnessFeria will introduce Austin Spanish-speaking families to school sports.

This Saturday, July 17, more than 40 nonprofits, health agencies, and fitness groups across the area will offer Fitness Feria, a first-ever concept for Austin.

The event features more than 20 sports and fitness activities demonstrated to families, including cycling, kayaking, football, cheerleading, ballet, golf, running, and more. There’ll also be hands-on practice activities between parents and children with coaches, athletes, and mentors.

At Fitness Feria, parents will navigate with their children thru an “Olympic pathway” of hands-on sports demonstrations and exhibits as they learn these things about the U.S. sports and fitness system:

· The ABCs of Movement – the essential physical activities at every age level, from infant to teenager

· What it takes to do many kinds of sports, such as volleyball, running, cycling, baseball, swimming, karate, soccer, and many more

· Where to connect with free sports camps, training, and fitness activities in the area

· How to get athletic mentors and scholarships

· The importance of practice, mental discipline, and healthy lifestyles to achieve success in sports and fitness

WHY: One in three kindergarteners in Austin is overweight or obese with a near majority of these kids live in Spanish language dominant families. Obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and other illnesses are at their highest in the Hispanic community, but the number is increasing across all socioeconomic and ethnic groups.

Fitness Feria aims to give Spanish-speaking parents a better understanding of the U.S. sports and fitness system so they can be drivers of their family’s health and movement. The event also trains and mobilizes nonprofits and community groups to better engage the Spanish-speaking community. Organizers still need volunteers.

WHEN: Saturday, July 17, 2010, 8 a.m. to 12 p.m.

WHERE: Toney Burger Center, 3200 Jones Road, Austin, Texas

WHO CAN ATTEND: The program is geared toward Spanish-speaking families, but all families are welcome to attend.

HOW YOU CAN HELP: Volunteer! According to Oné Musel-Gilley, “We have English and Spanish volunteer roles. However, our greatest need is Spanish speaking volunteers.” Go for it!

CONTACT: To learn more about Fitness Feria, click here.

Hurry! Make Chase send big money to Austin via Facebook

UPDATE: Four of the nonprofits below won $20,000 each from Chase. Congratulations, and thanks for all your votes!

Are you on Facebook?

You might have heard about Chase Community Giving’s ongoing campaign to give $5 million in donations to 200 charities across the country. They’re asking Facebook users to vote for their favorite charity; Chase will give the top vote-getter $250,000, the five runner-ups $100,000 each, and the rest in the top 200 $20,000 each. Ch-ching.

Here’s the thing: Voting ends Monday! And five Austin charities in the top 200!

I’m not a fan of these corporate marketing schemes cloaked as philanthropy, but I’m a big girl, I know how this stuff works, and… I mean, it’s $20,000. So go!

Austin charities in the running for the prize as of this writing are:

#117 Cedar Park High School Band Boosters, 1071 votes
#118 Colombian Orphanages, 1070 votes
#135 Little Helping Hands, 1035 votes
#141 Walter Diez Molina Fund, 1019 votes
#177 Challah for Hunger, 973 votes

Marissa Vogel, executive director of Little Helping Hands, tells me the nonprofits have been working together to make sure they all stay in. “We’ve been working so hard on this for a month now,” she says. “It’s one thing to ask people to do it, but then they actually have to do it!”

So we’re going to make this simple:

1. Click here. Log on to Facebook if you have to.

2. Go to the green “Voting Open Now” and click “Like.” Follow instructions from there.

3. To vote for the above nonprofits, best go to the “Leaderboard” tab and click though until you get to the Austin charities.

You can vote for up to 20 nonprofits. So go crazy! Let’s get $100,000 to Austin charities!

McCombs MBA students looking to serve on nonprofit boards in Austin

Lauren Blitzer, president of Net Impact McCombs

Austin nonprofits: Consider hosting an MBA Board Fellow this semester.

Lauren Blitzer is president of Net Impact McCombs, a professional club for socially-minded MBA students at the University of Texas McCombs School of Business.  She filled me in on this fantastic idea.

This month, Net Impact McCombs launched a Board Fellows program in which students serve on the board of directors of local nonprofits in a non-voting capacity, attend meetings, serve on committees, and complete a Board-level strategic project.

What MBA students get: MBA students learn about Board governance, the realities of operations of nonprofits, and get to apply their business skills to serve the community.

What the nonprofit gets: The nonprofit benefits from a fresh perspective and gains the business insights of an MBA student.

Here’s a little more information from Blitzer:

“Since the program is new to McCombs, and we want to focus more on the student/organization match than on strict guidelines, we plan to be flexible in our selection and matching process and encourage ALL organizations to apply.  Nonprofits come in all shapes and sizes, and we think this program should reflect that.  Please be assured that a good student match, enthusiasm, and commitment to the program will outweigh these criteria.

• Nonprofit (501(c)3) status  (STRICTLY REQUIRED)
• An operating history of at least one year
• An annual budget of at least $350,000
• A minimum of 3 full-time staff members
• Have a board member willing to serve as a mentor (STRICTLY REQUIRED)

“As long as you are confident that someone at your organization could be available enough to facilitate a positive student experience (provide mentorship and needed information/data for their project in a timely manner, etc), then we’d love for you to apply. That said, we can’t guarantee you (or any other organization) a Fellow.  We will be working this summer to ensure that the needs of the organizations match with the students’ skills and interests.  If we are unable to match you, please know that it isn’t because of those ‘criteria’; other schools who have done this before have all warned us about the disasters of a bad student/organization match, so we would rather not facilitate a match then force a bad pairing.”

Still interested? Blitzer asks nonprofit to apply by August 15, but if you want a student to start at the beginning of their semester, please apply sooner.

Get more information by sending Blitzer an email or just apply online now.

Great time at our little happy hour last night

Jackie Rogers of United Way, John Turner of Southwest Key and a friend from Southwest Key

I wanted to thank everyone again for their good wishes and support. We had a little happy hour last night… I never get out… so it was really fun. Even my husband got to come!

Here, a few photos. The party was at the lovely and very dark Vino Vino, which was wonderfully understanding and accommodating for our small crowd.

Some of the other folks who joined us were Amber Fogarty and her brother Billy of SOS Leadership, David Davenport of Capital Area Food Bank, Omar Gallaga of the Statesman, Martin Montero, Brent Lyles of Austin Youth River Watch, Robin Bradford of CASA, Salvadore Castillo of @salvocheque, Narissa Johnson of Safeplace, Claire England, Matthew Parente of Hubvine… and lots of other really cool, nice people. I can’t wait to hear from you guys with feedback and input for our next issue.

Tom Spencer of AAIM and Mando Rayo of Cultural Strategies

Victoria Gutierres of Apex Auctions, Melanie Chasteen of Big Brothers Big Sisters, and Layla Fry of Southwest Key

Mando, Laurie Loew of GiveRealty and Rob Grady of Nextscreen

(In)Fighting for East Austin’s kids: Grant applications for Promise Neighborhood planning due today

Okay, an amendment to a previous post…

Backstory: In March, I wrote a post about Southwest Key’s efforts to improve the educational opportunities and help strengthen the community for the people living where Southwest Key lives, Central East Austin around the former Johnston High School, now Eastside Memorial High School.

In that post, I talked about learning how Southwest Key established the East Austin Children’s Promise, which it modeled on the Harlem Children’s Zone. The HCZ itself serves as a model for the federal government’s new Promise Neighborhoods planning grants, which will offer about $500,000 to about 20 community efforts like HCZ around the country. Southwest Key — the Juan Sanchez team — is applying for a planning grant.

A few weeks after writing that post, I had lunch with Allen Weeks, a community organizer who lives in the St. John’s neighborhood in Northeast Austin, and has also worked to improve educational opportunities and help strengthen the community for people living where he lives. The Weeks team has organized a large collaboration to apply for a Promise Neighborhoods planning grant as well, this one for the Northeast Austin neighborhood around Reagan High School.

I wondered if it helped or hindered Austin’s chances to have two grant applications competing among the 900+ nationwide. And regardless of that, does the competition help East Austin?

Applications due today: Recent Statesman news stories, editorials and blog posts about the Promise Neighborhoods planning grants pick Weeks’ team over Sanchez’, saying that the former effort was better planned and includes more heavy-hitting collaborators, including AISD, UT, City of Austin, St. David’s Foundation, United Way Capital Area and more. They also criticize the Sanchez team for not being as well prepared and for being sore losers.

All this just substantiates the point I was trying to make in my March blog post: In a city the size of Austin and considering the plight of so many East Austin students, are we really allowed infighting? Still?

I think even AISD Superintendent Maria Carstarphen said something along those lines, too. At the same time, though, Carstarphen inherited what many believe to be a history of AISD’s inability to address the educational needs of East Austin.  Maybe the AISD of the past could have evolved its approach to account for the increasingly diverse and urban population?

AISD needs to do that now, and working with both Promise Neighborhood grant applicants should be a top priority. I’d love to know exactly what each team was asking from AISD. “Support” can come in many forms; surely AISD can support two efforts in some way.

I’d also love to know more about why the Statesman thinks the Northeast Austin proposal was stronger. It’s been reported that Southwest Key didn’t submit its proposal to AISD until the last minute, in June, but it was also reported that Sanchez said he’d been trying to meet with Southwest Key for months. And it’s not like AISD didn’t know about Southwest Key’s charter  school; the East Austin College Prep academy enrolled 90 6th-graders in 2009 and now has a waiting list for its 6th and 7th grades.

The only amendment I can add to this story is, maybe Carstarphen needs to include AISD among her mention of the infighting adults.

PS 1: Here’s a listing of some of the communities Austin is up against. There were 941 “intents to apply.” The grant applications are due today, June 28. Grants will be made available this September.

PS 2: Also, here’s what I read for fun on a Sunday night: A link to the PDF of FAQs about the Promise Neighborhoods planning grant applications.

PS 3: After spending hours with both Weeks and Juan Sanchez, Southwest Key’s CEO, I got the impression I was looking at two sides of the same coin. Both are effective and passionate community leaders, but each approaches their work with completely different strategies. It’s worth getting to know both of them better to learn which of their two distinctively different leadership styles is more effective for East Austin in the long run.

Hopped up on coffee and ideas

This morning I hustled up to Genuine Joe’s to meet Matt Kouri, Ann Starr and Haila Yates of Greenlights. Then down to Scholz’s to meet Jason Denny of the Austin Jaycees. Then to Lift to meet Priscilla Cortez and her new daughter, Isabella, of FuturoFund this afternoon. And I am still wide awake and hopped up, man.

It’s great to ramp up GivingCity and soak up all that positive, “be the change” energy again. It reminds me of why I wanted to do this in the first place. I could stay up and work all night! Yes, the caffeine has something to do with it, but what really gets me hopped up are the people.

The fact is, I get to talk to some of the best people in Austin almost every day. Smart, interesting people who care deeply about the city and spend significant time and energy working to make it better. I sit across from them at those tiny coffee shop tables, listen for the clues and put them down in my handy-dandy notebook as fast as I can.

Do you work around smart people who inspire you every day?

###

Don’t forget!

• Greenlights & OneStar team up to bring us the Texas Nonprofit Summit, September 23-24 here in Austin.
• The last opportunity to become a member of this year’s FuturoFund is to make your pledge by July 31. FF will choose its grant winners this November.

It’s going to be a fun fall.

No more sneaking around

Among the things I couldn’t do when I was working on GivingCity “on the side”…..

• Promote it much
• Talk about it with strangers (who might know my employer)
• Work on it during the day
• Have phone conversations about it at the office
• Meet with people about it during normal business hours like adults

I’m surprised anyone noticed GivingCity at all.

The good news is, it’s all out in the open now. I can tell people what I do — the one thing that I do! — and not have to explain and repeat myself. It’s like the time I changed from being “Monica Maldonado” (Wha? McDon-nold-o?) to “Monica Williams.” Just so much easier.

That’s why I’m filling up my calendar with meetings. During office hours at real offices. No more sneaking around!

I can’t tell you how nice this is. And how much more I’m learning — exponentially — about philanthropy in Central Texas. (Thank you again, ACF.)

SAT, June 5: Dads, we need you!

Father’s Day is still a couple of weeks away, but let’s face it  — dads have no idea when Father’s Day actually is. Bless their hearts.

So you won’t spoil anything if you bring him to the River City Youth Foundation‘s 10th Annual Father’s Day Parade & Festival. In fact, I’m sure he’ll love it.

This celebration just makes sense. RCYF believes that father’s play an important role in a child’s academic and general well being, so it offers this event as a way to seal that bond between dads and their kids. And in the end, dads will be glad they went.

The celebration kicks off with a parade — which you can be in! — starting at Mendez Middle School at 11:30 and ending the RCYF on Pleasant Valley by noon. Once you’re there, you’ll get to do a little Flying Pinto Game, a Dragon Game, a watermelon seed spitting contest, (of course, dads love spitting) and more. Then they’ll read some essays written by students, hand out a couple of awards and crown a few dads. Crowns! What dad doesn’t love crowns?!

No one else in Austin offers a celebration of dads like this, and River City Youth Foundation has been doing it for 10 years. Check out this video to see families having a great time at previous years’ events.

I hope you’ll check it out, and then tell us all about it….

River City Youth Foundation’s
10th Annual Father’s Parade & Fiesta

SAT JUNE 5

11:30 am – 2 p.m.
5208 South Pleasant Valley Road (map here)

(Re)Introducing GivingCity Austin

It was almost exactly three years ago that I wrote the first blog post for GivingCity Austin. A few months later I started messing around on Twitter, then we launched our first digital issue, then a Facebook page and suddenly I was calling Evan Smith to write an article for the magazine … as if I had any idea what I was doing.

Luckily, GivingCity had a few guiding principles (and the best designer in Austin) on its side. Among those guiding principles were these:

1. People like stories. Of course, people like infographics, databases, reports, charts, graphs, lists and I hear some weirdos enjoy Excel pivot tables. But nothing inspires, intrigues and connects people like a story does. And thanks to the Internets, there are a million more ways to tell a story.

2. Magazines can support communities. I love the way Tribeza supports the community of Austinites who love fashion; how Edible Austin supports local foodies; how AustinFit supports people who look great in workout clothes. The trick to making a magazine that supports a community is in the editing — or what they call “curating” these days. Curated, targeted and relevant content can foster shared affinities. And again, the wonderful Internets is a great place to grow a magazine.

3. Austinites want to help, it’s just hard for us to fit it into our lives. But I think the same city that can support magazines about fashion, foodies and fitness can also support a magazine about philanthropy. Because as Austinites, we truly have a passion for making our city one of the country’s best places to live.

I’m glad Torquil Dewar felt the same way. He’s a sucker for magazines, like I am, but he has the rare ability to turn a bunch of copy and pictures into an “experience.”  Plus, he’s made more digital magazines than just about any designer in the country. And it helps that he apparently doesn’t sleep.

GivingCity had always been a labor of love. I hate that phrase, but there’s no better way to say it. We put our own personal resources into it and have never seen anywhere near a profit, but that’s not what it was about for us. What kept us going was the creative freedom and, more than that, your support. Unfortunately, between the day jobs, the kids, the other freelance work, we had to stop producing the magazine. On our list of priorities — namely our families and our need for steady incomes — GivingCity just didn’t make the cut.

Now after four issues, hundreds of blog and Facebook posts, thousands of Tweets, and lots and lots of caffeine, we’re very proud to say that GivingCity has found a home.

The Austin Community Foundation has decided to support GivingCity Austin as part of its mission to grow a culture of generosity and philanthropy in Central Texas. The good people there have hired us to produce GivingCity Austin just the way we’ve produced it in the past as a service to the community. GivingCity Austin’s mission won’t change much; it will include stories from all over the community, not just ACF; and we’ll continue to distribute it digitally to our audience, ACF’s audience and whomever else wants it, free. Look for the first issue this fall.

In addition to this, on July 1, I’ll become the Austin Community Foundation’s first ever communications director, which I’m over the moon about. The Austin Community Foundation has a truly amazing story to tell. They are one of the pillars of the philanthropic community in Austin, and it will be my mission to tell more Central Texans about the important services and support it provides.

Seth Godin says we should “delight and overwhelm” our true fans, and that’s what we’re going to aim to do. Yes, GivingCity Austin is about bringing new people to the philanthropy community, but when we make it, we think of you — those of you who are already plugged in and looking for more, those of you who have told us this is exactly what you’ve been looking for, and those of you who’ve emailed, called, commented, friended, liked, re-Tweeted, #FFd and all the other means you’ve used to keep us on the right path.

Thank you so much, a thank you especially to ACF. Look for major improvements in the coming year, and, as always, let us know what you think.