For One Community Organizing Initiative, Spam Works

The sort of “spam” that Angela Ongoco fills her friends’ inboxes with begins like this:

Hi Guys!

As you know, I am working on a community development initiative in one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the world.  The operative term here is diverse, which is the reason for why I email you.  I was wondering if you could …

What follows has been everything from a request to translate letters to parents (in no fewer than 18 languages), to spreading the news about fellowship opportunities and staffing needs for the community development initiative that she leads, Project 126.

Eight years after its founding in 1996, the Thomas and Jeanne Elmezzi Foundation started Project 126 in an effort to focus its resources on economic development in Long Island City/Astoria, Queens.  The project’s is derived from the ending of the three zip codes where the Foundation decided to target their efforts:  11101, 11102, and 11106.

The foundation’s goals are straightforward community building, from civic engagement, leadership development, creating a forum for residents to connect and open dialogue to ensuring that basic public health needs are met.

To achieve these goals, Project 126 has a three-pronged strategy for implementation: creating a “snapshot” of the community to identify its needs, building a network and building a vision for the community’s future.

Internally, concerning how the organization runs, Project 126 relies on tech-savvy staff, from the hiring stages to daily tasks within the organization. According to Chris Cutter, Program Officer and Chief Advisor to Project 126, they “have recruited several volunteers by advertising opportunities on Facebook, Idealist.org, and other social networks.  We have, through these tools, recruited several long-term volunteers, including research persons, graphic designers and community engagement workers.” Angela’s email and Facebook spam has been effective.

The WordPress-based Project 123 Website

Their process for determining which tools to use was to focus on simplicity.  For Chris and the foundation, that means relying on Web 2.0 tools.  “In the past, tools developed for businesses and nonprofits have been impressive in complexity, but failed at the ‘front-end’ to allow ease of use.”  In the past year, they moved their email and collaboration to Google Enterprise for email and collaboration and their website to WordPress Content Management System.

These tools, “emphasize ease of use, and that has made all the difference” Chris explains.  “Google has allowed us to work remotely, in real-time, with volunteers by creating documents together, chatting together, and emailing large files with ease.  WordPress has allowed us to publish news stories quickly, track the readership levels, and offer an rss feed to all of our information.”

The small-staffed team that Chris mentioned is young, and since the move to Google and WordPress, Chris reports that it has been smooth sailing.  “The mojo,” he wrote in an email response to question, “I suppose, was something we, as 20 somethings, grew up with.  Intuitively understanding the way things work gives us a major advantage.  Though these things can be taught, as with traditional ‘mojo’, in-born talent never hurt .”

Externally, concerning how the organization works within their targeted community, Project 126 is in the process of conducting a survey to find out which social networking sites are the most used.

In a true manifestation of the way the organization uses current technology, particularly Google products, Angela used Google Chat to reply to a last round of questions from her BlackBerry: “Angela: I’m on my crackberry / I will gchat the answers…”

According to Angela, “young people are generally on MySpace” while a few nonprofits and older residents use Facebook.  For each demographic with which they work, the organization uses a different technology.  “For senior citizens I do some flyering in their building.”  For those in their 30’s and 40’s, she sends out mass emails.

“Income levels,” Angela writes, “also plays a role:” not everyone has access to computers, and not everyone knows how to sue them.  “So I try to [account] for that.”  She pushes for residents to be “tech connected” by holding community-wide courses on getting comfortable with computers.  “Residents need to learn to keep up with the rest of society” she states, “Poverty is no excuse when there are free [computer] courses available in the community.” Her sense of urgency comes from knowing that learning to use the computer is important for employment.

Angela herself sticks to what is most comfortable.  She uses email and Facebook because Facebook is “easy for me to use, and so is email.”

Angela uses her own, private profile and vast network to publicize the work at Project 126

Project 126 is currently setting up a MySpace account, “And I don’t know how to do that” writes Angela.

For that, the organization turns to their Program Officer.  “His job is not really to do the tech stuff / But since he’s interested in it / He does it.”  Despite the 20-something tech-savy mojo, in the end, Angela reports that they outsource much of their tech work to people in other countries; it is cheaper.

No related posts.