Ashley Mathews's Field Reports

Networking

Ashley Mathews — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 22:12:16 -0600

Hello Everyone,

Its been awhile since my last field report, I seem to keep forgetting about writing my reports. It kind of gets lost in the shuffle of the assignments I get from my organization. Anyway, I just recently attend the She's Geeky (un) conference in Mountian View, CA. The conference was for women working in the field of technology. I got to meet a lot of people outside of the nonprofit tech world such as, google reps, yahoo reps, and AOL reps. It was awesome I even got free public speaking training from acting and speech prof. from UC Berkley. Its amazing how much I learned in 3hrs, needless to say this session was very effective. On another note life at Grassroots.org is pretty good, I will keep everyone updated.

New Project

Ashley Mathews — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 11:51:41 -0600

Hello Everyone,
Since the last time I wrote I have been working on a new project. I am in the process of coordinating a blood drive with the Red Cross, which will be held on October, 11. So, I have been going around to businesses in the community to recruit donors. I am also getting help from StrongTech, which is the company my organization shares office space with. They also have been nice enough to help with recruiting donors and providing supplies such as, food, tables and chairs.
This blood drive is very important because the is critical shortage of blood in Central Ohio. So, I have come up with some incentives to get people to come donate such as, free Red Cross T-shirts and Grassroots logo glasses. In addition, I have asked for food donation from Panera Bread to provide free lunch and show tickets from the Shadow Box Cabaret.
My primary responsibility in organizing this blood drive is to recruit donors and make sure the Red Cross has the supplies they need when they arrive such as, tables and chairs. Outside of that I have to collaborate with the Red Cross to make sure the printed material for the event are edited and designed correctly. So, I will give an update on how the blood drive turned out later.

NP2020 Conference

Ashley Mathews — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 09:55:20 -0600

So, I attend the NP2020 Conference in Grand Rapids, MI from July,26-July,26
The conference structure was open discussion so, that gave me the opportunity to focus on thing I was interested in. My goal was to attend the conference to do some networking and find out about new development strategies for my org. However, I did do alot of networking with other orgs, but I found that I was more helpful to other orgs in terms of telling them about new web-based programs such as, egroupware and Salesforce. Also I participated in a group discussion called Oh Very Young! The purpose of this discussion was to find out how people new to the nonprofit world feel about. We talked about our future plans for the nonprofit world and what kind of skill we need to contribute to. If you are interested in reading some of the blogs and Wikis you can visit : http://nonprofit2020.wordpress.com/ and http://np2020.wikispaces.com/.

Getting to Know

Ashley Mathews — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 09:23:41 -0600

Well these past couple of weeks have been very productive. I am learning more about the operations of my host organization. About a week ago we had a staff retreat in Columbus, Oh which was very helpful for team building. I was able to meet all of the people who make it possible for Grassroots to be successful. Also, at the retreat I was able to get a clearer understanding of my role in the organization. Since the I have been working on a number of projects. One of my ongoing projects is to develop the domain Crime.org. I am currently looking for people who work in the field of a related field to help with the contents etc. Furthermore, I have been working on evaluating internal operation of the org and client outreach. On July, 26-July,28 I will be attending the NP2020 Conference in Grand Rapid,MI, which I received a scholarship for. At the conference I hope to do some networking with other organizations. In my next report I will give details about what I accomplished or learned at the conference.

PSO

Ashley Mathews — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 14:29:04 -0600

Today at PSO in Lowell, Mass we completed all the necessary paper work, which was a big relief. I am looking foward to the things that will take place in the next couple of days.

PS. I will keep everyone posted.