New Year’s Newsletter

Hello Brilliant Change Agents!

What a zany year 2016 was!  Yes, zany. Some gleaming things did happen this year despite tremendous defeats. We must continue to mourn the loss of some monumental change agents including Mattie Colin, Jack Greenberg, David Bowie, Prince, Ruth Guber, Zaha Hadid, Vera Rubin, and most recently George Michaels, Carrie Fisher, and Debbie Renolds, and Piers Sellers. These humans contributed so much to the betterment of humankind and acknowledging them with gratitude is the least we can do.

Some amazing social change did occur in 2016. Senator Elizabeth Warren smacked down Wells Fargo. The tiger population rose. India planted 10,000 trees in one day. We made it to Jupiter. Over 2000 veterans mobilized to support Standing Rock. Some incredible women of color were elected into high political seats. And, the Cubs winning the world series produced the 7^th largest peaceful gathering in the world. That’s a ton to celebrate and create a huge platform for people to find common ground!

For me personally, this new year brings a lot of anxiety. I am  practicing techniques to manifest my anxiety into fuel for the cause. I am invigorated to have my boots on the ground, fighting for what I believe in. I want to scream social justice and find ways, even though the obstacles are greater than ever, to make life more equitable for everyone. My dream is that as a society, we find courage and strength on an individual level and hold ourselves accountable for the future of everyone.

For the Project Kinect team, 2017 will be a huge year. We are working on a couple large endeavors in the realm of community engagement and visioning. These actions will assist in adding positions to our team and better become a sustainable social business our community can rely on. Additionally, we have been hired by some really great new organizations and events to assist in further delivering inspiring social change. We can’t wait!

Our two large annual events, the Social Change Forum and the Fall Food Cart Fest are growing in 2017. The Social Change Forum on March 2^nd will have more seats available so more change agents can participate.  The Fall Food Cart Fest will be moved downtown to mesh within the amazing vibrations of everything happening on the east side/downtown.

I am personally so thankful that Project Kinect is in its third year here in Madison. My enormous gratitude goes out to all of you in assisting to make Madison Project Kinect’s home.

With all my love in the new year,

Gregg & the PK Team

Check out the entire Newsletter here! 

 

Eventbrite - Social Change Forum 2017

Event: Box of Balloons Birthday Bash

The nonprofit, Box of Balloons is getting ready for their first annual Birthday Bash fundraiser on November 7th. This event is a family friendly event enjoyable for adults and children alike sponsored by Summit Credit Union, with support from many community businesses.

All funds raised during this events will go directly towards sponsoring a birthday celebration for children who would not be able to have a large celebration on their birthday. The organization works directly with local school social workers and community leaders to help identify deserving children and provide them with an awesome birthday party celebration. To date, between all 11 chapters housed in six different states, over 278 total birthday parties have been donated.

Purchase tickets here

Sunday, November 7th 2015

625 Heatherstone Ridge

Sun Prairie, WI 53590

$2 for adults

$6 for children

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Here is a video to also share what Box of Balloons does. 

Tools We Love: Sustainability Options for Nonprofits

We hosted a workshop at Madison Nonprofit Day this year titled, ‘Sustainable Business Plans for Nonprofits.’  While there are some amazing ideas on how to make nonprofits less reliant on grants, taking action to accomplish this is going to take some time.  We must change our frame of mind from, “We need support and assistance” to “We offer greatness to everyone and our business is better than just measuring success.”

The workshop focused on using the expertise in the room. We all know that no one really knows the scene better than the people working in it.  They just sometimes need some love, support, and space to think about what else is possible. Here is a list of resources we wanted to offer to them and figured it should be shared with everyone.

 

Sustainability References

 

Nonprofit with a For-Profit Business

 

Forming a For-Profit Partnership or Subsidiary

 

Miscellaneous

 

Additional Notes From Workshop

  • Let’s remember that sustainability does not only mean fiscal sustainability. How do we better become sustainable with volunteers, mental health, and capacity building?
  • Remind yourselves what your doing takes a lot and remember how amazing you are!

Voices We Love: Vu Le

It is a tragic shame that Vu Le and his website, Nonprofits With Balls have just been introduced to our staff.  We know that it is extremely difficult to keep reading this when you want to click the link to his website, but please refrain. We probably shouldn’t even be adding these sentences because you have already clicked it.  If you haven’t, go ahead, click it. We’ll even put it here to make it easier for you to click…. Nonprofits With Balls.

Vu Le is extraordinary.  He is a hot sexy unicorn to us for his candidness, ability to point out where real positive social change is and isn’t happening, and  his humor about it all.  Life is funny!

His website says this about him:

Vu Le is a writer, speaker, vegan, Pisces, and the Executive Director of Rainier Valley Corps, a start-up nonprofit with the mission of developing and supporting leaders of color to strengthen the capacity of communities-of-color-led nonprofits and foster collaboration between diverse communities to effect systemic change.

Vu’s passion to make the world better, combined with a low score on the Law School Admission Test, drove him into the field of nonprofit work, where he learned that we should take the work seriously, but not ourselves. There are tons of humor in the nonprofit world, and someone needs to document it. He is going to do that, with the hope that one day, a TV producer will see how cool and interesting our field is and make a show about nonprofit work, featuring attractive actors attending strategic planning meetings and filing 990 tax forms.

Known for his no-BS approach, irreverent sense of humor, and love of unicorns, Vu has been featured in dozens, if not hundreds, of his own blog posts at nonprofitwithballs.com. He is also the humor columnist for the awesome nonprofit online magazine, Blue Avocado. Vuenjoys talking about himself in the third person.

What’s with the name “Balls”?!

You may be thinking, “Why ‘Nonprofit with Balls’? Isn’t that sexist?! Why not ‘Nonprofit with Balls and Ovaries,’ you sexy sexist pig?!” The title comes from an experience he had, described here. Please read that entire post before writing him an angry email. Also, it refers to all the balls that we nonprofit professionals have to juggle: clients, board, staff, volunteers, funders, auditors, payrolls, budgets, cashflows, trainings, annual events, etc. We are all knee-deep in balls. We have balls coming at us from every direction. Sometimes we “drop the ball,” but no worries, since there is never a shortage of balls in this line of work.

Take a look at this video from Many Network.  It is a great display of Le’s speaking ability and candor about what nonprofits really need to be successful.

Project Kinect at Work: Let’s Eat Out!

Let’s Eat Out! has some amazing things coming up! 

  • Summer Concert Series

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Let’s Eat Out! has asked Project Kinect to assist in a four part pilot summer concert series at Burr Jones Field in Madison, WI. The series will be three concerts in June 21st, 28th,  & July 5th and a final concert, the “Fall Food Cart Festival”, on September 27th. The concert series would include the presence of local bands (3 bands for each date), six food carts representing LEO!, A beer trailer representing a local brewery, a sponsored children’s area, and a specific nonprofit benefactor for each event. Project Kinect’s role with the concert series will be to assist logistics for the events while outlining the process for giving donations to local nonprofits. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor, please check out the Let’s Eat Out! sponsorship page.

  • Internship Program

The Let’s Eat Out! Internship Initiative, in partnership with Briarpatch Youth Services, will target youth between the ages of 16 and 18 from economically challenged communities around the city of Madison who are seeking unique skills related to food service and entrepreneurship. The internship will not only provide a steady summer job (at $9 per hour), it will also provide external correlated training and the potential for long term job and entrepreneurial development.

In addition to providing valuable work experience and other training, the Let’s Eat Out! Internship initiative will also provide mentors for youth.  Food cart owners will serve as mentors for their interns and offer an up close and personal look at what it takes to manage and operate a small business.

Unlike other internship opportunities where interns often work at the bottom-rungs of the company, Let’s Eat Out! interns will be trained through day-to-day interactions with the owners of the businesses they’re working for.  The business owners will provide valuable guidance and insight on all aspects of small business management. Additionally, interns will be involved in labs each week that will assist to strengthen and add to their skill sets.

If this is something you would like to support financially, then here is where to donate.

If you want to volunteer,  here are great volunteer opportunities provided by Let’s Eat Out!s weekly dinners.

 

Project Kinect Most Currently

Thank you for visiting Project Kinect.  For those who are new to this website and are not familiar to Project Kinect, please spend some time with my journey page.  Project Kinect was originally a year-long grassroots travel project to create a new definition for the word community.  From March of 2011 to February of 2012, I traveled the country discovering what different forms of communities are doing to better themselves while documenting these findings in order to share with other communities in similar circumstances.  The  website is built so that you can see what I did, who I met and other extraordinary things that were happening in other parts of the country.  If you would like to just watch some or all of the videos, please check out the Youtube Channel for Project Kinect.

For everyone who wants to continue following Project Kinect, please continue to check out the website.  I will continue to add great things I see that involves connecting and community as well will continue to respond to emails and posting your great events to the community boards in your different cities.  Also, make sure you continue to check current kinecting as well as the work in progress, The Norman Rockwell Project.

In the future, I have plans to create Project Kinect into a nonprofit that primarily works on assisting in community growth whether it is a community that needs to rebuild after a natural disaster or a neighborhood that desperately needs help and resources to regain it’s sense of community.  Until then, I will be getting my masters at the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock.  I will keep all of the great things me and my fellow classmates are doing right here on the website so you can follow along as well as take any volunteer opportunities that may come up because of our activities.

Thank you all for the continued support and please email me with any additions, comments or events you would like to share with me and Project Kinect by emailing gregg@projectkinect.com.

Rockford, IL Weed & Seed: The Kishwaukee Corridor

I had the amazing opportunity to ride around with Dana, the director of the Kishwaukee Corridor part of Rockford.  This area of Rockford happens to be the largest Weed and Seed Site in the country and also happens to be the historical center of Rockford.  Thank you so much Dana for an amazing and impactful experience.  What you are doing for your community is unbelievably remarkable and selfless beyond all levels.

For more information on the Weed and Seed Program, check out these links:

National Weed and Seed

Kishwaukee Corridor Names Leader

Picked for National Program