For 51 years, Free Street has been creating original, joyful, and thought-provoking theater by, for, about, with, and in Chicago’s diverse communities. In this episode
Reflecting on my first year at LimeRed there are many things Ive learned that I think would be helpful for nonprofits to know or consider. In most cases you and your nonprofit are probably practicing these things already, and if you are you deserve a high-five!
We were recently tasked with developing a highly custom online forum. It would be a place where people would spontaneously create content and commentary about articles elsewhere on the site. Our would supply big topic buckets and the audience would fill them. Our client also wanted to include a low paywall for anyone wanting to comment or create.
I was trying to think of a good newsletter exampleit was a surprisingly tricky. I get a fair number of newsletters, but some of them are…bad. They’re unclear in purpose, they’re so poorly designed my eyes hurt, or they tell me about things I don’t care about and sound like they’re written by robots. But then I realized I get a great newsletter every week: The Sweet Pea.
I was on a panel recently with other Nonprofit Communicators addressing the question, How do we prepare the next generation of nonprofit communicators in the new digital age?
If youre a nonprofit organization, you probably already take donations on your website. There are so many payment receiving options: GiftTool, PayPal, Authorize.net, its barely even worth going through them all. Just make sure you arent being charged a fortune per transaction!
Since humans are fascinating, there are probably good stories happening all over your business or organization. It’s just a matter of collecting them.
Story collecting works best as a team effort. No matter how great you are at storytelling, chances are you are not involved of every facet of your organization and every client or customer interaction. The more perspectives you include, the deeper and broader your storytelling will be. Here are some tips for facilitating storytelling with your team.
Every project we do looks great, but lets be realistic: some of them have hiccups along the way to being great. Here are the top three reason why web projects go wrong and how to keep that from happening.
In 1999, I bought a manual transmission car without ever driving one before. It was small, black, shiny, had a spoiler and I was sure I looked great in it. The salesperson showed me how to drive it in the dealership parking lot and somehow I made it home. The next day I drove it from Des Moines, IA to Chicago, IL.
Like all things, it started out small.
Ive been on both the giving and receiving end of free work as Im sure most of us have. I started this business working with nonprofits and I was asked the Free Question more than enough times, and I have given away work many, many times. Some of the best work weve done has been pro-bono, but I definitely dont make a habit of it. I think people expect graphic designers, especially ones that do work for nonprofits, to be OK with doing free work, (Ive done it so I cant say Im totally adverse to it) but you know, designers have to eat and pay rent too. Most of us are pretty good at what we do and I dont know any other profession that is expected to do so much for free, on trade or at a discount.
Many years ago when I was a student in college, there was an exhibit in the city of zen buddhist sumi e paintings. The first time I visited the exhibit, I stood there for hours just staring at the works.
