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Helping Homeless Veterans, Christmas Tree Recycling, School Textbooks and More: This Week’s Latest ACTion

January 3, 2011 By Kevin Dauray Leave a Comment

  • Many veterans are returning from war without a place to call home. Dorothy Thomas, the Homeless Coordinator for the Veterans Administration in Alexandria, wants that to change. Read about her meeting with American Legion members and other officials that will indeed change lives and help protect those who have protected us.
  • Councilman Rob Krupicka recently wrote on his blog about the efforts of the Virginia Board of Education to ensure that factual errors in student textbooks are corrected. Del. David Englin is also introducing a bill in the state legislature on Monday to overhaul the state’s textbook adoption process.
  • Check out the extensive coverage of a new program called “Money Smart,” taught by Jennifer B. Murphy, on the LocalKicks blog.  Murphy, a recent graduate of the Parent Leadership Training Institute, created the program to teach students about financial well-being.  Another course will be taught at Minnie Howard this year.
  • Librarian Karen Russell, who managed at all four branches of the Alexandria Library, retired January 1st after a 38-year career.  Starting the Spanish-language collection was just one of her many accomplishments.  Congratulations Mrs. Russell and thank you for your service.
  • Alexandria residents who have curbside trash pick-up can put out their Christmas trees for collection on January 8th and 15th.  The trees will be recycled and reused as mulch this spring.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Filed Under: Civic Engagement, Education, Featured Tagged With: Alexandria Library, christmas, Councilman Rob Krupicka, david englin, Dorothy Thomas, homeless veterans, Jennifer B. Murphy, Karen Russell, Money Smart, recycling, tree, virginia textbooks

Are You A Social Good Champion?

December 3, 2010 By Tim McAllister 1 Comment

Social media news site Mashable has singled out three “incredible social good champions” using the web to bring online awareness and positive influence to causes for real change.  They highlight Ben Rattray - the founder of Change.org; Scott Harrison - the founder of Charity: Water; and The Free Agent, a term coined by Beth Kanter and Allison Fine in their book, The Networked Nonprofit to describe individuals who use social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube on their own initiative to build awareness for their favorite social causes.

ACTion Alexandria plans to use the social web to help our community bring positive change to citizens in need.  Have you used social media to support your favorite causes? Are you a Free Agent, using your social media skills to help your favorite charities?  Let us know how in the comments!

Filed Under: Civic Engagement, Featured, Nonprofits Tagged With: allison fine, beth kanter, causes, free agent, mashable, social, social good champions, social media, the networked nonprofit

Challenges Jumo Poses for Local Charities

December 1, 2010 By Tracy Viselli 1 Comment

As you can imagine, I think about the state of civic engagement and philanthropy in our city a lot. How do we use technology to engage more people? How do we use technology to inspire more offline action? How do we reach people who have never been involved before? And because of my community orientation, I can’t help but notice the way large-scale efforts like Jumo absorb the media attention and funding available in the space, but leave small communities and organizations out of the conversation.

The first thing I did when I could finally log into Jumo was look for Alexandria charities. Jumo is based around issues you want to follow but it does provide a chance to follow local projects-after you’ve made all of your other selections. What did I find under Alexandria in Jumo? With the exception of ACT for Alexandria, I found national charities and associations with Alexandria addresses. What I wanted to find was some of the local charities serving the local community—charities like Community Lodgings, Carpenter’s Shelter, ALIVE!, The Reading Connection, Healthy Families Alexandria, Alexandria Neighborhood Health Services, Friends of Guest House, etc. All great local charities who assist people in our city and who need our help.

Challenges Jumo poses for small, local charities:

  1. It makes it the responsibility of small, local charities to add themselves to Jumo-no so small a task for many small organizations operating on a shoe-string without designated social media or communications staff. The site then has to be maintained, people have to be followed, and the content must be monitored. And from the looks of existing pages, monitoring is a necessity because Jumo is pulling in news and other feeds that might not be related to your organization at all.
  2. You can donate to local charities once they are on Jumo, but you have to use Jumo’s donation mechanism. They don’t point you back to the nonprofits own donation process-taking away from what is sometimes a minimal but painstakingly developed online presence over years.
  3. Most importantly, you must OPT OUT of an additional donation tip for Jumo that defaults to 15%! For a small organization, that’s a hefty chunk of your donation going somewhere else.

It’s definitely possible that small organizations will benefit from Jumo’s efforts on their behalf-providing them with another point of contribution and interaction-but I wonder if how effective it will be for them? My sense is that it’s easy for small organizations without the resources to use it effectively to get lost on Jumo.

A few months ago, I gave a presentation about what I see as the need to return to local efforts at IgniteDC called “Back to Barnraising: Why Hyperlocal Is The Future for Online Civic Engagement and Philanthropy” (See Slide Share version below) because, when you look at the reasons people give/volunteer, it’s clear that they prefer to do so locally. According to a study at the University of Kent, people choose social actions using three criteria:

  • The action is easy to find.
  • The action speaks to their personal background.
  • The action makes them feel like they are making a difference personally.

And local giving makes impact questions like “Who did I help?” and “What difference did I make?” much easier to answer, making for a more satisfying philanthropic experience.

Jumo isn’t all bad-there is much good there. But like many large scale online projects, it forgot about the small guys during the planning process.

While projects similar to Jumo have been very successful (Citizen Effect, Change.org, etc.), what they’ve made apparent is that what is often most difficult to do, is to help those living closest to us-in our town, on our street, on our block. (Citizen Effect’s Citizen Gulf Day of Action is a successful exception.) I believe that the next generation of online civic engagement tools and platforms must address this most basic need-neighbors helping neighbors. That’s what we’re striving to do and we hope you’ll help.

Back to Barnraising: Why Hyperlocal Is The Future for Online Civic Engagement and Philanthropy
View more presentations from ACTion Alexandria.
Filed Under: Civic Engagement, Featured, Nonprofits Tagged With: action alexandria, charities, charity, civic engagement, community, hyperlocal, jumo, local, online, philanthropy

Happy National Philanthropy Day!

November 15, 2010 By Tracy Viselli 1 Comment

When most of us hear the word philanthropy, we think about money-lots of money. To most Americans, philanthropy is the province of the wealthy and celebrities-Bill and Melinda Gates, Warren Buffet, the Rockefellers, and Oprah Winfrey. But when I think of philanthropy and philanthropists, I think of you. The truth is, anyone can be a philanthropist. The word “philanthropy” means to love humankind and that’s something anyone can do regardless of income level.

You Are A Philanthropist If…

Have you every volunteered for your local school or charity? Have you ever donated to a food or clothing drive? Have you ever given even a small donation to a charity, online or off? If you answered yes to any of those questions, you are a philanthropist! Being a philanthropist isn’t about the money, although money certainly helps. Being a philanthropist is about wanting to help and giving of yourself through donations, whether you donate your time, money or both.

Alexandria Is A City Full of Philanthropists
Alexandria is already known for it’s philanthropic generosity. Alexandria has been ranked as the most generous large city in Convio Inc.’s annual “Most Charitable Cities” two years running. In 2009, Alexandria citizens made 25,143 donations for a total of $1.8 million. The average donation was $74.36, and the donation amount per 1000 people was $12,993. And while Alexandrians are uncommonly generous, we still have many needs in our community-particular among our less fortunate residents.

I Am A Philanthropist!

At ACTion Alexandria, we think of everyone in Alexandria as a philanthropist or budding philanthropist. We know how generous this community is and how much you like to help. Our goal is to build on Alexandria’s already generous spirit and provide you with all kinds of opportunities to exercise your philanthropic muscles in your community. Say it with me…I am a philanthropist!

Happy National Philanthropy Day!

Filed Under: Civic Engagement, Featured, Nonprofits Tagged With: alexandria, convio, giving, most charitable city, national philanthropy day, philanthropist, philanthropy

Growing Civic Engagement Among Young Voters, One Vote At A Time

November 1, 2010 By Kevin Bailey 2 Comments


The importance of participating in the political process can never be overstated. This is especially true when it comes to the fundamental principal of our democracy, the vote. Election cycle after election cycle we have to remind people of this civic responsibility and younger voters are no exception. Motivating young people to become involved in the political process and exercising their right to vote can be challenging, yet it is critical in sustaining an educated and aware electorate. People must understand the power they possess to influence the direction of government at all levels – federal, state and local.

For younger people, an understanding of the political process should first happen at the local level; this is where they can see government at work, affecting their everyday lives. Participating in local government (i.e., voting, issue advocacy) is sometimes overshadowed by the allure of state and national politics and elections. Truthfully, even I at 18 was concerned only in voting in the next presidential election, and failed to pay attention to the local issues, which had the most immediate impact on my life.

There is an election every year in Virginia so there is always an opportunity to get younger people involved. However, getting them off to an early start through engagement in the local community is key. This will provide them a case study in governance and political action that will make them more consistent and educated voters, no matter their political leaning. The objective is to get younger people involved earlier in an attempt to increase the likelihood of their sustained engagement in the political process. Voter apathy and fatigue are real, but measures can be taken to avert catastrophic drop off in voter turn out, especially among the younger demographics. As with most things, exposure and education is the answer. Let us make it our task to encourage the engagement of younger voters in local government – voting, issue advocacy, campaigning, etc. Not only will they become more consistent and educated voters, they will also be more prepared to take on the leadership roles of local elected office.

Editor’s Note: Representatives from both the Alexandria Young Republicans and Alexandria Young Democrats organizations were asked to contribute a blog post addressing the importance of voting as a form of civic engagement for young voters. Kevin Bailey, president of the Alexandria Young Democrats found the time during this busy election season to respond.

Filed Under: Civic Engagement, Featured Tagged With: alexandria, civic engagement, community, local, vote, voters, young, youth
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