I told you I am consulting for the Home & Garden Information Center, but I failed to tell you anything about them. What bad marketing on my part!
HGIC has been a big part of the University of Maryland Extension, providing gardening and plant advice to Marylanders for more than 14 years. The two main components are the Master Gardeners program and the plant information hotline where people can ask the experts at the center questions about pretty much anything gardening, including pests and disease, and even can send in soil or plant samples for testing.
They have a terrific campaign they started early this year called “Grow It! Eat It!” where they are encouraging Marylanders to grow fruits, veggies, herbs etc in their own gardens – being more sustainable and eating the freshest produce imaginable. Here’s a bit of an intro on the campaign from the center’s director, Jon Traunfeld:
There’s nothing like the flavor of a locally-grown tomato and there’s no location more local than your own backyard. Creating your own small food garden in 2009 could be an answer to many of life’s big issues. Food prices rose sharply in 2008 and economic pressures forced many Marylanders to reduce spending. At the same time, health experts told us to eat more vegetables and fruits, get more physically active, and introduce our couch-potato children to the great outdoors!
With this campaign, they have moved past the original concept of the center – mainly a call-in phone hotline – and are reaching out via the worldwide. They have started a blog, a Twitter feed, a Facebook fan page and even a YouTube channel with some wonderfully helpful gardening videos – and some really fun ones about snakes and turtles you may find in your suburban Maryland garden (I noted the suburban because we are talking very different pests in the city!). Because of a lot of these new initiatives, as well as keeping with the initial hotline, the center is facing many challenges moving forward – which is why we’re here. I’ll tell you a bit more about our goals for the semester in another posting or two.
Filed under: HGIC
I decided to apply for a second semester in the Social Venture Consulting Program – mainly because one of the organizations had my name written all over it – and I found out last week that I got it!
I had my first conference call with Kelley (that’s my co-consultant this time around) and the great folks at the Home & Garden Information Center yesterday, and Kelley and I are headed out to their offices in Ellicott City on Friday to meet with them in person. Beyond the fact that I am a “hort” junkie and love all things plants, that’s one of the things I am looking forward to most this project: actually getting face-to-face time with our group. While last semester I learned a lot – and I am glad that I got to experience consulting while not on site because I know that happens fairly often in the real world – I think that getting to see how the operation works and getting to actually experience some of the problems the group is facing is really going to help us help them.
I’ll let you know more about the on-site after it happens, as well as more about the project and my struggles with the SCOPE document.
Filed under: Introduction
Though I’m not technically part of the program anymore, I thought I’d add a message here to let everyone know that the non-profits for the social venture consulting program have been chosen for the fall semester. I am super excited to hear how many of these projects go throughout the semester and really want to get involved again. Melissa Carrier, the director of the program, asked if I wanted to be a coach this time around, but I am thinking about reassuming the consultant role because it was so fun and educational and rewarding getting in-depth with the non-profit I was working with. Anyway, I haven’t made a decision, but either way I won’t keep you waiting for a list of this semester’s amazing organizations:
• University of Maryland & Paint Branch Elementary School Partnership – Location: College Park, MD; Mission: The Partnership is developing a community engagement model that harnesses the resources and expertise of the University of Maryland and the community of College Park to make Paint Branch the local school of choice; Service area: Education; Service need: Marketing plan
• United Ministries, Inc. – Location: Baltimore, MD; Mission: United Ministries is a housing and social justice organization dedicated to assisting homeless men who want to change their lives, and to changing community attitudes about the homeless; Service Area: Human services; Service Need: Outcome measurement tracking and reporting systems
• KAHEA: The Hawaiian-Environmental Alliance – Location: Honolulu, HI; Mission: KAHEA is a community-based organization working to improve the quality of life for Hawai‘i’s people and future generations through the revitalization and protection of Hawai‘i’s unique natural and cultural resources; Service Area: Environment; Service Need: Strategic fund planning
• Samasource – Location: San Francisco, CA; Mission: We bring dignified, computer-based work to women, youth, and refugees living in poverty; Service Area: Economic development; Service Need: Tactical support including a marketing strategy
• Washington Area Community Investment Fund – Location: Washington, D.C.; Mission: WACIF is a regional nonprofit focused on empowering underserved communities and individuals by providing them with access to capital and specialized technical expertise; Service Area: Banking (CDFI); Service Need: Strategic marketing plan
• Alliance for Community Trees – Location: College Park; Mission: To support grassroots, citizen-based nonprofit organizations dedicated to urban and community tree planting, care, conservation, and education; Service Area: Environment; Service Need: Marketing strategy
• Home and Garden Information Center, University of Maryland Extension – Location: Ellicott City, MD; Mission: A rapidly growing urban and suburban population demands information on environmentally sound horticulture practices to maintain or improve the status of Maryland’s natural resources. HGIC … serves Maryland residents as a national model for the efficient delivery of consumer horticulture information and education; Service Area: Education and environment/horticulture; Service Need: Marketing plan
• Wisconsin Early Childhood Association – Location: Madison, WI; Mission: WECA is a statewide organization that exists so that every child in Wisconsin can have the best, highest quality early learning experiences; Service Area: Education; Service Need: Membership growth strategy
• The Sun Safe Tee Program – Location: Del Mar, CA; Mission: To teach sun protection strategies and to provide opportunities for the early detection of skin cancer to the golf community; Service Area: Health education; Service Need: Corporate fundraising strategy, outreach
• Gesher Jewish Day School – Location: Fairfax, VA; Mission: Gesher is dedicated to educational excellence, an individualized approach to learning, and to providing a nurturing and exciting educational environment; Service Area: Education; Service Need: Marketing strategy
Filed under: Grammar
Though this isn’t what I exactly had in mind for this space, I have had multiple requests to expand on my grammar post, plus after just editing my team project for marketing, I have a couple more additions.
- than, then: This seems simple enough, but yet than gets confused for then all the time. Think of than as compared to, as in “I like you better than him,” or in some cases except, as in “other than this or that.” Then also has multiple forms of usage but they all refer to a time, usually in a sequence. As an adverb it’s a time reference – “this happened, then that happened” – as a noun, it basically refers to a time in the past – “since then, he’s been depressed” – and as an adjective, it refers to belonging in a past time – “the then secretary of State.”
- Capitalization: Notice in the last sentence I capitalized State? That’s because it’s in reference to a proper noun, the State Department. Business writers tend to over capitalize and with no real reason except that they want to put emphasis on something. That just makes it confusing and look sloppy. Words should only be capitalized if they fall in the following categories: proper names and nouns, including titles and compositions, and popular names that have become common (such as the South, for the southern states).
- adverse, averse: With the help of Barry Wood of the Rockford Register-Star, I’d like to clarify the two words that many people believe are one-in-the-same. Averse applies to a person’s attitude, being opposed to or unwilling to do something. The related noun is aversion. Adverse is for describing a thing as being opposite, unfavorable or harmful. Related words include adversity, adversary and, interestingly, advertise. Example: “I’m averse to flying in adverse weather conditions.”
How responsible: They asked the question that I was thinking when I wrote this. What perfect timing; we must be in sync.
When I agreed to take on this blog, I really thought I had the time to properly devote to this. I clearly didn’t since I have left you, my readers, waiting for posts for some time. I have, however, been immersed in social media and blogs for most of that time. That leads me to:
Social media, friend or foe?
Up until recently, I thought of it as my foe. I am a journalist in the purist form: I love to hold a newspaper, reading it as I drink OJ in the morning. I am not a fan of the “news” channels that fill the 24-hour news cycle with more commentary than hard-hitting news, and then play it on a loop. I like blogs – clearly, I’m writing this one – but resent the ones who try to pass off rumor as news without any sourcing or standard of journalism ethics. Anyway, that’s a rant I don’t need to continue.
Needless to say, Twitter, in which you try to tell everyone the “news” of your life in 140 characters or less, was not what I believed to be a reliable source. Twitter has many uses – you have those Tweeters who like to tell the world what they ate for breakfast (too much info I don’t need to know), people selling things (It’s free marketing, but…), those who just link to other’s stories (I’ll touch on this later) and those who break news themselves (albeit not always traditional news sources).
I saw Twitter as a way pundits could @reply to each other, just another way to start a fight. But in reality, it’s really the opposite of what I’ve been thinking all along. If you put information out there that isn’t true, someone out in the net world is going to hold you accountable. If you say something that’s not true, you have hundreds, if not thousands of followers, to call you out. I like it – it might just be the next wave of responsible journalism, though the 140-character limit still bothers me (I can get a bit long-winded, if you didn’t notice…).
So, you’re wondering, if you’ve gotten this far, why I am going on about all of this. Well, The LAMP (the nonprofit I am consulting for) wants to start an ad campaign, but Emily and I have tried to convince them to start this online first and try to make it viral – it’s much less expensive than advertising in New York City and they can reach a a broader base. The LAMP folks are way beyond me in terms of social media. They have been on Twitter for much longer than it’s been popular and seem to have already used it to their advantage as they have more than 600 followers and according to Google Analytics, a good amount of their Web site traffic has come from Twitter. The work I am doing now is helping them define themselves on Twitter. Instead of just linkbacks to stories they think advance/enhance the discussion of media literacy, they need to explain briefly why the links relate to the cause.
It is very important to follow and continue your mission even on a very organic source such as Twitter. It’s easy to get lost in social media outlets that have link to link to link, and 30 minutes later you’re on a Web site you’ve never heard of reading about a topic you never intended to when you started. With Twitter, you need to keep in mind that many of the people seeing your Tweets may have never seen your previous ones or know who you are. Because of that, you need to make it clear what each post means toward advancing your message – why you’re on Twitter in the first place. The LAMP is picking this up and going with it, and it seems to make each post that much more interesting and worthwhile (very much unlike those posts from some unknown person you’re following but never met who likes to talk about the bowl of Wheaties she ate for breakfast).
Filed under: Communication
Communication
At Smith, and I suppose at any business school, group work is a significant part of the curriculum. While we are often assigned at random with four to six of our classmates — which means that a project that could take one person 2-3 hours becomes a series of late-night conference calls and a long string of e-mails, completing the project in no less than 15 man hours — my Social Venture team of Emily Roper and I is a perfect combination. We both have a communications background and are good at it. We clearly and simply divvy up the work and it actually splits what could be countless hours of work in half, making it a reasonable load; making it what group work should be.
You may be asking, “What’s your secret?” I already said it: communication. Now, there could be too much of such a thing, but in our case, we strike a good balance. We have mutual respect, mutual trust that the other is going to do her work and, most importantly, a mutual understanding that we have a huge load of other things on our plates. Neither of us wants to waste the other’s time – we know how precious it is.
I know it’s been a while, but life’s been busy. I work on Capitol Hill, so while the past couple weeks have been a sandstorm, the next two are recess and I’m all yours.
That’s one of the hardest things I’ve found with being a part-time student: figuring out time management between work, school, consulting, volunteering, having my own business and having a life. It seems like everything is all at once or not at all, and, well, I’m not really great at working ahead on projects. I knew from the beginning it would be hard – for the very first session of my very first semester I had probably about 100 to 150 pages of reading to do and I was beyond busy with both presidential nominating conventions back to back, an engagement party in New Jersey one weekend and a wedding in Toledo the next. I was everywhere and doing everything – except reading! – and I had no clue how I was going to be able to do it all. But I did, and you know what, it wasn’t that bad.
I can’t really give you any advice because it’s definitely something you have to figure out for yourself and work into your own schedule. For me, the 11 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. stretch tends to be very productive as my boyfriend has gone to bed and there isn’t anything distracting on TV. It works for me since I don’t have to be at work until 11 a.m. most mornings, but that’s not necessarily a good time for everyone – you just need to figure out a good time for your schedule and consistently use that time in a productive way (not in front of the TV!).
So that wasn’t a great post about the consulting project, but that will come shortly, I promise – we just need to get this little federal budget thing out of the way…
Who knew there was an engineering library?
Research. I love it, and I think I may want to go into that as a career after I graduate. (Call out: Any investment firms hiring for a market researcher?) I think that’s one of the aspects that drew me to journalism in the first place. I love finding out new information on topics of all sorts – topics I would not have introduced into my life had it not been for a certain story I was working on or project I had due (like this one).
I have a bit of knowledge about the advertising industry – the main objective of the consulting work we’re doing for The LAMP is to come up with a creative package, including an advertising campaign, fundraising approach, new Web site portal and a public relations campaign – but my knowledge is not of New York City demographics or the MTA transit system, which is what my focus is.
Since I didn’t really know where to start, I first headed to the Maryland library Web site and did some searching. I found a couple movies/documentaries of interest and a stack of books, so a trip to CP was in order. I’m not going to bore you with too many details, just a quick bit: Two of the most useful books I found were in the engineering library of all places. Stuck in the middle of books about fire safety in subway tunnels and electrical mapping (or something …) of elevated trains, were two fantastic books about the evolving culture and demographics of subways, one was even specifically about the MTA system. I have no clue what these sociological books were doing among the engineering stacks, but it taught me a couple lessons, namely: Never rule out a resourse. So, in a library I didn’t even know existed, in a building I didn’t know existed – and I went to Maryland for undergrad, too – I found two sources that practically wrote my paper for me.
I then headed to LexisNexis, which is a great resource for many projects and articles, but in this case it was anything but helpful. All the returns I got were for the Subway restaurant chain. Did you know they hired a new advertising firm recently, and possibly it’s based in Hawaii? Or something like that. I did find out that MTA is desperate for money (almost as much as WMATA) and is trying new advertising approaches. Which led me to spend 15 minutes or so intrigued by the new digital ads they are putting in the tunnel to get an animation/movie affect that lets companies target their audience to different times of the day. But that’s completely out of our nonprofit’s price range; it’s more targeted to McDonald’s wanting to sell McMuffins in the a.m. and BigMacs in the p.m.
Anyway, I turned in my first round of deliverables just a couple days ago, and I now have a new set to work on. This next step is about branding within the viral world of social media – Facebook, YouTube and the like. Does anyone out there have any suggestions on where to start? I doubt McKeldin’s going to be of any use to me on this front.
By the way, check out Mashable.com, a site that gives you the lastest news in the social Web world. The site recently wrote up a list of nonprofits that best utilize Twitter, and The LAMP was one of them!
One of the first things that was sent to us – my co-consultant Emily and I – when we learned that we got the LAMP project was the company’s information packet/press materials. Well, since I’ve never done consulting before and we hadn’t even met with Melissa Carrier or the company leaders yet, I did what was only natural to me: read the material, with a red pen in hand, and mark the heck out of it. As an editor, I can’t read anything without analyzing it, and this was a prime example of how, with just a few changes, the message could come across that much clearer.
If there is one thing I have learned beyond anything else in my short time in business school, it is: Businesspeople can’t write. Well, it’s not that they can’t, but maybe that they shouldn’t – they should hire people (like me?) to do it for them. Even some of my professors fall into this category, PhDs and all. I get an exam and start copy editing the math problems. For group work, I am always the last person to see the paper before we turn it in. I know you’ve all taken the GMAT, but I am guessing your math scores are what got you into the program.
So, the point of all of this, I am giving you a very brief lesson on the grammatical issues that I see pop up most often. And I would just like to give thanks to the AP stylebook for all of its help over the years.
WORD DEFINITIONS/USAGE:
- it’s, its: It’s is a contraction for it is or it has (“It’s up to you.” “It’s been a long time.”). Its is the possessive form of the neuter pronoun (“The company lost its assets.”). As an aside, neuter – in this case meaning it – is from the same root, neutral, and means there is no particular sex (ex. you neuter your dog, so it becomes an it).
- their, there, they’re: Their is a possessive pronoun (“They went to their house.”); there is an adverb indicating direction (“We went there for dinner.”), there it can also take on the form of a pronoun for constructions in which the real subject follows the verb (“There is no food on the table.”); and they’re is a contraction for they are.
- its, their: Both are possessives, but you need to figure out if you are talking about one subject or multiple subjects – and keep in mind a company is a company, being one subject (again, “The company lost its assets.”).
- that, which: Notice the order I put it in, with the comma — it’s a hint. Use that for essential clauses, important to the meaning of a sentence, and without commas (“I remember the day that we met.”). Use which for nonessential clauses and use commas (“The team, which finished last a year ago, is in first place.”). Here’s another hint: If you can drop the clause and not lose the meaning of the sentence, use which.
- compared to, compared with: This comes up a lot in business writing because you are comparing statistics of one firm or one year WITH statistics from another. Use compared to when the intent is to assert, without the need for elaboration, that two or more items are similar (“She compared her work for women’s rights to Susan B. Anthony’s campaign for women’s suffrage.”). Use compared with when juxtaposing two or more items to illustrate similarities and/or differences (“Company A’s ROA was 2.12 compared with 2.01 for its closest competitor.”).
MORE GENERAL CORRECTIONS:
- Periods: I’ll be brief and to the point: Only use a period at the end of a sentence. What is a sentence? Well, it can be two words (such as “Be careful.”) or several clauses, but it must have a verb and at least an implied subject (“[You] be careful.”)
- Colons: You may have noticed that some of the times that I have used colons in this entry I have capitalized the word following the punctuation mark, and sometimes I haven’t. Why is that? You should capitalize the first word after a colon only if it is a proper noun of the start of a complete sentence. (“He promised this: The company will make good all the losses.” But, “There were three considerations: expense, time and feasibility.”)
- Consistency: Not much to say here, it’s pretty straightforward, I just wanted to bring it to your attention. Notice how I made my section headers all caps, red and bold, and each topic has a bullet and the major theme is bolded — simple right? An example from The LAMP’s press packet:
- “Age: 5 yrs through high school”
- “Ages: 7yrs through high school”
- “Ages: 10 through high school”
While I object to yrs being abbreviated, I get the idea that they were going for a more laid-back approach. My concern here is that “Age” and “Ages” needs to be consistent, as does the space between “5 yrs” and “7yrs,” and even using “yrs” at all. Maybe it’s just me, but my eyes jump to inconsistencies like that, and they really are easy changes.
- Time reference: If you’re using statistics, such as “Young children spend nearly 25 hours using screen media,” you need a time reference in there or it means nothing. Is it 25 hours a week? That’s a lot; that’s a part-time job. Is it 25 hours a month? Not that bad, but maybe it needs to be regulated. Is it 25 hours a year? Then who cares.
- Sentence parallelism, BAD: “He has served as chair of the committee for two years, and a total of four years on the Board.”
OK: “He has served as chair of the committee for two years and a total of four years on the Board.” (notice no comma)
BEST: “He has served as chairman of the committee for two years and has been on the board a total of four years.” (much clearer)
Now, because I did this, I am going to get people (if I have any readers…) either leaving comments or coming up to me in class saying I spelled something wrong or a comma is out of place. Oh well, I did it to myself. I am not claiming to be the final word on any of this, but just an aide (a person who gives aid) for those who need it.
I leave you with a reading assignment/fun game: “Yanks Thump Sox” by Gene Weingarten.
The LAMP, that’s the nonprofit I am working with this semester, works to promote media literacy among New York City children, their parents and educators. So, what is media literacy, you may ask? I’ve been working on this for a few weeks now, and my answer: I’m not really sure.
Media literacy is defined by The LAMP as:
When you’re media literate, you understand how messages are being sent to you all day, every day. You also know how to create and send your own messages about the things that matter most to you.
But what does that mean? When I first heard the mission, a small part of me thought the group wanted to put me out of business (I work for a newspaper), but after working with the amazing staff there, I know better. They just want people to be educated about the media and look at it with a critical (not cynical) eye. They have diverse, interactive programs for kids that I wish I could participate in – everything from writing, editing and shooing your own commercial (where you learn how different persuasive techniques are used in advertising) to publishing your very own newspaper (where you learn how the media decides what’s newsworthy). My plug: If you know anyone in any of the five boroughs of New York City, forward the link along. It’s all free.
