Discontinuation of "PEPP RALLY"

I emailed Duke a PEPP to recommend that my organizational blog be discontinued, listing several practical reasons (the crux of which I've already discussed in my assignment blogs). Although I'm a little disappointed that my blog didn't impact the organization to a greater degree, I'm hopeful that future applications will benefit PEPP's mission.

Time Log 11/27-11/30

course blogs: 1.25 hours
Assignment 4: 1.5 hours
organizational blog: .25 hours

total 11/30: 3.0 hours

Assignment 4 Part 2

I have not yet spoken with PEPP about the continuation of my blog when the course is concluded, for this reason:
The information that I've provided in my blogs is available from a number of easily accessed sources, some of which are accessible through PEPP's home site. Lacking the discourse from the nonprofit community that I was hoping to generate, the blog itself is not necessarily directly relevant to the "Waking the Sleeping Giant" project. Bluntly, the blog is probably useless to the organization and its continuation is not crucial enough to demand that PEPP's resources be devoted to maintaining it.
While I don't regard the work I've done as a waste of time, the direction of my blog was entirely dependent on the audience for which it was intended. I originally intended to go from a general discussion of the restrictions placed on nonprofits to a specific examination of how those restrictions might affect the "Waking the Sleeping Giant" coalition, doing so with input from those nonprofits who, along with PEPP might form the basis of such a coalition. Without that element, the blog is almost completely unrelated to PEPP's goals regarding "Waking the Sleeping Giant".
I would be willing, however, to cede the use of "PEPP RALLY" as a possible blog title in the future.

Assignment 4 Part One

Working with/for PEPP has proven to be an interesting experience. From the outset of this project and my first meeting with Duke, it was pretty clear that those of us who would be collaborating with the organization would be given free rein to post whatever content we saw fit to post. Duke placed a great deal of trust in all of us, but at the same time indicated that there were certain topics and areas it would be in everyone's best interest to avoid discussing (certain undeveloped organizational projects, etc.). In a very real sense, there was no obvious "authority" over what went into my blog.
In all honesty, I might have benefitted from a bit of authoritative feedback;Duke was almost too hands off. It has been difficult to gauge what his opinion of the blog and its value to PEPP, if any, truly is. Some of this is the result of me not asking for more direction.
In terms of authority (or my perception of it anyway), DUKE WAS PEPP! I was aware of the existence of a board of directors, but they were for all intents and purposes nonentities regarding this project. Although I never really reported to Duke per se, he has been my only real contact within the organization; it was never really suggested that I deal with the board. About halfway through the project, Amy actually gave me the name of another individual on the board who dealt more directly with the "Waking the Sleeping Giant" initiative-consultation with this person at an earlier stage might have led me to choose another direction for my blogs. Again, a lot of this was my failure to adequately inquire about the resources available through the organization itself; no questions asked=no direction given.
The previously mentioned factors significantly affected the direction that I chose for my blog. Left relatively to my own devices, I set a course which I felt was solid and worthwhile. The topic I chose predetermined my audience; the outcome is fairly obvious to those who have looked at my posts.
One observation: a project like this can almost be looked at like an equation. On one side of the equation you have the organization, which is composed of extremely busy people who are 1)often very uncertain as to how the project could/should impact the organization 2)too preoccupied with running the organization to devote a significant amount of energy to examine that issue. On the other side you have the student, also very busy (albeit not as busy as the org reps) who is 1)probably equally uncertain as to how the project could/should impact the organization and 2)probably assuming a greater level of direction from the org than he/she is likely to get (of course, a lot of this depends on the initiative of the student). It would seem that a major challenge in a project like this would be to keep either side of the equation from cancelling out the other. I may take some flak for saying this-but the student may be bearing too much of the burden in determining the direction and content of the blog. If the ultimate goal is to do what is useful and beneficial to the organization, it is completely necessary for the organization to have a clearly defined objective for the student. I think that this issue will probably resolve itself if the course conitinues and the same organizations are willing to participate; at that point they will have had more experience with the medium and perhaps develop more efficient protocols for its future application.

Blog Stuff 2

After class discussion today, I am reflecting a bit on the difficulties of generating an audience for my blogs, as well as the blogs of my classmates who are also working on behalf of PEPP.
In terms of our respective audiences, mine being the nonprofit community of Fargo/Moorhead and theirs being primarily the general "interested" public, it seems that there are similar obstacles to reaching each. For me, the biggest obstacles would appear to be both the limited amount of time my audience has to adequately respond to the blogs as well as the apparent lack of pragmatic benefit they (as organizations) might receive by participating. For my classmates, the obstacles appear to be lack of time and possibly even limted access to the blog site (since PEPP's public service extends primarily to the low income community, the audience's inability to access the internet should be a concern-though without proper research I don't want to overstate this as an issue).
I think Dr. Baumann was accurate in pointing out that when dealing with an audience like the nonprofit community, where time is limited, it is essential that the blog represent some usefulness to the audience. It must be to the benefit of the audience to provide feedback to the blog. Discourse for the sake of discourse, while intellectually satisfying may not produce enough of an incentive to the audience to take the time to participate- there must be some element of the blog which serves the goals and interests of its audience to the extent that lack of participation could or would be counter to the audience's goals.
In order to accomplish this, identifying the various goals and interests of each constituent element of the audience (as much as possible) would appear to be a crucial part of any future application of what we've learned this semester. It seems now that this is common sense, but when I first started it was from a "Field of Dreams" model ("if you build it, they will come"). This approach at the earliest stages may have led to my current difficulties in generating interest.
Sorry this is so long- but I don't post here very often, so maybe this will make up for that.

Blog Stuff

In response to some of the feedback I've gotten from the class, I've tried to shorten my organizational blogs a bit. However, the topics discussed in the blogs are unfortunately pretty dry and academic. My original hope was that the audience for these blogs would be members of the nonprofit community, and that feedback/comments from this community would serve as illustration/clarification of some of the restrictions I have discussed so far.
The lack of feedback from this community leads me to a couple of conclusions:
1)the community itself is unaware of the blog
2)the community is aware of the blog yet chooses not to comment, despite being invited to do so
The first conclusion should be relatively easy to fix, with help from PEPP and its contacts within the community. The second conclusion may prove more difficult as it calls for an understanding of why the community would choose not to provide feedback, which could be a myriad of reasons.
My biggest fear in taking on this subject is inaccuracy, that the information I provide in these blogs is erroneous or misleading. Without specific anecdotal feedback from other nonprofit organizations I worry that these blogs lack an important element of credibility.

Time Log: 11-25

estimated time on IRS blog (research and posting): 1.5 hours
estimated time on FEC blog (research and posting): 1.0 hours

Time Log: 10-1/10-31

Research for blogs: 3.5 hours
Organizational blogs 1-3: 1.25 hours
Total for 10-1/10-31: 4.75 hours

Second Organizational Blog

Second blog is up. Next one to follow soon...
Check it out here.

First Organizational Blog

I posted my first blog today for PEPP. Next one should follow in a couple of days. Here's the link