Day 2: Resnick and Jones

The Information Needs of YOUR Community Thursday, Feb. 21, 2008 Aragon Room

Leader: Mitchel Resnick, M.I.T. Scribe: Nancy Jones, Community Foundation of Broward

Online Sources/Examples

Communityview.org – Central Minnesota – St. Cloud

• Calendar of events is well used
• Focus groups showed that people wanted in-depth information – not being used

Becauseitmatters.net – Gulf Coast Community Foundation

Community foundations can educate nonprofits –

Citizen academies – handson.org

State of Today and Related Issues

Rethink web sites – from the transactional/informational to complete information resource centers.

The current tools in our industry are not developed enough to accomplish our informational goals – dashboard/portal

• How long do you own an issue?
• Do you simply provide information from other sources?
• How can we adapt existing resources to include new voices?
• New components
• New media
• Make them more user-friendly

Youth roles:

Avenues to give youth a voice in our community

• Schools performance
• Existing school newspapers as vehicles

Reference Knight Foundation grant in Bradenton/Poynter Institute

Establish habits that engage them as youth – to continue into adulthood – their role as active participants

What can the future look like?

Connecting people with opportunities – mash-ups of maps/calendars/needs volunteermatch.org/charityfinder.org – integrate people and things that they are passionate about with needs – meaningful volunteerism

What resources do community foundations need to move forward?

Need network/information sharing forum for follow-up, feedback to Knight Foundation, resources for best practices

Listservs – from CoF

What are the sites that are doing this? What examples can we use?

What are the essential elements of these sites?

What are the physical places in a community where issues are developed?

Ideas:

• journalism interns
• video grantee stories
• video legacy project – why did you set up your Fund? Why did you choose our CF?