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Saturday, October 27, 2007

Since 2008 is an election year...

Or election ear as I just typed...:)

I had this image of our group growing by leaps and bounds next year. But how is that possible?!?

Well, I was thinking we could have people definitively in charge of certain parts of this here thing runs. I was thinking it would be great to have people in charge of the following:

1) Contests: You would determine the contests, make the rules, make sure people are following the rules, deal with any arguments when you say someone didn't follow the rules, determine prizes, and help to attain said prizes. This is a lot of responsibility but it could also be a lot of fun. We have found this year that contests are a great way to spur people on and it increases interest in the group. A lot of charitable groups offer prize incentives, not that charitable crafters want to get paid for their work, but it sparks some good ole fashioned, good natured competition!

2) Group growth: This person would be in charge of spreading the word. We're somewhere around 250 members this year. I want to be at 500 by the end of 2008. Yep, it's aggressive and may not be fully possible, but it's worth a shot. Primarily, I think this group could grow using the channels we already have -- livejournal, myspace, facebook, and blogspot. It might also be beneficial to try to start working relationships with other charitable groups. Offer to link to them if they link to us, etc. Ya know, that whole online thang :)

3) Non-crafted items: As we've seen this year, one of the most fun and most team-oriented projects is something that can involve both crafted and non-crafted items (like our Bags o'Sunshine). Zoanna over at 25thingsforcharity.blogspot.com has been putting together "katrina kits" that are ready for natural disasters (like the fires raging in SoCal). This person would be responsible for distributing/gathering non-crafted items for projects like this. I wouldn't want or expect this person to buy everything him or herself, but they would be the collection point for the whole year. I think it gets confusing when we have a different person in charge of different things all of the time.

Does this seem reasonable? Does anyone have any ideas? Do you want to have elected officials or volunteers? Let me know. Feedback desired! :)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

one thing i think for sure is we need a little clickable button, so that anyone that's a member can put it in their sidebar. that's a great way of spreading the news pretty easily.

also, are we getting a full-size website at some point? i feel like that was mentioned as something to do after we got switched over to this blogspot space, but maybe i'm making it up? i think that with a larger-scale site attached to the blog, we could have more space to host all this stuff on it's own pages ... like, a page to describe and highlight each charity we support, space to talk about contests, etc.

just thinking out loud here.

Anonymous said...

so, new comment to say, if we're doing some sort of elections or whatever, i'd be willing to take on group growth, because i see what i just wrote as a big part of it and would totally be willing to tackle that stuff. as well as work in the other channels we've already got going, contacting charitable organizations, that sort of thing.

Real Life Mad Man said...

Hi Robyn,

Yeah, someone had volunteered to do the web site but it never happened, sadly enough. I figured there was a 50/50 shot anyway :) It's still something I'd love to see.

I don't know if we should do elections because so few people tend to actively participate in stuff like that...maybe volunteers would be better, and then if multiple people want to do the same thing they could work together.

what do you think?

Priscilla said...

In terms of growing the group, what about starting a Homespun Helpers group over on Ravelry? A bunch of us are signed up on there, and we would probably be able to find new members pretty easily.

Real Life Mad Man said...

That's a great idea, Priscilla. I haven't touched Ravelry yet because I'm afraid it'll eat my life, but that would probably be a great way to go. Good call!