(Hmm. I'm promoting something that my employer, an environmental nonprofit, is involved in. Is that okay? I searched the guidelines and found no restrictions... Then why don't more groups do it? Or am I missing something? Maybe I'm a pioneer. Maybe I should just shut up and get on with it...)
Getting a good idea off the ground is a struggle in this economy, but there are still a lot of good ideas and great folks to fund those ideas. There's one I'm involved in myself, and given how its set up, it made sense to look to the greater online community for help. If you're concerned about climate change and energy issues - and if you're in favor of bottom-up strategies (given the challenges and delays to all the top-down global strategies mired in political politicalness), I'd ask you to take a look below, as there's a way you can help...
VECAN (link) stands for the "Vermont Energy and Climate Action Project." It's a coalition of a few different grassroots activists from a few different local organizations that are looking at affecting climate change from the bottom-up, one town at a time. The idea has been to create, promote and support local town energy committees that look at strategies for effecting their local community's carbon footprint. The idea, then, is for the towns to support each other, learn from each other, and export this model through an ever expanding network from county to county - and ultimately from state to state. It's an important idea, and the very type of approach that gets lost in conversations of global scale.
But we're doing it - we just need help to keep doing it - and to take it to the next level. We've thrown our hats into the ring for a $200,000 grant (from Green Mountain Coffee Roasters) over the next five years to fuel this project. But here’s the deal: Part of the application process involves submitting a summary of our grant idea to a website called justmeans.org. Then the grantors assess it against the number of votes and positive comments it receives relative to other proposals. The top vote getters proposals are given greater weight when their full proposals are reviewed.
Now here's the big Murphy's Law moment - the servers hosting the voting have been overloaded for days. As such, we haven't been able to turn out the votes (and we only need about 500!!) because the pages won't load! It's been better today, but we have through tomorrow - Friday - and we're way behind the curve. All I can tell you is, give it a try and if it doesn't work, try it a little later during off-peak hours, like later tonight or early in the morning.
Which leads me to an uncharacteristic pestering of the blogosphere. I figure, why not? If candidates can make appeals through the online progressive community...
But again, I ain't asking for money. What we need is to demonstrate that enough people think this is a good idea that it can generate broad appeal and make a difference. If you think so, here's what you can do:
- Click on the following link: http://www.justmeans.com/...
- Click on the "Support It" button atop the right-hand column. You will be asked to provide a name, email, and create a password. (Note: The system does not verify your email address, so if you don’t want to share that, get creative!)
- As soon as your "registration" is complete, they will automatically count your vote. (In other words, there is no need to click any other buttons to vote.) Please take a moment to enter a supportive comment right below the proposal.
- BONUS STEP: Feel free to email 10 friends and colleagues asking them to vote in support of our proposal as well! Be sure to include these instructions so they can easily zip through the registration process.
I love this stuff. I'm an old-school community organizer "retired" into bloggery, and it's easy to see that the two things are two forms of the same thing. There've been a million things associated with my day job that I coul've posted here, or at my own site, but I always pass. This, however, seems like a perfect fit. Projects that bring together digital activism with good ol' fashioned hitting the pavement always seem like the progressive Holy Grail to me, so how could I not post on it?
Thanks to everybody on this. All comments/recs/votes are appreciated. And I'm dying to see if talking about something like this here will actually be effective - 'cause by god, this is a poll worth freeping...
(And one more time, here's the link, and thanks!)