We need your help! This is your chance to tell journalists what you want to see in the news during the fall election.

The Workshop is holding a news briefing in October for the ethnic news media on critical issues in this fall’s election. We would like your advice on at least two issues that you think should be raised in news coverage this fall. Tell us two issues that effect your organization and your community and we will pass them along to the more than 300 news outlets serving our area’s black and immigrant communities.

Click here to tell us about the issues you think are important.

Raymond Guyton, right, of Hold Up the Light, showed off his unique light bulbs as he pitched a story on National Prayer Day to WBEZ culture reporter Lynette Kalsnes during the Workshop's Professional Media Relations training in February.

Been meaning to post this list for about a month now, ever since the final session of Professional Media Relations, our core annual “soup-to-nuts” training for nonprofit communicators. After five weeks of the class, the participants have found an idea, honed it, practiced it,and in the final session, they pitch it to journalists from around the area.

For years now area reporters have been gracious enough to join us for three hours on a Friday morning to share some thoughts about what kinds of stories they are looking for and how they like to get information. When it works well, they get good story ideas from the session.

This actually seemed like our best year yet in terms of folks in the session finding the best stories coming out of their organizations and getting to tell them to journalists, then journalists finding stories that worked out for them. Another highlight from this year’s session was a list of tips that WBEZ Reporter Lynette Kalsnes offered. Here they are:

1. What is the news element? A newspeg [can you believe there's no Wikipedia entry for news peg? We'll get to work on that, meanwhile hit the link for a decent definition--essentially the peg is what makes this story news, now] makes it more likely your story will get covered.
2. What is unique about the story? If there’s something new or interesting, that makes coverage more likely. Spell it out. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve always been lucky that when I left a job, the people who took the position over next were so dang smart that they ended up making me look good, too.

That’s by way of a reflection as I’ve been reading Beyond the Echo Chamber, by Jessica Clark and Tracy Van Slyke. I first met Tracy just 10 years ago when she became communications director at National Training and Information Center, best known for the bank-stoppin’ grassroots action coalition National People’s Action.

You haven’t heard about progressive news outlets’ fiscal crisis much in the course of the economic disaster for other news outlets. That’s because fiscal crisis is endemic to progressive news outlets–as Tracy and Jessica, who met when they worked at Chicago’s In These Times, know much better than I.

Also, despite big exceptions such as the bankrupt Air America, progressive outlets have rolled and grown with the times. They have received huge reinforcements in the form of the progressive blogosphere.

Tracy and Jessica tell us how sites and groups from Brave New Films to Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo, Center for Independent Media, FiveThirtyEight.com have joined with revamped and revitalized venerable outlets–The Nation, Progressive, Mother Jones etc. to gain voice and influence in the new millenium. Read the rest of this entry »

Bianca Berkhia, discusses La Casa Norte’s campaign to get 50o Facebook fans by the end of 2009 and how her organization uses social media for its fundraising and communicaitons today from Community Media Workshop on Vimeo.

Ever since Beth Kanter posted in November about whether small nonprofits can succeed with social media (a post that garnered a lot of comments), I’ve been wondering about stories and proof that, indeed, integrating these new modes of communication into our work is part of our future at nonprofits with budgets under $1 million — especially organizations that have been around a while, and those that provide traditional sorts of services. Found a couple stories these past two weeks. Read the rest of this entry »

Shoot and Score, by V'ron, from flickr

I scoff at Christmas decorations in stores before Thanksgiving is over, but in the spirit of, if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em & for those of us already thinking about spending our scant $$ for holiday gifts–it seemed like a good moment to list nonprofits that sell stuff — specifically, gifts for the holidays!

This post was inspired by lunch a week or 2 ago with Megy Karydes — writer, marketing/PR consultant and born and bred Chicagoan. So, full disclosure, a bunch of these are folks she works for.

I’ve looked through the sites though, and fell comfortable this is a solid list of great causes offering cool stuff.

Artisans 21 around the corner from my home in Hyde Park is one of the country’s oldest cooperative art galleries, I was there this morning, and saw some photos and demitasse cups for espresso that caught my eye (rather large for those who like me need their coffee strong and lots of it).

Bright Endeavors aims to break the cycle of poverty experienced by inner-city, homeless and at-risk young women 16–25 by teaching them skills to become self-sufficient, successful adults. They make Dreambean Candles as well as other products, like an $8 jar of bath sea salts to a $60 Tealightful Gift Box which includes candles, bath tea bags and fair trade, organic tea.

Greenheart, in Bucktown, carries fair trade and handmade items from more than a dozen developing countries as well as local organizations. Megy says the nonprofit ecofriendly and fair trade shop hosts a launch party Dec. 2 for a new line of copper and brass jewelry from South Africa.

If you would like to give a gift to charity in honor of a friend or family member, consider Hope for a Hurting World Catalog from Heartland Alliance, one of our region’s largest and most vital advocates for and providers of human services. Gifts range from $15-550 and include an infant care kit to healthy snacks for an after-school program. 

MayaWorks works with women in Guatemala to make gifts, home accents, jewelry and, most recently, introduced a baby collection. Baby booties for 6-12-month-olds are $15 a pair. Their best-selling item? yarmulkes.

Update! If you are more of a gift card kind of person — or you have to give a gift card kind of a gift — Oakbrook, Ill.-based nonprofit Opportunity International lets you buy a card whose recipient can designate the funds for a microloan to a woman enterpreneur in Kenya, Ghana, Colombia, Mexico or the Philippines. It looks pretty simple to do, check it out at OptInNow.

Update! Porchlight Counseling Services, an Evanston-based agency that offers counseling and other resources to survivors of college sexual assault, are selling “(k)no(w)more beads” this holiday season–beaded bracelets with an amethyst stone as a centerpiece: “(k)no(w)more beads represent empowerment, resistance, and community connectedness by insisting that the public know more about sexual assault and demanding that sexual assault be no more,” Stephanie Boehmer of Porchlight writes.

Reason to Give, the Firebelly Design-initiated campaign for supporting Humboldt Park families, plans a “holiday pop-up shop” with lots of artists and inexpensive art at Firebelly’s studio from 5 to 10 p.m. Friday, Dec. 4.

Sweet Beginnings markets Beeline, a line of honey-based personal care products which are handmade by individuals facing barriers to employment, particularly those with histories of criminal conviction.

I think of The Enterprising Kitchen, which helps women work toward self-sufficiency and economic independence by handcrafting soap and body care products out of its Ravenswood studio, as a grandma of Chicago’s social-enterprises. They offer products from $5 to $350 or will be happy to make up a custom order (baskets, anyone?) if you’d like.

WomanCraft is a nonprofit in North Lawndale whose green, handmade paper sheets are embedded with wildflower seeds including flax, cornflower, echinacea, coreopsis, larkspur, and black-eyed Susan seeds. A set of 10 cards is $13.

Need more inspiration? A few more posts featuring Chicago and some Midwest nonprofits’ gift ideas: from About.com and the Reader’s great Holiday Shopping event calendar.

Buy, buy, buy! Who am I missing do you think? And/or, if I missed your organization and you would like me to add you, let me know here.

(You can also add your nonprofit to our brand-new nonprofit organization directory here).

I’ve been meaning to share this for a while. At the end of the summer, one of the more intriguing responses to our annual survey of nonprofit communicators was to the question, “How has the economic crisis affected the way your organization communicates?”

It was a bit of a good news/bad news response:

• Read the rest of this entry »

by Thom Clark
One year ago today, as we all awaited the final days of an historic election campaign, our mentor Studs Terkel passed away, his absentee ballot un-cast. The self described eclectic disk jockey, Pulitzer prize winning author and cheer leader for humanity would have railed against the media for it’s mis-coverage this past week of worker protests against bonus-buck bankers conferring in Chicago, just as I remembered him yelling at the tube’s cable talkers on a Sunday morning 54 weeks ago when I last visited him at his home. “Will Barack make it?” he wondered as the latest debate was being parsed. “What a mess the Cubs and Sox made of their seasons, again,” Studs moaned in the next moment. Then he moved onto our 2009 Terkel awardees (Scott Simon, David Jackson and Alden Loury). There was never a dull moment in Studs’ living room.We miss ya Studs!

In the end, if there had been more than the 18 or so people who turned out to hear Steve Heye of the Metro Chicago YMCA speak about his chapter of the new book Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission (produced by the Nonprofit Technology Network, published by Jossey-Bass) we probably might have had less good of a time, because Steve might have presented his prepared powerpoint, from the podium, in the theater, instead of opening in late-night pitchman style while we sat on the couches in the adjacent open space (see video).

The Secret to Managing Tech for Nonprofits… May Be To Buy This Book from Community Media Workshop on Vimeo.

(Apologies for the shaky wrist with the camera–it’s a first date with the flip camera for me).

After the pitchman-style intro, Steve delivered a thoughtful presentation outlining some of the issues the book takes up.

Working at a small organization, I tend not to think about or understand as much of the issues that the “IT department” has to deal with. It was kind of refreshing to talk about technology and not discuss social media–the focus was more on aligning IT with overall organizational operations and strategy (the subject of Steve’s chapter in the new work). Read the rest of this entry »

New Yorker cartoon captions they are not.

Looking at nonprofits through the prism of our taglines–thanks to Nancy Schwartz’s new Nonprofit Tagline Report, which came out this week, I just have to say it: We are one earnest group of people.

If you’re at a nonprofit and online, chances are you know about this, but if not–Nancy, a New York-based marketing guru, solicited and received input from literally thousands of folks at nonprofits, including a final vote that produced 13 best taglines by popular acclaim: Read the rest of this entry »

Have you read the “Obama plan” for health care? I finally started this morning.

If you’re like me you’ve probably finally started to pay attention now that the debate has reached a crisis (I know, I’m not proud of my ignorance, but what can you say). Getting caught up to the headlines got me curious about how some longtime local health-care advocacy organizations have been dealing with the related issues of finding their issue in the spotlight and moving their work onto the Web, and next week I’ll share some case-study-type thoughts from a couple of local organizations, with a little about both their take on the debate and how they are handling the attention.

Meantime, I did some background research, and the first thing I found was the “Obama Plan,” more or less. It’s right here, with specifics and everything. I got there from whitehouse.gov but the page, “Healthreform.gov” is officially maintained by the Department of Health and Human Services. Read the rest of this entry »