1. What is your group number?
25
2. What is your team name?
Team Septagon
3. What is your Thursday 5pm meeting location?
Milner - 3rd Floor
4. Who is your team Liaison?
John
5. Who is your team Recorder?
Nathan
6. Who is your team Historian?
D. Nick
7. Who is your team Webmaster?
Nick F.
8. Who is your team Treasurer 1?
Blake
9. Who is your team Treasurer 2?
Kevin
10. What role will your 7th team member fulfill?
Recorder - Josh
11. What role will your 8th team member fulfill?
None
12. What is the URL for your team's portfolio site?
http://teamseptagon.com
13. What are your team's rules?
Group Rules:
Be on time
Be accountable for your work
Be responsive to messaging
Be productive during meetings
Be professional with organizations
Be Respectful to everyone's ideas
Always vote for major decisions
Be Prepared for meetings
14. Rank the three organizations in terms of preference (1= first choice)
1= Home Sweet Home, 2 = Boys and Girls Club, 3 = Wishbone
15. Present, in your own words, an overview of the organization – who is the community they serve and what services do they provide?
"Hope for All Who Enters"
Home Sweet Home is a Christian based ministry that caters to less fortunate individuals in the community. They provide services that include, housing for the homeless, a soup kitchen, a pantry, financial education and planning, and more. It was started by a "Candy-store owner and a self-professed alcoholic" Billy Shelper. Billy spent over 35 years constantly improving and devoting himself to community service through his ministry. During these early days he and his group served meals, provided clothing, taught sewing classes, church services and even gave crutches to those who needed them. Home Sweet Home as an organization will be 100 years old this year. They also provide free medical services to the under served in the community. They have a number of volunteer opportunities for people to give back to their local population. These include but are not limited to, childcare, carnival volunteering, classes, clothing helper, pantry assistant, testing of electronics, sorting of donated goods, food preparation, errand drivers, etc. Home Sweet Home Ministry is a beloved part of the community that provides a multitude of services to those in need, regardless of their ability to pay or return the favor.
It is important to note how many people are helped by this organization, according to their website, ("https://hshministries.org/advocate/our-solution/annual-report/album/2015-annual-report") in 2015 alone they helped over 8000 people in need with 146 being children and 30% with a history of domestic violence. In these hard economic times, it is unsurprising but unfortunate that over 50% of the people they have served had never been to a homeless center before.
We want to help this organization because they have been so helpful to this community for so long as well as providing a number of services. We hope to help them in any way that we are capable.
16. Address a problem or concern the organization deals with. Where do they need help? Here you will probably need to do a little research to explain the issue (make sure to cite sources).
Money - They are a non-profit charity organization so obviously they need money. It's what allows them to do what they do. They can take donations from their website at the following link https://hshministries.org/donate. They will take both a monthly and a single time donation. This will be primarily how we'd like to help them. We plan to do a fund raiser to help support this need. We cover this later, however we'd like to emphasize that we are open to ideas.
When we contact them we will let them know that we are open to helping in any way possible. We will present our original idea and if they approve it we will go ahead, however if they decline and ask for help through another source, we will be happy to accommodate them. We have several other ideas for what the organization will need.
Clothing- The organization provides clothing to those in need. If possible we would be happy to offer volunteer hours to help move clothes and organize the storage facility.
Wish list - They also have an Amazon wish list for things that they need. We could try to make this information more public and share with others, or we could use our funds raised from the fund raiser to purchase these things.
Food - They need food, for their pantry and cafeteria. We can purchase canned food with the funds received from the fund raiser, or we could help work in their cafeteria and pantry.
Volunteer- They need people for general volunteering. There are two ways we could help with this, volunteer ourselves or develop a "get-out-the-vote" campaign, just change voting with volunteering.
Donate a vehicle - They will also take donated vehicles and try to resell them for a profit for the organization. We could similarly, create an advertising campaign or assist with this process in some way.
Technology - Our group is comprised of members with technology backgrounds. While we cannot take on projects that are large or involve complex processes due to a time constraint, we can assist through smaller but equally important projects. Developing a database, creating custom software for the organization, identify security vulnerabilities within their network, etc.
Mission mart - Home Sweet Home runs what is called their Mission Mart. It is a used goods retailer with all the funds earned going towards supporting the Home Sweet Home Mission. We could assist in a number of ways here, from developing a information campaign, working in the mission mart itself, or helping set up a clothing drive.
According to their 2015 report (found here "https://hshministries.org/advocate/our-solution/annual-report/album/2015-annual-report"), they served over 108,680 meals to those in need. Vale Church alone gathered over 32,000 pounds of food.
At their mission mart they sold over 250,000 pounds of food and clothing.
This organization has needs and we feel that we can serve in a multitude of ways. If none of these ideas are suitable, we are open to ideas and interpretation.
17. What would your team like to do to help combat this problem / issue? Here is where you connect your plan to fulfilling a need of the organization.
-- Last minute shocker --
We had originally developed the idea to do a fund raiser "fun run" for Home Sweet Home. However we just found out that they already have this in their fund raising repertoire. In light of this last minute news, we are happy to contribute through volunteering or seeking funds.
If that won't work, we can perform the same idea for another organization, we will list plans for this down below.
In addition to all the ideas in the previous question, as well as our "fun run" idea, we are open to assisting with technology in any way possible. Every member of our group is involved with technology and we could develop systems and custom solutions for the organizations (on a time constraint)
18. What are your three SMART goals?
1. Raise $100 per person in the group ($700 total)
2. Have 100 people run in the "fun run" (for the previous ideas)
3. Any early registers would get a shirt (as a part of their participation)
19. How do you plan to reach your goals? Describe what fundraisers your team plans to try out. Please note what, if any, work you've already done to enact your plan.
As mentioned before we could source the funding for the "fun run" through donations, as well as help carry out the event. We can also assist with technology for the organization.
20. What is your proposed timeline for achieving your goals? Be as specific as possible when indicating prep work and fundraising achievement dates.
Make contact with organization by February 23rd.
Start advertising the event by March 1
Get donations from local businesses (be done) by March 22
Have shirts finished and shipped by April 10
Have the run on April 22
21. What potential problems do you anticipate in executing these tasks? What are you doing to prepare to overcome these problems?
We got blind sided by the fact that they already have a fund raising run event. We discovered this literally as we were typing this. We are open to developing other ideas to help the organization.
22. What fallback plans do you think you could execute, and what is your “point of no return” situation and date when you think you’d make the decision to implement the fallback plan?
If we cannot assist with the existing fun run, or have information on it by March 1st, we will switch to one of our multiple backups. We are particularly fond of the idea to provide technology support.
23. Please list any team members who did NOT participate in creating your project proposal, or contributed very little. A quick explanation of what they did/didn't do would be helpful.
Everyone contributed equally.