This application went in today to Google applying for the Bay Area Impact Challenge Grant, Monday March 31. It is a long shot, but 25 organizations will be awarded at least 100 thousand dollars, so keep your fingers crossed.
We can discuss at our next Core Collaborators meeting, April 15 at UU, 6:00 PM. Please send me ideas for the agenda.
\Thank you for your submission to the Bay Area Impact Challenge! We’re excited to read your application.
All applications received before before 11:59pm PT on March 31, 2014 will be reviewed.
Finalists and runners up will be announced on or around Thursday, May 22, 2014. We will be in touch before that time if we require additional information.
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What is the name of your organization?: United Nations Association – San Francisco, on behalf of UNA SF Bay Area Council of Organizations (COO)
I certify that the organization for which I am submitting this application is eligible to apply for the Challenge. This means my organization is a registered and recognized 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a registered office in the Bay Area. If you are a fiscal sponsor submitting an application for a sponsored group, the sponsored group must also be located in the Bay Area.: I certify.
What is your Employer ID (EIN)?: 23-7010438 – aka Better World Fund, national sponsor of UNA-SF
What is your website URL?: http://una-sf.org
What is the address of your organization?: 270 Cecilia Way, Tiburon, CA 94920
How many full-time employees does your organization have?: none
Who is the best person to contact at your organization?: Roger Eaton
What is that person’s title at your organization?: COO Co-Chair, also Communications Chair
What is their contact email?: rogerweaton@gmail.com
What is their contact phone number?: 415 933 0153
What was your 2013 annual budget?: < 3000
What do you estimate your 2014 annual budget will be?: < 8000 (assuming we do not qualify for the grant)
Have any Google staff, officers or directors (or to your knowledge, immediate family members thereof) been members of your organization’s board or officer group within the last 12 months?: No
Does your organization have any business dealings or ongoing negotiations with Google?: No
To your knowledge, are any current government officials, employees or civil servants employed by your organization or are they members of your organization's board or officer group?: No
What’s the “short story” on your project?: Our project is to develop the COO in two phases through 2016. To grow the COO we will organize the Bay Area to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of the UN, October 24, 2015. Then we will partner with business and government to achieve locally the post-2015 UN development goals.
Which sector best describes your organization’s work?: Community / Civic
Discuss the problem your proposed project aims to address, including the total expected impact of this project on your community if executed.: We intend to foster a civic/business/government partnership whose aims will be a) to achieve the post-2015 UN Goals in the Bay Area sooner than specified and b) to engage the U.S. and the world to achieve the global goals quickly.
Our targets for the first phase are 1) to fill the 900+ seat Herbst Hall at the War Memorial in San Francisco (where the UN Charter was signed in 1945) at $20 or more per ticket for the UN 70th centerpiece celebration. 2) To engage at least 150 civic organizations around the Bay Area to hold their own UN 70th celebrations. And 3) to hold a one-day NGO Conference about the post-2015 development goals with at least 50 UN NGOs in attendance for the UN 70th.
For the second phase, the numerical targets will be specified by the United Nations before the end of 2015. Important background: UN Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) expire in 2015. These MDGs largely target developing countries. Measureable UN Post-2015 Development Goals will target all countries.
What are the 1-3 key indicators you will use to track progress toward the impact you described above? How will you measure these indicators?: Phase one has three numerical targets as described above. We realize the UN 70th celebration is not quite what the Google Challenge grant is all about. Events come and go, while the Challenge is to impact the Bay Area. However, building the COO, the aim of our first phase, could indeed impact the Bay Area by creating the needed but seemingly impossible all-inclusive and cohesive Bay Area civic network as a suitable partner for a civic / business / government coalition to remake the Bay Area starting in 2016.
In phase two, the COO will use FSG’s “Collective Impact” structure, which requires specific measurable goals. The NGO conference will nail these goals down largely by adopting the UN Post-2015 goals as our own. Also, regardless of the UN Goals, the COO will target full gender equality as its key goal in the Bay Area by 2025 for the UN 80th.
Describe what makes your proposed project innovative.: We will be using our innovative InterMix Voices of Humanity Social Media software to facilitate COO organizing work. We are betting that the new and never tried before InterMix “Gender Crosstalk” feature, eta April 2014, will propel the growth of the COO. Gender crosstalk is the round by round election of two messages, one from the women and one from the men. See ugc.iwd.intermix.org. With Gender Crosstalk as the online social underpinning of the COO, gender equality is built in to the COO at the foundational level.
In the Collective Impact framework, InterMix will provide “continuous communication”. Moreover, the upcoming (expected by July, 2014) InterMix geographic level breakout of discussions will give us the ability to have county-wide as well as Bay Area wide discourse, which will facilitate regular in-person meetings at the more local level.
Additionally, we will be developing the InterMix “Make Your Gift Work Twice” feature.
To incentivize InterMix participation at both individual and organizational level, new grant and donor money will be funneled through the participants to the Bay Area organization of their choice. Pro-social bonuses do work: realizedworth.com/tag/dollars-for-doers. As we engage businesses, they can use the COO network for their own pro-social bonuses.
What other organizations are tackling this issue and what approaches have been tried in the past?: The use of a specialized social media with gender equality and inter-group decision-making to help with the organizing effort is truly innovative – never tried before as far as we know. In regards to UN 70th, San Francisco has held big UN 40th, 50th and 60th celebrations in the past with UNA San Francisco playing a major role in each. The idea of extending the organizational effort to include the Bay Area is new, as is the follow up with a phase two focused on UN development goals
How could you go about bringing this to other communities in the Bay Area and beyond in a sustainable way? : The COO project will naturally involve other metropolitan areas. The quickest way for any metro area to become more livable and more sustainable is by reorganizing to use modern communication/technology. Such "metro makeover" goes hand-in-hand with achieving post-2015 UN Goals, and provides a major carrot for the project.
The geographic levels of county and metro region are scalable to state, nation and world. Indeed, UNA-SF is about to launch a global gender crosstalk exchange by sending two collective messages to Exec Dir of UN Women Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. We need to transcend national and religious differences to address world challenges. If anything can trump nation and religion, it is gender, so let’s give the genders a chance to bring the world together. If it can work globally, then it can work locally, too. Uniting civil society locally is hugely challenging, but gender crosstalk might do the trick.
If selected as a winner, how would your project utilize the $500k funding received? Provide a budget for how your organization would spend this amount.: The grant money will be allocated over two and one-half years from July 2014 through December 2016.
• 1) 62,500 for a project director at $25k/year
2) 72,000 for three offices, one in San Francisco, one in San Jose or Silicon Valley and one in Oakland or Berkeley at $28,800 per year or $800 per month average
3) 90,000 for three part time staff, one for each office at $12k/year/staff-person
4) 10,000 for the War Memorial event
5) 60,000 for the NGO conference
6) 25,000 for fund-raising
7) 160,000 for continued development of InterMix: a) improved group facilities and b) creating an android app – sorry iphone users, you will be next
8) 20,500 miscellaneous and office supplies
There are 3 possible grant sizes. How would your project change if you received $250k?: With $250k, we would have to give up two offices and two staff and cut back on the NGO conference plus cut the InterMix budget to 60k. The director would also be cut to $60k. We would keep the fundraising budget in a gamble that we could raise the cut $250k. We would maintain our aim to include the whole of the Bay Area.
There are 3 possible grant sizes. How would your project change if you received $100k?: If the grant were for $100k instead of $500k, we would budget through the end of 2015 instead of the end of 2016. InterMix development would be cut to $20k. The project director would be cut to $30k. We would keep one office for $18k and rely on ticket sales to make the War Memorial event doable. We might have to concentrate on San Francisco and cut way back on the NGO conference.
What are the 2-3 most significant risks you foresee in this project? How has your team planned to address them?: InterMix software has been coded by a single person, so continued rapid progress depends to an extent on that person’s continued availability – no problem is expected since the developer has been dependable. Also, the Gender Crosstalk exchange is not a proven winner. If it takes off, then we are good to go, but if the launch to send messages to UN Women fails, then that will take the wind out of our sails. We should have an idea how the launch is going by May 28, 2014.
What’s the core project team look like? What makes them poised for success?: The COO has a dozen volunteer “Core Collaborators” at this point. There is considerable enthusiasm for putting on a big UN 70th and grant or no grant, gender crosstalk success or not, we will make the UN 70th happen.
Who do you consider your 3 most significant partner organizations (e.g., funders or others that have worked with your organization as a whole or on the proposed project) from the past 3 years? If none, list none.: Unitarian Universalist Church in San Francisco’s UNO group, UNA Eastbay Chapter, and UNA Northern California Division are our strongest partners.
How do volunteers contribute to your organization’s work today? Is there a way for volunteers to help contribute to your project?: At this point everyone is a volunteer. If we win a grant, the paid staff can count on continued and enhanced volunteer support.
Anything else we should know?: The UNA SF Bay Council of Organizations (COO) is a new project of UNA San Francisco. The new COO is to UNA-SF as the national COO is to UNA-USA – a supportive, but also independently minded organization. Please see also the COO website at sfbaycoo.org.
Terms and Conditions: By submitting an application, I certify on behalf of my organization that: 1) The organization agrees to be contacted by Google for purposes of carrying out the Challenge, 2) The organization agrees to the Challenge Rules https://impactchallenge.withgoogle.com/bayarea2014/docs/GoogleImpactChallenge-SanFranciscoBayArea-Rules.pdf , 3) All information contained in this application is true and accurate; that the organization meets the eligibility requirements specified in this application and the accompanying instructions; and that none of the information in this application is confidential or proprietary. Note: The information you submit will be used in accordance with Google's Privacy Policy http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/: I certify.
