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Dear Friend,

THANK YOU for your willingness to even consider advising our Action Information online public interest calendar effort! : )

Below you will find a link to our online Survey.  As you will see, this is not a survey in the scientific/statistical sense, but more a means for systematically obtaining feedback and valuable advice from people who support this effort.

When you take the Survey, you can answer as many of the questions as you choose.  A number of the questions will provide links to pre-existing lists to which your suggested additions and edits would be most welcome.  

If you have any difficulty with the Survey and Documents format, I would be happy to send you questions and related information via email and/or to get your reactions.  And could even meet to talk IRL (In Real Life!) or on the phone. 

Before plunging into the Survey, however, please consider the following history and overview of Action Information and the Calendar project - as the best advice will come from those with a full understanding of the foundation of this new project and its goals.

History: “MetNet” 

As some of you may recall, in the ‘90s a number of local activists put together a group called the MetroDC Environmental Network (“MetNet”) which, among other things, published a monthly Calendar/Newsletter that included events from several hundred local, regional and national environmental and social justice organizations.  Printed on a single sheet of newsprint, we mailed the Calendar out to several hundred people and distributed thousands of copies at events, businesses, schools and libraries throughout the MetroDC area.  While useful, printing and mailing the Calendar was expensive and, as a monthly publication, information often arrived later than was desired.  

Over the intervening decades, with the expansion of the Internet, email and apps, some of us have contemplated a “MetNet 2.0” that would publish an online comprehensive public interest cause calendar.  With my departure from UDC Law, that time has (finally!) come!  I’ve been working with a worker co-op IT company, Agaric, to build the online capability of the Calendar and with my daughters, who are working on design elements - and we’re now ready to collect more input to refine the designs and functions of the Calendar.

Action Information, Inc.

We incorporated Action Information, Inc. as a Maryland nonprofit in November 2021, applied for 501(c)(3) federal tax exempt status in February 2022, and obtained that status in October 2022.  Daniel Solomon of the District and Andrea Miller and Eric Gilchrist (both of Central Virginia) comprise our Board of Directors.  We will create an Advisory Board in large part from those who respond to this Survey! ☺

Our Idea and Plan

The Theory:  More people will be more active if we make it easier for them to find ways to get involved in causes they care about.  We want to help people spend less time “doom scrolling,” arguing on social media and yelling at the TV screen! Instead, we want to help them become active and aware of what they can do in their community, county, state, etc.   We particularly want to support local action and foster community building.  We also want to help organizers by giving them a way to check future dates to avoid scheduling conflicts  as well as to publicize their events and, thereby, increase the reach of their work.  If you’ve ever tried to search for local events on a particular topic topic using a search engine, you may have noticed that they can be hard to find.  If the organizers have posted at all, event and volunteer info can be buried by advertising (being the first on the search lists) and/or by huge websites that may or may not have much relation to what you want.  For example we searched for December 2022 “solar energy education events in Montgomery County MD” and even though we know of at least a dozen related events that are actually listed on a variety of websites, the events we scoured online for, were not listed!  This is a common problem for all issue areas.  We’ve also done extensive research on the availability of similar online calendars and to our knowledge, nothing like what we’re building exists.  While Facebook and Event Brite – and a number of other event-listing services - are often useful, they are not nearly comprehensive and do not provide the search functions we are building..

A Simple Idea:  We’ll collect ALL public interest events and action opportunities, categorize them by category, subcategory and issue as well as location, price, age-appropriateness, whether service-credit eligible and more, and then make them EASY and FREE to find in an online database.  Part of what makes this “simple” is that we will not be registering folks for others’ events - the host organizations’ sign up links will be provided.  And the only money we will handle will be those funds donated to Action Information. 

(In a later phase we will consider allowing small/start-up groups without their own web presence to register participants on the Action Information site.)

Action Opportunities Included:  We plan to include everything from local civic meetings to government hearings, PTA meetings, stream and park cleanups, protests, demonstrations, webinars, conferences, fundraisers, volunteer opportunities of all types, local/state/national legislative and policy education and/or advocacy-related events and even electoral political actions. 

Free and Easy:  Users come to our website, create a profile, choose what they’re interested in looking at and/or keeping apprised about, and save their searches.  They’ll be able to view the results of the “Saved Searches” on the web and/or opt to receive listserv-like emailed notifications immediately when events hit our database, via daily digest, via weekly digest, or they can opt to receive no notifications and just visit our website to see their Calendar or search the larger Calendar whenever they choose.  We will also track usage and continue to collect feedback to improve the Calendar.

The Mobile App:  While our website will be mobile friendly from the start, in a second phase, we’ll build a mobile phone app that provides the same options via pop-up notifications.  (And we are designing with the mobile app in mind now!)

Starting Locally:  We are starting in Montgomery County, MD where we will work to upload ALL local public interest events and action opportunities.  At the same time, we’ll build the capacity to identify the sources of regional, national and international causes and events.  We will expand locally, next to the District, then to the MetroDC area, then to the District/Maryland/Virginia area and then…hopefully, beyond.

Organizational Directory:  In the process of creating this one-stop public interest event calendar, we will also be collecting, and making available, information on the organizations whose events we carry.  Participating organizations will be able to control their own pages.  This information will be made searchable for use by the public and by the organizations themselves.  

Partner Organizations:  We will recruit organizations which commit to self-posting their events in a timely and accurate manner AND to letting their members know about the existence and function of the Calendar.  

Sponsor Organizations:  Sponsor organizations will be Partner Organizations which, in addition, commit to donating to Action Information annually on a sliding scale.  Sponsor Organizations will be given a small amount of extra prominence on the site and in the listings. 

Biggest Challenge:  As the wise saying goes, “garbage in/garbage out.”  Even in Montgomery County, MD there are tens of thousands of public events every year.  To make the Calendar work, we will need these events uploaded into the Calendar in a timely and accurate way, with all event details correct and with the event itself accurately categorized in all relevant ways (issue, location, age-appropriateness, price, etc.).  

We’re going to be counting on organizations’ staff and a LOT of volunteer power to populate the Calendar in a timely and accurate manner..  

Who will Use the Calendar?  We envision a super-wide range of users, from totally non-involved and a-political folks just looking for something interesting and useful to do in their area, to people who care about particular causes (environment, racism, poverty, etc.) and who want to know what they can choose from to take action.  Our users will also include experienced individual organizers as well as organizations seeking more help and more attendees at events.  We also expect organizers and organizations to use the Calendar to check for conflicts before they schedule their events.  And we hope that the Calendar will inspire potential new organizers to start something new – perhaps in their own neighborhoods!  

Why We’re a C3

Volunteer Power:  We chose this legal form for several reasons. One of the biggest reasons to be a nonprofit is that it will make getting high-quality volunteer support more realistic.  This is important because, should the Calendar succeed and expand its coverage geographically, there may ultimately be millions of events to enter each year.  To do this cost-effectively and sustainably, we’ll need to recruit and train and supervise large numbers of dedicated volunteers who want to help to promote their specific causes and groups - as well as the Calendar as a whole.  We believe this will prove much more realistic as a nonprofit.  The alternative would be to form as a for-profit with sufficient funding to cover these costs and hope, eventually, to build an advertising base.  Since multi-million dollar start-up funding was not available - and we’re not doing this to get rich! - we were inclined toward the nonprofit route. 

Start-up Funding:  And, finally, while the multi-millions to start up as a for-profit were not readily available, we DID have an offer for a generous foundation grant to cover our tech build-out as well as the support from a few other generous donors!  

Advertising:  As a C3 we could potentially sell advertising but would be limited by IRS rules to approximately 20% of our budget so as not to compete unfairly with for-profit businesses.  If we were to do this, we would consider a model that includes the possibility of soliciting donations from “Members” who could then opt out of receiving advertising.

List Development and Use:  One of the most exciting collateral benefits of building a well-functioning Calendar that attracts a large user base is that, in the process, we will be building an issue-coded list that could be used to support a wide range of non-profit causes consistent with our tax status. This list could, potentially, be made accessible for political messaging – on a nonpartisan basis consistent with IRS regulations. 

Privacy Policy: While Action Information reserves the right to forward a limited amount of appropriate emails to users, and to include a limited amount of advertising, the underlying individual user data will NEVER be sold!  

Political Content:  At first, because we honor and want to encourage and support all forms of civic engagement – including partisan electoral volunteer work - we thought we could only be a for-profit.  Then we learned, courtesy of the DC Bar Pro-Bono Center’s Nonprofit and Small Business Legal Assistance Program, that we COULD be a C3, so long as we were open to listing events from all parties – and similarly, were open to the inclusion of events reflecting conservative public interest causes.  

Importantly, so long as the Calendar is open to all, we will not be obligated to have an equal number of event postings from “both sides” of a campaign or of an issue.  We will not, however, be obligated to - and will not - accept events that advocate hate, discrimination or violence.  

THANK YOU!!

Thank you for reviewing all the background and goals of this project.  We’re excited to hear from you and get your advice on how to make the Calendar a useful organizing tool and a service that encourages people to become more active on - or to find new - causes they care about!

Joe Libertelli, Director, Action Information

Click HERE to take the Survey.