• Brochures for the Sevathon
• Poster board for Sevathon
• Flyers for Sevathon
• Giveaways for the Sevathon
• Website development
• Website design
• Content on website
• Volunteer recruitment pitch
• Fundraising plan for Sevathon
• Recruitment for our new volunteer orientation on July 4th from 10:30-12
• Identifying copy center who can donate copy services

Our volunteers have been working so hard to put things together for the events of this week. I really admire their tenacity and passion!

This week we have our website launch. Which means, after this week, information about MySahana and the work we do will not be coming from this blog, but from our brand new website that a good friend of mine has been working so hard with me to design and develop! This is it. Dream #1 coming to reality!

I want to take this opportunity to thank all of my regular readers, blog subscribers and those of you who have commented along the way. This blog provided a fabulous forum on which I could share some of my experiences starting a nonprofit. And through this experience I’ve met some amazing people who I never would have met otherise. While there is a very long way to go to officially establish ourselves as a nonprofit, having your support by reading this blog and spreading the word to others has helped us reach the excitement of this coming week! Thank you.

It would be wonderful to see and meet all of you! Come see us at our first booth at our first health and wellness fair! You can find information about us on Facebook and Twitter as well. Spread the word about MySahana and help us launch with a bang! See you on July 18th!

Don’t want to wait until July 18th to learn about volunteering with us? Email volunteer@mysahana.org to find out about volunteer opportunities and the next orientation!

MySahana © 2010 All Rights Reserved.

We had our first special events meeting last week to make a plan for our booth at ICC’s 2nd Annual Sevathon! I cannot express the amazement at how creative, and excited the volunteers are. We had some really amazing ideas come up through our brainstorming session and I feel really great about our plan for the booth on July 18th!

Also, MySahana’s website is going to be launched in 3 weeks! I am so excited because we have been working so hard on this website. I have been working closely with my friend who has generously offered to develop this website for me to get the design right and to finish writing the content to put up on the site for when its ready.

The volunteers have been busy creating a marketing plan, fundraising plan and recruiting plan for our event on July 18th. They’re also putting together drafts of brochures, flyers and posters. In addition, our volunteers are trying to find a copy center that will partner with us and be MySahana’s official copy place. Does anyone know any place that would like to work with our nonprofit? Email our volunteers at mysahana@mysahana.org with information!

I have been amazed by the outpouring of support and excitement by friends, family members and members of the community and I’ve gotten some amazing questions that I wanted to share the answers to. For this reason, I’ve created a formspring account where anyone can ask me questions about anything anonymously. This account is also connected to our Twitter account, so feel free to follow us there too!

It’s a really busy time for MySahana but in the next few weeks, some amazing things are going to happen for us. Can’t wait to share all the excitement with you all and see you at our event on July 18th!

And just for fun, I leave you with this interesting article I came across yesterday about the image of volunteering. What do you guys think?

Don’t want to wait until July 18th to learn about volunteering with us? Email volunteer@mysahana.org to find out about volunteer opportunities and the next orientation!

MySahana © 2010 All Rights Reserved.

Last week I met with the Executive Director of the organization to talk about a potential partnership between us and their nonprofit. He had actually heard about MySahana from a couple of people and expressed excitement about what MySahana‘s mission and what we stand for. Basically, he saw a lot of potential in our organization and proposed supporting us as this organization starts gaining ground and also establishing a long-term partnership with our organization!

Aside from this being so exciting that another organization has heard of us and wants to partner with us, this seems like a really useful opportunity too! Both the South Asian Heart Center and MySahana has a very important common goal: reaching out to the South Asian community and educating them on a particular issue that is surrounded by a lot of misinformation. At the same time, the organizations also have complimentary goals that will help support each others’ work and outreach plans. It seems like a really great partnership that both organizations can really gain a lot from!

So on July 18th, MySahana will make its public appearance thanks to the support of the South Asian Heart Center! We will have a booth, generously given to us by the South Asian Heart Center, at ICC’s 2nd Annual Sevathon! Our booth will be displayed during the Health and Wellness Fair which will take place after the marathon in the morning. We will have information about our organization, what we do, our vision, as well as opportunities to sign up to volunteer with our nonprofit! You’ll also get to meet MySahana’s absolutely amazing volunteers who have helped make this organization what it is so far!

And the most exciting thing is that by that day, MySahana’s website will be officially up and running!

This is a huge step for MySahana! We are getting such amazing exposure and the name is starting to become very familiar to people! Thank you all for following us, supporting us and spreading the word! It’s because of you, that so many people have heard of this tiny organization that was just an idea a few months ago. Thank you!

So, save the date, and we’ll see you at our booth on July 18th!

Don’t want to wait until July 18th to learn about volunteering with us? Email volunteer@mysahana.org to find out about volunteer opportunities and the next orientation!

MySahana © 2010 All Rights Reserved.

• Our Administrative Support Committee is managing all 5 committee meetings, working with venues to schedule new volunteer orientations and trainings, and providing all support to every meeting. This is the committee that basically organizes MySahana. They’re current project is reaching out to local businesses to donate printing services or provide low cost printing services for our upcoming brochures and flyers.
• Our Fundraising Committee is working hard at developing a long-term fundraising plan and reaching out to potential donors in the community. They’re handling all the financial aspect of MySahana, including setting up our bank and PayPal accounts, etc. This committee will also be researching and applying to state-wide and national grants eventually.
• The Marketing/PR Committee is developing a strong marketing plan, designing brochures, pamphlets, and flyers from scratch to promote the organization. The volunteers on this committee use lots of creativity to advertise (in all forms of media) MySahana and the work that we do.
• And our Recruiting & Personnel Committee has been working really hard to recruit for volunteers, review applications, manage the volunteer program and use Facebook and Twitter to reach more people! These volunteers work hard to ensure that high quality volunteers are accepted into the volunteer program and provide HR-type support to active volunteers with any issue they may have. (Fortunately, so far, there haven’t been any issues!)
• And as for me, I’ve been overseeing the whole organization, making connections and networking with local businesses and organizations who can promote us and help us fly off the ground, running volunteer orientations, finalizing the website (with the help of a really great friend), promoting MySahana to personal and professional contacts, and well, everything else you can think of!

There’s plenty of room to join and plenty of ways you can help! So if you’re interested, please email volunteer@mysahana.org and ask about our volunteer program. Pass on the word to anyone you know who might be interested. This organization is really taking off, and what better than to be there during the initial phases of development!

MySahana © 2010 All Rights Reserved.

Since 1974, this growth is due to 3 groups primarily: older teenagers (16-19), people in middle adulthood (45-64) and seniors (65+). And it seems that volunteers are choosing to volunteer more with educational groups than with political, civic, or international groups. This most common organization that volunteers in this country are choosing to work with are religious groups!

Why do you think these changes have occurred?

If you want to volunteer with MySahana, please email volunteer@mysahana.org for more information about the next orientation.

MySahana © 2010 All Rights Reserved.

A more accurate gene test for austism - More proof that autism has a genetic component to it

Oxytocin and autistic symptoms – This love hormone may help ameliorate autistic symptoms in mild cases.

Autism and Aspergers – With the new diagnostic manual coming out in 1 year, people are not pleased with the changes in the diagnostic criteria.

MySahana © 2010 All Rights Reserved.

Autism is a mental illness/developmental disorder marked by a difficulty in communicating and relating with others. It exists on a spectrum so no one person’s symptoms will be identical to another’s.

The biggest misconception about autism is that it is caused by vaccinations and thus parents nowadays are not vaccinating their children for fear of developing the disorder. Mental health professionals, doctors and researchers are screaming at the top of their lungs but parents are not listening: autism is NOT caused by vaccinations. There is no research that supports this at all. And in fact, by not vaccinating your child, you are putting them at increased risk for contracting potentially fatal diseases!

Autism is also not caused by any specific materials in vitamins that children take. There is zero proof of this as well.

In addition, autism cannot be cured by changing a child’s diet. Parents have often asked me whether reducing the amount of sugar or fat in their child’s diet will help. It will not. Perhaps they child will eat healthier but it won’t help with the symptoms of autism.

It is indescribably difficult to be the parent of an autistic child. But, there are resources out there that can actually help your child. Behavioral training and behavior therapy has been shown to be very effective. Just please don’t listen to all those misinformed, uneducated Jenny McCarthy’s of the world preaching wrong information about autism!

MySahana © 2010 All Rights Reserved.

In 2008, the Corporation of National and Community Service did an in-depth study to understand how volunteers spend their time during the day. It turns out that volunteers are actually just as busy as non-volunteers, with similar number of hours spent on child and family care as well as paid jobs and similar amounts of responsibilities as non-volunteers. The difference is, they find time and make time to volunteer.

Did you know that according to repeated research studies, people who volunteer watch about 1 hour less TV per day than people who don’t? This finding held up across all age groups and across different types of living situations (alone, with family, with children, etc.)

Current volunteers also spend more time socializing with others than non-volunteers. For example, they are more likely to eat and drink with others than to do it alone. In fact , current volunteers are more likely than non-volunteers to make TV watching a social activity!

It basically shows that if someone is deciding whether to volunteer, commitment and passion for the cause may be more closely correlated with volunteering than actual time commitment!

If you’ve been a volunteer, does this study accurately describe your experience?

If you want to volunteer with MySahana, please email volunteer@mysahana.org for more information about the next orientation.

MySahana © 2010 All Rights Reserved.

Why nonprofits shouldn’t use facebook – an impassioned view of how Facebook might even be hurting nonprofit marketing
Rules of engagement for twitter – more tips on how to use twitter effectively
7 essentials of facebook nonprofit marketers need to know - an opposite view of your the first article
Nonprofit says no to donation from Craigslist - Even though nonprofits will accept basically anything you give them, this nonprofit drew a line at a donation from Craigslist.
The importance of keeping accurate records - what could happen if you aren’t organized with your bookkeeping and paperwork filings!

MySahana © 2010 All Rights Reserved.

My question, though, is how do you use it effectively? At MySahana’s first training, I mentioned Twitter as a potential avenue through which we can promote and market MySahana. But I acknowledged that though MySahana has a Twitter account, I am pretty clueless on how to maximize its effectiveness.

The volunteers are doing a great job of researching this issue. Several of them even joined Twitter just to learn more about it from the inside! We really do have the best volunteers ever.

I myself did a Google search and found countless articles with tips and guides for beginners on Twitter. But recently, I came across this article that offers 9 tips on how to ensure that your tweets are retweeted – something that is essential in using Twitter as a marketing tool!

I found this article to stand out from the rest because 1) it was very easy to read and understand (not too much Twitter-jargon…tweetgon?)  2) it provided very concrete steps that we can take to help and 3) it was based on research conducted by by Dan Zarrella analyzing over 5 million tweets.

Here’s a brief summary of what I thought was helpful or interesting:

1) Link constantly to other sites. And always shorten the links!

You get retweeted much more often if you shorten your url than if you don’t. And apparently there’s a trend on how you link and that trend has moved away from TinyURL to bit.ly and owl.ly. All I know is if your twitter and facebook accounts are connected, it automatically does bit.ly so you’re doing ok!

2) There is a ranking of words that are most often reweeted! And the top three are you, twitter, and please.

I can understand the “you” since it makes it seem like you’re connecting with others. And the “please” shows cordiality and respect. But “twitter”? Really? I can’t understand that.

3) Don’t just write about mundane daily activities.

I think this is particularly true when you’re starting out. Who cares? Maybe when you’re more established (or a reality TV star) will people care when you ate breakfast or took a shower. Zarrella even identified words that are least likely to be retweeted! Top three are “game”, “going”, “haha”. How interesting! Any thoughts as to why?

4) Twitter users retweet intelligent tweets.

Retweets have more syllables per word than non-retweets and apparently rank higher on the grade level readability scale! It looks like the difference isn’t that big though and I wonder if it is statistically significant or just an interesting fact.

5) Don’t use semi-colons if your life depended on it.

I wonder if that’s because most people don’t know how to use it. Or our reading trends have changed so much that very few of us read anything that includes such a complex punctuation mark. Who knows!

6) Be original.

I’ve also learned that if it’s slightly controversial it helps! MySahana’s tweets regarding the copyright infringement and the website being taken down were the most retweeted.

7) Headline-styled tweets spread like wildfire.

Basically if you make your information sound important and necessary to read, people will follow. That’s what I get out of that.

Don’t be negative, emotional, crass or self-absorbed.

People really respond to things that are helpful to them, especially if it’s informative.

9) Golden hour: 4pm on Friday.

This was by-far the most surprising. I would have guessed it was at the beginning of the week or any day around lunch time. But maybe by 4 on Friday, people are just checked out of work or making plans for the weekend. Very interesting!

As our Marketing/PR committee picks up, I’m hoping some of these tips will help us to promote MySahana even better. And with our next new volunteer orientation on June 12, 2010, it is essential we get the word to as many people as possible!

Do you have any tips on how to use Twitter effectively?

If you want to volunteer with MySahana, please email volunteer@mysahana.org for more information about the next orientation.

MySahana © 2010 All Rights Reserved.