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Future 5000
Voting Summary (Elevator Pitch):
Future 5000 is the largest online directory and network of progressive youth groups in the country. It is designed to strengthen our networks, maximize our resources and leverage community power.
Supporting organization:
Generational Alliance
URL:
www.future5000.com
City:
Oakland
State/Region:
CA
Country:
United States
Project Vision Statement & Potential Social Impact:
Future 5000, the largest online directory and network of progressive youth groups in the country, was collaboratively designed by the organizational members of the Generational Alliance (GA). The youth civic engagement field is fractured among at least four distinct sectors: community-based youth organizing, campus organizing and leadership development, cultural organizing and non-campus voter organizing. The GA creates opportunities for these sectors to build relationships and collaborative projects towards the development of a long-term strategic and integrated movement for social change. Future 5000 is the GA’s “movement mapping” project. It is designed to strengthen our networks, maximize our resources and leverage community power.
Future 5000 members get:
Ownership: From crisis response after natural disasters to coordinating direct action for immigrant justice, members will decide how to use Future 5000. This is an especially exciting opportunity for groups without a strong independent web presence.
Access: Organizations working on the same issues will be able to easily share information, strategies and resources. Obvious strategic alliances will be easier to build, and unlikely ones will be easier to imagine.
Recognition: By collecting and centralizing information, Future 5000 makes member organizations easy to find. It’s like a virtual spotlight on the work our members do — work that too often goes unrecognized.
Future 5000 has joined with two other progressive movement-building web projects, myBLOC.net and the Online Media Resource Center, to form the M-TECH Collaborative. The collaborative is working to integrate the functionality and user communities of all three sites.
M-Tech has a holistic understanding of the role of technology within community work. Rather than replacing on-the-ground organizing, we are committed to building open-source, participatory and democratic technology that is youth and community driven and that supports face-to-face organizing and builds on existing relationships. These shared values and commitments are our basis of integration.
Sustainability (financial) model:
The collaborative ethic underlying our mission and vision is also central to our fundraising strategy. In late 2006, Future 5000 joined with two other progressive movement-building web projects, myBLOC.net and the Online Media Resource Center, to form the M-TECH Collaborative.
We meet with our MTech partners regularly and jointly plan fundraising efforts. We have submitted to Skyline Public Works for a development grant to fund all of our integration efforts and for general support for each of our projects. We are also approaching potential individual donors together and we are jointly planning a major launch party/fundraising event for late April.
Future 5000 staff and volunteers host a monthly social networking happy hour event that also serves as a grassroots fundraising venue. We are in the process of developing a comprehensive grassroots and major donor program that incorporates regular fundraising/community outreach events. We also plan to design and sell t-shirts for income and will continue to explore entrepreneurial/ merchandising avenues of income.
Future 5000 has one staff member but much of the outreach and education about Future 5000 and our cross-sector alliance-building vision and activities are carried out by volunteers and interns around the country.
Potential obstacles:
- Most of our members and potential member organizations are under-staffed and under-resourced, often just struggling to keep their organizations, programs and campaigns afloat. Collaboration, as a result, even if prioritized in principle, is rarely played out in practice. Organizations work in isolation and rarely even know who else is out there doing similar work. Who has the time to do this research? For this reason, it is essential that Future 5000 is able to develop the most user-friendly, low-maintenance format possible, utilizing RSS feeds and other automatic or F5K driven update methods.
Resource Needs:
Our primary resource needs are stipends for interns and/or a half-time support staff person to help with website maintenance, content development and user outreach and engagement.
We also require additional resources to complete our release two plans for the website.
Based on the objectives of F5000 for 2007, the key development requirements are:
- Online reporting mechanism that allows the admin to download and report data about the organizations that have profile in Future 5000.
- Develop a simple mechanism to allow users/organizations to create reports about other organizations and their members and download that information in a format that they can use for mail outs or reports.
- Improve Chaski to send out segmented communications to organizations and their members.
Key Milestones:
- Complete release 1 functionality updates and fixes
- Complete release 2 planning, begin engineering (see above for release 2 primary goals)
- Complete integration planning with MyBLOC.net and Youthmediacouncil.org
- Develop online and offline training support for users
- Improve search and reporting functionality
- Conduct comprehensive user surveys
- Disseminate thousands of flyers, postcards, handbills and stickers at targeted events, venues and organizations
- Support at least 50 members to create web banner, write feature articles and place Future 5000 links on their organizational websites.
Project Summary:
Future 5000 is the largest online directory and network of progressive youth groups in the country. It is designed to strengthen our networks, maximize our resources and leverage community power.
Future 5000 members get:
Ownership:
From crisis response after natural disasters to coordinating direct action for immigrant justice, members will decide how to use Future 5000. This is an especially exciting opportunity for groups without a strong independent web presence.
Access:
Organizations working on the same issues will be able to easily share information, strategies and resources. Obvious strategic alliances will be easier to build, and unlikely ones will be easier to imagine.
Recognition:
By collecting and centralizing information, Future 5000 makes member organizations easy to find. It’s like a virtual spotlight on the work our members do — work that too often goes unrecognized.
