Category Archive: Social responsibility
“Southern Fried Design-a-thon” report
Two Emma designers were on hand to help a non-profit.
How 24 hours and two Emma designers helped reinvent a Nashville non-profit’s brand.
On July 24, both Jimmy Thorn and Elizabeth Williams, superstar Emma designers, stepped away from creating email templates and designs for Emma customers and took on a new design challenge.
The trick? This one came with a 24-hour crunch. They teamed with more than 30 other creatives at CoLab Nashville (and several rounds of 5-hour energy drinks) to create a new logo, marketing strategy, website, video package, brochure and social media presence for the Nashville non-profit YouthTurns, a program through Reconciliation Ministries. It’s a group that does tremendous work to serve and support kids whose parents are in prison.
Why do it?
Jimmy loved the challenge. A fresh project, a blank canvas and a zealous group of creatives collaborating. Some good fried chicken and unlimited drinks didn’t hurt either.
Elizabeth was a bit more skeptical. Social Media Club passed along the information, but with tons of deserving causes, why pick this one? But then she attended a meeting where a young boy walked in and tugged at her heart strings. He described his life with both parents in prison, and how Reconciliation Ministries provided a support structure that encouraged him to refuse the life that his parents had chosen for themselves. Today, he’s a college graduate.
How did it pan out?
The pressure was on. The brainstorming sessions began at 11 a.m. Saturday, when Jimmy and Elizabeth split off with a group of six to focus on the name and brand identity. After a brief fire alarm interruption at 5 a.m. and some Jimmy Hendrix breakthrough tunes, they were still going. They still had to finalize the new look of the website.
The whole Design-a-thon team huddled back Sunday morning. Amidst the yawns and snores were satisfied smiles and a sense of accomplishment. After $80,000 worth of donated support and service, this hometown non-profit had a new identity — YouthTurns — plus a communication strategy and hub for donors, mentors and deserving children to access information and contribute to the cause. They had a new, sophisticated logo and brand design. And a new site that entices donors and supporters to stay connected and keep contributing.
And remarkably, the hodgepodge of designers, coders and marketers established a brand with a plan in 24 hours, pushing their boundaries and stretching their creative limits. And now they can more effectively help improve young peoples’ lives, breaking the cycle of imprisonment. Not bad for one night’s wake.
Want to learn more?
You can find opportunities to donate, volunteer or get involved with YouthTurns online. Take a minute to get to know these guys and the fantastic work they’re doing.
GeekforGood.net, CoLab Nashville and Social Media Club Nashville collaborated to make this event happen, so keep an eye on those groups if you’re in the Nashville area and would like to join in next time.
You can also read more about how Emma gives back to our community and to causes we care about here.
What about you? Do you or your colleagues give back with your creative efforts? What’s been your experience?
A Nashville nonprofit mobilizes volunteers after a flood
When Nashville endured record-high rainfall and flooding over this past weekend, Hands On Nashville recognized that relief efforts would need to be large in scale and swift. Josh Corlew, HON’s Emergency Preparedness Manager, sent a series of email campaigns urging folks to get involved and showing them where – and how – they could donate time or money. You can see recent campaigns here and here.
In a crisis that is being declared a federal disaster, Hands on Nashville is using the immediacy of email and social networking to their advantage: updating supporters when volunteer positions have filled, posting ongoing needs and keeping the spirit of urgency alive.
Of course, all of us at Emma are paying special attention to how nonprofits are helping during the flood since our main office is in Nashville. And we’re pleased to have Hands On Nashville as one of our customers. But most of all, we’re thrilled to see email and social networking sites play such a practical role in communicating, bringing people together and helping solve problems during a crisis.
A few ways to follow and support Hands On Nashville’s efforts:
+ Sign up to receive their email newsletters
+ Follow them on Twitter (@HONashville)
+ Check out their current volunteer opportunities
You can also text “REDCROSS” to 90999 to donate $10 to relief efforts in Nashville.
By the way, Emma designer Taylor Schena designed the flood-edition Hands On Nashville stationery pictured above.
Happy Earth Day!
It’s Earth Day, and as such, it seems like an appropriate day to recognize just how much paper — and how many trees — the Emma Community helps to save each and every month by sending email newsletters and campaigns instead of printing ‘em.
If everybody in the Emma community printed a campaign for each recipient instead of sending an email, here’s how that paper would add up in just a single month:
+ Stacked end to end, the paper would cover the distance of a three round-trips between New York and Paris.
+ Folded into little origami swans, those little origami swans would form a line as long as the Earth’s diameter.
+ Turned magically from paper into pocket-sized Etch-a-Sketches, we would be able to give everybody in Finland 27 pocket-sized Etch-a-Sketches.
+ The Finns just really like to doodle, is all.
And if that weren’t enough, the Emma Community has helped us plant more than 55,000 trees since we first starting planting 5 trees for each new customer back in December of 2007. Here’s one last number to ponder, then: If each of those 55,000 trees were turned into a small squirrel, then that would be kinda uncool, because squirrels are neat and all but we’d rather have the trees.
How are you celebrating Earth Day? Share your favorite environmental causes in the comments, and here’s to making the world a little shadier, in a good way.
Support relief work in Haiti with your email campaigns.
Invite your email subscribers to be a part of the relief efforts in Haiti. Emma’s endlessly talented graphic designers put together a suite of donation badges that are yours to add to your next email campaign. Here’s how it works:
1. Download the badge that suits your style.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2. Add it to your email campaign.
3. Link it to this donation page we’ve put together with the help of the fine people at Network for Good:
http://www1.networkforgood.org/emma-haiti-relief, or pair it with your own program.
There you have it, and here’s to doing some good with our email campaigns.
Give back with a vote — help decide this year’s Emma 25 honorees.
Every year, we award free Emma email and survey service to small, deserving non-profits that our customers tell us about.
Today, the nominations are in — over 100 fantastic groups doing fantastic work around the world — and we’re asking *you* to vote for your five favorite groups anytime between now and the end of January.
Vote now at www.myemma.com/emma25, and tell folks you know to get involved in the giving back good times, too.
Here’s to sending some email and doing some good!
Nominate a deserving nonprofit for free Emma email marketing service!
When we say it’s the most wonderful time of the year ’round these parts, we’re talking about Emma 25 time. It’s the annual program (now in its sixth year) where we team up with our customers to award free Emma service to deserving non-profits — 25 around the world, and 25 in the cities Emma calls home (Nashville, Portland, Denver and Austin).
If you’re an Emma customer, why not nominate your favorite non-profit for free email marketing and survey services from Emma? It’s a fantastic way to help those groups use email to stay in touch with volunteers, find donations, send newsletters, manage events and more.
Come early January, we’ll post all the eligible groups and invite the whole world to vote for their favorites. But for *your* favorite group to be an honoree, *you’ve* got to nominate ‘em.
It just takes a few minutes, and you’ll have that warm, fuzzy feeling that no amount of delicious gingerbread lattes can rival. Go on and get to nominating!
Now students in Wisconsin can sharpen their pencils – and their minds
During this year’s SXSWi, Emma asked participants to help decide which 40 classrooms to help through DonorsChoose.org, an organization that helps fund classroom projects that fall outside public school budgets.
One such request came from Ms. F., who teaches math, science and reading to 44 sixth-graders in Wisconsin. In her classroom, there are two pencil sharpeners, one of which doesn’t work well, the other of which just doesn’t work. It takes two students to sharpen a pencil here, as one holds the broken sharpener steady while the other turns the crank.
Ms. F. appealed to DonorsChoose.org, asking for a pencil sharpener. Her students, she wrote, have great potential despite many obstacles: they’ve run out of glue for science fair boards, they don’t have enough graph paper to practice graphs in math and have no poster paper for group presentations. Plus, they share a limited number of pencils.
“The truth is, I teach in a rough neighborhood,” wrote Ms. F. “My students put up with more disappointment than they should have to and I would love to provide everything for them but, unfortunately, that is not possible. What we’re asking for is a working pencil sharpener and a few other basic supplies that will make our day run just a little bit more smoothly.”
Emma and others helped fulfilled her $276 request. Here’s what she wrote in response:
“Thank you SO much for funding my project! These resources are going to greatly enhance the learning in my classroom. Not having to send students to other rooms to sharpen their pencils or try, desperately, to manipulate our broken pencil sharpener is going to be wonderful. You don’t realize how amazing a working pencil sharpener is until you don’t have one. :)
“People like you who are so willing to help out students in need truly amaze me. There are so many people in these students’ communities and lives who are not even willing to support them and here you are, strangers to them, and more than willing to put their needs in front of your own. I hope you know how much your generosity is appreciated.”
Working with DonorsChoose.org is just one of the ways Emma gives back. Click here to learn more. See the full list of classrooms we helped fund here. And learn how you can sponsor your *own* classroom project here.
Emma is a member of the Email Sender & Provider Coalition and the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group.
Copyright © 2003 - 2010 Emma. All rights reserved.