good2gether

Atlanta 2day.

Man.  I've been in Atlanta a lot in the last couple of months.  Back again today and tomorrow for brand, nonprofit, and media meetings.

Find good to do!

Atlanta Do Good Channel at ajc.com/The Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Boston Do Good Channel at boston.com/The Boston Globe.

San Francisco Do Good Channel @ SFGate.com/The San Francisco Chronicle.

Go.  Look.  Do good!

Baltimore, MD.

Taking off first thing from the hotel in DC and heading over to Baltimore for meetings with:

• Humane Society of Baltimore County
• Big Brother Big Sister of Central Maryland
• Business Volunteers Unlimited
• Baltimore Community Foundation
• Association of Fundraising Professionals Maryland
• The Baltimore Sun

From the Corporation for National and Community Service.

On volunteering in America:

• People who live in mid-sized American cities are more likely to volunteer than residents of big cities. The average volunteer rate for mid-sized cities for 2004 to 2007 was nearly 30 percent, three percentage points higher than the average for big cities.

• College towns are hot spots for volunteering. College towns tend to be home not only to many students with strong volunteering habits, but also a lot of highly educated adults. People who graduate from college and seek higher degrees tend to volunteer more than others, research has found. The three top mid-sized cities for volunteer rates — Provo, Utah (64 percent); Iowa City (45 percent); and Madison, Wisc. (42 percent) — are all college towns.

• Utah had the highest volunteering rate in the nation, almost 44 percent, while California had the largest total number of volunteers, 6.3 million.

• While volunteer rates in most states stayed the same or dipped slightly from 2006 to 2007, volunteering grew in other states such as Georgia, Louisiana, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota.

• People are traveling long distances to volunteer. More than 3.7 million Americans, about 6 percent of all volunteers, worked without pay for charitable causes at least 120 miles from their homes last year, including 1.1 million people who traveled overseas. The trend is especially pronounced in the region devastated by Hurricane Katrina. At least one-quarter of Mississippi’s volunteers and one-fifth of Louisiana’s volunteers last year were out-of-state residents.

• Women volunteer more than men, and working women have the highest volunteer rate. About 29 percent of women volunteered last year, compared with roughly 23 percent of men. Women with children and women who work have higher volunteer rates than other women.

Houston, TX.

Meetings in Houston today with the Greater Houston Community Foundation, Volunteer Houston, the YMCA of Greater Houston, and Association of Fundraising Professionals, Houston Chapter.

San Antonio, TX.

Meeting today with Big Brother Big Sister of South Texas, San Antonio Area Foundation, Nonprofit Resource Center of Texas, and the United Way of San Antonio & Bexar County.

The driving to Houston for more meetings tomorrow.

Boston to Austin to San Antonio to Houston to Boston.

Down to Texas this week to work on the Do Good launches in Austin, San Antonio, and Houston, and then back to Boston on Friday for more meetings.

Articles at Boston.com linking to Do Good.

Neat.

The editors at Boston.com have linked from two online articles back to the Do Good Channel.  This is so powerful for nonprofits - read and Do Good.  Take a look:

Tuned In - Evidence that black-throated warblers use the grapevine to pick nesting sites upends conventional wisdom

Make way for puffins, terns, and laughing gulls

This is the power in our model - an article moves you, interests you, makes you want to do something.  Now you can.  You can Do Good.

Great volunteering opportunity – Dorchester Arts Collaborative.

This sounds like a terrific event and a great opportunity to volunteer for the arts. Check it out here.

Total Newspaper Readership Grows. Yeah for us and our nonprofit partners!

From MediaDailyNews - Total Newspaper Readership Grows

For all the gloom in the newspaper industry, total readership--including Web site visitors--is increasing, according to Mediamark Research and Intelligence, which found a 2.1% increase in audience size to 80.6 million between spring 2007 and spring 2008. The survey was performed by MRI for the Newspaper National Network in the top 100 media markets.

Importantly, this figure includes unduplicated online readers, counting each person who reads both newspapers and online just once.

According to the Newspaper Association of America, the total unique audience for newspaper Web sites reached 66.4 million in the first quarter of 2008--12.3% greater than the same period in 2007. Visitors generated 3.1 billion page views in the first quarter, up from 3 billion last year.

Read the whole thing here.

And here's my comment - NICE!  This validates our newspaper-centric approach. 

Now imagine 1% or 3% or 5% or 15% or more of those page views with the connect2cause widget appearing alongside…that's an astonishing asset to put to work for nonprofits and for our brand sponsors.