November 19, 2009

Attendees: Betsey Rubin, Christine Kenny, Dan Bassil, Jenné Myers, Karl Androes, Michael Ban, Paul Nakin, Mary Ellen Schneider, Molly Topper, Sarah Rossi, Jennifer Bricker and Devon Lovell.

Karl Androes led an exercise on groups determining the focus for our common challenges and what ways we might want to collaborate as a group.

We came up with the following as our top focus:

Tangible Resources

Advocacy

Funding

Evaluation

Creative Problem Solving

From our fun sticky notes:

Tangible Resources:

Share physical space

Sharing great resources for curriculum

Streamline Services

Collaborate Association Management Software

Collaborate on Trainings/workshops for students

Collaborate on Back office Expenses

Training materials/ Parents & Tutors

Use the web to tell story and educate the public

Share Contacts

Balance resources with programs to maximize impact

Provide materials to families to support students at home

Advocacy:

Marketing Campaign

Generate awareness

Mutual Referrals and “planting seeds”

Funding:

Enlarge the funding “pie” for literacy

Resources

Building Individual donor base

Evaluation:

Sharing evaluation techniques

Finding the best tools for evaluating reading gains

What serves us vs. what serves funders

Translating literacy into funder-friendly information

Creative Problem Solving:

Work together with our students

Share ideas

Network

Collaborate with peers so our collective efforts help us solve more problems

Knowledge sharing – what works?

Share best practices

Partnerships & Collaborations

Engage all members in storytelling and relationship building

Additional Conversation/Action Points:

Check to Paul Nakin for $50 for website

Send Paul updates to site

Check out www.chicagoliteracy.org

Think about state, federal & city dollars for the bigger pie

Taproot Foundation for Marketing – Mike Ban