The Extended Greater Good United Proposal
Mission Statement
Our Mission is to support, create and implement highly efficient, effective and systemic solutions to problems that cause suffering or threaten our common survival.
Section 1, A Recap of the Greater Good United Condensed Proposal.
Introduction
We are living in a time when the degree of real suffering in America and around the global is particularly serious. We do not have time to waste! We need to use our keenest intelligence to find the most efficient and effective strategies possible, if we are serious about alleviating human suffering and the threat on the long-term survival of the planet.
People need to feel assured that the time and money invested on philanthropic pursuits is well spent. Greater Good United, (GGU) is confident that this proposal directly addresses their concerns. In fact, everything in this proposal from recruitment strategies to the initiatives we choose to support has these concerns in mind.
Our First And Most Important Challenge
There is a tremendous core of talented people who are interested in serving the greater good. Our first and most important challenge is to find effective ways to pool that talent into highly efficient actions. We need people! We need more people! This is why our top priority is our Recruit-To-Recruit Initiative.
There are hundreds of thousands of people with time on their hands in retirement communities, high schools, on unemployment or disability and elsewhere. We need them and they need us! With proper planning many of these people can be recruited to work on greater good projects that not only have potential for helping to improve the economy, preserve the environment and alleviate suffering; they can also give those contributing a greater sense of happiness and meaning in their lives!
Efficiency and Effectiveness Criteria
* That all adopted strategies are supported by persuasive evidence that anticipated benefits far outweigh the projected monetary expenditure.
* That all adopted strategies are supported by persuasive evidence that benefits far outweigh the projected time expenditure.
* That all adopted strategies hold promise of motivating active participation and financial support from prospective volunteers and professionals who could render free or low cost services.
Please note: the criteria stated above is for evaluating efficacy and not necessarily a cause for accepting or rejecting a strategic proposal.
Section 2, An Example of a Proposed Low Expenditure/High Yield Project
Let’s assume that one GGU volunteer goes into a retirement community; this individual then trains ten seniors to use social networking websites for recruiting volunteers for nonprofits; on average, each senior then recruits ten volunteers. In this instance, one person will have produced one hundred other volunteers! If GGU and affiliates have highly effective initiatives to funnel these new volunteers toward, the time offered will be very well spent!
Now let’s assume that 15% of those recruited are professionals that render online and offline marketing services that improves the nonprofit’s overall visibility, thereby increasing donations and volunteered assistance. If this were factually so, one volunteer would have recruited one hundred other people; the time donated by those recruited would be well spent and a nonprofit would be receiving the assistance needed to address problems that undermine their ability to provide needed services. Furthermore, the quality of life for those ten seniors and one hundred volunteers might be significantly improved!
Section 3, The Perpetuation Model
Habitat for Humanity uses what we refer to as “The Perpetuation Model”: Houses are built and the resale profits are recycled back to support future building projects*. We propose to utilize a similar construct: Agencies receiving significant assistance from GGU would agree to either:
a. help other non-competing agencies with the knowledge and/or training acquired.
b. have a volunteer or staff person go into a retirement community, high school, or elsewhere, to attract more GGU recruiters. This model would not only increase our capacity to effectuate greater good, it would also inspire more professionals to volunteer their time and services. The greater the benefits that people believe could result from offering their time and services, the better!
Summary of Section 3
Although yet to be tested, we believe that an online and offline recruit-to-recruit effort combined with a perpetuation model holds great promise. Recruiting professional assistance for worthwhile initiatives is particularly important! Fortunately, with web 2.0 technologies, the capacity to find and network with experts in virtually any field has greatly increased!
Section 4, Online Recruiting Resources
The simplest way that elders and other volunteers can recruit support for charitable efforts is through social networking sites. This includes Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, Craigslist and others. Each of these sites offer specific benefits for mobilizing support for promising public service initiatives. Continued analysis will be required to hone our ability to make good use of these sites, along with related online marketing technologies.
Section 5, Green Energy Solutions
From our cursory research, there is good reason to assume that training for green energy jobs meets our high efficiency criteria in a number of important respects:
* Energy conservation practices are critical not only for our long-term economic stability, but also for our survival!
* A recent analysis of a highly successful energy conservation pilot project estimates that corporations such as Yahoo and Cisco will save thirty-five million dollars each over five years . The prospects of substantial savings could motivate many businesses to hire specialists from the green collar industry.
* There are several publicly funded organizations that provide relatively short-term training, i.e., six months to a year, which in turn create jobs and thereby help to stimulate the economy .
* Due to public funding, free or low cost training is available from these organizations .
* The cost of implementing certain green business practices, such as retrofitting, is relatively inexpensive .
* Energy conservation is an emerging profession, where demand could very well exceed supply within the foreseeable future due to pending Cap and Trade legislation in Congress.
* The money saved by large corporations and businesses could lead to hiring more employees and/or exhibiting a better performance on the Stock Market. Of course, these potentialities may hold true for smaller companies to a lesser degree.
Problems
Through our brief interviews with energy conservation specialists, it appears that the actual need or benefits of investing in green practices greatly outweighs the perceived need , . Consequently, qualified candidates exceed available jobs. Despite growing evidence that prudent energy and environmental practices hold promise for significant savings over time, the business sector is likely to be slow in responding to these findings.
Secondly, through our cursory research, we are not convinced that relationships between existing alliances have realized their full potential. For example, organizations focusing upon green job training programs may not be in close communication with education, marketing, public relations and sales experts; the people that are needed to convince employers to hire green collar employees or pay for green technology entrepreneurial services.
Proposed Measure
We believe that effective sales and marketing strategies are just as important when targeting the business sector, as it is when the business sector targets consumers! If this effort is poorly planned or under-funded, supply will continue to exceed demand and the proliferation and implementation of green energy technologies will be stifled. Top-notch strategic planners are needed to create proposals and top-notch grant-writers are needed to attract the funding needed to implement a full-blown green energy marketing campaign.
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How GGU Can Assist
* By providing volunteers for initiatives that are focused upon multifaceted campaigns directed at motivating green energy practices throughout the business sector and elsewhere.
* By recruiting free or low cost grant writing assistance for these initiatives.
* By recruiting a cadre of other experts to assure that green collar startup companies have the professional supervision and business training needed to be as successful as possible.
* By carefully balancing our support for short-term, mid-term and long-term green energy training programs.
* By encouraging collaboration and other beneficial relationship building initiatives whenever possible.
Section 6: Promoting Preventive Medicine For The Older Adult Population
Although public awareness of the importance of preventive medicine has grown significantly, there is still a great need to effectuate changes in the practices of older adults and their healthcare providers. Although efforts need not be limited to adults 50 or older, this is an important population to target when considering the following:
* According to the U.S. census bureau, there are close to thirty-eight million adults over the age of sixty-five , not including the older adult population between the ages of fifty to sixty-five.
* Preventive medicine has a very significant potential for reducing the cost of healthcare. For example, strength training for elders increases both muscle mass and bone density . This can dramatically reduce recovery time as a result of falls, while increasing the longevity of maintaining an independent living arrangement.
* Preventive medicine and health promotion services can significantly improve the quality of life for seniors.
* Health wellness programs can provide significant savings for assisted living facilities, retirement communities, nursing homes and families.
* Money saved by healthcare facilities that serve older adults would be significant. This could lead to hiring more employees and/or exhibiting better performance on the Stock Market, if they are a public trading company.
* Money saved by individual out of pocket costs could be better spent on other necessary expenses, products and services, which in turn would help to stimulate the economy.
Investing in preventive healthcare through funding fitness programs for older adults shows promise for the following reasons:
* The Senior Fitness Association (SFA) provides a relatively short training program. According to Mr. Grant Clark, Vice President of SFA, their program can be completed within 3-6 months .
* SFA provides low cost training programs. This is both an attractive incentive for receiving grants and encouraging program enrollment.
* The present market for fitness training for Americans over fifty is greatly underdeveloped .
* Senior health and fitness is a less competitive profession, therefore saturation in this job market is not likely to occur at any time in the foreseeable future.
Problem
Preventive health care initiatives face very similar challenges to those found within green energy organizations. Therefore, we propose the same education, sales, public relations and marketing strategies that were already discussed.
Section 7, stimulating the nonprofit and other public service sectors (PSS).
Benefits:
* Increased revenues within this sector would lead to more PPS jobs.
* Increased revenues within this sector would increase the capacity of certain agencies to provide effective career training.
* Increased revenues within this sector would lead to promoting the greater good and alleviating suffering.
* Increased revenues within this sector would lead to improved community services, which in turn would put less stress on municipal, state and federal budgets.
Problem
It is common knowledge that the PSS is suffering greatly as a result of the current economic crisis; financial support is dwindling and a continued shortage of volunteers is preventing many agencies from providing very needed services to their communities and beyond. In turn, this lessening of services increases homelessness, drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, exploitation of the environment and more. In addition to the subsequent increase in human suffering, the long-term financial impact from continued deterioration within communities is likely to be considerable.
Proposed Measure
One approach to combating the less than desirable economic impact on this sector is to find viable ways to increase their overall public visibility, which most specifically involves improving the effectiveness of their online and offline marketing efforts. For example, web 2.0 technologies are evolving far faster than the ability of this sector to learn and utilize.
An extensive campaign to better train this sector in the most effective applications of vlogging, blogging, multimedia presentations, pay-per-click advertising, social networking and search engine optimization can make an enormous difference in terms of increasing revenue, public awareness and support from volunteers. This in turn will create more agency jobs, provide better training for the unemployed, along with a host of other community benefits.
Furthermore, many agencies could benefit greatly from high quality professional assistance in numerous areas including software applications, accounting, management, product development, event planning, graphic design, cross-promotion marketing and more. With this said, our top priority is to effectively recruit the support that will stimulate this sector, which in turn will promote the greater good!
Section 8, Summary
Not only can web 2.0 technologies help those dedicated to promoting public services, it can help GGU effectively recruit the individuals that can in turn support important initiatives. Twitter, Craigslist and other social networking sites provide easy access for making ongoing online requests for volunteers. For example, on Twitter people can easily make public requests twenty to thirty times a day provided it is not for the same reason; that is a capacity that was not available to us even five years ago!
With our think-tank and implementation strategies, our objective extends far beyond recruiting volunteers. Successful efforts need to have a perpetuation model in place. Efforts at supporting important job training programs need to be coordinated with top-notch marketing efforts. We need to attract experts that are well suited to help important initiatives succeed. We recommend that we:
* adopt a recruit-to-recruit strategy and plan of action primarily through social networking websites.
* carefully choose public service efforts that have a good prospect for creating a high yield/low cost ratio.
* focus on helping nonprofits get the professional attention needed to generate greater revenue and increase public visibility.
* implement a perpetuation model to further both the extent of good created and the likelihood of getting the specific professional support needed at any given time.
* operate mostly online via forums and blogs so that we can avoid spam through the use of E-mail.
* have conference calls at least four times a year for more personal communication.
* continue using our think-tank to improve our ability to support stimulating economic measures while ameliorating other undesirable conditions.
* focus our offline recruiting efforts on situations where the potential of holding gatherings to appeal for support is possible.
Examples of this include giving talks at retirement communities, churches or schools.
* carefully consider the cost and length of programs when choosing initiatives to support.
* create a model that can be easily replicated by persons interested in supporting the greater good.
References
Habitat For Humanity (http://www.habitat.org/how/carter.aspx)
Energy Defense Fund, Environmental Defense Fund’s Climate Corps Fellows Helps Companies Save Millions, Cut Energy Use, Press Release, 12/3/2008 (http://www.edf.org/pressrelease.cfm?contentID=8892).
Tandrid Mohammed, Solar Richmond, unofficial interview, 4/17/2009.
Tandrid Mohammed, Solar Richmond, unofficial interview, 4/17/2009.
Patty Gelenberg, COWS, interview, 4/24/2009.
Tandrid Mohammed, Solar Richmond, unofficial interview, 4/17/2009.
Patty Gelenberg, COWS, interview, 4/24/2009.
U.S. Census Bureau, US Census Bureau News, US Department of Commerce, 4/10/2009. (www.census.gov).
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, (http://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/growingstronger/why/index.html)
Deborah L. Mullen, CSCS, Importance of Strength Training For Older Adults, Webpage, http://www.simplefitnesssolutions.com/articles/older_adults.htm
Mr. Grant Clark, Vice President, Senior Fitness Association, informational interview, 4/16/2009
Mr. Grant Clark, Vice President, Senior Fitness Association, informational interview, 4/16/2009
