Career guides for nonprofit job seekers

Idealist.org, a project of Action Without Borders, has published a series of guides for nonprofit career seekers and switchers, and is offering them free in PDF format: The Idealist Guides to Nonprofit Careers

Idealist Nonprofit Career Guides

The publications provide useful advice, strategies, and resources for people considering a career in the nonprofit sector, and include the following titles:

The Idealist Guide to Nonprofit Careers for First-time Job Seekers

This book is a free resource for emerging professionals pursuing their first position in the nonprofit sector. Whether you’re a current student, a recent graduate, or someone entering the workforce for the first time, this book is meant for you.

The Idealist Guide to Nonprofit Careers for Sector Switchers

This book is a free resource for transitioning professionals pursuing new career options in the nonprofit sector. If you call yourself a mid-career transitioner, a re-careerer, an encore careerist, a bridger, or a sector switcher, this book is meant for you.

Service Corps to Social Impact Career – A Companion to The Idealist Guides to Nonprofit Careers

This Companion is for prospective, current, and former participants of a wide range of service corps who want to use their service experience as a building block to their next steps. Written by Amy Potthast of Idealist.org, the book’s sections are available as free PDFs.

From Serving Your Country to Serving Your Community – An Introductory Companion to The Idealist Guides to Nonprofit Careers

This booklet is for soldiers on active duty as well as veterans who are interested in transferring their talents from service in the armed forces into a social impact career in the nonprofit sector. Written by Steven Joiner of Idealist.org, the booklet is available as a free PDF.

Hello single-stream, goodbye excuses

HR logoRecycling recently (finally) got a lot easier for residents of Haverhill, MA. Effective July 5, 2010, residents no longer need to separate paper & cardboard from glass, plastics, and metal. Instead, all recyclables can simply be thrown in the same container, then placed at the curbside for collection every other week.

No more sorting, no more Saturday trips to the Recycling Center, no more excuses!

recycling outreach packet

Sproutreach is pleased to have played a part in this exciting new program by creating the outreach materials recently mailed to city residents. Each of the city’s nearly 30,000 households was issued a packet containing a tri-fold brochure with the program’s guidelines and a tear-off collection schedule, a large sticker to label a recycling container, and a letter from the Mayor.

HaverhillRecycles.org screenshotOur studio also created a website for the program, HaverhillRecycles.org. The site is designed to serve as an online guide to the program, a collection calendar, a resource for additional information, and a place for community feedback and interaction.

The new logo we designed for Haverhill Recycling, shown above, was donated to the project as an expression of our support for this important local initiative.

The website, as well as the printed outreach materials, were all funded by Team Haverhill —the driving force behind this expanded recycling initiative. Team Haverhill is an independent, volunteer action group dedicated to making Haverhill a better place to live, learn, work and play.

Community Giving Tree Grand Opening

Community Giving Tree recycles children’s clothing and baby equipment and provides other necessities such as school supplies and toiletries to low income families in Essex County, MA.

CGT logoThe donations that they collect and distribute keep babies safe, make children feel valued, and help families achieve self-sufficiency. By putting gently used baby equipment, toys, and clothing into the hands of deserving local families, they’re also keeping these items out of the landfill.

Grand Opening Celebration: Sat., June 12
Saturday, June 12, from 10 AM to 1 PM, the nonprofit organization will celebrate the opening of their brand new Community Giving Center, located at 570 Main St, West Boxford, MA. If you’re in the area, consider stopping by to learn more about the organization’s mission and services and discover rewarding opportunities to get involved. The event will include a building dedication, tree planting, ribbon cutting, open house and tours.

Below: A bi-fold brochure that Sproutreach recently designed for Community Giving Tree
CGT brochure

Maps alive

It’s often said that every major city has a heartbeart, with a unique pulse all its own. That metaphor is made by visible by the wonderful maps produced by photographer Eric Fischer as part of his Geotaggers’ World Atlas – a data visualization project in which he plotted Flickr photos on a map, highlighting 50 major cities worldwide.

Boston, MA
Shown above is a portion of Fischer’s map of Boston. The different colors represent different modes of transportation: Black is walking (less than 7mph), Red is bicycling or equivalent speed (less than 19mph), Blue is motor vehicles on normal roads (less 43mph); Green is freeways or rapid transit (43+ mph). More black and red, please!

Immediately upon encountering these maps on the Flickr Blog, I was reminded of visual representations I’ve seen of dendrites – the branched projections of neurons that conduct electrochemical stimulation within our cells. The image shown below is from the University of Wisconsin – Madison Department of Physiology’s Binaural Physiology Lab. It shows the onset response revealed through intracellular labeling as part of the lab’s anatomical studies of brain cells. The “dendritic tree” is shown in red, along with a system of axons is shown in black.

dendritic tree

It’s always personal

JDRF Bay State websiteWhile I’ve been fortunate to have had a number of opportunities to lend my design services to the fight against Type 1 Diabetes, it’s rare that I get a venue to use my words in that effort. However, I was recently presented with just such an opportunity.

Lisa and I are honored to be featured by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation’s New England Chapter / Bay State Branch as this month’s Cure Champion. With that honor came a request to write a “profile” for their website. With so much emotion behind every keystroke, it was one of the the toughest writing assignments I’ve ever faced…and perhaps the most important.

You can read our story on the Baystate Branch’s homepage this month (look for the Cure Champion section).

Update: The JDRF website has changed since this article was written, but you can still view our story, alongside other Cure Champions, on an archived record of the page (see May 2010).