Final Post: Working on the Draft

The past few days of working on my SCORE project have been slow but productive. I am still waiting for the answers to the questions that I sent via email to Deborah Elisason, my first interview source. Hopefully she will send them later today or tomorrow, though today would be more preferable as it would give me more ample time to further rephrase my final draft. I sent her about nine questions related to nonprofit work, which are the following:

1. Why are nonprofits exempt from taxation?

2. Describe your position in SeARTS.

3. What do you believe are the qualifications for working in a nonprofit?

4. What are some recent problems that nonprofits in general have been facing?

5. What initially attracted you to joining a nonprofit?

6. What do you believe should be the general mission of all nonprofit organizations, regardless of their individual themes?

7. What are the greatest strengths of nonprofits? Weaknesses?

8. Describe the benefits that nonprofits bring to there surrounding community?  

9. What makes a nonprofit different from a regular business or corporation?

Yesterday, I was able to find a second interview source. Originally I had been planning to interview my dad, James Caviston, who is the president of SeARTS. But yesterday, because of an email sent by my dad, I called up Bob Hastings, executive director of the Cape Ann Chamber of Commerce. In our conversation over the phone, I told him that I would like to interview him as a source for my paper. He agreed to my proposition. I told him that I would send him questions via email to him, and that he would send his answers back no later than this Sunday. The questions I asked him were almost the same as the ones I sent Deborah Eliason, but included more about the CACC, which is a larger and more wide-ranging group than SeARTS. Here are the questions that I sent to Bob Hastings:

1. What is the mission of the Cape Ann Chamber of Commerce?

2. How does the CACC promote business activity and promote economic development?

3. What are the most important economic drivers in Cape Ann? What areas of business activity are growing and what ones are dwindling? 

4. What are the greatest challenges faced by the CACC in the course of its work?

5. What is the best way for a nonprofit to use the internet?

6. What do you believe are the most effective ways of advertising for a nonprofit?

7. What are the best qualifications for working in a nonprofit?

8. What initially attracted you to working in a nonprofit?

9. What are the benefits that nonprofits bring to the community?

10. How large a role does membership play in CACC's work?

Slow & Steady Progress

As the above title suggest, my work yesterday on my SCORE final draft progressed at a slow but steady rate. I started yesterday on my revisions of the text of my rough draft. I cut out sections I thought were unnecessary or were not allowed by the SCORE rubric (In this case, the use of the first-person). In particular, I looked for phrases that I had used more than once, circling them so that I could change them later. For example, I tend to over rely on usage of the words "This" and "These". Both these words were hunted down and ruthlessly circled by the iron point of my #2 pencil.

I also took the opportunity to visit the library again to look for my third book source. Though I only used four sources in my rough draft, I actually have seven sources: my SCORE project, two books, three periodicals, and a website. Due to time difficulties, I couldn't fit all of the soures into my rough draft. My visit to the library was therefore necessary to find one more book source. Fortunately, in this aspect, I was successful, as I managed to find several quotes from a book.

This left me with my interviews. I asked my dad if he would like to be interviewed, to which he agreed. Now I just needed to my second source. In my last post, I discussed the possibilty of interviewing Bob Hastings, the executive director of the Cape Ann Chamber of Commerce, as my second interview source. However, yesterday, I thought that I may try to interview Deborah Eliason, the member of the SeARTS board of directors who I had worked with on the surveys. Yesteday morning I sent her an email asking her if she would have time this to sit down for an interview. Unfortunately, as of this morning, at 7:48 AM, I have yet to hear back from her. She is undoubtfully very busy this week, but I hope that I will receive an email from her soon.

Writing the Final Draft

This week I will be fully committed to preparing the final draft of my SCORE essay. As states in the previous blog, I need to add more to my essay in order for it to be fully completed. These additions to my essay will have to include my required two interviews about the benefits of nonprofit work and at least two other sources, including another book and a periodical.

I have two specific interview in mind. The first is my dad, James Caviston, who is the president of SeARTS nonprofit organization I interned at for my SCORE project. My dad has been the president of SeARTs for almost  five consecutive years, giving him much experience and insight into nonprofit management and work. In  my opinion, he would be an invaluable source of information for the essay. The other possible interviewee is Bob Hastings, executive director of the Cape Ann Chamber of Commerce. I have met Mr. Hastings at the meeting between the city of Gloucester and representatives from the federal government two weeks ago. It had been originally suggested by my dad after the meeting was concluded that if there was no work for me at SeARTS, I could continue my research as an intern at the Chamber of Commerce. This idea did not materialize, but I was able to become familiar with the Chamber of Commerce through our introduction.

Hopefully the latter will be available this week for a full interview. Speaking of which, I still have to conceive what questions I will ask both my interviewees. Will they will the same questions? Different questions? Or a mixture of the two, depending on the nonprofit they run? Either way it is going to be a very busy week.

Finishing the Rough Draft

Today I had planned on turning in the rough draft of my SCORE essay I labored over yesterday to my SCORE advisor, Coach Marty Stephan. Unfortunately, I learned that he was not at school today, making it impossible for me to hand in my essay. This leaves me having to email my essay to him, which is also coincidentally unfortunate because I had saved the rough draft on my home desk top. It will be simple to do later, I suppose, but at the present time it is a minor annoyance. But enough of my problems; I have to relate how I long I worked on my rough draft for.

The answer to that was all day. As I mentioned before in a previous post. I had not been able to start my rough draft until Wednesday. On Wednesday, I finished about a page and a half before finishing up for the day, vowing that I would complete it on Thursday. From 9:30 on Thursday morning to 10:30 at night, I worked arduously on the rough draft. I realistically realized early on that it would not be the required 12 pages, but since it was a rough draft I didn't have to worry about that now. I also didn't have all of my sources put together, but again reasoned that I had more than enough to complete this draft and would get more for the final draft.

Overall, I probably could have been more organized in my approach to writing the paper. I did have enough sufficient quotes to make my rough draft a complete essay. What I will add on to my final draft will be quotes from interviews, which I admit I haven't done yet, and also more sources, including books and from a website/podcast/video.

Day #1: Working on the Rough Draft

Today was the first full day that I had a chance to sit down and work on the rough draft of my SCORE essay. To be frank, I found the transition to be somewhat difficult and confusing. I had been working on my SCORE project for the past four weeks and through word of mouth remembered that the rough draft is due this Friday. I feel that the seniors were not given a specific date on which they could start their rough drafts. This would have given them more time to prepare their materials and sources that they've gathered through their project and use them in the essay.  I suppose since many of my classmates have projects of different and various natures means each student would finish their project at a different date. All the same, a little more preparation would have been useful.

The current state of my rough draft is sketching out a rough draft of my rough draft. I have so far found three of the required ten sources. I plan to find more tonight and finish finding them tomorrow, when I will also start the rough draft. Since it is a rough draft, it would not, to my belief, be terrible if the essay falls short of its requirements. All the same, I would like to hand in a decent essay on Friday. If it is completed fully, then only editing the paper will be necessary. If the paper is not fully completed or just falls short of the standards, then I can just finish the paper, and then edit it for the final draft due May 23.

Latest Updates & Concerns

While reviewing my blog posts in preparation for writing my rough draft, due this Friday, I discovered that I discovered that I had only completed nine blog posts. The required amount of blog posts, as I am aware of, is fifteen, meaning that three should be have been done for each week during the project. I was surprised that I was short six blogs and checked to see what I had done wrong. I soon uncovered the problem and am now blogging about it to clarify the matter.  

If my blog posts are to be acutely followed, it is noticeable that there is a week-long gap between late April and early May. This gap occurs directly after the April 27 nonprofit organization meeting that seARTS participated in. Between the time of my next blog, which was a May 1 blog detailing the meeting, I had lapsed back into school work, which was preoccupying and time consuming. After having attended the nonprofit meeting, that I had contributed to through my work on the surveys, I seemed to find myself in a situation in which I had nothing to do. The nonprofit meeting had been one of the most important events of that month for seARTS. I am glad to have been able to be involved in the preparations for the meeting and to have participated in it first-hand. But since it was over,  there seemed to be no long-term projects that I could involve myself in. Until an opportunity came about, I waited and in the  meanwhile worked on school-related assignments.

This waiting period lasted for almost a week, during which I made no blog post since I had nothing to contribute to the project. In retrospect, I could have done more research on sources for my paper. But after my week-long hiatus, I once more became involved in seARTS through it's participation in the meetings between the federal economic assessment board and the Gloucester city government.

Federal Economic Assessment (In Depth)

As I promised two blogs ago, I will now describe the Economic Assessment Meeting held at the Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester between a federal delegation, the mayor, and numerous nonprofit organizations, in greater depth. As stated before, the delegation was in Gloucester to determine the economic state of the city. As I also said before, this was, as I believe, the first time that the city of Gloucester had directly asked the federal government for financial aid, making it a significant event in the city's history. I won't be able to supply direct answers for each question asked, especially for the above question, but I can supply many of the questions asked.

After everyone in attendance had briefly explained who they were, the order of business was a discussion about the different aspects of the economic situation of Gloucester. One of the first questions that was asked by the board was about art colonies in Gloucester, specifically whether there were any. It was explained about there were a number of art colonies, most notably the Rocky Neck Art Colony.

The next question asked by the board was how the market shares of Gloucester would be characterized. Gloucester, it turns out, currently ranks 33rd in state market shares, not a positive sign. The concept of a "creative economy", a diverse economy, was discussed, and what were the measures Gloucester was enacting to do so.  Strategies for building up the infrastructure were also discussed, particularly by Chamber of Commerce head Bob Hastings. Because of the lack of infrastructure and attractive business, many residents had been leaving Gloucester in droves. This, as a consequence, has deprived the city of much needed revenue.

Hastings used a quote to describe Gloucester's situation: "We have seen the enemy and he is us". This about sums what was unanimously agreed upon in the meeting: Gloucester is in the economic dump, to phrase it nicely, a lot of it the fault of poor handling by the city government and the residents of Gloucester. The mood of the meeting, however, was very optimistic, much like the meeting I attended last week. That is a positive sign that cooperation to work toward the economic benefit of Gloucester is unanimous by all parties involved.

SeARTS Meeting of the Artists

Yesterday, I blogged that I would go into more detail about the meeting between the federal government economic assessment, the mayor of Gloucester, and the representatives of nonprofit organizations in Cape Ann. However, for this blog post I want to concentrate on another event that happened later that same afternoon and that also was in the same place, the Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester. It was an event that I was able to attend, making it my second time that day I had been at the Cape Ann Museum.

This event was a part of the month long "Partner with an Artist" event that is taking place across all of the Cape Ann. This particular event, sponsored by seARTS, was "PWA 2011 Artists and Partners", in which a group of individual artists gave a presentation about a recent project they had been working on. Each artists came with a group that was helping to sponsor their project.

The first to present was Elizabeth Harty with the Rockport Council on the Aging, showing off her collages comprised of her own art and pictures from 19th century Gloucester. Next up were Kristen Miller and Rob Newton with The Annie and Alchemy Cafe & Bistro, presenting the introduction of a documentary about the WPA murals in Gloucester during the Great Depression they titled "No More Gloomy Sundays". Notably, Kristen Miller, a celloist, composed the music for the film. After that was Abby Ytzen with Capt. Joe & Sons, showing her drawn illustrations of native fish. John Tagiuri with Gloucester Marine Railways presented pictures of old fishing vessels he had taken as a project for the Library of Congress. Last to present was Susan Erony with the Gloucester Writers Center, Ten Pound Island Books and the Sawyer Free Library, explaining how she had been studying local poetry and was inscribing passages from some poems onto bricks.

After the presentations were completed, a Q&A session began with the audience. After this, a member of seARTS who had been acting as MC through the night make an interesting point that I would like to include here. She said that if it wasn't for funding from nonprofit organizations, these artists would be unable to follow their passions and pursue their own artistic projects. This goes to show the effect nonprofits such as seARTS can have on the artistic community of Cape Ann. It also shows the passion that each individual artists had for their work, and how support from nonprofits is essential to help keeping them working.

"History in the Making"

Today I was once more a participant in another meeting which seARTS participated in. Unlike last weeks meeting, however, this one involved members of the federal government, making it much more significant. This meeting was a part of a three day economic assessment made by the US Department of of Commerce and hosted by the city government. The fourth meeting of day, according to the official schedule, it was held at at the Cape Ann Museum, located on 27 Pleasant Street in Gloucester, making it an appropriate location for the economic issues that would be discussed there. Other groups and nonprofits, besides seARTS, were the Tourism e-Board, City of Gloucester Committee for the Arts, seARTS, the Cape Ann Chamber of Commerce, and the Mass Cultural Council. The meeting was open to the public.

Originally, the meeting was set up to have the thirteen-member panel sit in a semi-circle facing a row of seats. However, there were not enough people there to fill all the seats so it became more convient to have the nonprofit and group representatives just move their own chairs to make it an open circle discussion. The meeting was opened by Gloucester Mayor Carolyn Kirk, who gave a brief summary of why the meeting was taking place. Next, the federal board panel introduced themselves and the positions that they held in the federal government. All of them worked in bureaucratic agencies and, as established later, all but four had been to Gloucester before. After that, introductions were made all around and then the meeting commenced.

I won't go into great detail aobut what went on during the two hour meeting. Perhaps tomorrow's blog. What was discussed was, in short, the need for aid to Gloucester by the federal government. After the meeting, I discussed this with my dad, who said that this was history in the making for Gloucester. Gloucester had always historically been very self-sufficient, due to a booming fishing industry and the prescence of other business' in the city. But no one will deny that for the past few decades, Gloucester has been on a steady economic decline. Corporations and business' have left, fishing has suffered tremendously for a variety of factors, all of which caused a decline in the population, and a very non-flattering reputation. That Gloucester needs federal money to be able to bring back prosperity is a sure sign of the desperate state that the city is currently in.

Post-Meeting

I am glad to have been able to participate in the nonprofit organizations meeting held on Wednesday. To be to able to learn more about these different organizations in the Cape Ann area and listen to their ideas and perceptions was invaluable to the thesis of my SCORE project. There were some members who spoke out aloud, tossing out ideas and potential projects, adding a touch of humor to their dialogue. There were those who preferred to remain silent and passively listen, occasionally speaking up for a instance to give out an idea. The atmosphere remained positive and optimistic, with few to none disagreements or arguments. The mutual feeling at the end of the meeting was that much had been accomplished. Perhaps I've mentioned this before, but it was unanimously decided that such these nonprofit meetings would be held "quarterly", that is, twice a month.

At the end of the meeting, I took some me some brochures that had been handed out, as well as copy of the meeting's schedule. The brochures were from some of the organizations present at the meetings. I believe that these could be very useful for my project. They would be a good source of citation, if I wish to use one of these organizations as an example of the typical nonprofit.

This week, I may be able to attend another seARTs meeting. There are, to my knowledge, two meetings, one on Monday, the other the next day, which I can participate in with my Dad, who as president of seARTS, will be attending.

Nonprofit Meeting

Today I had my first hands-on experience of my SCORE project by observing the annual seARTS sponsored semi-annual cultural organization partners meeting. Most of these groups were based in Cape Ann and in surrounding areas. The meeting was held in a room in the lower part of the Sawyer Free Library in Gloucester. I was seated next to Deborah Eliason, the member of the board of directors whom I sent the survey information to the night before. Before I made myself comfortable, my dad told me to pass out the the meeting's schedule and also a paper listing the organizations present, their email addresses, events they were sponsoring and the dates, and the contact info of the organization presidents.

The meeting began a little after 12 in the afternoon. It commenced with everyone at the table sharing their name, organization they represented, and briefly summarized the purpose and mission of that group. I was the last to speak. I briefly summarized why I was there and what exactly what SCORE was all about. After this was done, Deborah beside me began reading the survey report I had sent her the night before. It is a strange sensation to listen to words you had written the night before be delivered by another person. I felt at that moment like a speechwriter, which I technically was.

For the next two hours, I listened silently to people from different backgrounds but with a similar goal: to bring cultural spotlight onto Cape Ann. The atmosphere of the meeting was positive and optimistic. People were constantly pitching new ideas and projecting more could be done. I won't go into extreme detail about what was discussed, but it left me with a good understanding and estimate about how meetings such as these occur.

Eventful Week Ahead

Today has been, I have to admit, one of the most strenuous, stress-filled days of my project. This was due to having to balance my schoolwork and the pressing needs of my SCORE assignment. While I have had difficulties in fitting time in for my SCORE project because of classroom requirements, today seemed almost unbearable. I spent the whole morning looking for sources for an English essay I'm already behind on, staring at a computer all day and feeling like my mind would turn completely numb with exhaustion, and then having to work non-stop ALL afternoon on SCORE, which I had been already working on already this morning.

But I digress. Today has also been a very important day in regards to my SCORE project. Tomorrow, seARTS will be sponsoring the Semi-annual Cultural Organization Partners Meeting. My work on the surveys for the past two weeks has been gathering the data that will be presented for this event. This afternoon, I have been in contact via email with a member of the seARTS board of directors, Deborah Eliason, whom I had met last week and discussed my work with seARTS. I originally sent her an email asking how she would like me to categorize the data that I was preparing for the meeting. Deborah responded by asking me to fill out questions that she would need by tomorrow. Using the data from the surveys and notes I have taken during this time. I managed to complete this in good time. Tomorrow, I plan on attending the event and watching the data I scrutinized over be presented to seARTS and to the nonprofit community. 

The 3rd post

Last week, I had planned to do the required three post; plans that were soon dashed out of my mind by my trip to the University of New Hampshire in Durham. As you may expect, I soon forgot about my blog post, and only remembered today that I had not completed the third post. So be that as it may, I am now completing my third blog that should have been done last week.

This week is a school holiday, meaning that SCORE, being a school project, is officially put on hold for the time being. However, I plan to continue with my project, due to the nature of the work I am doing. As I was doing last week, I will be copying down surveys that were filled out at seARTS events. Completing the surveys this week will  be important because of the upcoming Nonprofit meeting being held in Gloucester on April 27. It is my hope that the data that I am abstracting will be of use to seARTS. Using this data, seARTS can plan ahead for regional strategies to help promote the organization and to formulate new fund-raising events. As I commented on before, I want to attend this meeting and observe firsthand how nonprofits collaborate together and function as a whole.

So I will continue to hammer at at the mound of surveys that lie placidly on the right side of my working desk. Most of these surveys are in vanilla folders, making them hard to distinguish unless the contents are closely inspected. Never the less, they will be my constant companions for the rest of this projected murky week.

And the work goes on...

On this rainy Wednesday, I continued to pour over seARTS surveys and write down the info I could obtain from it. To fully abstract the data, I had to carefully examine the parts of the surveys that I needed to copy down. I begin this process by selecting a stack of surveys that came from a particular seARTS related event. I next write down the questions asked on the survey on separate sheets of paper. The questions that I write down are the multiple choice questions that make up most of a survey. After recording the number of surveys in that stack. I go through each survey and tally up the responses for each individual question asked on the survey.

 This can be a very, very, long process. If is often very time consuming, for a number of reasons. The number of surveys can range from about 13 to 54 (actual numbers). As a result, much time is spent having to look through each one, a problem that is compounded by accidentally overlooking questions and having to count through the stack again. Deciphering the handwriting of the surveyed can also be quite the task. For as many legible surveys, there is twice the amount of illegible ones. Often someone will have misinterpreted a question and either will write an unhelpful comment on it or add what appears at first to be some sort of ink graffiti but is really just unreadable gibberish.

An important word is that tomorrow, I am having a meeting with a women who has a law office in Gloucester. She and I will discuss data and statistical analysis, which I hope will be beneficial toward my SCORE project.

April 11- Day #1

Today was the first official day of of my SCORE assignment. For my project, I am working at a non-profit organization in Gloucester called seARTS (Society for the Advancement of the Arts), which helps to support local artists and promote cultural activities across Cape Anne. My own connection to seARTS is through my dad, who was a member of this organization and, a while ago, became president of seARTS. I have previously been to seARTS events, but the main focus of my project is obtaining a greater understanding of how a non-profit organization runs and functions.

Since it was the first day on the job, I spent some considerable time organizing a project that I will be working on for the rest of the week. My work place for the time being is pretty convenient; around 500 yards away from the school at my dad's house. From there I have been working at abstracting the data on filled out seARTS surveys that were collected from participants in seARTS-sponsored events. The work is very time-consuming: the survey that I spent today doing was 53 pages long. At the longest, completing a whole page took about a minute long. This was the only survey that I completed today, but it was mostly because of the other preoccupation's that I had with school and other aspects of the assignment.

Beside the surveys, I also planned ahead for the rest of April. One my aims for this project is to involved in seARTS events. Later this month, I learned from my dad, there is going to be conference among nonprofit organizations, a meeting which seARTS will be a part of. A contribution I can make to this could be through my data collection. Another detail to this assignment will be learning how to operate an Excel software program, which has a spreadsheet application. Using a spreadsheet, I can organize the extracted date more clearly than writing it down and also make pattern arranges to it that can categorize every part of the survey.