AmeriCorps VISTA is the national service program designed specifically to fight poverty. VISTA members commit to serve full-time for a year at a nonprofit organization or local government agency, working to fight illiteracy, improve health services, create businesses, strengthen community groups, and much more. With passion, commitment, and hard work, VISTAs create or expand programs designed to bring individuals and communities out of poverty.

Americorps VISTA has partnered with Points of Light Institute and HandsOn Network, based in Atlanta, Georgia to create HandsOn Tech. This program aimed at sustainable technology capacity building for nonprofits incorporates 24 VISTAs in seven cities, all with the shared focus of using technology to make organizations more efficient and more effective in supporting their mission.

Our 2011 Americorps VISTA Nonprofit Technology Capacity Building Program will offer a set of no-cost trainings across the Bay Area focusing on a range of ways to integrate online campaigning, social media and internet tools and best practices into existing organizational campaigns and nonprofit programs.

• eCampaigning Best Practices and Emerging Tactics
• Email For Advocacy and Community Organizing: Basics, Essentials, and Best Practices
• Web Sites For Advocacy and Community Organizing: Basics, Essentials, and Best Practices

The Aspiration mentoring methodology is based on both experience and philosophy which dictate that effective online advocacy derives from the following time-honored, process-driven activities: setting goals, developing a strategic plan, selecting appropriate tools, allocating human resources, following sustainable, well-defined processes for communicating online.

Our upcoming year will be shaped and informed by the above framework, and strives to translate it into well-defined processes with clear steps for implementation.

In addition to peer to peer learning, we are engaging knowledgeable, skills-based volunteers in the Bay Area to connect with nonprofits around their needs and interests.

We welcome comments, suggestions and any other feedback. Please address all correspondence to help@aspirationtech.org.

The program is currently seeking organizations who would like to engage in a conversation about their tech challenges and hopes. Your input helps us to shape our program on how to best serve nonprofits in the Bay Area with their online communications and tech support needs. We will take this information and use it to craft a plan for supporting and strengthening nonprofit organizations in the Bay Area in relation to their eAdvocacy and online communications skills.

• you are interested in attending no-cost trainings focused on organizational online communications
• have a venue (office, conference room, community center) that could host a training and allow other organizations to gather together
• you know other organizations that might be interested in being included

If interested, please email us at help@aspirationtech.org

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We welcome comments, questions, suggestions and any other feedback. Please address all correspondence to help@aspirationtech.org, or call us at 415-839-6456.

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