Asian Arts Initiative Journal #2
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Since Betsy was not going to be in Monday and President’s Day, we arranged that I would come in Wednesday this week and next week. When we met today, we went over my schedule, including helping out this Friday at the MANTRA open mic event. Betsy updated me on several different things going on. The save-the-date postcards for the annual fundraising banquet (of which I received some to distribute) and the search that just started for a new position, Director of Development and an internal search for a new program assistant. I also brought up the possibility of outsourcing the AAI’s email through a recent initiative through Google. I had sent an email to Betsy earlier this week and was pretty excited about the possibilities for the organization, since it would simplify the current email setup and offer more possibilities/functionality. I had hoped that we could at least apply for the (free) program, but Betsy said that she would have to discuss it at the staff meeting.
It was somewhat surprising to hear this since I thought it was a relatively straightforward matter to sign up, since it wouldn’t be a commitment. I had forgotten that even small organizations have specific channels for making decisions.
Betsy and I worked using the database software some more to estimate a better idea of how many people will need to be called during the call-a-thon on Wednesday evening. We also discussed the details of when the calling would take place and by whom. I spent much of the afternoon rewriting the script for the call-a-thon. I found it was hard to switch to the mode of writing for a telephone call, as Betsy had to point out, many of the phrases or sentences I was using would be awkward on the phone or didn’t reflect regular speech patterns.
I also had the task of investigating the possibility of setting up a mailing list for the participants in the Artists’ Exchange program, which one of the board members had suggested we set up (modeled after another organization’s mailing list). I looked around on the web-interface for the mail setup and found some mentions of mailing lists but no actual way to add them, so I called the customer service number of the company. After spending a long time on hold with someone (who seemed very confused by my request), I was told that they didn’t offer that functionality. I’ll have to look into other, outside possibilities that still allow the “asianartsinitiative.org” tag to be visible.
