Barb's Plague Journal

Backlog

Items for later

• Gitbooks: more comics; add a printout (optional) as suggested by Linda. 

• Create LinkedIn Page for NG; connect buffer to post there too.

• Download data from Stripe and import into QB; this may be helpful reference. 

• Make sure that people can be members NG and are getting blog posts and so on.

• Post lesson plans on various outlets!

• Reply to Liliana

• Track how many people visit a page or download things using google analytics for docs in Drive, and Wix somehow.

Thursday 5/7

• Watched the PPP webinar by Paychex recommended by our banker. CARES Act signed March 27. April 16th: SBA reached $349B authorization level. Congress authorized additional money, and House approved 4/23; Trump signed 4/24 I think. Additional $310B for PPP, and $10B for administrative expenses. $50B for underserved areas and smaller community banks. Separate from PPP, $60B for EIDL program. $100B for hospitals and testing.

  • Loan request must be necessary to support the ongoing operations. We certify that in good faith.

Wednesday 5/6

Various items over the past week or two:

• Confirmed received $12,066 from PPP, and $3000 from EIDG

• Sent out updated contracts to allow hourly work

• Started taking course on project-based learning from modelteaching.com

• Talked to Katie Simes today

• Planned out proposed work hours through the rest of the year. May want to expand the furlough while the $600 extra amount is available if we don't have programs to delivery in July.

• Looked at grants.

Saturday 4/25

• Worked with Dave to finalize the MA charity application, two PC reports, and the 990 for 2019. Reviewed MA unemployment insurance.

• Received $500 from the SOS Foundation; need to enter it into QB & write thank you letter

Friday 4/24

• Applied for loan with Kabbage & connected bank account; was denied by Funding Circle and would like to write them to find out why

• Sent Ethan some info for DUA UI

• Got $100 donation from Linda Fobes; need to enter it into QB & write thank you letter

• Dave made progress on D&O insurance; has a little more to do.

Thursday 4/23

• Added member roles: Volunteer, Board, Staff. Thought might use these to restrict docs pages. 

• Added key docs to website for logged-in members to view. Things related to 501(c)(3) status: bylaws, articles of incorporation, tax filings (990), annual reports. Emailed board asking them to join the site as members. Finished at least a draft of 2019 annual report and uploaded it.

• Worked on adding opportunities to grantseeker. I think this will be a good simple way for us to track grant opportunities. Free.

2h

Wednesday 4/22

• Talked with Ethan and Jen about unemployment insurance etc.

• Prepared 990 (tax returns) for 2019 and MA filings (charity application and PC forms for 2018 and 2019)

• Talked to Meghan who wanted reference for Charles Flannery

• Talked to a bookkeeper but decided not to move forward; can handle it ourselves.

6h

Tuesday 4/21

• Finished 2019 financial statements & sent to board

Monday 4/20

• Spent hours trying to apply for $5k grant that was overwhelmed. Never got into the site.

• Talked to Keegan who is going to create more neighborhood courses.

• Ran payroll. $0 :-(

4h

Weekend 4/18-19

• Worked on financials with Dave; getting Quickbooks up to date 

• Sent thank you notes to some donors

8h

Thursday 4/16

Done:

• Set up google analytics for Wix website (which also has its own analytics), and the two gitbooks.

• Did some more reading and note-taking in the orienteering references gitbook

• Sent email to CSB asking about PPP loan. Heard from Cambridge Savings Bank: no PPP loan. In queue for when they pick up again. Talked to Doug; he recommended making sure CSB has everything and is ready to push the button; and consider applying elsewhere.

• Sent email to insurance agent asking about D&O insurance. Heard back; forwarded to the Daves.

• Created comic strip for lesson 2 of at-home orienteering. Set up FB, Insta and blog posts on it. 

• Looked into whether people will be notified about the blog post on Wix. Members get notified. However, there are two Subscriber lists that we have and I don't know which gets notified. I manually added barb.bryant@orienteeringusa.org to the Subscribers one, to see if I get the blog post tomorrow morning. (Check!) Generally, people are EITHER members OR subscribers. That is confusing. Do we want members? Do we want subscribers? Do we want someone to be both? See this spreadsheet for all our subscribers and members. Sent email to Harkadors to have them become members.

• Tried to figure out how to set up an Event (Drawing Isometric Maps). Still have to decide whether we're using Wix video (would like to do that bc it comes with our thing) or Zoom (would need to stick to 40min or purchase subscription). Setting up Wix video is a little complicated; need to be more awake to figure that out.

6h

Wednesday 4/15

To do: 

• write D Gibbs with info on D&O insurance status

Accomplished:

• Thanked two new donors (Bermans and Peggy Dickison)

• Got email saying we did not get the Verizon LINC grant (55k applicants; 250 finalists)

• Read and responded to email from Orienteering Canada / AOA. In so doing, reread the AOA materials for teaching kids (which are excellent), and documented them in a new gitbook about orienteering education around the world. Added some other stuff to it and did more research going down the rabbit whole.

• Idea: AOA curriculum - use their games in our curriculum in response to suggestions to keep instructions short and active games. Also, use whole-class challenges (like sorting into 4 equal sized groups). Also, knowing which way is north - kids should know this for their space, and know how to figure it out. Why does it matter?

• Idea: get sponsored by O suppliers, and by outdoor fitness stores

• Two AEE applications for national conference in November. We'll be notified by May 15th.

• Met with team.

Tuesday 4/14

7am-10am, 7:30-8

Accomplished:

• Updated lesson plans to remove outdoor portion per request from Joel Burke; sent him email. 

• Social media: scheduled posts on FB, blog, instagram about lesson plans. Scheduled blog post about need for support. Connected instagram to FB page. Got set up on Buffer for scheduling instagram & FB.

• Thanked Rick Worner, Phil Bricker, Jim McGrath for their donations. Added donation info and additional contact info from donorbox into QB.

• Added lesson plans to FindIt Cambridge, website blog, website Activities > Lesson Plans

• Sent Board instructions on writing their own letters and sharing on social media.

• Met with Finance committee to prioritize things.

To do for today:

• AEE application

• Make a plan for the week

• Process new subscribers from the website and come up with plan for communication!

• Put action items relating to Nbrhd-O in Asana.

Narrative:

I finally figured out how to merge contacts. In SF, click the 9 dots on the left; search for Contact Merge. Did this for Phil Bricker, who had two accounts.

Steps for recording a donation:

• Manually add the donation to the person in FB. 

• Email them directly from FB to thank them.

• When payments post in QB bank account, then annotate them manually.

Yesterday Joel Burke wrote saying they're not paying contractors during stay-at-home time. I asked if he could distribute the lessons anyway. This morning I got email saying he could, but could we remove the part where we ask kids to go outside in the neighborhood. I did that and wrote him back asking him to share with the teachers. In addition, I scheduled a FB post and added a FindIt Cambridge activity with the updated 5-lesson sequence. 

I looked into social media scheduling tools. At first I thought Later was the one that we had heard about, but then I realized it was Buffer. There are many, but most do not have a free plan. Later allows 1 SM account and 30 scheduled posts per month; Buffer allows 3 accounts and 10 scheduled posts, on the free plan. I'm going back to Buffer. I found this overview helpful.

I confirmed NavigationGames_ is a business/professional account on Instagram. I connected the FB page to the navigationgames_ Insta account. I believe I set buffer up to automatically post, though I can't see how to confirm that on buffer; will wait and see what happens. K queued a post about the lesson plans for this evening. Summary: use Buffer for scheduling SM posts on FB & Insta; later, connect a LinkedIn page too.

Monday 4/13/2020

Started at 7am.

Goals for today:

• Update lesson plans per Linda's feedback and more. Done

• Email Joel Burke with the lesson plans asking permission to work with the Gr 3 teachers. Done

• Contact the people in Pittsburgh; draft AEE application. Sent email

• Send email to Board with instructions for fundraising. Write thank you letters & record donations.

• Make a plan for the week

• Check in with Tanairi, Jen & Ethan on filing for unemployment. Sent email

• Process new subscribers from the website and come up with plan for communication!

• Put action items relating to Nbrhd-O in Asana.

• Gitbooks: items for later: add a printout (optional) as suggested by Linda. If people don't have a printer, then can we mail or deliver a printout?

4h

Sunday 4/12/2020

I worked all day on the Neighborhood-O. I went out and picked around 50 controls from the Riverside neighborhood. Isabel had checked some of the Agassiz controls and went over those with me. And Ethan said he'd updated the control descriptions for Agassiz but I did not see where he'd done that, so I went through and made sure that there were no questions that had both red and yellow in their answer, or both blue and green, because those can be confusing to distinguish. Then I updated the apps script so that it created the answer sheet PDF and form using the same randomization; collected the IDs and URLs for the created forms and answer sheets and put into a new tab; used headers not column number (more robust); and I wrote a new function that would go through the courses spreadsheet and automatically bring in all the results into a single spreadsheet. I created a git repository for the software, which is now 400 lines of code. There are options to connect more closely to the git repo, but this works for now (I edit it right in place on github). I updated the Wix database with the new course information and changed the display pages slightly. Still to be done: Check all the courses to make sure the correct files display; create more courses; document (gitbooks?) for others to copy; post results on Wix. Update the map files for all neighborhoods to include information about the start location. Add ability to filter the neighborhood by town.

I also heard back from Linda Fobes with good suggestions for the lesson plans. I'm happy to say that she liked them!

10h.