Dear DIA Community,

It's that time of year.The dog days have wound down, the pennant races are heating up, and the kids have gotten their texting plans and Facebook accounts ready for the new school year.

It's nonprofit season, too, and the year-end fundraising push is right around the corner. Make sure to point any new staff you've accumulated over the summer to a training, or sign up for a refresher course for yourself. The Salsa transition is well under way, so look for tours through the platform, advanced user training and all around special treatment this fall.

Events and Trainings

  • Things are fiery over here at Salsa HQ. We've got a whole slew of new webinars and trainings for you, so please take a look at our September Training Schedule.
  • OneWorld Peer Learning: How Events Abroad Can Stay Current at Home
  • We know you've all patiently been waiting for the next DC DIA happy hour. Well, please mark your calendars for Friday, September 28th @ 6pm at a watering hole nearby. We would love to meet the many new DIA members in the area and catch up with the rest of you.  DIA friends, colleagues, and nonprofit techies are all welcome!

Announcing the DIA Empowers Recipients

Thanks to the progressive community's tremendous response to our first ever grants program, DIA Empowers, the DIA community just got even stronger! Five worthy groups were granted a year using Salsa. We're very excited to have this opportunity to help these organizations achieve their goals, thereby achieving our own, and to welcome them into the DIA community.

Read all about the winners.

We'd also like to announce the next round of DIA Empowers grants. This time, we're choosing three groups working specificaly on Katrina-related advocacy. We'd like to mark the anniversary as well as acknowledge the work of the nonprofits and the continued need for help, even two years later, in recovering from Katrina and Rita. Please see the grants page to read about this round and apply.

Be a DIA Guru

Meet the Staff

Meet Kip!
KIPI started with DemocracyInAction back in June to open a California office. I came from the League of Young Voters, where I was the Online and Technology Coordinator for a year. I'm here to build our community and to provide trainings and support to the 65-or-so supa dope organizations in California who are members of DIA. I'm inspired by the work of these organizations; my job is an honor and a privilege.

In the rest of my life, I'm a circus monkey street performer from Knoxville, Tennessee. I'm a resident artist of the Million Fishes Arts Collective in San Francisco's Mission District, and I can often be found performing in the streets, alone or with the Guerrilla Carnival. My next big endeavor is a project called the "Gypsy Kitchen." My friend and I will build a small kitchen and stage into the back of a van, which we'll use to blend circus performance with a Food Not Bombs-style activism. The van will allow us to tour and travel, prepare and serve food to anyone who's hungry, do bilingual (Spanish-English) circus workshops with children, and put on free and spontaneous performances with music, marionettes, acrobatics, and more...
 
And now for our latest additions...
Christian Norton, Node Manager, is bringing "Midwestern sensibility" back to Washington, DC.  Starting as an intern at the Campaign for America's Future and then rising to the position of Web Developer / Web 2.0 Specialist, Christian was instrumental in planning, developing, and implementing two highly successful blogs: commonsense.ourfuture.org  and The Big Con.  Being an expert in XHTML/CSS, Christian is rapidly expanding his knowledge to MySQL and Javascript. He has a B.A. from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln in Philosophy and Political Science.  In his free time, Christian likes to play video games and consume burritos.
 
Tyler McMorrow, Software Developer, graduated from The George Washington University with a B.S. in Computer Science and a concentration in Security and Information Assurance.  Not content with the dry future of being a code monkey in a cubicle at a multinational corporation, he sought out a younger and more vibrant place of employment and found that at DIA.  Tyler is currently working on adding new CRM features to the Salsa platform and finding cool new ways to leverage a network of hundreds of nonprofit organizations.

After being a regular at DIA happy hours for years, Jon Wheeler decided to make the plunge this summer and come on staff as Associate Director of Outreach. Previously, he was a co-founder of the Center for Progressive Leadership, one of DIA's early adopters. At CPL Jon helped design and implement their innovative leadership development programs for future candidates, organizers and activists, as well as being the all-around tech guru and DIA-wrangler. He also has a background in tech management on Capitol Hill, the IMF, and teaching technology, leadership and entrepreneurial skills to high school students. Jon will be based in the DC office and will focus primarily on outreach as well as working with select organizations to help them successfully use the Salsa platform to accomplish their advocacy and organizational development goals. In his spare time he plans to continue mixing good cocktails, finding new uses for wood paneling, and traveling to exotic locales.

Around the DIA Community

Do you know about our referral program?

Community Spotlights

My fondness for liberals, smart people, and Wisconsin politicians (not to mention good food) aided in my decision to read the Environmental Working Group's recent email on their Organics Petition. Read more of Chelsea's article.

Whenthesaints.org, a collaborative effort of katrina-focused groups, is urging the United States Senate to pass Senator Dodd's Gulf Coast Recovery Bill of 2007 (S1668) to assist the Gulf Coast region in rebuilding the infrastructure lost after the Katrina and Rita disasters. Many of the groups participating are DIA community members, and we applaud their efforts. 

Featured Campaigns:
  • The Governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, recently took steps that put Florida and his administration at the forefront of the battle for a stable climate. Please take a moment to join the GRN in thanking Governor Crist for his commitment to the environment.
  • The good news is it's not too late to turn things around. Take a look at Oceana's victories page and watch their moving video.
  • Thirty-eight political prisoners have been freed in Ethiopia, largely thanks to grassroots pressure, which compelled Congress to act. Let's try to harness this victory to build momentum, so take action!
  • Will you take just a minute and pass a postcard along? Tell your friends and family about what's happening, and help build the movement to end Uganda's war.
  • Help CIVIC ask General Petraeus where he got his casualty numbers. For every family that has lost sons and daughters, this is not a numbers game.
Happy Campaigning,
The DIA Team

 

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