Public Information & Education Task Force

September 11, 2017

 

PRESENT: Ross Cunningham, Carol Rancourt, Maryalice Crofton, David Burns

The meeting opened at 4pm by teleconference.

DISCUSSION ITEMS:

Report back on All for Good  
The contact at Points of Light Institute confirmed that All for Good is an aggregator. That means users can search for volunteer opportunities using zip code and they will see listings from a number of popular platforms (VolunteerMatch, Galaxy, etc.). We have two options: we can just do a link on VolunteerMaine.org or we can pay for some code that would put a search box on the VM.org homepage. Referring agencies is not as straightforward and we should look more closely at that part. POLI is going to send an overview to Maryalice for consideration at another meeting.

Outreach to town officials.  
There was discussion of how and where to reach town officials. The Commission has rotated outreach to Members of Congress, state legislators, county leaders, and municipal officials. The next 10 months normally would be municipal. Members decided the best start is to get one of the AmeriCorps brochures into packets for attendees at the Maine Municipal Associations conference in October. Maryalice emailed members a copy of the “Have a Plan” brochure to see if they thought it would suit.

David also asked if John had started his speaking tour. He hasn’t as it is going to be ongoing over fall and winter. David has some opportunities for him Downeast and in Aroostook.

There was a sidebar about the three branches of AmeriCorps and two grant programs.

Service Enterprise.  
Members have not had a chance to review both the videos. They will do so and provide feedback on whether these are sufficient for an introduction. The trainers are planning to use them in outreach.

Confirmation of meeting schedule.  
After some discussion, members decided to keep PIE meetings on the second Monday of the month at 3pm.

There being no other agenda items, the meeting ended at 4:43 pm.

The next meeting conflicts with the October holiday so members will need to agree on an alternate date.