Posted tagged ‘Alternative Spring Break’

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Victory for ASB declared in Penny Wars

February 14, 2011

Who knew there was so much money in jars and between couch cushions? When it was all totaled, the annual Penny Wars for SI’s Alternative Spring Break student projects came to a whopping $3,151.58. That total included both contributions in person at North Quad and through the Crowdrise online fundraising effort.

Kelly Kowatch, primary strategist of Penny Wars and assistant director of career development at SI, said the faculty/staff/Ph.D. student group took the top honor for donations with $860.11. You can take a look at how each of the Penny Wars combatants made out.

Helping with Penny Wars were Jessie Mannisto, Deborah Nelson, Cassandra Palmer, Hanna Stelman, Jonathan Brier, Melissa Cox, Caitlin Holman, Mallory Hood, Kayla Lenkner, Jessica Scott, Lisa Marchessault, Kendra Tsai, Whitney Ferdon, Mo Ibrahim, Meg Hixon, Steve Cherry, Ted McCarthy, Liu Liu, Elena Azadbakht, Kayla Ondracek, Jerry Marshall, Hilary Townsend, Owen Ellis, Shi Chen, Natalie Bond, Cassandra Palmer, Stephanie Smith, Becky Chu, Aravindh Baskaran, Emily Rosengren, Killian Escobedo, Marshall Rinek, Candra Gill, Catherine Hrbal, Emily Thompson, Elena Azadbakht, Anne Cox, Graham Hukill, Karen Stover, Katy Ross, and Andrea Rotter.

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SI experiments with fundraising in the cloud

January 17, 2011

The School of Information is partnering with the Office of University Development on a pilot fundraising project using the social networking site crowdrise.com. The funds will support SI’s Alternative Spring Break, when students spend a week volunteering their skills at nonprofit educational and cultural institutions in cities like New York and Chicago.

Last year’s projects included distributing books to inmates at Rikers Island through a New York Public Library internship, improving the usability of ProPublica.org’s website, developing social media best practices for the American Library Association, and building wireframes to enable reader contributions at the Huffington Post.

This year’s ASB takes place between Feb. 28 and March 4.

The school hopes to raise awareness for ASB by encouraging alumni, students, and friends of SI to engage in viral promotion of the Crowdrise project through their own online networks. Students will attempt to raise at least $30,000 to augment other fund-raising activities — including a book sale and penny war — that provide travel and lodging expenses for ASB participants. Crowdrise broadens the reach and provides more opportunities for philanthropy at a personal level, says Director of Development Tom Wamsley.

(more…)

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Need a bright, motivated MSI student?

December 2, 2010

Emily Puckett Rodgers (MSI '10) volunteered at Detroit's Heidelberg Project for ASB 2010.

The School of Information is actively soliciting host organizations for Alternative Spring Break. Last year more than 100 SI master’s degree students spent the week of spring break working at over 50 nonprofit, cultural, educational, and government organizations in New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Washington, D.C. They worked on information-management service projects for institutions like the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, the Huffington Post, the Cabrini-Connections Tutor/Mentor Connection, the United Nations, and the Detroit Public Library.

Projects included archiving, cataloging, research, web development, digitizing, curating, creating online tutorials, and database development.

If your organization, or one you know, could use a dedicated, capable — and best of all, free — graduate student (or two or three!) for a week in March, please contact Kelly Kowatch at kkowatch@umich.edu.

Alternative Spring Break host sites must be: 

• A public sector organization (non-profit, government, education, or cultural)

• In the metropolitan area of Chicago, Detroit, New York City, or Washington, D.C., accessible through public transportation from the downtown area (with the exception of Detroit)

• Willing to provide a professional-level project or projects related to the School of Information’s areas of study

• Willing to spend time with the students, providing them with a well-rounded experience, educating them on the purpose of the organization, and introducing them to relevant colleagues

The application deadline for host organizations is Jan. 7.

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Penny War over — ASB is the winner

February 20, 2010

The power of the penny was evident this week at the School of Information (with the help of other coins, cash, and checks) as a record $2447.90 was raised to support the Alternative Spring Break program. The results by group are now available online. The funds will help send a record 112 master’s students to projects in Detroit, Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C., during the University of Michigan winter break.

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Plan for the ASB recipe book dinner party!

December 15, 2009

Mark your calendars for the ASB Recipe Book Dinner Party… 5 p.m. Jan. 15 in the Ehrlicher Room, 411 West Hall.

The SI ASB Fundraising Committee is planning this new event to help raise money for the 2010 Alternative Spring Break and also to share the wonderful recipes you’ve been cultivating.
 
Price of admission: $5 with dish, $10 without (children will be admitted for $5 each). This price gets you a shiny new copy of the ASB Recipe Book (also, dinner). However, if you submit a recipe by 11:59 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 12 and prepare the same dish for the event, you will get the $5 discount. We will have sign-ups at a later date so you can tell us what you’re bringing. All proceeds are donated to ASB. Please RSVP for the event.

Thank you to those who have sent me recipes for inclusion into the recipe book. We have decided to change how we collect recipes. Our team is hard at work creating a Web interface where you can sign up for the event AND submit your recipe all in one fell swoop. We will release the link soon, so be thinking about what you’d like to include!

About ASB 2010: The School of Information sends groups of students to New York City, Washington D.C., and Chicago to put their information specialist skills to work at public sector organizations, such as the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Museums, and various nonprofits. Through fundraising activities such as this, SI is able to send these students to these organizations fully funded and provide them with lodging and transportation.

Become a fan of SI Alternative Spring Break!

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SI ASB Needs Your Books

November 18, 2009

The ASB Book Sale is 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Dec. 2 and 3 this year (in the lobby of West Hall). Over the past two years, we’ve raised a pretty significant amount of money from these sales because of considerable generosity from the SI community. (Last year was especially robust because the Olsons donated their entire duplicate library to us before they departed to California.)

However, this year we’re short on books. We have a fraction of what we’ve had in the past. Although I know that this makes Jim (our facilities manager) quite happy because of storage reasons, it won’t do much for fundraising for the ASB program.

It would be great if everyone could donate just two or three books — that’s all we’re asking. We’ve got a lot of avid readers and researchers here at SI who have great collections of books; if you can just pull out a couple that you know you probably won’t ever look at again, we would love to have them.

I’ve already started to get some books from the SI community, so if you’ve donated, thank you! (I hope that you plan to restock at the sale in two weeks).

Otherwise, you can drop books off to my office (404C West Hall) or in the bins at SI North.

If you have questions, please contact Kelly Kowatch (kkowatch@umich.edu).

Thank you,

SI ASB Fundraising Committee

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