Carol doles out the drumsticks to nonprofit stars
Last year I blogged on 5 Shining Stars Connecticut nonprofits should be thankful for, and this year the field is again crowded with some true nonprofit luminaries. So, with a generous helping of gratitude, I’m doling out the Thanksgiving turkey drumsticks to these fine Connecticut nonprofit organizations who inspire, innovate, and advocate in ways that set them apart:
1. Music Haven: By day, they run after-school music education programs for kids in New Haven’s most underserved neighborhoods. By night, they are a string quartet, bringing world-class chamber music to these same neighborhoods and beyond. Oh and by the way, this year Music Haven was chosen as one of the best after-school arts programs in the nation by the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. Take a listen to them from this WNPR feature story. They are a gem.
2. buildOn: Stamford-based buildOn is about to turn 20, and they are well-deserving of a tasty drumstick this Thanksgiving for their astonishingly effective youth programs with a national–and international–focus:
Students in buildOn programs, located in 101 American urban high schools, have contributed over 850,000 hours of community service. buildOn then partners these same students with developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Central America to build schools, and buildOn’s school contruction programs have completed 427 schools to date. Impressive, eh?
Check out their Flikr photo stream of Chicago students building a school in Malawi.
Photo credit: buildOn
3. Health Justice CT: An up and comer, Health Justice CT is a social media innovator–creating opportunities for health advocates to network and collaborate in new ways, including monthly breakfast TweetUps in Greater Hartford and New Haven, Tweet Chats (use hashtag #hcsmct), and community forums on new media and social change. They are one to watch.
4. Wadsworth Atheneum: The Wadsworth gets the nod for putting the “social” in social media–an excellent model of how nonprofit organizations can be using social media to build community, engage new supporters, and share ideas. They offer prizes, ask fun questions, and offer interesting posts tying in history with art– all to steadily grow interest in the arts. (It’s working: they have 5000+ Facebook fans and counting). My personal favorite: their Facebook art contests, inviting others to “name that painting” or “name that artist.”
6. William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund: The folks at Graustein are quietly but relentlessly leading the march towards one goal: ensuring that Connecticut children of all races and income levels are ready for school by age five and are successful learners by age nine. No organization in Connecticut is doing more to build an early childhood system with parents and communities as full partners in the process –from creating the vision to implementation. In year 9 of a 14-year initiative, Graustein in fully committed, and is putting up big dollars to make it happen: over $4 million per year in the past three years alone. A juicy drumstick goes to them from the kids in our state.
