I read over all the proposals and picked the ones I liked best. The criteria I used were pretty simple: I looked for projects that had a clearly defined mission, were global in scope, and looked like they might actually work as planned. I stayed away from proposals that wanted to “enable” other non profits because I find most of them to be ineffective. Here is the list in alphabetical order:

A Global Neighbor Network

The 2006 conference was great and I think the organizers had a great idea to make N2Y2 focus on 20 great projects. Everyone is going to learn a ton.

Here are my top 7 proposals:

In my review of my fellow project proposals in the Education category (8 so far) -- I am fascinated to see such a wide range of what we each think counts as "education."

Some proposals are right there squarely in the formal k-12 context -- albeit with an out-of-the-box concept for 'how to' or 'what to' learn.

Other proposals are outside a conventional definition of formal education -- and aimed at an adult, professional population.

Yet other projects support education/learning indirectly.

Have any of the rest of you noticed the same thing?  What do you think?

Since the season is almost over--by June 9th we'll be done with all of our programming-- I've decided to take the summer to write up a proposal for the use of the Internet to extend our reach and promote our mission. I am proposing that we use the blogging format to reach out to people, not just to get people in the seats, because most likely the people who will view our blog won't be in the area, but to spread our valuable content through the web.

At the suggestion of my mother, who is a seasoned grant writer, I'm using the New York/New Jersey Area Common Application Form to structure my proposal. Here are some of the questions I will have to answer...What need does this project address? Who is the audience? What are your strategies? Who will be working on it? How does it contribute to our mission? How will you measure success?