More fun than...

I can honestly say that nothing has ever delighted me so much as the work I'm doing creating Naples Social Action. Six months ago it didn't exist, not even as a vague idea. Somewhere in February, the idea struck me to put together a calendar for the entire nonprofit community; I spoke with Michael Junkowski at VSM.net shortly thereafter to pitch him on it - after all, somebody had to to the heavy lifting, the actual tech work. Without Michael... well, I shudder to think.

March 27th we went live. That was almost exactly 5 months ago. Since then, Michael has single-handedly created a masterpiece. The website is much more robust than I'd ever thought possible.

Jane and I have been more than a little busy populating his work with content. We're still reaching out to nonprofits to tell them we're here and give them passwords; now we have an additional teammate, Lois Barrowcliff, who is our liaison to the art community.

It took me over two months of round-the-clock work to make the CAN Ride happen. Probably only about 5 hours total, start-to-finish, was stressful. The rest was just plain fun, as I got to meet all sorts of nice people all over Naples. I've taught, I've sold, I've written, and I've managed, but I've never done anything like organize an event of any kind. Kathy Nicklaus and her board, volunteers, and the entire CAN operation were just great to work with.

When you look at the money we raised - about $9,000 for our two groups to split - you could easily argue that it wasn't cost effective. After all, my one-day speaking fee is more than that; I was even asked by a few skeptics why I didn't just give some talks and donate the fees to CAN.

Well, yeah, the money is important to any nonprofit, and CAN is no exception - neither, for that matter, is Naples Social Action. But I chose to take the long view, and I stand behind that choice. You see, Naples Social Action is growing in scope, and I need to get my hands dirty now so I can guide it when it's huge. I couldn't run a language school if I weren't a very experienced teacher. Jane and I could never write about and teach customer service if we weren't steeped in that field ourselves. I come to the nonprofit realm with no background what-so-ever. I'm educating myself, that's all. And class is a pleasure.

It's fun for Jane and me to sit back and watch our newest endeavor unfold - as with Coine Language School when we started, we really don't know what the final form of Naples Social Action (and later Local Social Action, when we export it to the rest of the nation) will be. First we were an online calendar.

Now we're that, plus we throw fundraisers, hopefully about one every month once we get up some steam.

Then there's the newsletter. It took me the entire day today, starting at 4:45 a.m., but I sent the newsletter out to about 400 individuals plus a few group email lists, which together bring the number of recipients up over 1,000. And we're only on issue 4.

Is NSA going to turn into a media empire, as we sell advertising to fund the causes we support? Stay tuned - right now, your guess is as good as ours. All we know is, we're enjoying our work immensely.

"Do what you love, and you'll never work another day in your life," as a wise man once said.