Mark your calendars for January 22, 2004, when GENaustin will host bestselling author Rachel Simmons. Simmons wrote the New York Times bestseller Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls, the first book to explore the phenomenon of bullying between girls. Her brand new book out in December, Odd Girl Speaks Out: Girls Write About Bullies, Cliques, Popularity, and Jealousy, delves further into the issue, but this time from girls’ perspectives. She will be GENaustin’s guest on a panel along with teen girls who will to give frank and honest advice as well as answer questions of girls and parents. The event will take place at the Dell Jewish Community Center at 6:00 p.m.

Simmons’ work has been profiled in media ranging from The Oprah Winfrey Show to The Washington Post. She is currently the director of The Girls’ Leadership Institute, a Sidwell Friends summer program and a consultant to schools all over the country. She lives in Brooklyn.

• We need people on this subcommittee to help us get the following sponsorships at $2,000, $1,000, and $100 levels. Letters will go out to businesses and individuals in early December, so we will need people to call, email and/or meet with the recipients of the letters to follow-up.
• Obtain 5 raffle items that would be of high interest to girls attending the event (portable CD players, etc.)

• We need to approach TV stations, local newspapers, newsletter to include information about this event and for sponsorship.
• We need to gather email addresses to invite people to the event, targeting girls’ organizations, school district personnel, parents, and kids.

We’ll need people at the event, taking money, letting people in, selling raffle tickets, and manning a GENaustin resource table.

Volunteer opportunities will include following up, either in-person, via phone, or email with businesses that have received letters from us.

This year we will be making a CD to benefit GENaustin. It will, hopefully, include both national and local artists. The current action item on our plate is to contact artists directly and get them to commit to recording a song or donating one of their existing songs to the CD. Other tasks will include distribution, marketing, and CD release party.

GENaustin has some great t-shirts with our logo, sterling silver charms featuring our GEN girl, and donated Jaqua Girls beauty kits. We need someone to take charge of sales and distribution.

Action Items:

• Take inventory
• Set (or understand) prices
• Brainstorm sale opportunities
• Collect funds

GENaustin is serving as an umbrella organization for LadyFest, allowing them to use our 501(c)3 to collect donations. After expenses, LadyFest will also donate one-half of their proceeds to GENaustin. The event will take place in May.

They will contact GENaustin in the near future about possibly putting on a workshop. We would need one volunteer to be their main contact and possibly work with Barb Steinberg, GENaustin’s Director of Programs, to put together an income-generating workshop for the event.

GENaustin currently receives royalties from online shopping with www.greatergood.com, www.igive.com, and www.bookpeople.com. We also have a Randall’s Remarkable Card number, 9033. We have a tremendous potential to make a lot of money with this, but we need to market these opportunities, perhaps run some sort of contest, sign up people for the Remarkable Card, etc. Basically, we need some volunteers to own this and develop an action plan to exploit these opportunities as much as we can.

We need volunteers to continuously seek donations of gift certificates, books on adolescent girls, and gift items to be used as appreciation gifts for volunteers, staff, and to save money off our bottom line for items such as office supplies and food/supplies for events.

New York Times, Good Morning America, PBS, and Time Magazine for Kids have all featured GENaustin. This national recognition demonstrates the critical importance of our cause, both locally and nationally. Come join us as a volunteer as we further refine our model and prepare to launch outside of the central Texas area.

Please contact GENaustin, [email protected] or (512) 414-0472 to find out more about volunteering for these activites.

This site was last updated on 1/04/2005.

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