- organize
- delegate
- get all the ducks in a row
If you are in charge of hosting an event, party or festival of any magnitude, say for work, school, church or an organization there is a basic plan you need to follow to attend to all the details. Here is a ’schedule’ of tasks.
Two Months before the event:
Check on any licensing you may need. Chances are, there is nothing to pain about, but if you will need to check on permit for:
selling items or tickets – IRS, (are you 501 C3 status? non-profit? )
raffling items or money – gaming commission
selling or serving alcohal – zoning, licensing, age restrictions
selling food – health department
lighting candles or having a fire – marshall approval.
transportation, rides, hayrides, inflatibles (Moon Walks, etc.) insurance issues; city ordinances or codes
animals – health codes; ordinances
In general, check the blanket policies of the organization you work with or under. What are your by-laws? Group codes? etc.
Delegate: Depending upon the size of your event, you will need to assign tasks. If you are an organization and you have a board, each board member can take the task that fits their role. Ask for RSVPs and volunteers. Don’t try to go it alone! Let others part their talents. .
Get the word out: Insert newsletter or bulletin announcemenst, print and post flyers, or start a phone chain or email invitiations. Will you invite the general public or have a tiny guest list? Situation up a table after school, after church or activity meetings.
Take an informal head count: How many will be involved? How many children and what ages? Will it be a family affair?
Determine your budget: What is your overhead? Will you derive donations of food, supplies, etc? Will you need to charge money? Will you sell tickets? Will this be a fundraiser of some sort?
Find a location: A large basement? A church hall? A school gym? A barn? Will you need to rent a facility?
Decide upon activity locations: Outdoor, indoor or both? Will you have scavenger hunts, hayrides, hay mazes, etc that will be outside? Consider your local weather.
Network your volunteers: How many activity helpers will you have? Who donate food, craft supplies, etc? Who could cut out, assemble or design items you’ll need for activiites? Will you need shoppers? Phone callers? etc. I like to call upon senior citizens who might like an opportunity to be involved.
Prepare your agenda: ( see sample below) How many activities? Who will man each one? How will you arrange space? Where and when will people eat?
Assign coordinators: Consider this: perform each game or activity coordinator responsible for preparing a list of supplies and prizes and making or gathering materials. If one family or person takes care of each activity it will run smoother and not be overwhelming for a few folks. Family members can take turns manning the activity so everyone can participate. Give each coordinator a budget or spending limit based upon your initial budget analysis. A simple way is to divide your activity budget by the number of activities. (ie $200- 10 activities = $20 each). But do remember that some may cost more.
Circulate order forms and place a bulk order: Give each coordiantor time to plan their activity and list what will be needed. If you will order from a catalog, ask that supply or prize lists be in about three weeks ahead of time. Send bulk order from whichever catalogs or online sources you use.
Consider purchasing durable goods: This might be a good annual event. If you buy game supplies, like a bean bag toss game, store them from year to year.
In the week ahead:
Send out reminder emails.
Shop for food and store supplies. Freeze perishables.
Decorate area. Don’t inlafte anything until the day of the party. Inflatibles lose air overnight.
Set up games, activities or booths.
Check for anything you might be missing.
Put in a last newsletter/ bulletin reminder.
Most of all, remember to have fun yourself!
Related Posts
Filed under Email Hosting Solutions by on Apr 27th, 2011. Comment. 
- organize
- delegate
- get all the ducks in a row
If you are in charge of hosting an event, party or festival of any magnitude, say for work, school, church or an organization there is a basic understanding you need to follow to attend to all the details. Here is a ’schedule’ of tasks.
Two Months before the event:
Check on any licensing you may need. Chances are, there is nothing to worry about, but if you will need to check on permit for:
selling items or tickets – IRS, (are you 501 C3 status? non-profit? )
raffling items or money – gaming commission
selling or serving alcohal – zoning, licensing, age restrictions
selling food – health department
lighting candles or having a fire – marshall approval.
transportation, rides, hayrides, inflatibles (Moon Walks, etc.) insurance issues; city ordinances or codes
animals – health codes; ordinances
In general, check the blanket policies of the organization you work with or under. What are your by-laws? Group codes? etc.
Delegate: Depending upon the size of your event, you will need to assign tasks. If you are an organization and you have a board, each board member can steal the task that fits their role. Ask for RSVPs and volunteers. Don’t try to go it alone! Let others share their talents. .
Get the word out: Insert newsletter or bulletin announcemenst, print and post flyers, or start a phone chain or email invitiations. Will you invite the general public or have a limited guest list? Set up a table after school, after church or activity meetings.
Take an informal head count: How many will be involved? How many children and what ages? Will it be a family affair?
Determine your budget: What is your overhead? Will you pick up donations of food, supplies, etc? Will you need to charge money? Will you sell tickets? Will this be a fundraiser of some sort?
Find a location: A large basement? A church hall? A school gym? A barn? Will you need to rent a facility?
Decide upon activity locations: Outdoor, indoor or both? Will you have scavenger hunts, hayrides, hay mazes, etc that will be outside? Consider your local weather.
Network your volunteers: How many activity helpers will you have? Who donate food, craft supplies, etc? Who could lop out, assemble or design items you’ll need for activiites? Will you need shoppers? Phone callers? etc. I like to call upon senior citizens who might like an opportunity to be involved.
Prepare your agenda: ( see sample below) How many activities? Who will man each one? How will you arrange space? Where and when will people eat?
Effect coordinators: Consider this: make each game or activity coordinator responsible for preparing a list of supplies and prizes and making or gathering materials. If one family or person takes care of each activity it will run smoother and not be overwhelming for a few folks. Family members can take turns manning the activity so everyone can participate. Give each coordinator a budget or spending limit based upon your initial budget analysis. A simple way is to divide your activity budget by the number of activities. (ie $200- 10 activities = $20 each). But do remember that some may cost more.
Circulate order forms and place a bulk order: Give each coordiantor time to plan their activity and list what will be needed. If you will order from a catalog, ask that supply or prize lists be in about three weeks ahead of time. Send bulk order from whichever catalogs or online sources you expend.
Consider purchasing durable goods: This might be a good annual event. If you buy game supplies, like a bean bag toss game, store them from year to year.
In the week ahead:
Send out reminder emails.
Shop for food and store supplies. Freeze perishables.
Decorate station. Don’t inlafte anything until the day of the party. Inflatibles lose air overnight.
Set up games, activities or booths.
Check for anything you might be missing.
Put in a last newsletter/ bulletin reminder.
Most of all, remember to have fun yourself!
Related Posts
Filed under Email Hosting Solutions by on Apr 20th, 2011. Comment.
6. Free Hostia (Free)
The reason I decided to include this, is because it is a gigantic package if you are adamant on not spending any money. They are ad free, which is fairly strange for a free host. The server response times are very fast. They have 250mb of storage and 5GB of bandwidth. They also help one, 10mb MySQL database, which too, is uncommon for a free host, but it also is limiting on what you can do with your website. It also includes Elefante scripts, for easy installation of many popular applications. They also guarantee 99.9% uptime.
5. Host Gator ($6.95 per month)
They offer a decent package for a reasonable price. You also are not bound to any contract and offer a 30 day money back guarantee. It includes 50 GB of storage and 200 GB of bandwidth, which is plenty for your average website. It includes unlimited MySQL databases, which is nice if you thought on running multiple applications. It also supports 20 FTP accounts and most of your average programming languages. On top of a decent package, they offer several easy to install applications to get your website up and running. They offer Fantastico, Instant PHPNuke, Instant Forums, and much more. They also include several different e-commerce applications. Their $6.95 package guarantees 99.5% uptime, which is generally worse than other paid web hosts. Their other packages all guarantee 99.9% uptime.
4. 1&1 ($3.99 per month)
1&1 offers one of the cheapest web hosting solutions available. It includes 1 free domain, 10GB of storage and 300GB of bandwidth. They only offer 1 FTP account, which can be somewhat limiting. They offer 600 email accounts, with 800 aliases. The linux package allows for ten, 100mb MySQL databases. Along with several included web applications, they give you free vouchers for advertising. My biggest complaint about their webhosting is that their MySQL databases are generated with random names, so you cannot identify which is which, unless there is a description.
3. IX($3.95 per month)
IX offers a cheap package that is great for new webmasters. They support 2 hosted domains. It includes 300 GB of storage and 3,000 GB of bandwidth. It also includes 1 free domain name. It offers 2500 email accounts and supports catch-all email addresses. It supports POP3, IMAP, and webmail. It also includes Auto responders and mailing lists. It supports the standard scripting languages but does not include any MySQL databases. This can be pretty limiting, depending on what you plan on doing.
2. bluehost ($6.95 per month)
bluehost is very similar to my top choice, Host Monster. It supports 300gb of storage and 3,000gb of bandwidth. It includes a free domain and unlimited domain name hosting. It supports 2500 email accounts and unlimited auto responders. It also includes an additional 1,000FTP accounts. It supports 50 MySQL and 50 PostgreSQL databases. It also includes: SSH, webmail, anonymous FTP, Hotlink protection, Fantastico, many e-commerce features and Denial of Service (DDoS) Protection. Search engine submission, position report, and a search keyword analyzer are included free.
1. Host Monster($5.95 per month)
I personally consume Host Monster for everything now. They offer an incredible package and are very reliable. They offer 300gb of storage and 3,000gb of bandwidth. On top of that, they include a free domain name. They offer unlimited: domain name hosting, add-on domains, parked domains, subdomains, email accounts, auto responders, and FTP accounts. They also include 100 MySQL and 100 PostgreSQL databases. Some other nice features: they allow SSH (Shell Access), Anonymous FTP, 2 Web Mail Options, Custom CRON jobs, and Fantastico. They also include free search engine submission.
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Filed under Email Hosting Solutions by on Mar 21st, 2011. Comment.
There is no doubt that leveraging technology can improve productivity and communication within any organization. But what if you are a charity or non-profit organization trying to stretch every dollar? How do you find the resources to develop and implement an Information Technology strategy on a budget? The sterling news is that many huge businesses have discounted or free offerings for non-profits. Here is a quick guide to some of the best tools you can get for (almost) nothing to help your non-profit grow!
TechSoup: This spacious site acts as a clearinghouse for donations from major vendors such as Microsoft, Adobe, and many others. Since these titanic organizations each have separate eligibility policies (some will not donate to organizations which prosthelytize religion, others will not donate to private foundations), it can be difficult to know whether you can take advantage of their offerings or not. TechSoup acts as a mediator by registering information about non-profit organizations (they require you to submit your 501(c) certificate and other information about the nature of your operations) and then determining your eligibility for the products you request from their place. For this service they charge a nominal fee, but since it means you can get products such as Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop for pennies on the dollar, its well worth the small cost. Beyond software, TechSoup also offers hardware and consulting services as well as a wealth of free resources and how-to guides.
Salesforce.com: Thanks to a commitment by its founders, the Salesforce.com foundation commits 1% product, 1% time and 1% equity to making the world a better place. From this commitment comes a program which will allow you to get up to 10 licenses for their hosted CRM (customer relationship management) enterprise class solution for free! What’s better than free? It’s completely customizable and there is an active community of other non-profits who communicate about how they have implemented and modified the offering to meet their possess needs.
Google Apps: Even if you have been living under a rock for the last 10 years, you’ve probably heard of Google. The 100lb gorilla of search engines has expanded their offerings to include a number of useful tools which they bundled together under the heading “Google Apps”. This suite includes an email application (gmail) which you can use from your desktop through Microsoft Outlook (which you bought for nearly free from TechSoup!). In addition you can leverage their calendaring platform to share and update your team calendar, as well as their document management solution which lets you store and share documents. A small note of caution (before run out and upload all of your data) – keeping your documents “in the sky” with Google can be spacious for collaboration, but you still need to backup your data. Originate sure you retain local copies of what’s stored on Google docs lest you lose internet access or something gets inadvertently deleted.
Hosted Exchange: Exchange is Microsoft’s flagship communication and collaboration server. It allows for far more robust email and calendaring management than you can earn with Google Apps, and if you have more than 1-5 employees, going up a step to hosted Exchange can make a astronomical disagreement. It does cost more but it will give you great benefits such as a support team dedicated to your account, native integration with the collaboration features in Microsoft Outlook, etc. Most Exchange hosting providers also offer hosted SharePoint which will allow you to store and share files in a far more robust manner than the simple interface offered by Google Apps. You can even tack on web site hosting and have everything managed in one place. Some providers of Hosted Exchange services include Intermedia, 123Together, and USA.net. Pricing and plans vary but you will be able to talk to a sales representative about what you need, and they can back you design a package for you. The biggest wait on of a hosted solution is that you don’t have to own, maintain, upgrade or patch a server on your situation. So you get all the benefits of enterprise class communications without the headaches and costs of owning the equipment.
Skype: This communication tool allows you to initiate video or audio chats with users around the world and both the application and the calls are free! If you have internet access and a microphone on your computer (most laptops have them built in) you can talk for free with any Skype user around the world. This can be a great design to reduce your phone bills and keep in touch with your team.
Wordpress: Everyone needs a web site but building one can be a costly (and confusing) adventure. Web designers abound and all of them have different philosophies on scripting languages, platforms, and other things you really don’t want or need to know about. If you just need a few informational pages to get started, you can go to Wordpress, pick a template, and be up and running for free. Technically this site is for bloggers – people who want to post articles and journal online. However you can choose to turn off the commenting features if you want, and then it works unprejudiced like a regular web page. You can use roam and tumble tools to add pictures and text, or even fancy widgets like RSS feeds if you’re feeling extra tech savvy, but if you honest want the basics you can get a functional, attractive site set up in minutes. The best share is you can assign your hold domain name to your Wordpress site so it looks just like a regular web site. You don’t even have to know how to use a registrar – Wordpress will do it all for you. Impartial walk through a simple process from the dashboard, pay a small fee ($15 at the moment I am writing this) and the domain will be yours!
Foundation Center: This organization provides resources and links to a large range of services to help foundations and non-profits run their operations. They have an excellent collection of technology related resources including links to organizations that will help with everything from web design to technology strategy development.
Developing an IT strategy for a non-profit can be challenging. In an ideal world you would have a relationship with a trusted advisor who can benefit you review your choices and find out what’s right for your organization. If you have suggestions of tools, send me an email and I’ll be happy to add them to this list!
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Filed under Email Hosting Solutions by on Mar 15th, 2011. Comment.
For first-time USPS package shippers or those who do not ship packages frequently with the Postal Service it can be a hassle to ship packages if you don’t know the guidelines. Some of the questions that new shippers ask range from “What size items can be shipped for $4.95 using a Priority Mail Flat Rate box? ” to “Do you save money when printing and paying for postage labels online? ” This article dispels the myths and confirms the facts about shipping with the Postal Service based on personal research of its shipping guidelines.
Myth or Fact?
1. You can ship a pair of boots for $4.95 using a Priority Mail Flat Rate box.
2. A pair of dumbbells of any weight can be shipped for $4.95 as long as it fits in a shrimp Priority Mail Flat Rate box.
3. A runt Priority Mail Flat Rate box cannot not weigh more than four pounds and a medium Priority Mail Flat Rate box cannot weigh more than 20 pounds if shipped internationally?
4. Both Priority Mail Flat Rate envelopes and small Flat Rate boxes ship for $4.95.
5. When calculating postage on usps.com, choose “package” as the shape of a corrugated box measuring 8 inches in width and 15 inches in height.
6. A printer can be shipped using USPS’s First Class Mail Service.
7. Printing your own postage online is less expensive than paying for postage in USPS retail stores.
8. You can track a colossal flat envelope containing photos using a delivery confirmation number.
9. An envelope of any thickness that measures 6 1/8 in. to 12 in. in height and 11 ½ in. to 15 in. in length is considered a large envelope.
10. Supplies that are ordered on usps.com are delivered in 7-10 business days.
Answers:
1. Myth. An item must fit into the small Priority Mail Flat Rate Box with the dimensions: 8 5/8 in. x 5 3/8 in. x 1 5/8 in. to ship for $4.95. A pair of boots does not fit into this size box; rather an ipod would be a better fit.
2. Fact. Items that fit into small Priority Mail Flat Rate boxes are one uncouth price for domestic shipping regardless of the staunch weight of the item.
3. Fact. While weight is not an issue for Priority Mail Flat Rate boxes used for domestic shipping to US destinations, weight limitations apply to international shipping.
4. Fact. Both Priority Mail Flat Rate envelopes and small Flat Rate boxes ship for $4.95.
5. Myth. If any dimension of a box is over 12 inches, you must decide the shape “Sizable Package” on usps.com.
6. Myth. To ship with First Class Mail Service, the weight of a package must not exceed 13 ounces.
7. Fact. When printing postage with Click-n-Ship at usps.com, shippers receive discounts on a range of services including delivery confirmation.
8. Myth. 1st Class Mail Large Envelopes (Flat Pieces) and letter size envelopes are not eligible for delivery confirmation.
9. Myth. A colossal envelope that exceeds ¾ inches in thickness is considered a “thick envelope”.
10. Fact. If you are a frequent shipper, be sure to allow sufficient time to receive your ordered supplies.
Of most importance, these myths and facts serve as a brief tutorial for individuals shipping gifts to family or friends or inexperienced eBay shippers using the Postal Service. More of the Postal Service’s shipping guidelines are found on its website usps.com.
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Filed under Email Hosting Solutions by on Mar 13th, 2011. Comment.