BlogPac Progressive Entrepreneur Contest: Five For Under $5K
by: Chris Bowers
Tue Jul 10, 2007 at 14:48:10 PM EDT

For the past year, as part of our ongoing effort to support the progressive blogosphere and movement, BlogPac has delivered over four-dozen targeted, no-strings-attached grants to progressive activists, organizations, campaigns, and media outlets around the country. Now, we would like to both expand and open up our grant making process, and give your progressive movement building idea a chance to receive one of our grants. As such, today BlogPac is launching a nationwide contest to find the five best new, grassroots progressive infrastructure projects in America, and provide those projects with the money, exposure, and connections necessary to get off the ground.

You can see the rules for this contest, including how to submit an entry, by clicking here. The five winning projects will receive up to $5,000 directly from BlogPac, a featured post here on Open Left, and a fundraising letter to our email list. The winning entries will be decided by our panel of judges, which include representatives from some of the most influential, enterprising organizations in our movement: Gina Cooper of Yearly Kos, Susan G of Dailykos, Adam Green of MoveOn.org, Jane Hamsher of Fire Dog Lake, Justin Krebs of Living Liberally, Ben Rahn of Act Blue and, of course, Matt Stoller and Chris Bowers of BlogPac. Given the panel of judges, even submitting an entry to the contest guarantees that your idea will be reviewed by a wide variety of progressive, “open left” leaders who can help it take flight!

Almost any project is open to consideration in this contest. It can be national, regional or local. It can focus on media, culture, social networking, direct action, research, elections, messaging and much more. It can work to expand the audience of progressive radio, book more progressives appear as commentators on cable news networks, or find ways for progressive bloggers to have access to health care. It can produce strategy guides for grassroots activists run for party office, train a new generation of activists in civil disobedience tactics, or help produce a progressive documentary. The only requirements to be considered for the contest are as follows:
The project on progressive infrastructure, not public policy. This contest is not trying to pass or propose specific legislation, but instead to build upon the architecture of the progressive movement.
The project cannot have received more than $25,000 in donations / revenue in the past calendar year.
Sending a description of your project, how it will help progressive infrastructure, how much money it needs, and how it will use that money to blogpacinfrastructure@yahoo.com.
Why are we doing this? Because time and time again, the new, progressive infrastructure that has helped to stop the conservative movement in its tracks has come from grassroots activists with little in the way of political connections or start up money, but still with a wealth of ideas and determination. In 1998, two computer entrepreneurs fed up with Republican attempts to impeach Bill Clinton founded MoveOn.org. Living Liberally, a social networking organization with over 200 local chapters around the country, was founded in 2003 by a group of friends who wanted to help progressives stay in regular contact with each other. Act Blue, which generated over $25,000,000 for Democratic candidates in the last three years, was a project put together by a group of college friends in Cambridge. The progressive blogosphere, which now attracts between two and four million readers a day, came into being when thousands of concerned citizens around the country simply started putting their thoughts online with no more than their ideals, hope and desire for change as guides.

Each of these projects started small, but grew into something special because the creative, indefatigable people behind them. At BlogPac, we know that there are many more of these committed, inspired activists who either already have small organizations, or who just have ideas for new organizations. With only a little assistance, these projects and these ideas can turn into the next big thing in the progressive, political ecosystem, thus helping us all continue to take our country back.

The contest opens today, July 10th, and the deadline for submissions is 10 p.m. eastern on Tuesday, July 24th. The winners will be announced at the Open Left caucus (yes, we have one) of Yearly Kos in early August. With permission of the entrants, here at Open Left will also be highlighting entries as they come in over the next two weeks.

So, start sending in entries to blogpacinfrastructure@yahoo.com. Of course, the more money BlogPac has, the more money we will be able to contribute to each of the winning projects. Whether or not you submit an idea, contribute to BlogPac today, and help your fellow progressive activists bring the next wave of movement infrastructure to life.

BlogPac Entrepreneur Contest: Rules and How To Enter
Submitted by Chris Bowers on Tue, 2007-07-10 16:44. Entrepreneur Contest

Rules And How To Enter In The Extended Entry

1. Send an email to blogpacinfrastructure@yahoo.com, with a subject header of "Entrepreneur Contest Entry." In the email, include your name and contact info (email, phone number and mailing address), as well as the name of the idea, organization or campaign you are entering in the contest. Even if it is just an idea, every entry must still be given a name.

2. In the email, describe your idea, organization or campaign, and how it will help build progressive infrastructure. Please keep descriptions under 1,000 words.

3. After the description, explain how much money and other resources you need in order to make this idea, campaign or organization work. Additionally, provide a brief outline of your plan for raising and spending that money. Please keep this description under 1,000 words.

4. Submissions will not be accepted after 10 p.m. eastern time, on Tuesday, July 24, 2007.

5. Winning entries will be determined by the panel of eight judges. Chris Bowers, Gina Cooper, Susan Gardner, Adam Green, Jane Hamsher, Justin Krebs, Ben Rahm and, Matt Stoller.

6. Winning entires will be given a maximum of $5,000. Smaller awards may also be given as the panel of judges sees fit. The winners will be announced at the Open Left caucus at Yearly Kos 2007, although the winning entires will be notified ahead of time.

7. In order to be eligible for consideration, an entry must focus on progressive infrastructure, not public policy. This contest is not trying to pass or propose specific legislation, but instead to build upon the architecture of the progressive movement.

8. In order to be eligible for consideration, an entry cannot have received more than $25,000 in donations or other revenue in the past calendar year. We are trying to give small organizations a boost.

OH hell yeah.

I'll get on this tonight. I'm editing vids right now. Which is EXTREMELY time consuming. I didn't realize I'd have to watch an hour of testimony over and over and over.

Entrepreneur Contest Entry

Name: Tj Templeton

Email: oldusa100@gmail.com

Phone: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Mailing address: Project for the Old American Century
PO Box 33
Le Mars, IA 51031

Name of the organization: Project for the Old American Century oldamericancentury.org


Who and what we are:


The Project for the Old American Century serves as a grass-roots effort to empower and grow the online and terrestrial liberal/progressive movement. We do this by providing a number of services:



1. Daily online news aggregator: Every day the website posts on its main page an average of 50 news headlines divided into categories that are important to liberals and progressives. Please visit the main page www.oldamericancentury.org to see today's example.

2. Archives: In addition to posting the daily headlines, we also archive them and maintain an active media archive of audio and video files relating to progressive issues. The media ranges from audio interviews on Air America radio to recorded clips of testimony on C-Span and elsewhere.

3. Unique content: We actively monitor the media and have created a database of popular right wing talking points and juxtapose them with the facts debunking them. We also provide libraries of charts and graphs, timelines, and published reports and documents to better inform the public and to serve liberal and progressive bloggers with research needs.

4. Video production: We utilize both flash media and .wmv video files to create our own unique informative videos to serve as a viral campaign to help spread the liberal/progressive message.

5. Graphic arts communications: Our graphics serve as a popular method for liberal/progressive bloggers to illustrate their content and for people to express themselves on web presences such as Myspace.

6. Discussion forum: We provide an online discussion forum with over 1,400 registered members to discuss issues and share resources.

7. Quarterly postal newsletter: This is the only service that we do not offer for free. The cost is 2 dollars a month. The quarterly newsletter serves as an overview of trends in the news and media that the Project has covered in the previous few months. This ability to analyze headlines over a period of months allows the reader a different perspective on the information presented to them on a daily basis. An example of a previous quarterly newsletter can be seen here in .PDF format: http://www.oldamericancentury.org/winter_2007_prima.pdf

Aside from the service we provide to individuals, we also help support smaller media outlets and organizations by directing web traffic to their sites. Many times we have noticed new and up-and-coming blogs and been able to give them an increase in readership in the range of 10-20 thousand unique visitors a day simply by linking to a post of theirs on our front page.

Our funding comes from individual donations and the sales of merchandise featuring our unique graphics. The revenue generated by sales and quarterly fund drives falls short of the sum total operating costs, which have to be offset by my wife's paycheck. All work for the Project is either done by myself, or the occasional unpaid volunteer. On extremely rare occasions, we have hired consultants to help with projects such as hiring Eric Blumrich of bushflash.com to collaborate with us to create this flash animation: http://www.oldamericancentury.org/kstreet.swf

Currently our annual income is well under $25,000, and as I stated before, at times, my wife's income offsets the operating costs of the Project.

Should we win the contest; any funds we receive will be used for marketing and advertising. We feel that we offer one of the best resources on the net for liberals and progressives, yet we are still relatively unknown. Our total advertising budget for the past 4 years has been under $200 and yet we've been able to grow from 0 to 15,000 unique daily visors and 124,000 hits a day on just our reputation and personal efforts alone. To explain why I think that advertising would be the wisest use of the funds, let me present this example:

Last week one of our graphics was posted on the front page of digg.com. The image received 2,500 "digs". The increase in traffic from that exposure generated 500 dollars in sales for that day. That's more retail activity than we normally raise in a week. And the traffic from that little boost remained. Not only did many of the visitors make a purchase, but they came back the next day and continue to return. If we were to be able to place an add on a high-traffic, like-minded websites like Daily Kos or Crooks and Liars, I am confident that it would not only pay for itself almost immediately, but would vastly increase our web presence and funding for the long term and bring us closer to our goal of hiring staff and becoming a force similar to the Center for American Progress.

So there you have it. Please take a visit to our website: www.oldamericancentury.org and poke around to get a feel for the work we do. We are in no way aligned with any political party or organization. Everything we do is a personal effort to promote liberal and progressive values to move our country back to the way the founding fathers intended and away from the direction of the neoconservatives and their "Project for the New American Century".


Sincerely,

Tj Templeton, Founder/editor, Project for the Old American Century.

God damn. I never realized how much I actually do. Yikes. I need a vacation.

God damn. I never realized how much I actually do. Yikes. I need a vacation.

Well, the winner was supposed to be notified and announced at the Yearly KOS convention. The convention is over and no notification. Oddly, the respective websites have no announcement of winner either.

that sucks chief!

Yeah, it really does. But it also avoids a dilemma for us. I intended to use the money for advertising, but we still owe 5 grand in (last years) taxes. I would have had to struggle with where to spend it. They say you can spend it however you like. And I guess paying taxes on the revenue of the site is technically still putting it towards the site, but I really would have preferred some well placed adverts. Oh well. Move on. Drive on. Giddy up!

get those shirts in the mail, and i see a possible windfall in abut a month and a half...

the offer for grant propsoals still stands... i don't have the time to research what's out there, but if you give me some leads on grant programs, I will both make time and enjoy writing them. I believe in this project, TJ, and I'll support it however I can. I can't afford to give you the 5 grand, but I can make compelling, well - worded arguments to people who can, and I'd be honored to do so.

Due to the volume of excellent submissions we received (over 100!), combined with the timing of Yearly Kos, it has been necessary to move the announcement of the winners of the entrepreneur contest back to Tuesday, August 14th. I sincerely apologize for this delay, and I promise it will not happen again. I also want to state how excited I am, and all of the judges are, about this project, and about the great ideas I have seen as a result. I hope to find funding for more than just five, and to work to make this project a regular event over the long-term. The wealth of ideas and energy in the progressive grassroots is stunning, and BlogPac will work to seed as many of them as possible.

Thanks Seuss. I'll be PMing you about that.

update:


Translation: They totally blew the prize money on hookers and beer at Yearly Kos. Just like I would. WOOT!