theparkerfamily.org » Non-Profits

found: view

evancparker — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 12:23:28 +0000

(the view from my new office…)

thank you :)

evancparker — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 21:23:54 +0000

the next horizon

evancparker — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 00:25:00 +0000

after six and a half years in conservation, i’ve got a new job.

starting july 19th, i’ll be the vice president for digital at a pr-firm based out of boston. (in the non-profit industry, they’re best known for their work on american cancer society’s more birthdays effort, which is more or less the gold standard for a cause-based marketing campaign right now.)

on the off chance you have questions, here are some answers in no particular order:

no, we’re not moving — the firm’s headquarters are in boston, which means i get to visit often, but their digital team is are all based in DC as it gives them access to a lot of the government/non-profit/corporate clients they have and hope to grow.
no, i won’t have to wear a suit and tie — i wore a tie for my interview with the president/ceo and was ribbed mercilessly for it. during my final interview, my direct boss was wearing flip-flops.
yes, my wife and i will now be competitors in the same field — and, yes, i’m not sure that’s such a good idea either because i know how competitive she gets too.

so, i’m everything you’d imagine right now — i’m excited, i’m terrified. mostly, i just want to launch one last campaign for the Conservancy (more soon) and then hit the ground running.

it’s such a great opportunity, and sounds like it’s going to be a lot of fun — albeit, a lot of work, too.

in an odd coincidence, the above photo was featured as the Daily Nature Photo on my.nature.org this week. in an even stranger coincidence, it’s the first time i’ve ever been featured on the site even though i conceived/built/launched it myself.

it’s just more proof that good things happen all at once.

trip #0: boston, ma

evancparker — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 15:38:22 +0000

i’m in boston for the fourth-round of a job interview. hard to believe my nearly seven years at the conservancy might be over in a week or two.

hike: great falls, maryland

evancparker — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 17:22:09 +0000

See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
hike: great falls, maryland

digital photography contest

evancparker — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 00:11:55 +0000

I launched the Conservancy’s annual “Digital Photography Contest” in 2006 to engage constituents and foster an organizational presence on Flickr.

Over the past five years, the contest has collected over 100,000 photos from nearly 50,000 supporters. The corresponding Flickr presence has grown to more than 300,000 photos and over 24,000 participants.

This year we’re doing it all over again — only adding the ability to submit photo using Facebook credentials. Here’s hoping…

earthday

evancparker — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 23:58:15 +0000

We’re going in a different direction this year for Earth Day — with a Picnic for the Planet campaign this attempts to use healthy food to demonstrate the relevance of conservation to our daily lives.

The campaign includes an integrated mini-site, social community efforts via Facebook Events and meetup.com, outreach to chefs and food bloggers, and a series of YouTube animations.

UPDATE The effort resulted in over 600 picnics (that we know of, and we estimate we only know about 30% of them) in 60 countries around the world — number I certainly won’t kick out of bed in the morning.

Top 5 (Intangible) Tools for Nonprofit Marketers

evancparker — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 19:13:37 +0000

turns out that a piece i wrote on non-profit marketing was featured on the NTEN blog.

i’m pretty sure that makes me famous, though certainly not controversial as it garnered only one (1!) measly comment — next time i’ll light myself on fire.

Read it on NTEN.org:
Top 5 (Intangible) Tools for Nonprofit Marketers

’tis the season for cubicle decorations

evancparker — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 18:03:47 +0000

i love my co-workers.

my team is the only group on our floor that’s decorated their cubes this year — and once again we’ve totally out done ourselves. the theme this year was “white trash” and i think i can safely say that ~~we knocked it out of the park~~ we’re just plain awesome.

wishing

evancparker — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 00:23:57 +0000

we’ve got a new CMO at work — chief marketing officer — and i’ve been itching to meet him.

i’m itching partly because i’ve heard such great things, and partly because i don’t have a good track record with meeting my “C”-level executives so i want to get it out of the way.

see, when i first started at my current gig i met the then CEO … on my second day … in the 2nd floor bathroom.

it was awkward as hell, and over the next four years he proceeded to introduce himself to me each and every time he saw me, never once remembering that we had met before.

about three years ago we got another CEO and about a month into his tenure i met *him* for the first time … in the 4th floor bathroom.

it was awkward as hell, and I haven’t really talked with him since.

so it was with GREAT relief that i made it to the conference (which our new CMO is leading/attending) without any untimely meetings in a bathroom back in the worldwide office.

it just so happens that i met our new CMO this morning … in the bathroom of conference center … while i was actively using the, er, facilities.

it was awkward as hell.

no word yet on if we’ll ever speak again.

tonight, on larry king live …

evancparker — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 14:07:48 +0000

i’ve spent the better part of the last six days helping get the Conservancy ready to be one of the featured charities for tonight’s CNN/Larry King Live “Gulf Coast Relief Telethon” at 8 p.m. ET.

besides the normal online donation stuff my team always does, we’re using the opportunity to launch our first mobile text-to-donate effort.

viewers will be able to text “COAST” to 50555 to donate $10 to The Nature Conservancy’s Fund for Gulf Coast Restoration. needless to say, i’m fascinated to see how it goes.

so, tune in tonight … and help me justify my paycheck.

circa de mayo

evancparker — Fri, 07 May 2010 21:40:20 +0000

See All the Photos on Flickr:
circa de mayo

diversity at the conservancy

evancparker — Thu, 06 May 2010 12:06:43 +0000

… comes down to which color Prius you own.

firsts: direct mail from the Conservancy

evancparker — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 23:46:49 +0000

baby sparklet got her first piece of direct mail from the nature conservancy. not sure if she got it because her uncle/aunt/cousins adopted an acre for her, or if i just used her information as some kind of test.

either way, i’m feeling a perverse kind of proud right now.

baby sparklet: single-handedly crippling office productivity since 2009

evancparker — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:51:44 +0000

i honestly believe that i could get a full day worth of child care from my coworkers … just break Sparklet up into 15 minute increments.

paternity

evancparker — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 20:01:13 +0000

IMG_0522.CR2, originally uploaded by [ecpark].

it’s 4:01 pm, and i’m officially on paternity leave … and will be on full-time sparklet duty between now and February 17th, so the lady sparkler can go back to work.

being able to take this much time is one of the great benefits of working at a non-profit — and one of the great benefits of having great coworkers — that i can (a) disappear for this long, and (b) not be worried that the world is going to end without me.

right now, the only burning question in my mind is whether i will now have more time to blog, or less. and i guess that means that life is pretty good.

firsts

evancparker — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 03:00:38 +0000

photo of the week // week six

another string of small celebrations over the weekend:

first “take your daughter to work day” — we stopped by the Conservancy on Friday afternoon (i had the day off) and made a quick round. i love the fact that i am the only boy in a department of 29 women for just this type of occasion.
first television — i caught little miss kate actually *watching* television this weekend. sunday night, i put her down in front of the tv to get her a new bottle, and when i came back here eyes were transfixed on the screen. of course, it was the tottenham match, and they went on to win 9-1 (which is kind of a lot for a soccer match) so she’s now allowed to watch tottenham whenever she wants.
first dress — baby momma has been just itching to get sparklet into a little dress she had picked out, and we had a couple good reasons (guests, work) to break out the nice stuff. monumental, because it’s the first time she’s broken out of the usual onesies/pants routine.

in other news, we had out latest pediatrician’s appointment on Friday. sparklet clocked in a a whopping 9 pounds, 1 1/2 ounces, which brings her up to about the 25th percentile for weight. if you couple that with 22 inches long (75th percentile) and 14 inches around (25th) she’s either going to be a bean pole, or a supermodel, or both.

and lastly … i’ve got to find a new time to blog. way back when, i used to blog on my two hour round-trip, public-transit commute, but with the baby i have started driving (i know, i know) which not only takes less time (18 minutes each way) but isn’t a very good environment for multitasking.

more recently, i’ve been blogging during the downtime between the 6:00 pm feeding and the 10:00 pm feeding. the lady sparkler is asleep, and sparklet *used* to be either (a) asleep or (b) blessedly docile. however, since the onset of the six hour rolling dinner feedings last week, there has been precious little time (or free hands) to write anything down.

maybe they make thought-to-screen, telepathy-based dictation software for the mac …

Explore the Photo Set:
sparklet’s first dress

foundation center: basic quick and dirty case studies on social media

evancparker — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 21:12:44 +0000

another presentation on social media today, this one at the Foundation Center in downtown D.C. this group was looking for a more basic information about social media, so we talked much more about what people (especially small orgs) should be doing in the social media space.

the panel was setup by Dahna Goldstein of PhilanTech, who had a bio that would rival most noble laureates, and again featured Jocelyn Harmon (of Marketing for Non-Profits fame).

no fire alarm this time, which was a good thing, because (with questions) we went a full hour over our allotted time. a lot of fascinating discussions, especially from a portion of the non-profit community (the smaller part) that might not have the same bandwidth and resources to devote to the topic.

bridge 2009: Quick and Dirty Case Studies for Social Media Fundraising and Engagement

evancparker — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 23:23:28 +0000

I presented at Bridge this afternoon, a conference for non-profit fundraisers and marketers.

Our session (with Jocelyn Harmon of Marketing for Non-Profits fame) was a nice little road map for non-profits deciding if they should be in the social media space, and how to best go about getting there. I was brought in for case studies, and focused on Facebook Causes, Flickr, the new my.nature.org, and online donation based social media.

We actually had a third presenter, Roz Lemieux from Fission Strategy, but the fire alarm went off 30 minutes out from the end and she never made it podium. It was the last day of the conference, during the last session — why do i keep getting the graveyard shifts? — and nobody seemed interested in going back to the conference room after the all clear was given.

Now, if we had offered to finish it up at the hotel bar … who knows what sort of attendance we would have had.

Speaking of, the conference was at the Gaylord / National Harbor way out in suburban Maryland. The compound certainly was impressive, but in a fake, Disneyland sorta way. Everything was shiny and massive, but rang (more than) a little hollow. Not to mention, the Gaylord are the people who stole “The Awakening” from DC’s Hains Point, so I am already rooting for their speedy demise.

On the flip side, at least I have another reason to hate the ‘burbs … with all the baby shopping at suburban big box stores, I was obviously starting to run out.

found photo: retreat, lake accotink, virginia

evancparker — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:38:24 +0000

photo.jpg, originally uploaded by [ecpark].

Shamu Snubs the Conservancy

evancparker — Wed, 20 May 2009 17:52:21 +0000

Well, not really :)

Sea World / Busch Gardens and their “Animal Ambassadors” stopped by the Conservancy this morning … and a couple hundred of us gathered in the garden out back to see a Red-necked Wallaby, some type of lizard, an American Alligator and Magellan Penguin. Shamu (the killer whale) did not attend, nor was he expected (can you imagine *that* kennel carrier?)

I have to say that (a) the southern tip of Argentina is back at the top of my travel list, and (b) everyday would be better with penguins.

my.nature.org

evancparker — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:53:52 +0000

things are always a little nuts in march, but this we used earth day to launch a brand new engagement site.

we are using my.nature.org to serves relevant, personalized content to the Conservancy’s online supporter communities, as well as to post a ton of user-generated content we collect from our flickr efforts, the message of hope campaign, and our everyday environmental tips.

UPDATE: In the 18 months since the campaign’s launch, my.nature.org has garnered nearly 800,000 visits and 1.5 million page views. The site’s user generated content campaigns have become fixtures on the Conservancy’s social media presences, including Facebook, Flickr and Twitter. i’ll take it.

The State of the Birds

evancparker — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:04:34 +0000

Over the last two weeks, we’ve been going nuts at the office as we run up towards Earth Day 2009. However, in the process, we managed to launch a nifty little site talking about the importance of bird conservation.

We recently participated in a sweeping study that looks at the health of bird populations around the country and what this means for the future of our birds. With that in mind, and in full recognition of how incrediably strong our birding community is, we launched a mini-site where people can learn about the threats to birds in the U.S., share their best places to bird, and submit their favorite bird photos.

We also threw in a sweet little desktop screensaver of bird images from our Flickr community.

plant a billion lights

evancparker — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:54:16 +0000

I’ve never seen my name in lights, but maybe this is the next best thing … this week, someone donated space on the billboards that surround times square to the plant a billion trees campaign.

(that’s the nature conservancy’s tree planting effort in the brazillian rain forest that I raised money for last earth day — and helped launch as part of my day job.)

I haven’t heard anything about who the donor was, or how they chose us, but it’s fantastic to see such an important cause get the recognition (imho) it so richly deserves.

dma 2009: revolution or evolution

evancparker — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 22:46:09 +0000

Presentation today with the fine people at Planit, an agency out of Baltimore. All my slides are mixed into the main presentation, but they are the case studies around registration form testing, landing page to donation form conversion, social media (flickr, facebook widgets) and lifecycle emails.