Final DFE Proposal: Stewardship Network

SI 575—CIC DFE Proposal Organization: The Stewardship Network, a Michigan non-profit with its headquarters office in Ann Arbor, has for the last 5+ years been working to develop a statewide network that will connect individuals, organizations, and businesses that are interested in and working to protect Michigan’s natural lands and waters. It seeks to make this work more effective by helping interested parties share ideas, resources, and information. Project: My 501 project has just performed an outside assessment of communication and work processes within certain parts of The Stewardship Network. We have noted and made recommendations on issues such as central document storage, creating policies and protocols for certain work processes, and use of their website and database content management system, Kintera Sphere. There are certain things we have noticed and have ideas and suspicions about, which were out of the scope of our project but which might be very helpful for an SI student to continue to evaluate and then actually implement solutions on. The project will include two major components. The first is to assess the usability of the Stewardship Network’s current content management system, Kintera Sphere, in light of the Network’s needs, technical abilities and resources, and desire that their content management system give them plenty of room to grow. There were questions in our 501 project over whether this was the best system for them to be using or not but, again, this kind of analysis was out of the scope of our project. To perform this assessment, the student should have some experience and ability with content management systems, but this project will also give him or her an opportunity to research and compare different options based on cost, ease of use, functionality, room for growth, etc. In assessing Kintera Sphere, the student will take into account the uses and functionality that the Network wishes to get out of its content management system, decide whether Kintera can deliver here or not. If it can deliver needs as well as any other system, the student will continue working on the next part of the project. If it cannot deliver on the Network’s needs or there are other systems that would be significantly better and easier to use, the student will make recommendations for another system. This assessment and research will need to be performed in consultation with the Director and the Network’s current IT volunteer. The second stage of the project will be identifying and implementing ways to maximize the Network’s use of the capabilities of its content management system. This will start with setting up the basics: setting up central storage of shared documents and organization of these documents to make them accessible; setting up one-time registration user accounts/profiles; and setting up accessibility layers and user access to different layers. This should be more than enough to fill up a part-time semester DFE and perhaps a full-time summer internship as well. If the above work is completed and there is still time in the internship, the student might begin working on integrating additional functionality such as an electronic calendar and the Stewardship Match program into the website. Mentor: I have not secured mentorship for this project. Some parts of it may be mentored by the IT volunteer if she is willing, but more likely I would need to find someone in SI or some other organization nearby who has experience with this kind of work. I will be speaking with the Network staff in January and would be happy to find a mentor for this project if they wish to promote it as an internship. I am not presently qualified to take on this project and so have not sought out a mentor partly because I know I will not actually be taking it on, at least not this semester or summer