Gumball Capital Blog

Hey, sorry for the break in updates, we’ve come out of finals and moving and whatnot and have finally settled down back to business.  So, here we go!

Cool Stuff
We got T-shirts, possibly to send out to our competing teams and whatnot, how cool is that?  And for the leading team, we got ourselves some sweet polos.

Bilal attended the DoSomething Conference last weekend, and came back with a bunch of useful tips for expanding our model and working on the next steps in getting even more schools to participate, as well as how to manage them all.  Yay!

Campus Ops
So apparently Doreen and Co. are developing a timeline for contacting and helping OCs to launch the Gumball Challenge.  This has definitely been an issue with us before, with teams getting confused about deadlines and whatnot, so it’s good that we’re clearing the path for next year’s Challenge.

Speaking of next year, not only are we getting sponsored by Gumball.com, we’re also coordinating with Recycle to Eradicate Poverty and College Kiva!

Finance
In the beginning we had issues with properly documenting our finances, so we’ve decided to make income and budget sheets!

To make things easier, we’re also standardizing financial documentation methods for the Challenge, so that teams can more easily report to us how they’re doing.

Outreach
We’re now seriously looking for funds and grants through DoSomething.org and the Goldman Foundation. If you know of anything that could help us, please drop us a line!

We’re also creating Info packets and primers for general info on Gumball, to make recruiting easier.

Finally, we’re getting a chance to look into becoming a 501c3 or receiving Fiscal Sponsorship.  SF Community Foundation looks promising for fiscal sponsorship, but we’ll update you as to how that goes!

Marketing
Our newsletter went out last week.  For those of you who’d like to receive it, sign up!

I’m currently working with the Haas Center, the main public service center at Stanford, to put Gumball Capital in a new service video featuring the different grouops around campus!  Should be awesome, I’ll get you all a link to the final product when it’s available!

Hey all!

As you might’ve noticed, we’ve got a new link in the top right corner of our website!

That’s right, we’ve formed a partnership with Gumball.com!  They’ve generously agreed to sponsor our competition and provide us and our partner schools with the gumballs we’ll need!

This is really exciting, because our currently supply is over a year old, unusable, and verily stale (I tested it; don’t ever do what I did, I nearly broke my teeth), so we were wondering how on earth we were going to get a couple thousand gumballs.  Thanks, Gumball.com!  We look forward to working with you!

~Jae and the Gumball Team

I’m reading Forces for Good - The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits by Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant. It’s a wonderfully readable and useful book, and was used by two Corps members, Sophia and Kalvin, to teach a class on Social Entrepreneurship.

Reading one section about “Creating Evangelists” helped me remember that we aren’t just trying to raise the most amount of money for microfinance, but we are shaping the minds of college students to harness their energy and passion for social change.
“Habitat has not chosen the easiest way to build houses. The easiest way is like the construction companies do it, with paid skilled labor and lots of it. Habitat does not work this way because the ultimate goal is not the house, but [to transform] the people who participate in the building of that house, the families who will live in that house, and the society that they are a part of.”

Cool Stuff
1. Last meeting of the year is next Monday, May 25 @ 9PM.
2. Salina & I presented at the Teens in Tech Conference last Tuesday. Read about it here and here.

Campus Ops
1. Meeting with Phoneraiser on Monday to discuss recruiting more OCs.
2. Meeting with College Kiva this Tuesday to discuss a possible partnership.
3. Stanford OC recruiting has begun. Emails and flyers have been sent out. Spread the word!

Finance
1. 2007-2008 Income Sheet to be finalized by next week.
2. Focusing on document consolidation in the coming weeks.

Outreach
1. Submitting DFJ Business Plan this week.
2. Pitching to Plug & Play Tech Center on Monday.

Marketing
1. Tweaking Facebook ads to target more colleges.
2. Final newsletter for the quarter to be sent Sunday, May 25.

Website
1. The latest version of the Challenge website is up at: www.gumballchallenge.org; send your comments here.

Cool Stuff
1. UUNI Big Idea finalists announced tomorrow.  Stay tuned!
2. Here on Earth: Radios without Borders interview on Wednesday May 7, 1-2 PM PST.  http://www.wpr.org/hereonearth/archive_080507k.cfm

Campus Ops
1. Half of the Challenge Vlogs are complete. The rest should be filmed by next week.
2. Gumball Merchandise catalog arriving anytime this week.
3. Stanford OC recruitment begins this week.  Spread the word!

Finance
1. 2007-2008 Income Sheet to be finalized in a couple weeks.
2. The Gumball Fund has cycled 244 loans of $6000 through Kiva so far!

Outreach
1. Salina and I are presenting at the Teens in Tech Conference, May 13.
2. Editing our business plan for submission into the DFJ entrepreneurship competition.
3. Drafting an op-ed for the Stanford Microfinance Journal.

Marketing
1. Starter Kit to be finished by May 11.
2. Google Ads to continue for 1 more week.
3. Final newsletter for the quarter to be drafted by next week.

Website
1. There’s been a 50% increase in traffic to the website since last month!  Whoohoo!
2. Beta version of www.gumballchallenge.org will be ready by Wednesday May 7.  Send your feedback through our form if you’d care to help us test!

Cool Stuff
1. UUNI Big Idea finalists will be announced Monday May 5. Stay tuned!
2. Ashoka Youth Venture sent us some cool t-shirts, business cards, and a nonprofit info binder!
3. Not so cool…we didn’t make it to the next round of the BASES Social eChallenge.

Campus Ops
1. No new updates from OCs so far, but we’re hoping to hear back soon.
2. All Challenge vlogs should be done by May 3.
3. Final Gumball party at Bucca di Beppo at the end of the quarter. Final date TBA.
4. Gumball Merchandise catalog arriving this week!

Finance
1. 2007-2008 Income Sheet to be finalized in a couple weeks.
2. Financial document consolidation will be done within a week.

Outreach
1. Radios without Borders interview on Wednesday May 7th. Ayo, Jason, and Travis will be on call!
2. Salina and Jae are presenting at the Teens in Tech Conference, May 13.
3. Possibly entering the DFJ entrepreneurship competition for a shot at $250,000.

Marketing
1. Starter Kit to be finished by mid-May.
2. Google Ads to continue for 2 more weeks. Facebook ads will run till the money runs out (we only pay per click, how cool is that?)!

Website
1. The next version of www.gumballchallenge.org will be ready by next week.

Howdy folks, here’s what we’ve been up to lately!

Cool Stuff
1. BASES Social eChallenge presentation tomorrow: Monday April 21 @ 1:30 - 2:00PM in the Y2E2 building.  Please drop by and support the Gumball team if you’re around!
2. I’ve finished the 3rd version of the Challenge video!  Check it out, and let me know what you think.
3. DoSomething.org has offered us free tickets to Coachella!  We’re guaging interest from our team to see if anyone would like to go.

Campus Ops
1. Met with Paly students last Thursday.  Will form an OC by the end of the year, and run the Challenge in the Fall.
2. Recruiting for Stanford OC in early April.
3. All Challenge vlogs should be done by May 3.  I’ll be editing them!

Finance
1. Making changes to Income Sheet and Budget in the coming weeks.
2. Compiling all Financial documents and spreadsheets for easier access and usability.

Outreach
1. Executive Summary and video submitted for 2nd round of UUNI Big Idea competition.
2. Radios without Borders interview in May.
3. Presenting at Teens in Tech Conference, May 13.

Marketing
1. Starter Kit cover design finished.  Great work Shelly!
2. Second round of Facebook and Google Ad Marketing has started.
3. Email Templates have been finalized.  Now contacting blogs, and service groups in the coming weeks.

Website
1. Working on Google Analytics for Advertising Campaign.
2. Making functional changes to www.gumballchallenge.org.

Cool Stuff
1. Thanks to everyone who came out to the pizza party yesterday. Extra kudos to Campus Ops for holding the event!
2. The Social eChallenge Business Plan is done! Next step is to prepare for the presentation on Monday, April 21.
3. I’ve completed the first version of the new Gumball Challenge video! Look for it in about a week or so!

Campus Ops
1. The Gumball Merchandise catalog has come in. We’ll be ordering stuff soon.
2. All Challenge vlogs should be done by May 3.
3. Meeting with Paly students and teachers this week to discuss partnership.
4. Recruiting for Stanford OC at the end of the month.

Finance
1. Making changes to Income Sheet and Budget in the coming weeks.
2. Compiling all Financial documents and spreadsheets for easier access and usability.

Outreach
1. National Awards have been distributed to Stanford winners!
2. Business Plan complete! Now working on preparing for Social eChallenge presentation.

Marketing
1. Design working on the Starter Kit this week.
2. Second newsletter has been sent out!
3. First round of Facebook and Google Ad Marketing campaigns to commence this Tuesday/Wednesday.
4. Finalizing the Gumball Challenge video; working on a promotional video next.

Website
1. Working on Google Analytics for Advertising Campaign
2. Making massive functional changes to www.gumballchallenge.org.

Hey all! We’re back from our Spring Breaks, but that doesn’t mean we’ve been idle. Here’s all the cool stuff that’s been going on!

Cool Stuff
1. We’ve proceeded to the 2nd round of the Social e-Challenge! Next step is drafting a business plan…
2. We’re also semi-finalists in the UUNI Big Idea competition! That puts us in the top 75 of over 1000 submissions.
3. Doreen, Stefanie, & Ayo presented at the Splash Conference yesterday (04/05/08), teaching students about Social Entrepreneurship (and gumballs). I taught a course as well, titled “Innovation: the Power of Creativity.”
4. Kalvin & Stefanie presented at Aurora Forum’s Poverty Conference yesterday as well.

Campus Ops
1. We’re looking at Michigan, Ohio State, San Jose State, and UNT to join us in the Challenge next fall.
2. Gumball merchandise (t-shirts, hats, etc.) will hopefully be ordered in 2-4 weeks. It’ll look pretty snazzy, so if you’re interested in having something, drop us a line!
3. We’re filming some vlogs with various Gumballers about their experiences, the next one is set to start filming next Sunday.
4. We’re partnering with schools! We’ll be meeting with Palo Alto and Gunn High school students and teachers next week to discuss the details.
5. OC Starter Kit v2.0 almost complete…

Finance
1. We’ve loaned out a about $5000 in outstanding loans, and a total of $5900 to 233 entrepreneurs!
2. We’ve finally got our balance sheet and budget properly drafted; final drafts should be complete by the end of the month, so we’ll have a plan to work from.

Outreach
1. National Awards will be distributed this week to Stanford competitors.
2. Bilal, Salina, Ellen, Jason, and Kalvin are drafting a Business Plan this week for submission to Social e-Challenge.
3. We’ve decided to participating in the Teens in Tech Conference in May, it’s a great way to spread our name while (hopefully) meeting some like-minded people.

Marketing
1. We have a new Gumballer in Marketing: welcome aboard Tariq!
2. Second newsletter coming out this week.
3. First round of Facebook and Google Ad marketing campaigns to commence next week. We’re not entirely sure how well they ads will work, but we’ll try it and see how things go.
4. I’m personally in the process of compiling 3 new multimedia videos about Gumball: one about the Challenge, one about our History, and one as a sweet little Promo.

WebDev
1. Travis is hard at work on fixing bugs of our main website.
2. He’ll also be creating functionality for OC registration on Challenge website.

All in all, a very productive break–thanks for reading!

Hello readers! Here’s what we’ve discussed at our weekly directors’ meetings:

Cool Stuff
1. We’ll be focusing on wrapping up operations for the quarter… last meeting of the quarter is next Sunday, March 9!
2. We’ll find out if we proceed to the 2nd round of the Social e-challenge on Wednesday, March 5.
3. Gumball will be featured on Radios without Borders: Wednesday Mar 12, 1-2PM.
4. Not so cool news… we’re not proceeding to the next round of the Texas Social Innovation competition.

Campus Ops
1. Ann Arbor OC is looking into becoming an established student group on their campus.
2. Ohio State has expressed interest in running the Challenge.
3. Price quotes on Gumball Merchandise coming in a few weeks.
4. Meeting Face AIDS this week, to get general advice on setting up chapters.
5. We’re expanding to High Schools! Talking to Paly and other Bay Area schools next week
6. We may be going on a Skydiving trip, hosted by Deanna, next quarter (yes, skydiving). =)

Finance
1. The Gumball Fund is now $5050, and we’ve loaned out a total of $5225 to 212 entrepreneurs!
2. Working on drafting a new budget for the coming fiscal year’s expenses

Outreach
1. National Awards have been sent out. Stanford Awards going out this week.
2. Thank You Letters have been sent out!
3. The Chiapas Project has expressed interest in partnering with us. Having a conference call with them this week.

Marketing
1. First Newsletter has been sent out!
2. Writing templates for contacting blogs and newspapers
3. Compiling Multimedia video of all Challenge/Gumball photos & videos.
4. Will start advertising on Facebook next quarter.

Website
1. Focusing on consolidating the WIKI into a micropreneurship education tool.