Art Head plan

Potential client with some great goals:

Hey Benjamin!

Thanks for the chat the other day - I feel much better about things now!

Here's a little write-up of what I need/want Art Head to do. I've also attached [copied below] my original Civic Space proposal, which has a lot of detail about the goals, users, tasks, and all that rot.

Also, you can read Mission and Goals of the project here: http://indyarts.wikispaces.com/

Site is here: https://artscommunity.civicspaceondemand.org/

Artists:

Art Head is envisioned to be an online community of individual artists and grassroots arts organizations with a peer-to-peer philanthropy element (micro-philanthropy - targeting donations under $10). Artists (and representatives of arts orgs) set up user profiles and create "Projects" (which are actually "groups" in drupal speak, I believe). Each project has its own contribution page! The idea is that artist users build a community around a project through project/group email and blog communication capabilities, and solicit micro-donations from the public through their project page (civiContribute).

Currently all donations made through the site are funneled into ONE account. Originally, I wanted each artist to be able to receive and manage their own donations, but Civi couldn't do it, at least not for the amount of $$ I was spending. From what I was told, the developers were trying to work in a Chip In integration, but the deal fell through. I would've loved that. Don't know if there's anything you guys could do in this area - but it would be better if we didn't have to manage all the donations from a central repository - if the artists COULD receive the funds directly. And I love the Chip In widget stuff. Any suggestions you guys have here would be appreciated. One good thing about having the central account is you can do a good job of tracking the money - showing results, etc. It's just a bit of an administrative burden to manage.

Donors:

The other type of user is the "donor", member of the public, who will be searching for artists and projects and giving money. Right now, they can "subscribe" to an artist's project(s) and receive updates through that project site. They can donate using the CiviContribute page for the project.

Projects can be classified with a discipline, and there's also free tagging capabilities. There's a project search (which actually seems to be searching the entire site right now).

Other functionality:

I'm using the administrative blog for dynamic front page content. There's a newsletter sign-up which I believe adds people to a group in CivicCRM. I'm not sure I want/need a newsletter sign up. I would perhaps just want to encourage subscription to the main blog via RSS?

You probably want e-mail signup as an option as well, though you could offer e-mail subscriptions to the RSS feed (or equivalent) rather than an edited mass e-mail.

CiviCRM - Hadn't started playing with this at all yet. My first impression was that it was not as intuitive or user-friendly as I would've liked. I'd be very interested in exploring Salesforce integration. I do not think my CRM requirements are very complex at this point. If we could talk more about CiviCRM vs. the Salesforce possibility, that would be great. My organization, Independent Arts & Media, really needs a CRM solution organization-wide, and it would be great to maybe have whatever we set up for Art Head be used organizationally.

Agreed it should be organization-wide. I think we'll need more details.

Now that I think about it, I would also appreciate a color fix for the site. They didn't quite match what I wanted them to when I gave them the color palette!

Sure! Got the palette?

Another thing for us to think about - in the future I would like for this to be a project that can expand geographically. If it launches successfully in SF/Bay Area, I would like to launch it in the Twin Cities (where I am currently). I had spoken to Kieran about this a while back, and he quoted me a price to do something or other, but if we could think about that capability too, at this time, that would be great. (I keep saying "that would be great".) IT could be as simple as using geographic tags on projects? Or having separate sites for different geographies? I don't know!

Probably tags... with location information.... http://drupal.org/project/place

Original Request for Proposal via CivicSpace Form

1. Objective

The primary objective is to connect artists and arts organizations with people who are interested (or could be persuaded) to donate small amounts of money ($5 - $100) to support projects in development, and then to actually facilitate the transaction!

The secondary objective is to build a library of fundraising resources for artists and philanthropic resources for givers.

2. Goals

Describe your goals in simple English.

Break them down into the top items:
(1) Create a local, community website that connects, supports, and promotes the arts, the people creating the art, and the individuals who wish to support them
(2) Promote philanthropy for the arts by providing the means for anyone with an interest in an arts project to contribute to the artist or organization creating it
(3) Support and energize the local arts scene by providing the tools and resources for individual artists and grassroots arts organizations to promote and fundraise for their projects

These are lofty - do you need more specific goals?
5.1. User Goals and Primary Tasks
Who are the primary users of the system?
Primary users fall into three categories:
(1) Individual Artists
(2) Representative(s) of a Grassroots Arts Organization
(3) Interested Citizen/Potential Philanthropist

What are the most important tasks they need to accomplish?
Individual Artists and Arts Orgs
(1) Create an online personal or organizational profile
(2) Create specific project pages with details about the scope, budget, fundraising goal, etc.
(3) Blog about their projects/progress
(4) Collect donations towards their project-based fundraising goals
(5) Upload media (image, video, sound, etc.) files to display their work
(6) List events, gallery showings, performances, etc.

Interested Citizen/Potential Philanthropist
(1) Browse projects by interest: discipline, genre, keywords, etc.
(2) Pledge money toward projects with fundraising goals
(3) Track donations
(4) Get updates from the artists/orgs on the projects they choose to support
(5) Find local arts events
5.2. High Level Functional Requirements
What is the most important functionality for your project?
Project-based fundraising capability for individual artists and grassroots arts orgs.
5.2.1. Online Fundraising
Describe how you would like to use online fundraising capabilities.
I would love to have a site where every artist/org could have fundraising goals for specific projects and the capability of collecting small increment donations from the community at large to reach their goal. (A la fundable, chipin, and others.)

I would love for the donors to be able to track all their donations and the projects they have donated to with a kind of “donor dashboard”.
5.2.2. Blast Email
Describe how you would like to use blast email capabilities.
Blast emails could be used to:
• Send targeted emails to users with an interest in a specific genre of art when new artists/orgs/projects that meet the criteria are added to the userbase
• Send periodic emails to artists/orgs listing funding opportunities and resources
• Other targeted newsletters as yet to be determined
• Events announcements
5.2.3. Website/ Content Management
Describe how you would like to use a content management system to run your website.
Not quite sure what using CMS entails…I’d like to be able to have an org blog, the ability to feature artist and organization profiles on the front page, push out new and popular content, tag clouds, rss feeds, ability to integrate widgets, ability for users to create content and interact with other users, …?
5.2.4. Online Community
Describe what online community features are important for your project.
Some sort of ratings or vouching system, so that artists who have others vouch for them, or rate them highly, naturally rise to the top of the online community as being talented and capable of delivering on their projects. Kind of like ebay seller’s ratings?

User Blogs (integrated with profile) with tagging, RSS, and comments capabilities

Ability to donate anonymously

Networks – interest groups, fan clubs or “donor circles” (artist can have a list of all the users who have donated to his/her project(s))

Communications/Messaging between users
5.2.5. Constituent Relationship Management (supporter database)
Describe how you would like to use your supporter database.
Not sure…what are the capabilities?
5.3. Navigation
Give a sense of the navigation for your website… what are the major sections?
Front Page
Featured profiles
Main Blog
Links, Recently Updated/Added, Tag Cloud, RSS feeds (internal and external)
About Page/How to Join/How to Use
Resources Page
Philanthropy resources for artists and givers
The Artsbase
Browsing the memberbase – with ability to segment by discipline (film, theater, music, literary), most popular, most recent, project tags (keywords), nonprofit (or fiscal sponsorship) status, project status, geography
Artists/Orgs Profiles
Bio/Resume
Blogs
Project Profiles, Pages or Descriptions
Media Galleries (image, sound, video)
Fundraising
Individual Donor Profiles
Donor Dashboards (tracking projects funded)
Forums and/or Events Calendar

5.4. Look and Feel
Describe the how sophisticated and polished you want the look and feel of your website. Look and feel can be a complex and expensive component of the contract.

Needs to look professional with an aesthetic that appeals to the artistic set. Graphically and thematically strong, elegant simplicity, unique look, not text heavy.
5.5. Implementation & Set Up
Any special considerations during the implementation and set up of your site (support training, deployment to multiple locations, etc.)?

I want to be able to run this sucker myself!

Resolution