From The Mustard Seed, Winter/Spring 2013
More than 50 staff at Geonetric helped create new websites for 4 non-profits in Cedar Rapids
One of our greatest assets at the Catherine McAuley Center is a community of businesses and professionals who seek opportunities to give back. Most recently, Geonetric donated new website designs to 4 local agencies, including CMC, in an event called Operation Overnight. As they said themselves, “Why Operation Overnight? Because Geonetric’s team of software engineers and marketers don’t know how to build houses (at least not very well). Instead, we figure we can use our mad, website development skillz, social media ninja expertise, or our guerrilla marketing ideas to help these non-profits in their missions to improve our local community.” With 24 hours and a lot of coffee, a team of Geonetric staff used their amazing technical skills to build a new website for CMC. They improved our web presence and trained our staff to maintain the website. We have harnessed the power of social media to share the success of clients and promote our events. Since launching the site, we have been able to reach more than 1,000 CMC supporters through e-newsletters, Facebook, and website visits.
- Geonetric staff works diligently on CMC’s new website build
Geonetric’s contribution is just one way that professionals and organizations in our community are improving the efficiency and quality of services at CMC. Each of our board members brings professional knowledge that is an asset to our mission. So many of our volunteers bring valuable expertise as professionals in the fields of finance, investing, facilities maintenance, fundraising, law, marketing, technology, and so many others. By utilizing volunteer expertise and in-kind services wherever possible, we are able to make the most of monetary contributions. Time and again, members of our community have said, “I can do that!” and offered their skills to the Center: Mount Mercy University nursing students present health and nutrition topics to women at the Transitional Housing Healthy Women’s Series; Mercy Medical Center staff provide design and printing services for several CMC projects; Robyn Hepker of Benson & Hepker Design volunteers her expertise to our Annual Report and this newsletter; Waldinger staff donated their time to take apart an old boiler so it could be removed from the Center, and Ovation Networks donated and installed a video security system, just to name a few.
We know that professionals right here in Cedar Rapids are reaching out to their community looking for a way to give back by doing what they do best. Do you have a skill that could benefit CMC programming or operations? Let us know. Our new website makes it much easier for potential volunteers to sign up and get started. Check out our volunteer opportunities here.