Taproot Launches Friends of the San Francisco Public Library Web Site...

Health, wealth, excellence, abundance, and joy are the 5 key precepts that I remind myself to focus on every day.

Service to the community has always been a significant dimension of my life. What I disliked about service was that many service opportunities asked me to volunteer time doing tasks I was not good at or tasks that any one could do. I always felt like I could give more to my causes if I could give my causes the full value of my skills.

For example instead of donating a book to the local library wouldn't they be better served by me if I could help them raise awareness of their services and their programs by building them a new Web site or new Brand campaign?

But I didn't think there was any mechanism for me to volunteer my marketing, business, and technology acumen to such places. That was until I found Taproot, where we "do it pro bono."

Today, we launched the second Web grant project I have volunteered to guide. I am an account director/grant manager for Taproot and I lead the development, design, build and launch of Advanced Website grants for Taproot.

The first Taproot project I was involved with was the Slide Ranch web site: http://slideranch.org/news where I acted as Grant Manager / Account Director. At Taproot I acted as the Grant Manager/Account Director for the Slide Ranch Advanced Website Grant. Slide Ranch, “Where the Bay Area Gets Down to Earth,” provides outdoor education programs focused on re-connecting students to where food and clothing come from. For the Slide Ranch Advanced Website Grant I built a 7 person team consisting of a Marketing Manager, Copy Writer, Web Designer, Web Programmer, Account Director, Slide Ranch Liaison, and the Executive Director of Slide Ranch.

This team based on the pro-bono model developed an advanced Web site executing on the Taproot process. The Taproot process includes steps such as a project plan, time line, requirements docs, design directions, wire frames, beta site, and go live.

Live today, the second Taproot project is the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library web site: http://www.friendssfpl.org/ or http://www.friendsandfoundation.org/. The Friends of the San Francisco Public Library is a legendary local non-profit serving the Bay area's entire chain of local libraries. I felt it was a great honor to be of service to this incredible organization. For this project our team ebbed and flowed. We lost members of the team to disease, car accidents, pregnancy, and job changes. During the development of the site I saw two companies fold, my mother died, and I divorced my wife. But some how the remaining team of myself, Civiane Chung, David Balmer, and Natalie Thompson stuck it out and finished the project.

Here are the credits: http://www.friendsandfoundation.net/?Credits listing the team.


My joy at completing this second Taproot project is quite deep. The investment by the volunteers, in sum, by both current team members and by ex-team members is well over 400 hours of work. Considering the size of the Friends site and considering the variability in the project, I couldn't be more proud of this team's accomplishment.

Interested in donating your technical, business, or marketing skills to local non-profits in need? Check out http://taprootfoundation.org.

Interested in your local library and the programs they run? Check out http://www.friendssfpl.org/