Spreading Kindness

Featured: Salisbury University Nonprofit Fundraising and Volunteer Management course students, Professor Ryan Weaver, Kindness commissioner Robby Chin & Secretary of Kindness, Heather Brooks

Thanks to a collaboration during the fall semester at Salisbury University, kindSBY has expanded its efforts to spread kindness in the Salisbury area. Professor Ryan Weaver established a Nonprofit Fundraising and Volunteer Management course, and kindSBY was the grateful beneficiary of this first class session.

The City of Salisbury’s Secretary of Kindness and kindSBY’s Executive Director Heather Brooks took on the task of working with three teams of students whose learning provided kindSBY with a host of opportunities to spread even more kindness in our community while providing a new generation of university students with hands-on experience in marketing, social media, fundraising and website development as they prepare for careers as nonprofit leaders.

In return, kindSBY now has a comprehensive social media toolkit for use in marketing and communications efforts along with a fresh new logo that is both inviting and colorful. A new system for recruiting new volunteers and maintaining those relationships for the long term was established using the United Way of the Lower Eastern Shore’s existing Get Connected platform.

Most exciting is a new kindSBY website, developed by the students in collaboration with kindSBY; it’s slated to be launched in the near future and will be the subject of a separate post.

In addition to these enhancements to our brand and marketing capabilities, the students established a Kindness Club at Parkside High School and a kindSBY club is being created at Salisbury University under the direction of Kindness Commissioner, Savanna Brooks.

At the end of SU’s fall semester, the students also created and distributed small Finals Care Kits containing snacks, stickers and kindness bracelets during final exam week. This provided class members with hands-on experience planning and managing a nonprofit budget, and executing the project and keeping records – a process nonprofits use when a grant is applied for, awarded and completed.

Finally, the students also provided potential future strategies for using the tools they provided.

Heather dedicated a substantial amount of time and effort to help make all of this happen, but it’s fair to say that it was well worth her efforts. Thank you, Heather and Professor Weaver!