Notes and materials from GiveCamp 2011

 Oct. 24, 2011

This page was begun Oct. 17 with materials in preparation for GiveCamp, an event held for the first time this year in Charlotte, where software developers volunteer their weekend to write code for nonprofits. Friendship Trays was one of the nonprofits chosen to participate.

Most of the small nonprofits participating received help upgrading the design and features of their websites. One Monroe church received its first website, complete with many communication tools that will help the church stay in touch with its members and the community.

The Friendship Trays proposal, below, was far more narrow and techically more difficult. And the results will continue to appear here for some time.

Code writing, we observed, is chiefly a solitary work. Oh yes, whenever someone needed help, other volunteers were ready to help. But the only major group activity was on Sunday, with the taking of a group picture. A YouTube video of that successful effort appears at the bottom of the page.

 

 

 

Tool kit and list in lieu of memory

 

 Oct. 17, 2011

THE PROPOSAL

 

Capture meal data on website. Our accountant has a spreadsheet tracking meals. The data is voluminous, and most is irrelevant to our task and must not be posted to the web. This project would create a web-based sheet that would update both a display of the data and a bar chart or line chart display of it.

I have made two attempts to display the material. The most recent is at

http://friendshiptrays.org/AboutUs/Financials/Operations/O.htm

The graph is a Quark Xpress page turned into a jpg. The data is in an html table.

One of the earlier attempts is at

http://www.friendshiptrays.org/AboutUs/Financials/Operations/MealCountWeekday.htm

Here, both the graphic and the data are in Quark pages turned into jpgs for import.

And another:

 

http://friendshiptrays.org/AboutUs/Financials/Operations/M.htm

 

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We'd like to capture in the display these items as computed from the daily data:

-- Total meals served monthly. Spring has long been the high, summer the low.

-- Six-week running average of daily meals served. There is no need to show graphic results of daily numbers; it's easier just to explain that Tuesdays and Thursdays are traditionally lowest because recipients tend to schedule kidney dialysis on those days.

-- Totals for the month and proportion of meals during the month served to different groups of recipients. At this point there are three groups: home-bound recipients, day care centers served individually packaged meals, and centers receiving big pans of food for a given population. The tricky part is that a fourth category might be added in the future.

If the accountant's Excel spreadsheet must be re-keyed into the web-based program, that's fine.

 

Crude examples of some of the data are below.

 

 

Monthly chart out of Excel

 

 

 

Extant meal data historical

 

 

The team working on the Friendship Trays project:

 

Tom Alderman

Leona Bondale

Mark Squires, Team Leader

 

 

This is a short video used Friday evening to introduce the group of 30 or so volunteers and nonprofit staffers to the work of Friendship Trays.

 

     

     

     

     

     

     

 

The final portrait from this sitting is displayed here.

 

The seven nonprofits assisted over the Charlotte weekend were A Better World After School, Cabarrus Literacy Council, Children & Family Services Center, Friendship Trays, Greater Charlotte SPCA, Langford Chapel CME Church in Monroe and the Literacy Council of Union County.

There is more information online about national GiveCamp and the Charlotte GiveCamp, which was held for the first time in 2011.