Soapbox Engage Blog

For fifteen years, KIPP NYC, a non-profit network of public charter schools in New York City, has disproven the ordinary about urban schools in the United States. Their goal has been to "graduate students with the strength of character and academic abilities needed to succeed in life." They have 1,300 students and 700 alumni, with 80% of them from low-income families and 98% are African-American or Latino.

KIPP NYC is an organization focused on results and results it has shown. Over its lifetime, it can consistently grown to educate more students from low-income families and give them a true opportunity to seek higher education. Their programs have extended from kindergarten to college prep, all supported by a dedicated staff of dynamic teachers. These programs have helped 95% of students score at or higher than the state average in math, 93% of students to finish high school, and 86% of graduates go to college.

In December, PICnet launched a brand new website for the organization, encasing information on various programs, a professional design, and multimedia on staff and students.  It consolidated information from several websites on different programs onto one universal and streamlined site.

Some key components of the project:

• A lot of content needed to be migrated
• Information architecture had to be designed for pulling content from multiple sites onto one universal site
• We set up a simple-viewer photo gallery
• Plenty of videos for staffers/alumni/families/family testimonials

KIPP NYC is on track to having 50% of their graduates finish college in 6 years in the next two years. The organization's goal is to strengthen and expand their programs so that 75% of their graduates complete their college degree, compared to national average of 10% for low-income communities.  If you would like to learn more or support these students and teachers in their endeavor, please visit them on the web at http://www.kippnyc.org/.

You have a very large video file, pdf or document... or you have a large number of smaller files.  These can become too large to store on your web server, and they can quickly push your beyond your bandwidth allowance. So, what do you do?

One solution worth considering is Amazon's S3 cloud storage solution.  S3 allows you to store large amounts of data at a surprisingly low cost.  Additionally, the cost structure is scalable, so you will only ever pay for what you use.

What is Amazon S3?

S3 stands for Simple Storage Service.  Simply put in Amazon's own words, "Amazon S3 is storage for the Internet. It’s a simple storage service that offers software developers a highly-scalable, reliable, and low-latency data storage infrastructure at very low costs."

All that means is that it is a service that allows you to store data in the "cloud" in a way that is fast, cheap and reliable.

At PICnet, we're always looking for new talent, and right now we're on a mission: adding another stellar Project Manager to our team to help deliver the high-quality service our non-profit, association, and congressional clients expect.

We're specifically looking for fun individuals from our non-profit sector with experience in the Web development process (Joomla experience is a huge plus).

Our Non-Profit Soapbox platform is a Joomla-based content management system used by non-profits and socially responsible businesses to easily manage their Web communications. We're looking to keep up with demand by adding the right project management talent to our team.

Think you've got what it takes? Read on...