Sample Projects

Southern Rural Development Institute strengthened rural communities to resist development "of last resort" - prisons, big box retailers and the like. One tool they used was a detailed rural philanthropy report, combining local IRS data on giving with tools to harness that rural strength into greater community resiliency. One problem: the report had to be painstakingly hand-prepared by staff people over the course of days. Some Bright Roots research, a handful of Crystal Reports macros and document rewrites later... and they could start one compiling with just a click of a button. Just give them the zip code!

Second Family Foundation wanted to expand its direct practice supporting children in foster care with a research component, bringing new information to the NC foster care community about its demographics and effective interventions. Bright Roots helped negotiate the data request to North Carolina Department of Social Services using a combination framework of social work research and computer science data protection... keeping social security numbers and personal information safe while still meaningfully linking client groups. The research findings will be completed and published in 2010.

Durham Center for Employment Training brings skills in highly employable areas (like medical billing and business office technology) to the unemployed as a community development and support strategy. That means dozens of computers in each classroom! Bright roots ran the intranet cabling and helped clean up the "floor spaghetti"... then when these computers came down with viruses or need hardware repairs, CET called on Bright Roots again to hand clean and repair computers and set up safeguards and best practices so users couldn't accidentally bring viruses back onto campus.

In the data industry, SAS is widely respected as a leader in both data analysis and mapping AND taking care of its employees. When the eldercare consultant in its small department of social workers needed a tracking system for the employees and their parents whom she expertly supported through crises and transitions, Bright Roots used existing company assets on their exchange server to set up a customized, MSOutlook-driven client intake system to increase her ability to stay on top of a growing case load.

The Stone House supports activists by bringing diverse spiritual practices and principles to help reduce the high burnout rate in that difficult work. They brought Bright Roots Consulting on to redesign their database and create a delegated individual fundraising strategy that better leveraged board and staff relationships, minimized stress and maximized well-timed asks. Bright Roots still supports them by providing technical support and infrastructure for their program evaluation and fundraising needs.

Pickard's Mountain Eco-Institute Pickards Mountain Eco-Institute is dedicated to offering practical solutions to the environmental crisis.  Their educational farm and sustainability learning center, complete with organic gardens, sustainable livestock production, biofuels, and renewable energy systems are dedicated to children of all ages. They called on Bright Roots Consulting on to revamp their budgeting and program measurement documents and put together stronger grant making packages. Bright Roots still supports them in this work as a part time operations / fundraising coordinator.

As the NC LGBT Pride festival and parade has expanded, so has the community's ability to map itself. Pride needed a simple, managable, but professional looking website celebrating lgbt-owned and friendly businesses. The site has been used to leverage new sponsors for the pride guide and parade, keeping the not-for-profit event in the black.

Through a sweet, glowing referral, Sustainable Methods Consulting asked for a simple website with some basic flash capability to replace their freely created template site. After guiding them through a process of color, font, style and layout selection, Bright Roots got the site up and turned the completed site over to them to maintain!

The Pride Guide is the state's premiere resource guide for a growing number of lgbt-owned and allied businesses. Bright Roots supported their work with page and advertising layout, enabling the guide to get to the printers in time for the NC Pride Parade. Dealing with that many new and old advertisors became a challenge - sales were great, but the billing infrastructure was taxed. We complimented the new website with an billing strategy supported by online forms, shared workspaces, automated invoices and paypal that increased our ability to track our new sales.

Apple Realty had a new website template... but couldn't get the functionality they needed out of it. Thanks to a request to Bright Roots, they added on javascript features that made it easier to selectively view, print, and internally update their property listings... making maintenance a breeze. We added missing HTML descriptors for search engine optimization that bumped their appearance on google searches up considerably.

Teaming together with the old webmaster, Bright Roots rolled out a brand new template for a local martial arts business, Open Sky Aikido & Tai Chi... optimizing it for searches and updating their content, then turning it over to the business owners to make their own updates.

Gold Standard Media is a for-profit organization that supplies bulk gift products for corporate events. Bright Roots supported their work with an online and graphic presence start to finish, putting together a search engine optiminzed website, logos, business cards and more. When the company added a "greener" line of products, they nabbed a green discount from us due to their socially conscious move.

Josh Lozoff's Deep Magic, famous both locally and nationally, has grown its online presence significantly. Bright Roots helped put together his general magic site and special event site, along with posters and flyers for his award-winning and sold out show, Beyond Belief.