Some of us will argue that volunteering for SPCUG is a community service, but our group occasionally gets involved with other organizations to help with their causes.
KVIE
For KVIE, our local PBS television station, we have helped out with several of their fundraising events.
Our first assistance was to provide memberships to KVIE for their auction event. This was before I joined, so I could not get much information. I could not find any reference in Sacra Blue that told me how much the membership actually sold for.
We have provided 18 to 25 people to man the phones during pledge week. For these events, we answer the phones during all of the breaks that occur during our four-hour shift. We take information from the callers and enter it into computers. We do this about once a year. We are always looking for more members to get involved with this event.
This event is currently KVIE’s largest source of income. Originally, we went hoping they would show some special programming that would appeal to computer users (and get us more members). Now we go to help out and have fun.
The other fundraiser we have become involved with is the KVIE Art Action. This yearly event is a weekend auction. This auction is a lot more laid back than the auctions were when they sold everything.
For this event, we use two volunteers per shift with a total of eight shifts. We watch the bidding activity and enter the latest bids into a computer that uses an Access database. The values are used to track bid activity and update the high bid values shown on the air. This one gets quite exciting when there is a bidding war.
Net at Two Rivers
Net at Two Rivers was a public service project promoting both functional and computer literacy among residents of our community. This project, headed by Barb Englund and Cynthia Mulit, was partially funded by the U.S. Department of Commerce. They provided funds to match the value of time that volunteers provided. So our members provided services and the government gave funds.
Other organizations involved with this project included MacNexus, the Sacramento Police Department, Access Sacramento, and Family Service Agency.
We provided volunteers who helped set up equipment and provide training. Training was provided for volunteers to become trainers. All the reports I ever got from the program were positive.
We brought in over $765,000 in federal money to the program.
Technical Job Fair
SPCUG became co-sponsors for the Technical Job Fairs that were facilitated by Job Journal, Inc., when the fair was started in 1995. We provided free advertising in Sacra Blue and had a table at the fair itself. Our goal was to let people know we existed.
Scholarships
The Sacramento PC Users Group has been offering scholarships to area students since 1993. To date we have awarded over $6,000 to seventeen (17) recipients from fifteen (15) schools throughout the area we serve.
The requirements are that the student be graduating from high school during the current year and be attending college starting in the following year. Applicants may reside in any of the communities we serve. Members of the Sacramento PC Users Group or their families are eligible, but such affiliation is given no additional consideration.
Applicants are asked to complete all of the information requested on our standard form. They must also supply a letter of recommendation from a high school faculty member and an essay of 500 words or less. Their essay needs to describe what they have accomplished with a computer, and what they plan to accomplish in the future. Enrollment in a specific computer-related field is not required.
Charitable Donations
When MS-DOS 6.0 was released, we collected over $1,000 from attendees. With a matching contribution from Microsoft, this resulted in a gift to the United Way of $2,028.10.
