we here at causeway couldn't be happier. the fine folks at chatter chose to spotlight us in their january issue! how cool is that?! but before you go scoping it out, i must warn you. this article has strings attached.

here are 3 warnings about our article in chatter, that you need to know:

1. this ain't your typical nonprofit - make no bones about it - causeway is different. 

●  from top-to-bottom, it is operated 100% by volunteers. 

●  this non-profit is run like a 'startup' for-profit business. i'm talking about bootstraps people! 

●  it's hyper local. causeway is 'by chattanoogans' and 'for chattanoogans'. to put it another way, causeway is in the business of connecting & empowering our fellow citizens to make chattanooga a better place.

 2. our math doesn't always add up…in a good way - not only does causeway pass along 100% of your donations, if you do a good job rallying support for your cause, 110% will be passed along. how can you beat that?!

3. causeway isn't for the apathetic. causeway, at its very core, is about action. nothing gets done without you and your friends and your neighbors. it's that simple. so if you read the article and it clicks, the ball is in your court. take action! you can start a new cause, contribute to existing causes, or help other causes rally support.

we're really excited about causeway, and we hope you are too. chattanooga needs lots of civic-minded citizens, just like you. folks who are willing to leverage their skills, time, brain power, and resources for the good of our community.

there. consider yourself warned.

congrats to the 35.85 guild & andrew mollenkof

the voting has ended, and we have a winner for our first causeway video contest! the 35.85 guild and filmmaker andrew mollenkof will receive $1,000 each. if you'd like to learn more about the 35.85 guild, watch the video andrew created below and check out their cause, helping artists connect, grow, and thrive!

thanks to our finalists and participants

we'd also like to say a big thank you to all of the nonprofits and filmmakers that entered the contest. if you haven't seen these great videos or read the causes submitted, we'd encourage you to do so! chattanoogans from across the city are working on some amazing causes. we hope these short videos bring awareness and rally support for these nonprofits that are working to improve the lives of individuals in our community.

We have absolutely loved seeing all the amazing things people are doing in Chattanooga to better our city and help the people who live here. We received some great entries for our first Causeway Video Contest (check out the videos and the worthy causes they promote).

The Finalists

As we originally stated in our video guidelines, the winner will be decided by a combination of public 'support' votes and a panel of judges. Due to the lack of votes we are extending the voting portion of the video contest until 6:00 PM Friday December 7th! Our judges did not want to make the decision solely on their own, so now it is Chattanooga's turn. The judges have made their decisions based on the criteria and have chosen the top 3 videos. The top three causes that are still in the running are:

• Helping Artists Connect, Grow and Thrive! by the 3585 Guild
• The Folk School of Chattanooga is Growing! by the Folk School of Chattanooga
• Unite. Wear White. to End Human Trafficking by Second Life of Chattanooga

(We are only counting new supporters of these causes from the beginning of the contest on October 1st until 6:00pm Dec 7th.)

Time to Vote!

Now it is up to you! Vote for your favorite finalist by creating a profile on Causeway (if you don't already have one) and clicking the "Support" button at the top of the cause you want to win.  

Rally support for your favorite video and cause via Facebook, emails, Twitter, good ole fashion word of mouth and whatever else you can think of. Once again, the three finalists are:

• Helping Artists Connect, Grow and Thrive! by the 3585 Guild
• The Folk School of Chattanooga is Growing! by the Folk School of Chattanooga
• Unite. Wear White. to End Human Trafficking by Second Life of Chattanooga

What They'll Win

The winner of the contest (both the filmmaker AND the nonprofit) will receive $1,000 each. We'll be announcing the winner on Monday, December 10th - so stay tuned!

nothing says it's fall time like carved vegetables, so we made our very own causeway pumpkin! the weather is just now starting to get cold, but it is definitely fall! many folks like to volunteer in the winter around christmas time, but why wait? now is the perfect time to find a cause you care about or submit your own. 

Last week I went to The Tivoli Theatre, along with over one thousand other Chattanoogans, to watch the premiere of Build Me A World: The Story Of The Howard School. The film, by Fancy Rhino, documents a year at The Howard School, which until recently was in the bottom 5% of performing schools in Tennessee. An excerpt from the invitation we received said the following:

we believe that Howard stands for our city - and the aim of this film is to inspire our city to stand up for Howard and ultimately, for other schools like it. 

This past Saturday, Causeway had the opportunity to join Fancy Rhino, educators from The Howard School, and other citizens to discuss ways we as Chattanoogans can get involved and better support the students and educators at Howard. Businessmen and women, politicians, educators and folks from various churches and nonprofit organizations were present to brainstorm ways to support the school's goals. We heard some great ideas, and we're looking forward to seeing some of these up on the site in the future! 

If you haven't had a chance to see the film, River City Company will be showing another free viewing September 1, 2012 on Market Street at 8:45 p.m. And if you're interested in getting involved with Howard, email us at , and we'll let you know once we have active causes on the site. There will be plenty of opportunities to get involved, so stay tuned!

what's new?

we're excited about all the updates rolling out over here at causeway. in the past few months we have seen a lot of growth and have put in a few more updates to make causeway.org even better! we know that we're not perfect, but that's why we have a "beta" phase. so keep the feedback coming and help us, help you, help chattanooga!

editing causes

when you submit a cause, you can now go back and edit that cause at anytime! gone are the days when you would have to submit every typo change to us for approval. we understand these causes are important to you, and this is just one way we can make things easier!

this also means that if you want to submit a cause, you can now save a draft of that cause before submitting it for approval. a lot of work and information goes into a cause and sometimes life interupts. no problem - save your draft and come back later! 

Share your thoughts

we love brainstorming and getting input and feedback from others so we brought this concept to causeway. as you scroll through a cause, you will now see a "share your thoughts" button for each section. if you have a question about a specific section or have some ideas that might strengthen a cause, then click on "share your thoughts" and add a comment directly to that section!  

having a good plan is important in order to address your cause. sometimes we just don't have all the answers and we need input from others. we implemented "share your thoughts" to help causes get the best possible plan in place so it can move forward, rally support, and be addressed. 

Rally support

this is a huge part of causeway. submitting a cause doesn't magically drum up support. it's a lot of work too! to help you with this, we have now added an "email" button at the top of each cause along with all of the popular social sharing buttons so you can quickly and easily broadcast your cause to all your friends, family, and neighbors.

Support

so let's say you have found a cause you care about.  what do you do now?  finding causes that you care about is the first step, now support them! the most obvious way to support a cause is to click the "support" button. when you click the support button, then your profile picture appears to the right in the list of supporters for that cause. also when you go to view all causes, by default the causes are listed by number of supporters. so by clicking support you can actually move a cause higher up on the page. also later this year, we'll be rolling out a new feature for supporters that will allow you to stay in the loop and receive important updates about that cause.

Contribute

clicking the support button alone will not help a cause become addressed though. the progress bar indicating %-to-goal does not move up either. in order to help a cause progress you must go beyond clicking the support button and really get involved. contributing time, money, materials, expertise, and facilities is the only way to help a cause get addressed! so roll up your sleeves, pull out that wallet, or put on your thinking cap and contribute in whatever way fits you! you can also help by then tweeting, sharing on facebook, or posting to google+ that you have contributed to a cause. at causeway we call this "rallying support." you may know someone that loves to volunteer, or that is passionate about education, but they have no idea about causeway. share causes you care about and let's help these causes reach their goals! 

i remember in high school and college that we had to fulfill a certain number of volunteer hours every semester. although this was sometimes done through obligation, it has helped develop a desire in me to give back.  some of you may be like i was and are looking for unique ways to volunteer for school or you may be like me now and simply have the volunteer bug!  causeway is the perfect place for us volunteer lovers. peruse causes to find different organizations and opportunities to get involved with here locally in chattanooga. what i love about causeway is that its focus is on chattanooga. we call chattanooga home and want to see chattanoogans be as involved as possible in the development and betterment of our city.  

so the next time you have an itch to volunteer in chattanooga and want to know where you can contribute your time, head over to causeway and see what causes have been posted or updated. we want to be a resource for chattanooga to find ways to get involved. there is often a disconnect between people who love to serve and people and organizations that need help and volunteers. causeway helps to make that connection. so post your local causes on causeway and find other causes that you want to get involved with.  that's what we're here for! local connections and local causes. 

it was exciting to see an article in our Times Free Press newspaper this past week detailing a little bit of what causeway is all about. we have seen a huge jump in activity since the beta site launched last september. the exposure by the Times Free Press has helped us reach a larger audience and get others in the chattanooga area excited about giving and being involved in our community. 

we love chattanooga and believe strongly that we are not alone in this.  chattanoogans are famous for rising up and helping out in our community.  help us as we champion more community involvement so chattanoogans will take ownership of our city and contribute towards its improvement.  find a cause you care about, help think of a way to get it done, contribute and rally support, and let's see results.  jump over to the Times Free Press site here and see their take on what this startup called causeway is all about.

here are the top 10-ish reasons why you might want to get involved with causeway:

1. you love chattanooga.
2. you think we, as individuals and as a community, can help ourselves better than, say, the government can. (not starting any fights here-- government officials have suggested the same to us...)
3. you like the idea of supporting civic entrepreneurism, connecting folks who have good local causes with folks who have good ways to address them (“cause-way”).
4. you think it’d be cool if it were easier for people to contribute to their community on a level playing field, according to their means-- for example, if someone can’t give money, maybe they’ve got time, tools, facilities, or expertise, which can be just as good, and just as worthy of recognition, as money.
5. you like the idea of a place to see “civic business plans” come to life-- a place to create, review and even crowdsource plans to improve our community-- in other words, a place to treat chattanooga like it’s our business, because ... chattanooga IS our business.
6. you’re tired of giving money or time to something and not really knowing... where it went.  (causeway passes 100%- actually 110%- through, and even covers credit card fees.)
7. you’re a businessperson, or you simply like the idea of seeing results of projects, good OR bad, so chattanoogans can learn from other chattanoogans, and our community can keeping getting smarter and better.
8. you’d agree that, even if one small project doesn’t save the world, it can set an example for others-- others who might have a great idea and just need a little inspiration.
9. you like local-- buying local, hiring local, designing local, giving local.  and you like local grassroots efforts, even if, like causeway, they’re a little crazy or underfunded at first, like a startup.
10. you’d love to have one place to choose and track all your local giving-- including all the local nonprofits you already know and love. causeway can support both new causes and existing ones-- and can provide a platform for every charitable event or organization in town, without bias or territorialism, or taking a cut for ourselves.
11. you like folks who give 110%.  The volunteers at causeway-- and we are all volunteers--give 110%, literally.  not only do we put 11 items in our top 10 lists, but we’ll pass 110% of donations to causes in 2012-- by providing a 10% match per cause (until we can afford more).  Why? because sometimes good ideas, and entrepreneurs-- for profit or nonprofit-- just need a little boost to get going. (and on the flipside, people who contribute want to see their full contribution go to the cause they support).

like those entrepreneurs, causeway is just getting started.  but if any of these points strikes your fancy, find a cause you’d like to support, submit your own cause, or contribute directly to causeway-- why? to help folks in our community to help each other, and to help themselves.  

because in chattanooga, and at causeway, we believe where there’s a cause, there’s a way.