With not enough hours in the day, how can we make a real difference in the Richmond, Va., community?
For me, part of the answer lies in Impact 100.
Through Impact 100, one hundred women each donate a $1,000 toward a $100,000 grant for a mutually decided upon non-profit. The grant is awarded at the annual “Big Give” where each woman has a single live vote.
A minimum donation of $1,000 is required per woman; however, you can join an impact circle with two other people and share a vote. Getting involved is easy and it is a great opportunity to meet with other local women wanting to help make a change. Simple acts, when made collectively, can transform lives.
The Art 180 team poses with their $100,000 check.
The Big Give 2012 This year’s Big Give followed a rigorous grants review process where dozens of proposals were considered. The volunteer grants committees narrowed the choices to four finalists: Art180, Positive Vibe/Positive Vibe Café, Boaz & Ruth, and William Byrd Community House. Each non-profit presented how they would put the grant to use and, following their presentations, Impact 100 members chose the grant winner on May 8, 2012.
And the winner is … The recipient of the 2012 Impact100 grant is Art180. The money will make it possible to open a youth-run art center located in the downtown Broad Street Arts District. The center will showcase youth talent in all forms of artistic and performance expression and provide employment skills training opportunities for youth.
The Big Give is an amazingly fun, energetic, and emotional event to attend. I love seeing generous, caring and passionate women join together to help our community and truly make an impact.
Get involved Learn more about Impact100. To receive more information and be added to the mailing list, call (804) 330-7400 Ext 122 or email impact100@tcfrichmond.org
Watch this WRIC-TV clip higlighting Impact 100's founder and Capital One executive Talley Baratka.
Michele Rhudy is proud to be a board member of Impact 100 and donate her agency's time to spread the word about the group through media outreach.
No phones, watches, TV, devices, music, books, magazines. That’s what I encountered on a recent women’s weekend. This seemed extreme; until, they took extreme one step further … by telling us we couldn’t speak.
Could I survive? When you are 2,000 miles from home and 8,000 feet above sea level, what choice do you have? Well, aside from a few stolen whispers, I not merely survived – I wondered how I had survived without it.
As a professional communicator, this got me thinking about the messages I produce for others to consume. About all the noise my messages generate. How I’m posting, blogging, tweeting, writing and scripting. Creating the exact absence of silence.
Do I worry more about the frequency of my messaging versus approaching my audience only when I have something of value to share?
Now Here’s Some Noise
340 million tweets per day
140 million+ active Twitter users
150 million+ LinkedIn users
Every second, two people join LinkedIn.
800+ million monthly active Facebook users
400+ million daily active Facebook users
Source: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook
A few words We all probably know people who listen more than they speak. And when they do speak, we want to hear it. Not hearing them is like missing a moment of gold. The kind of gold we communicators spend a career attempting to strike.
In my life, that person is my 72-year-old uncle Charlie. After introducing Uncle Charlie to my favorite city, New York, I asked for his impression. All he said was, “I’d do it again.”
Four words. 16 characters. A tweet on a diet.
In one second, my uncle Charlie summed up the world’s flashiest city, and rightfully deemed it a city worth a do-over.
Recently, I was at a meeting where the following question was posed, “Can you tell a story in six words?” Sure, I thought. I don’t know how but it could be done. The speaker continued, “Yes, you can,” and then offered this example: “Baby shoes for sale. Never worn.”
Embrace silence
As communicators, we shouldn’t fear silence.
Silence doesn’t remove our message from the landscape. It allows our message time to root. It allows us the space to create a stronger voice for our messages. It leaves our audience expectant, because the more we aren’t quiet the more our ability to hear dulls.
Instead of mass messaging, how about ensuring our messages have mass? Do we want to be the company that always has something to say or that always says something?
I’ve come to realize that the loudest sound is the sound that breaks silence.
Let’s be silence breakers. But to do that, we have to allow for the silence first.
How do you create silence? Share your thoughts on our Facebook page.
With two busy kids, a husband who is a sports editor, a dog, and lots of client work, Nicole vanEsselstyn finds her “silence” one moment at a time.
The team at Rhudy & Co. is proud to support Connor's Heroes and its new fundraiser, the Little Heroes Calendar. What is Connor’s Heroes? Connor's Heroes is dedicated to conquering children’s cancer. Comprised of parents, volunteers and others who care about pediatric cancer, this Richmond-area nonprofit supports direct assistance, awareness, and research.
What is the Little Heroes Calendar? Richmond photographer Missy Bane will be photographing and putting together the Little Heroes Calendar, a fundraiser for Connor’s Heroes.
Did you know?
Pediatric cancer is the leading cause of death by disease in children.
Childhood cancer cuts across all social, economic and ethnic differences.
Just a small fraction of the dollars spent on research in this country is directed to pediatric cancer.
Get involved To be a part of this fun and creative community project:Say cheese! and then Vote for your favorite online at www.littleheroescalendar.com.
Once all of the portraits are taken, everyone will be able to vote for their favorites for $1 per vote (again tax deductible to Connor's Heroes). The top 13 vote-getters will be featured in the 2013 calendar, which will be available in September.
Photo sessions are scheduled for April 20-21, 2012, and May 18-19, 2012. Below is a cute baby with a schedule, but you'll probably need to click here to view and print all of the details. For more information or to book your session, visit the Little Heroes' Calendar website. Attend the 2nd Annual Heroes Art Ball Also, mark you calendar to attend the 2nd Annual Heroes Art Ball at the historic Hotel John Marshall in Richmond on Friday, May 4.
Several years ago, a Richmond media outlet was quoting a Twitter handle as the official handle for a well-known local company. Unfortunately, the handle was not being used by the company. This created a challenging situation as we had to work with the client's lawyers to take control of the Twitter handle and clarify details with the reporters.
Ensuring that people are who they say they are online is critical, especially when you're in the business of reporting the news.
To better understand this issue in the Richmond area, I reached out to a few journalists in the Richmond area including:
-Louis Llovio, the retail reporter at the Richmond Times-Dispatch
-Scott Wise, director of interactive media for WTVR-TV(CBS 6 News)
-Pat Kane, a journalist with the Progress-Indexin Petersburg, Va.
Richmond Times-Dispatch Louis Llovio stated, "I try not to ever quote from a Twitter feed. There’s too much bad information. When I do see something of interest on Twitter – or Facebook or anywhere else – I independently verify it before I write the story.
"I try not to ever quote from a Twitter feed." Louis Llovio Richmond Times-Dispatch
One of the main reasons for that is that our threshold is higher. Someone that blogs or Tweets can post anything they want, but we have a journalistic responsibility to our readers to nail down a story before we print it online or in the paper."
WTVR-TV(CBS 6 News) Scott Wise said via Twitter, "@jonathan_rhudy - depends on situation. generally tho tweets have become a primary source of info - like phone call, email or press release. like i said, case by case, but generally i'll report as fact a tweet from police, fire, gov't official."
" ... generally i'll report as fact a tweet from police, fire, gov't official" Scott Wise (via Twitter) WTVR-TV (CBS 6 News)
Progress-Index (Petersburg, Va.) Patrick Kane shared, "I will typically only directly cite a trusted government source unless we have asked normal folks for their input on something. For instance, the chief of Colonial Heights Fire and EMS started using Twitter, and sending photos out, during Hurricane Irene. That gave me a very full view of the damage in the city for breaking news and fairly specific addresses when searching for affected folks for the day-after story, too. I'll also cite Virginia 411 or something like that. I also dug up a few congratulatory Tweets for election night stories last fall.
"We have also taken Twitter tips and turned them into full-length scoops." Patrick Kane Progress-Index (Petersburg, Va.)
We have also taken Twitter tips and turned them into full-length scoops. For instance, a local government Tweeted the sale of an important local property, and one of our reporters broke a story of regional interest when he discovered the buyer's identity. We have also gotten scooped when nobody is paying attention. I was off the day Prince George County let the cat of the bag (there is speculation it was accidental) about President Barack Obama's visit to the Rolls-Royce plant in the county."
First-line sources of information When it comes to breaking news, Twitter and Facebook have become first-line sources of information. Consider the Twitterquake that happened in August 2011 after the Mineral quake.
As internal and external communicators, we need to evolve our thinking and approaches — just like Llovio, Wise and Kane — to fully embrace social media and its tremendous potential. Whether Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest, we need to serve up timely, relevant and engaging content while keeping an eye on the fundamentals of solid journalism.
Jonathan Rhudy is a news junkie and recently discovered the joys of Zite, a custom magazine for his iPad.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012 at 2:34PM 
The Art 180 team poses with their $100,000 check.
