Today’s guest post was written by Derek Shanahan, one of the smartest guys I know. The two of us have been working on a way to bring our teams together for a while now, and we’re proud to announce that 20 Something Bloggers has become the first official partner of ItStartsWith.Us. Please read on for Derek’s piece of the story, or visit the new partner page to learn more and sign up.
Hi everyone, my name is Derek and I run a blogger community called 20 Something Bloggers. Our community was started just over two years ago by Lisa Farlow when she realized it was difficult to find blogs and bloggers who were at a similar point in their lives as she was. She’d just turned 20, and as communities for mommy bloggers, newlyweds, and other groups were establishing themselves, the twenty-something experience didn’t seem to have a home online. She decided to start her own space, and invited the handful of twenty something bloggers she’d already found to join.
Our Community
Lisa and I now manage a vibrant community of 9,000 personal bloggers that’s growing every day. We organize regular online blogger events and our members frequently take their friendships offline to meetups and social events. Many have become true friends, and we continually see incredible acts of support, friendship, and genorousity within the group.
The two of us, along with our wonderful team of volunteer admins and managers, want to make 20 Something Bloggers a very special place for people writing about their lives online. We want everyone who joins us to become better bloggers, enjoying blogging more, and feel like they’re part of a community.
We Want To Do Good
Early on, we knew that a group like this would hold wonderful potential for helping out charities and adding some sunshine to the world. Twenty somethings not only want to make their world better…they actually believe that they can do it. That kind of determination is a force, and we have always wanted to find ways to encourage it.
I’m sure it won’t surprise anyone that we’ve been approached frequently by our members and outside charities hoping to promote a specific cause or charitable event. We quickly realized that our growth would make addressing everyone’s favorite charities very difficult. How were we going to pick which causes to support?
It Starts With All Of Us
That’s where Nate, and his project, came into the picture. After a few phone calls and meetings, I felt confident that this platform was the one we’d been looking for.
Like many of you reading this blog, and participating in ISWU, I found Nate to be a very genuine, smart guy with a great idea. I don’t have to tell you the merits of the project and how it’s structured. I don’t have to tell you what kind of potential it has down the road.
What I can tell you is that many organizations like ours very much want to encourage and motivate their membership to act selflessly. We are often impeded by the challenges of marrying ourselves to specific causes. I’d been looking for a ‘platform’ to enable charitable activity, and by implementing a partnership with Nate (and by extension, all of you reading this post) we take a big step towards the realization of our vision for the power of community.
Over the next few weeks I’ll be encouraging my community to join the 20SB/ISWU partnership, which will share missions with the rest of you. We will provide a space within our community for participating members to connect, and we will encourage them to leave mission reports on the ISWU forum threads. I hope you’ll welcome them as they drop in to see what the fuss is all about!
In addition, I’d encourage you to reach out to your own communities and encourage them to get involved. Nate and I are going to work together to perfect the logistics between ISWU and its partners, so don’t hesitate to let us know if you have a group or organization that might like to get involved.
Until then, I commend everyone for taking the time to do the little things necessary to make a big difference. We’re honored to join you.
Similar Posts:
- Our First ItStartsWith.Us Meetup
- Social Media For Good: 12for12k
- Connecting Others and Building Communities: Part of the ItStartsWith.Us Mission
- Dropping Love Bombs
- A Note To New Readers
