The Missing Project Foundation
It's official, the Missing Project Foundation is now established under the auspices of the Congressional District Program.. This means that the Missing Project is a tax-exempt project and that donations to the Project are tax-deductible. This is a keystone in the foundation of the project, which requires funding to proceed. This is awesome news.
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Leaps and Bounds
Wow, things have been happening!
- 501(c)3 status was granted via Fiscal Sponsorship from the Congressional District Programs. This means a couple of really huge things. 1) we can now start offering tax write-offs to donors and seek grants, which in turn means...
2) It means we can start fundraising to extend the project onto new platforms including Facebook, the iPhone (1 Million devices sold in 72 hrs!, over 6 million out there and 25-40 million more to be sold next year say the analysts) and web advertising networks. The potential reach of this project has exponentially increased. That means Very Good Things as far as possibly finding a missing person and raising funds for the NCMA, among other worthy organizations.
- The application design is complete. It looks so awesome! The prototype now has a professionally designed skin.
- The website redesign is underway. This current site is a placeholder site and now that the player's been designed, we're getting closer to launching.
- TheMissingSong.com is soon to be named www.missingproject.org. The focus here is not the song - it's the project. The logo's going to be changed to reflect this. (i'll post it after it's been refactored to account for the name change.)
Um... I think there are a couple of other developments that have happened in the last couple of months but I can't think of them at the moment.
I'm really excited about all this stuff coming together.
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321 Contact
I had a really great conversation with Kym Pasqualini, the Executive Director for the National Center for Missing Adults. They've been through the wringer financially, and I think that Spring is breathing some fresh oxygen into the organization and determination into an already fiercely determined woman. I'm amazed and inspired by what she's been through to keep her organization's mission afloat, and I'm optimistic that we'll be able to forge a relationship that will support the NCMA's work. I'm not sure if the call was the result of donations w/ notations, or my calls and emails to pretty much anyone associated with the NCMA. But, it was a good call.
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CrowdSourcing the Missing Project
A big part of the vision for the Missing Project is to leverage the power of the network to find missing persons. While the biggest impact will happen after the project is launched and people start watching and sharing the video, I think there's something remarkable waiting to happen and it will only take a little bit of help from you.
The most critical component to the project is getting access to a database of missing persons. I'm definitely not in a position to create or maintain one. Fortunately for the project, and the tens of thousands of families affected by the disappearance of a loved one, there are a number of organizations out there whose mission is to do exactly that. The largest of these is the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children - a multi-million dollar organization doing incredible work in this area.
A less-well funded, but equally important organization is the National Center for Missing Adults - an organization that supports families of missing adults. This organization spent a lot of money to hire people after Katrina and apparently the government failed to come through with promised compensation. As a result, the NCMA has had to close its doors. But their database lives on.
It's really important that the Missing Project support the NCMA. It was an adult missing person and his family's ordeal that inspired the project. I see this supporting the NCMA in three ways: 1) widely distributing images of missing persons from their database, 2) talking about the NCMA and its mission on the radio, on the web and at performances and 3) donating profits from the sale of the song to the NCMA and organizations like it.
I've been calling and emailing the NCMA and haven't gotten a response. I can imagine that they have bigger fish to fry than some random artist with a "great idea."
But I really do believe this project will breathe life back into to the NCMA and it will certainly find lost loved ones.
So I'd like to make a request... make a donation to the NCMA (the donate link is upper left). Even if it's just a few dollars. In the comment section, mention TheMissingSong.com, and suggest they support the project. I'm not looking for a single dollar from them, and we'll take care of all the work that needs to happen. I just need to talk to Kym, the executive director and get connected with their tech people. I believe that enough people making donations will get the attention of the NCMA and will bring to bear the last piece of this important project.
I know that the network will change everything. Everything. Connecting people together and focusing collective attention will move mountains. And I believe it will help find missing persons, too.
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Pictures of the Martin
I just added a few photographs of the guitar on the "About the song" page. Photography by Michael Rauner.
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Woah.
So in my DayJob, I'm the Talent Development lead for CivicActions, which means I'm always looking for people to work on really cool save-the-world technology projects. A few weeks ago, I interviewed a guy for a gig, but we couldn't quite come to terms, so to speak. A few days later, he referred a friend of his, who is also looking for technology work, and who's motivated to make a difference with his tech chops.
I interviewed his friend (and about a dozen other people) and have been trying to suss out exactly the right mix of people and projects.
Anyway, the first guy IM's me yesterday to follow up on his referral and see how things are going. I really liked the guy and so we ended up having a nice email exchange, during which we started quickly talking about music. I showed him Unamerican he was moved and had some really poignant and impactful feedback which at that moment, I felt like I really needed to hear.
Then I showed him TheMissingSong.com, and he was floored. The friend he'd referred had told him the same story about a friend who'd gone missing and was /pretty sure/ we were talking about the same "Robert John." we were both kind of stunned and tingly - like when you start sensing something really unbelievable is going on. He left a message for his friend, and we left it at that. I came back to my computer a couple of hours later to find IM's from the friend, who, yes, in fact, was very close friends with the very same "Robert John."
It was a surreal moment to be chatting about someone, not entirely sure if you're talking about the same person (who continues to play an enormously important role in both of our lives) and to have it dawn on you with each exchange of facts ("his birthday is coming up" "April 11" "4/11") that we were talking about the same person.
We had a very deep and breathtaking conversation that left me feeling like this project is so much bigger and significant than I had imagined. In my experience in bringing people together to work on projects, I've learned that when things are "right", things kinda come together with a fair amount of "magic". Last night's chat was kind of like a blizzard of magic and divine grace.
One of the many amazing bits of that conversation was a totally obvious and yet overlooked opportunity for the Missing Song project - a Facebook Application. Which has now been added to the project's goals, f'sure. I'm very excited about this as a development direction and think it's going to make this project explode, frankly.
Which it kind of already is, in (sometimes very) slow motion.
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A Moving Meeting
Sometimes you have conversations with people you may not know, but afterwards you have a sense that "This Was Meant To Be." I had one of those conversations with Jannel Rap in Los Angeles, whose organization "GINA for Missing Persons FOUNDation" has a mission "to educate the public by utilizing entertainment to create awareness and media attention for missing persons world-wide. that can guide people whose family members become missing."
I flew to LA to meet her and to talk about the Missing Song project. I had a bunch of ideas how the Missing Song project could support her, but I wasn't really clear on what I wanted or needed from her organization.
My friend whose brother disappeared has come to peace with the tragedy of her brother's passing, and has moved on to pursue her life's dreams, purpose and ambition, which don't directly have to do with finding missing persons.
Jannel, though, has found herself still very much involved in advocating for and supporting families of the missing. As a songwriter and musician, we had a lot in common, though an obvious difference being she still lives with the uncertainty of a missing family member.
Being able to have a conversation with her was moving and inspiring and touched me deeply. I've had some aching concerns about the personal benefits I might realize as a result of doing this project and doing it well. I've struggled with words like "exploitation" and "personal gain" despite looking at an obvious need and being inspired with an obvious solution.
But her reflection to me calmed those concerns, and reminded me in a deep way about who I am and what I stand for, and how being of service to the world doesn't mean being destitute and giving up everything. Indeed, karmic law as expressed in Galatians VI, "As you sow, so shall you reap," suggests that doing good in the world means being supported in doing so. I have lots of other project ideas using music and technology that I'm itching to get to, but this one is first. I'm praying that God will bless me with resources I don't currently have in order to continue doing my work.
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