After years of flying all over to build businesses and service clients, I’ve enjoyed spending time in my own backyard working with co-founders toward the launch of an online, non-profit, free community supporting Arizona’s entrepreneurs. To paraphrase something I once overheard an entrepreneur confess, I can’t stop starting.
GrowAZ is where Arizona entrepreneurs of all stripes help each other to build their businesses simply by working together, buying from one another or helping each other with advice.
GrowAZ - Entrepreneurs Helping Entrepreneurs
Here is the proposition:
“Join the FREE GrowAZ Community where “Entrepreneurs Help Entrepreneurs.” By establishing your listing you’ll be touting what you provide (products, services, community) while reaching out to others in Arizona’s business community with what you need (advice, employees, project support, resources, barter opportunities and more).”
And here is a simple example of entrepreneurs helping each other:
An artist needs a website and a technology firm needs a logo – these two exchange their services, saving both parties money and connecting two firms that might find future marketplace synergy right here in Arizona.
In addition to helping each other, of course, member businesses will showcase their products and services, hiring and other needs to the broader community. Users will be able to “track” individual companies of interest for alerts updating them on the status of developments and needs.
As with nearly any non-profit, GrowAZ is looking for volunteers. We’ve just started engaging students, those building their personal brands and small companies to fill the needs. Even so, there is plenty of room for more volunteers so if you are interested, please join us!
For our most ambitious volunteers (individuals or companies), GrowAZ is an opportunity to showcase their work as part of the community. GrowAZ will provide recognition for work right on the GrowAZ website itself – and enable contributors to display badges on their sites, demonstrating their support of GrowAZ. From “Development Sponsor” to “Community Sponsor” to “Contributing $ponsor” there are a number of ways volunteers can benefit from helping GrowAZ.
Here are some of the specific areas where we need, or will need, volunteers:
- Website Design – we can always look better (especially now, before we have a site!), from our overall look to our home page, badges and social media profiles.
- Website Development – from the current work on version 1.0 to extensions, API’s, multi-channel communications and alerts there is an endless array of projects small and large. [Platform: WordPress + SugarCRM]
- Content Creation – site, blog and social media content targeted at entrepreneurs and small business.
- Community Management (online) – online community moderation and management, verifying business listing submissions, managing site admin functions and generally seeking to help GrowAZ member firms to meet their needs.
- Community Evangelists (online and offline) – similar to community managers, but with extensions into Arizona’s physical world, engaging volunteers, catalysts and sponsors in business, media, government, associations, academia and other interested constituents.
- Marketing – creating multichannel campaigns (emails, social media, web), driving social media presence, analyzing website and social media data, using outside market data and other means of developing growth strategies and tactics.
- Administration – managing aspects of the non-profit business that is GrowAZ, from communications to documentation and event management.
If you see something that looks like your opportunity to help with the new GrowAZ, please let me know!
Links for More Information on GrowAZ:
Google Site (overview, wireframes and more) – http://sites.google.com/site/growaz/project-definition
Google Group (more detail and staying in the loop) – http://groups.google.com/group/growaz
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