I produce newsletter stories, blog posts and email around a theme each month.

Major Austin newspaper

Promoting new university program. Story accompanied email series.

Machines that could copy and analyze DNA existed when Amanda Pratt was taking college biology classes, though getting one into the classrooms was unheard of. Determined not to keep such an exciting learning tool from her own students, Pratt — now a high school science teacher — recruited the Downriver West, Michigan, Kiwanis Club to make a dream come true.

The sun shines 361 days a year on the Pinellas peninsula, situated between Tampa Bay, Florida, and the Gulf of Mexico. The area draws enough tourists to fill 5 million hotel beds. But the sun that tans those tourists also beats down on the 4,019 area students who are homeless.

Mission Capital equips mission-driven organizations to advance equity and opportunity.

Mission Capital, in partnership with The New Philanthropists, is bringing back its Board Summit. The goal: to help Central Texas nonprofits develop diverse boards for more effective and representative leadership.

This press release earned a congratulatory call from Dale Chihuly studios. (Image by Bryan Ohno licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.)

Online feature - Civil rights/racial discrimination is the social issue of most concern to young adult Americans, according to a new research study – and they trust nonprofits to correct the injustices. [I wrote the report from client's research and this article.]

A Virginia club eases transitions for children in foster care.

On day one in combat, this veteran demonstrated the style of leadership she’s still known for.

Dena Dupuie of Austin wound her way through piles of trash filling the small mobile home. Though she’d been in many foster care homes, this was one of the worst. “I was taken aback. I could hardly walk through the house,” she said. “You know why? Because they couldn’t afford $45 a month for trash pickup.”

Most of us get a TB test some time in our lives, and we go on our merry way, assuming it will be negative. We don’t know how lucky we are. Butler University Associate Professor of Chemistry Jeremy Johnson is searching for a way to spread that luck to the parts of the world where tuberculosis still kills more people than any other infectious disease: 1.5 million annually.

Wet or dry shoes? Shorts or a sport coat? Sunshine or fluorescent lights? Mosquitos or … well, fewer mosquitos?

The way to the heart of Hillsborough, New Brunswick, is through the stomachs of its 1,400 residents. And the Hillsborough Kiwanis Club has found its way there.

“Usually, jobs for people who have special needs are things like sorting or sweeping,” Fixter says. “I just said, ‘They could totally brew beer!’”

The good news and the bad news: Joe Raiola isn’t likely to run out of material for his one-man show, The Joy of Censorship, any time soon. With the release of the documentary Bully and its R rating by the Motion Picture Association of America, Raiola has a new topic on which to unleash his ability to find humor in the absurd.