Memorandum To: From: Date: Subject: Jodie Nicotra Samantha Riggers, Kayla Root, Kelsey Hart February 1, 2013

English 440 Agency Profile and Communication Analysis _______________________________________________

This memo provides the information necessary to complete a grant proposal for Moscows Adventure Club, a self-supporting, non-profit after school and summer program for elementary school children. The following report is garnered from information online, candid interviews with the founder David Garnett and the organizations correspondence to parents and community members. This project is divided into three sections: an agency profile, a discourse analysis, and a style sheet. PART ONE: AGENCY PROFILE The purpose of this section is to present basic information about the Adventure Club, ranging from its history to current mission and everything necessary in between. Adventure Club Fundamentals The Adventure Clubs office is located at the Moscow School District No. 281 headquarters at 650 North Cleveland Street in Moscow, Idaho. Its overarching program runs at Lena Whitmore, McDonald and Russell elementary schools, and features afterschool curriculums, field trips and even provides full days of supervised care, such as during holidays and teacher-in-service days. The Adventure Club is open to children ages kindergarten through sixth grade. The enrollment fees and hours of each program vary, however. From 3:00 to 6:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, parents or guardians can pay a fee of $8.10 per day for their children to attend activities after school and receive a snack. Children generally complete homework during this time. For full days, which also include summer weekdays, the fee is $23.40 per day as long as enrollment is for five or more hours. Children are offered two snacks during full days. A half day covers any time less than five hours and costs $11.45. When children get to attend a field trip, such as to Rollaway, the Palouse Ice Rink or Zeppoz, the fee is $10.00 in order to cover the costs of rentals, facilities and staffing. David is the Adventure Club director and three site supervisors answer to him. Beneath these supervisors are group leaders and University of Idaho undergraduate students working for academic credit or service learning hours. A few volunteers and local high school students also help during the various programs. Although predominantly a college community, the city of Moscow has a population of a little over 24,0000. About 17 percent of Moscows elementary students attend one or more programs offered by the Adventure Club. An after school program generally has about 30 children at each school, while 50 students at each attend on non-school days. Adventure Club employees see about 300 different children total throughout the year.

History The Adventure Club was founded in 1992 by a group of local families who desired a safe environment for their children to spend time at after school. Although the organization is part of the National After School Association, the Adventure Club holds no additional ties to any local or regional affiliations who share the same mission. For more information about community partners, please see the following page within the Discourse Analysis. Mission Statement and Purpose As stated on the Adventure Clubs website, the organizations purpose is to provide a supervised environment that promotes the intellectual, physical, and social development of children. According to David, their mission used to be more specific, but has changed to what he feels is a more timeless statement. When questioned about the future of the Adventure Club, David eagerly spoke about the potential of a 21st Century Community Learning Center. Through grants, the federal government would give money to the states that would allocate it appropriately. Created for strictly low-income families, primarily Westpark and Russell Elementary, the center would have different staff from the Adventure Club but would share supplies. Ideally bussing would be provided, in addition to multiple meals and snacks. David hopes to someday partner with the University of Idaho to offer undergraduates college credit through their volunteer work. Funding Grants are the primary funding for the Adventure Club, besides tuition costs. Because costs especially that of bussing, have increased, David is constantly seeking new means to finance his program. The Schweitzer Engineering Lab, located across the state border in Pullman, Washington, donates $5,000 each summer for Camp Invention, but community giving is generally sparse. Funding goes not only toward the $56.00 per hour bussing fee, but also to the income of David himself and his staff. For specific funding information and, please see page four within the Discourse Analysis. PART TWO: DISCOURSE ANALYSIS The purpose of this section is to inform you about the discourse community of the afterschool program, Adventure Club. The discourse community of the organization, for our purposes, includes the members of the organization and potential financial supporters of Adventure Club. Members and Their Backgrounds and Responsibilities As previously stated, the current director of Adventure Club is David Garnett who has been director since 2002. Each of the three locations is overseen by a site supervisor. The site supervisors are Marsha Williams at Lena Whitmore Elementary School, Jill Malm at McDonald Elementary and Jena Malm at Russell Elementary School. At each of the locations are a number of group leaders, which are made up of community volunteers, college students, and education practicum students. The group leaders directly oversee the students who come to the programs and help organize the events that take place. They report directly to their particular site supervisor. The group leaders typically

communicate through text messaging and calling. David makes two to three visits a week to each site where he checks in on both group leaders and site supervisors. Site supervisors conversely report issues or news directly to David, typically in person or over email. The majority of the communication within the agency is informal. Davids background prior to working with Adventure Club was in natural resources and outdoor leadership. Though he initially found himself uncertain about his experience for such as position, he has gain significant experience and developed skills over the past eleven years in management and understanding children's development. Two of the site supervisors, Jena and Jill have been with the program since its beginning in 1992. The background and areas of expertise of the volunteers and group leaders vary greatly. Given the nature of the community with a high college-age population, some volunteers are completely inexperienced whereas others have or are pursuing degrees in related areas with years of experience. The role of the site supervisors is to create meaningful experiences for students and to take care of daily needs such as food for snacks and creating lesson and activity plans. As director, David handles much of the communication with both the Moscow School District and Adventure Clubs other community partners such as the Palouse-Clearwater Environmental Institute and the Palouse Science Organization. He is the only member who has an office, donated by the Moscow School District in their main district building. What Adventure Club Writes About and To Whom Written documents within the Adventure Club have the primary intent to increase enrollment, and therefore are almost exclusively catered to parents and families of Moscow School District students. The focus of the text have shifted over the years. Initially the program sought to inform families about keeping children safe by enrolling them in the after school program. When David first became director, he changed the focus to providing students with an academic enriching environment. Currently, written materials take an approach of informing parents about how fun Adventure Club is and the variety of experiences their child could potentially have. Who Writes Text for Adventure Club Along with his many other duties, David creates all of the organizations texts. He maintains the text and information on the organizations website, creates and distributes advertisement postcards and informational flyers for Moscow School District families, and does all the writing for grants. Other texts include the Adventure Club Handbook and application forms for parents and families. Many of these are five to eight year old documents that are reproduced each year with minimal changes. David has had aspirations in the past of creating newer advertisements such as posters or brochures but is limited due to time and financial constraints. In 2006, David created an alternative postcard to send to parents which included color printing and a folded format as opposed to his typical one-sided style. He found that the increase in parent/family interest in Adventure Club did not justify the additional cost of producing the more flamboyant postcard. This is his main evaluation of the text he produces. David must make decisions

based on the increase or decrease in enrolment to determine if his written correspondences are successful or not. Over the past years, David has also submitted applications for a variety of grants. Some of these organizations have included the Moscow Women's Giving Circle, Idaho Community Foundation, Optical Society of America Foundation (OSAF), Inland Northwest Community Foundation and Latah County Community Foundation. For these grants, a simple application is typically submitted as well as a proposal narrative. The focus of these grant applications vary greatly from Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics education (STEM), outdoor education, and funding for field trips. He supports his need for the finances by including information about the high rate of students left unsupervised after school and that children benefit by having fun and exploring the world around them. How Text are Written The style of text that Adventure Club produces will be further discussed in the next section. Some of the most effective elements of the organization's writings are its reading level and simplicity. The text is all written at a level that can easily be understood and is not bogged down by unnecessary information. All of the text produced for parents and families are fairly informal as well. This is effective given that parents often receive large amounts of documents from their childrens schools and may not respond well to lengthy, formal looking text. The least effective elements of the Adventure Clubs text is that information and styles are somewhat dated. A nearly identical format and text is used year after year, some of which have not been changed since 2005. With improvements and new features in programs such as Microsoft Word, updated flyers, postcards and letters could easily be created. PART THREE: STYLE SHEET The purpose of this section is to inform readers about the style in which documents produced by the Adventure Club are written. Grammar and Mechanics Abbreviations The abbreviation UI is used without saying University of Idaho. North is written as N. The abbreviation WSU is written without saying Washington State University. Dept. is written for department. Uppercase used for universities, departments. The words do not are capitalized. Use comma before and.

Capitalization

Commas

Independent clauses joined by use of comma. Credit Hyphen Names of writers or photographers are not given. Flyers: No space before or after a hyphen. Handbook: A space before and after a hyphen. Flyers: lists bulleted. Application: lists as numbers. Colon before introducing a list. Flyers: K-6 is written in heading, kindergarten through six is spelled out in sentences. Postcard: Kindergarten and six are spelled out Facebook: Numbers are just written as a number (ex. 6). Phone numbers written with the area code in parentheses. All links on website are hyperlinked and underlined in blue. Paragraphs are not indented and there is one space between paragraphs. The terms child and parent or guardian are used to remain gender neutral. Section titles, numbers, dates, headings Informal but professional Some of the writing speaks directly to the parents while the other part of the writing is strictly informative. Written for parents or guardians

Lists

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Nonsexist Language

Bold Style

Visual Elements Photographs Website: Color photos and slideshow of activities, no captions provided Facebook: Photos of activities posted, captions provided above photo Application tables are formatted with questions. There are two columns and 8 rows. There are no page numbers on flyers. Page numbers centered on the bottom of the page for

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Page Numbers

applications, scholarships and the program. Graphics Design Style Flyers: Center justified, 2 pages, front and back, single-space, left justified Headings bold and center justified, extra spacing before other information Text boxes without outlines used Website heading: Calibri Facebook: Tahoma Flyer to parents: Cambria, 14 pt., 18 pt. heading Flyers: Clip art images of the Fall season

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Type and Font