The Main Street Project

Filing Period

Jan 1, 2011 to Dec 31, 2011

Signed

May 31, 2012

Return Version

2011v1.2

Gross Receipts

$659,735

Mission

Major Activities

Activity 2

Media justice during 2011, main street project organized and conducted seven public training sessions under the umbrella of 'people's tech - learning, creating, reclaiming our technology.' over 150 participants learned about a variety of topics including media justice 101, placestories storytelling training, video production and video editing, the opportunity to launch low-power fm community radio stations, and narrative-based organizing. Mid-year, we facilitated a stakeholder's reflection on format and content to inform future programming. In july, we organized a two-day youth media justice camp in minneapolis that included both skills development and an introduction to media policy issues for the 25 participants. In connection with the multi-organizational youth mural project in minneapolis, we trained two high school interns on interviewing and video production/editing. They produced a series of videos documenting the summer project and published them online. We also facilitated monthly digital justice coalition meetings/conference calls with an expanding and diverse group of 12 community organizations' participants representing homeless/low-income, transgender youth, organizing with communities of color, media production, and providing access to computers at reduced or no cost. We worked with coalition member, open access connections (primary constituency very low income and homeless individuals) and a research assistant from the center for urban and regional affairs at the university of minnesota to develop and release a report at a community event: envisioning an internet center for homeless individuals. The event was attended by practitioners, public library leadership, and government representatives, and was covered by the media. When open access connections launched their new netbook lending library, we provided support, curriculum and produced a video documenting the process. Main street project organized and fundraised to bring a 20-person minnesota delegation to the allied media conference in detroit. We also helped organize the conference media policy track and facilitated a follow-up convening of the group. In partnership with other digital justice coalition members, we hosted a phone justice policy day in april; community organization leaders attended the first half of the day for a knowledge exchange and training; policy decision makers joined us for the second half as we shared information and stories to help them understand the issue. Members of the digital justice coalition and other organizations created recommendations and filed comments on the safelink program with the minnesota public utilities commission. Coalition members also signed on to comments about the universal service fund that the media action grassroots network (mag-net) filed with the fcc. In collaboration with the center for media justice, main street project hosted an october roundtable discussion in minneapolis with fcc commissioner michael copps. Leaders from 12 community-based and media production organizations participated, including individuals working with the digital justice coalition. Discussion topics covered a wide-range of media policy issues, including the universal service fund, net neutrality, media consolidation, and lack of minority and female media ownership.

Activity 3

The vote by mail program concentrated on researching the effectiveness of a variety of civic education efforts on mail ballot adoption rates. Msp worked with academic researchers at the university of miami, rice university, and the university of new mexico on a direct comparison of the impact of vote-by-mail education and recruitment to voter turnout for early in-person voting and to election day. Msp also established research programs to measure the impact of the type of ballot request forms on vote-by-mail usage and the impact of shifts to all mail elections on overall participation.

Filer

EIN

20-1788275