80/20 Foundation awards NOWCastSA $10,000 grant

SAN ANTONIO - April 16, 2013 - PRLog -- The 80/20 Foundation awarded NOWCastSA an unrestricted grant of $10,000.

The grant will benefit NOWCastSA’s innovative technology services, furthering its mission of creating and facilitating an inclusive civic conversation in the San Antonio Metropolitan Area.

The 80/20 Foundation initially worked with NOWCastSA in 2011 when Executive Director Lorenzo Gomez wanted to increase the reach of a panel discussion Texas CEO Magazine hosted on San Antonio Brain Gain, or the in-migration of residents with a bachelor’s degree or higher.  NOWCastSA webcast the event live on its site and archived the video at http://nowcastsa.com/blogs/webcast-san-antonio-brain-gain for anyone to replay for free. The video was seen by nearly 200 individuals in its first week, with viewers from New York to California, North Dakota to Mexico. Viewers engage with this video for an average of 13 minutes.

Gomez came back to NOWCastSA to sponsor the first-ever live webcast of a 3-Day Startup event, an international entrepreneurship education program. NOWCastSA streamed live for 33 straight hours as local teams brainstormed, developed and pitched novel tech companies.

“This grant allowed NOWCastSA to start 2013 off at a sprint,” says NOWCastSA Managing Director Charlotte-Anne Lucas.  “As a nonprofit, we rely on sponsors and underwriters to be able share the community’s news with the world. Individual gifts and unrestricted funds like this make sure we have the staff and equipment to move on projects quickly when they come up.”

Lucas adds that the 80/20 Foundation is a perfect match for NOWCastSA. “They want to make San Antonio a geek-friendly place, a hub for techies and entrepreneurs.  People today aren’t sitting around waiting to come to you – they are mobile, which means you need to find a way to get your stuff to them wherever they are. NOWCastSA is that platform.”

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About NOWCastSA

NOWCastSA is a nonprofit community journalism organization in San Antonio. Its mission is to promote and facilitate an inclusive civic conversation by empowering neighbors to identify common issues and share information through education, training, community news, events and multimedia.

Using streaming and on-demand video technology, NOWCastSA creates online forums for community conversations, expanding the room for public events. Viewers can watch live or after the fact and can share the video around the world.

NOWCastSA is a grassroots project of CI:NOW (http://cinow.info/), a San Antonio confederation formed in the 1990s to democratize data. Learn more at www.NOWCastSA.com.

About the 80/20 Foundation

The 80/20 Foundation, founded by Graham Weston, strives to change the San Antonio community by making grants to public charities in three strategic areas: Giving San Antonio more urban options, turning San Antonio into the next hub for entrepreneurs, and promoting education for the tech jobs of the future. Learn more at www.8020foundation.com.