InfamousMothersProjectReport.docx

Consulting For Infamous Mothers Live Service Case Project Report: Fall-2016 Jessica McWain, Patrick Egan, Zhengyang Zhang, Diep Nguyen, Matt Bush

ABSTRACT

Team 3 was tasked with identifying how Infamous Mothers can approach and contact cities to identify how to create a network of support for a book tour.

2 Edgewood College Consulting for Infamous Mothers

Dear Ms. Levingston,

We would like to thank you for giving us the opportunity to work with the Infamous Mothers organization. We enjoyed learning about the organization and assisting you with your endeavor to create a fifteen-city book tour. Our team was tasked with identifying how Infamous Mothers can approach and contact cities to identify how to create a network of support for a book tour.

Our group researched and analyzed possible tour locations and routes along with

estimated costs, art exhibit locations, and suggested venues for workshops and presentations. With input from Adam and Amy we narrowed the scope of our project to instead be methods of approaching and identifying host organizations to provide the tools for Infamous Mothers so that they can utilize our findings for future tour or workshop locations. Our team created and distributed a survey identifying background information for possible book purchases and attending speaking events. We conducted phone interviews with individuals from educational institutions, social support agencies, and art galleries.

We discovered through our phone interviews and survey collection that there is a

potential market that is willing to travel farther for an event that they are interested in, than we would have guessed before we gathered data. Our initial estimates for time required to approach and achieve positive contacts that are interested and willing to host Infamous Mothers in their communities was far too short. We imagined that we could easily reach out to our contact list and be done in a few days. We discovered that people are very busy, that the contacts may express interest, or request contact by using another method, but we would never hear from them again.

This project allowed us to challenge ourselves in the areas of logistics, project

management, data analysis techniques for examining primary and gathering secondary data, and to learn outside of the classroom. We are grateful for the challenge this project offered us, and hope that this report may provide you with the information to be successful with Infamous Mothers’ future book tour and other public events. Thank you again for this wonderful opportunity. Sincerely, The Edgewood College Capstone Team 3


Table of Contents

Executive Summary 4 Introduction

Project Outline 5

Lean Canvas 6 Data Collection 7 Data Analysis 7

Secondary Data 7 Primary Data- Phone 7 Primary Data- Survey 7

Conclusions and Final Recommendation 8

Appendix 1-City Data 9

Appendix 2- Table of Contacts Approached 11

Appendix 3- Positive Responses 14

Appendix 4-Survey Data 17


Executive Summary

Infamous Mothers is a for profit organization that aims at changing the way women are perceived as mothers. They sell socially-conscious apparel, produce publications, and lead educational workshops and class with the goal of empowering mothers and how they experience mothering. Infamous Mothers is planning a fifteen-city tour, in which they will offer the workshops, art exhibits, and classes for a corporate setting throughout the country. This tour will increase visibility for Infamous Mothers and hopefully inspire individuals to come to the conference held in Wisconsin in the year 2018. Description of Client Request

Our group was tasked with identifying how Infamous Mothers could interact with organizations, women’s support groups, and universities they would like to add in their tour promoting their new book. Our group focused on five main cities east of the Mississippi River.

● Chicago, Illinois ● Milwaukee, Wisconsin ● Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania ● St. Louis, Missouri ● St. Paul, Minnesota

Data Collected

Our group collected primary and secondary data for this project. We conducting phone interviews and sent emails to various organizations and individuals. As a whole, we also created a survey that was distributed through email and social media, primarily Facebook. We encounter quite a few constraints along the way, the data demonstrated that time and numbers of people to contact were the most important elements needed in order to gain the response rate Infamous Mothers is in need of. Unfortunately, our group did not gain a large response rate. See figure one below for an in-depth view at the data. (Page #6) Final Recommendations

Our group recommends that Infamous Mothers increase the lead-time for contacting organizations, but also to have a much larger number of individuals to contact. Another recommendation would be to send alternate methods of contact; for example, letters and going in person depending on the location. Lastly, when individuals request alternate methods of communication, send an email with that individual on the phone to ensure a receipt and encourage them to respond.


Infamous Mothers

Infamous Mothers is a for profit organization that aims at changing the way women are perceived as mothers. They sell socially-conscious apparel, produce publications, and lead educational workshops and class with the goal of empowering mothers and how they experience mothering. Infamous Mothers is planning a fifteen-city tour, in which they will offer the workshops, art exhibits, and classes for a corporate setting throughout the country. This tour will increase visibility for Infamous Mothers and hopefully inspire individuals to come to the conference held in Wisconsin in the year 2018. Project Outline

Originally, our group started by creating a list identifying potential sites for tour destinations. We created two lists of fifteen-cities based both population, and population growth. The original data can be seen in the Appendix I. From the lists of cities we narrowed down to 5 cities to focus on, choosing Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, St. Louis, and Pittsburg, cities that have a metropolitan population of greater than 1 million people and are within a day’s driving distance from madison by bus.

In each of the targeted cities we identified at least 6 resource contacts, spread between academic institutions, social support networks, and to a lesser degree art galleries, with the understanding that some of the organizations may already have facilities to utilize. Our contact with academic institutions focused on African American studies, gender studies, and diversity and inclusion department heads/administrators.

With the list of potential contacts, we drafted a set of questions to address to the contacts in a phone interview along with a brief introduction of the Infamous Mothers organization and ourselves.

Additionally we created a survey to share on social media to access information of potential respondents who may be interested in attending a tour visit, who otherwise would not have information about infamous mothers. This survey data can be used to identify where to market the tour too once a location host has been identified.


Lean Canvas

Our group identified the problem for infamous mothers to be ‘what is the best

method for Infamous Mothers to reach out to potential hosts for locations, to be a part of their upcoming book tour?.’ A second problem we seeked to address was the information pertaining to the furthest distance to market the tour once a host location has been chosen.

We proposed the solution would be to reach out to academic institutions, women's

social support networks, and art galleries by phone and email. For the marketing information our team created a survey and shared it via email and social media, particularly Facebook.

The key metrics for success would be measured by the number of contacts that

expressed interest in what Infamous Mothers does with their workshops, public speaking, and their art exhibits. Partial success would be measured by suggested contact that the person we’ve called would suggest we get in contact with next. The survey responses would let us measure distance that people say they are willing to travel to attend an event, as well as other supporting information, like prefered cost to attend and prefered cost of merchandise.

The costs of identifying this information can be measured in time, the cost of

phone minutes, the sending of emails, and the sharing of the survey.


Data Collection and Analysis Secondary Data:

Our group used secondary census data to narrow the cities in the United States down to 5 cities to focus on approaching. We also created our database of potential contacts by gathering contact information from organizational websites that we hypothesized to be interested in Infamous Mothers.. Primary data:

First we conducted phone interviews. Of the eighteen calls, only fifty percent of them were answered. Of the nine where the phone was picked up twenty-two percent gave a positive response when asked would they be interested in hosting infamous mothers. No voicemail messages were returned in duration of the project.

From our small sample size, with a fifty percent response rate we suggest that the original list of people to contact be significantly higher if half of the list you won’t get a hold of. Our group does not see voice mail messages as a reliable method of reaching a contact. We recommend that instead of leaving a voicemail; create a second list of numbers to attempt calling back at a later time. Eight of nine phone calls requested an email with the request for information. Twenty-five percent of the sent emails/calls received a response. Positive responses can be viewed in appendix 3.

The email response rate to requests for an email was higher than our phone’s positive responses. We would suggest that email be a good follow up to a phone call once contact has been established. None of our emails without a prior introduction have received a response at this time. Positive responses can be viewed in appendix 3.

Patrick Matt Jessica Yang Diep

Total

Number of calls: 7 2 3 2 4 18

Number of answers: 4 0 2 1 2 9

Number of voicemails left: 2 0 1 1 2 6

Number of callbacks from voicemails left: 0 0 0 0 0 0

Number of requests for alternate methods of communication: 3 0 2 0 3 8

Number of email responses: 0 1 0 1 0 2

Requests to call back later: 1 0 0 0 2 3

# of calls with positive responses: 0 0 2 0 0 2


Figure 1: Summary of call data. The above table is a representation of the results of our phone interviews.

Next we created and conducted a survey. Our survey received seventy-one responses. The questionnaire contained eleven questions. The respondents were primarily between the ages of twenty-one and thirty. They had a good mix of educational backgrounds from high school diplomas all the way to doctorate degrees. Full survey results and graphical representations may be seen in appendix 4 at the end.

The question “How far would you be willing to travel for an event? (For example an art exhibit or educational lecture)” yielded surprising results. 39.4% of respondents stated that they would be willing to travel more than 30 miles for an event, while another 40.8% stated that they would travel between 11 and 20 miles. This information may be utilized to identify how far from a host organization to advertise an event.

The question “How much would you be willing to spend to attend an informative workshop/ lecture/ art gallery?” resulted in the majority, 43.7%, stating that they would spend between 10-20 dollars to attend an event. This may offer an additional revenue stream for Infamous Mothers.

When asked, “How much notice do you need in advance to attend an educational lecture or art gallery?” 63.4% of respondents stated that they would require one to two weeks of notice for an event. This means that Infamous Mothers can focus more time of arranging hosts and networking, before spreading word of a visit. We would recommend that additional notice be given, as some survey respondents required more notice, but if scheduling arrangements are a difficulty that one could spend a bit more time on identifying the details of the hosts. Conclusion and Final Recommendations

After completing this project the primary recommendation is for Ms. Levingston to increase the lead-time for contacting organization and individuals as well as tremendously increase the amount of organizations and individuals to contact. By doing both of these things she will be able to properly connect with local organizations, universities, and art galleries well before she begins to handle the various logistics that go into planning a fifteen-city tour. Connecting with city organizations will help Ms. Levingston network and do outreach, in order to gain the most attendees for her various events. Although it is essential to the success of Ms. Levingston's tour to make these connections, our data has proven that getting a hold of university professors, women’s support group members, and art gallery workers is very difficult.

Also, we recommend sending out large quantities of phone calls and e-mails due to the low response rates, and having people with strong phone and communication skills to call these individuals and organizations. A three to six person sized committee tasked


with handling communications with new clients could be a very viable option to solve many of these problems, as Ms. Levingston suggested in her presentation feedback.

Appendix 1 - City Data Cities by population

Rank City; State 2010 population 2012 population Growth / Decline

1

New York City; New

York 8,175,133 8,336,697 161,564

2

Los Angeles;

California 3,792,621 3,857,799 65,178

3 Chicago; Illinois 2,695,598 2,714,856 19,258

4 Houston; Texas 2,099,451 2,160,821 61,370

5

Philadelphia;

Pennsylvania 1,526,006 1,547,607 21,601

6 Phoenix; Arizona 1,445,632 1,488,750 43,118

7 San Antonio; Texas 1,327,407 1,382,951 55,544

8 San Diego; California 1,307,402 1,338,348 30,946

9 Dallas; Texas 1,197,816 1,241,162 43,346

10 San Jose; California 945,942 982,765 36,823

11 Austin; Texas 790,390 842,592 52,202

12 Jacksonville; Florida 821,784 836,507 14,723

13 Indianapolis; Indiana 820,445 834,852 14,407

14

San Francisco;

California 805,235 825,863 20,628

15 Columbus; Ohio 787,033 809,798 22,765

16 Fort Worth; Texas 741,206 777,992 36,786

17

Charlotte; North

Carolina 731,424 775,202 43,778

18 Detroit; Michigan 713,777 701,475 -12,302


19 El Paso; Texas 649,121 672,538 23,417

20 Memphis; Tennessee 646,889 655,155 8,266

Referenced: http://www.citymayors.com/gratis/uscities_growth.html

Cities by growth rate

Rank City; State 2010 population 2012 population Growth

1 New York; New York 8,175,133 8,336,697 161,564

2 Los Angeles; California 3,792,621 3,857,799 65,178

3 Houston; Texas 2,099,451 2,160,821 61,370

4 San Antonio; Texas 1,327,407 1,382,951 55,544

5 Austin; Texas 790,390 842,592 52,202

6 Charlotte; North Carolina 731,424 775,202 43,778

7 Dallas; Texas 1,197,816 1,241,162 43,346

8 Phoenix; Arizona 1,445,632 1,488,750 43,118

9 San Jose; California 945,942 982,765 36,823

10 Fort Worth; Texas 741,206 777,992 36,786

11 Denver; Colorado 600,158 634,265 34,107

12 San Diego; California 1,307,402 1,338,348 30,946

13

Washington; District of

Columbia 601,723 632,323 30,600

14 Kent; Washington 92,411 122,999 30,588

15 Seattle; Washington 608,660 634,535 25,875

16 New Orleans; Louisiana 343,829 369,250 25,421

17 Atlanta; Georgia 420,003 443,775 23,772

18 El Paso; Texas 649,121 672,538 23,417

19

Nashville-Davidson;

Tennessee 601,222 624,496 23,274

20 Columbus; Ohio 787,033 809,798 22,765


Appendix 2 - Table of Contacts Approached Chicago, Illinois

College Women's Agencies

University of Chicago University of Illinois at Chicago Northwestern University

The Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality- The University of Chicago

The Gender and Women's Studies

Gender & Sexuality Studies Program

YWCA Metropolitan Chicago

Tate Brazas Carmella Gomez Jan Radway (312) 372-6600

Administration and Operations - Program Coordinator Business Manager Director

773-795-6503 312-996-2952 (847) 491-5871

[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

http://gendersexuality.uchicago.edu/about/contact.shtml https://gws.uic.edu/

http://www.gendersexuality.northwestern.edu/about/contact.html

https://gws.uic.edu/gws/resources

The Department of African American Studies

Department of African American Studies

Teresa Helena Moreno

Assistant Director and Director of Undergraduate Studies

(312) 996-3542 847-491-5122

[email protected] [email protected]

https://aast.uic.edu/aast/people/staff/teresa-helena-moreno

http://www.afam.northwestern.edu/about/contact.html

http://gendersexuality.uchicago.edu/about/contact.shtml



https://gws.uic.edu/











Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Marquette University

UW-Milwaukee

Milwaukee Institiute of Art and Design

Katie Ginggrass Gallery

Milwaukee Women's Center Joy House

Amy Blair HR-Department Steven Anderson (414)-289-0855 (414)-449-4777 Main Campus

Director of undergraduate studies

(414)-229-4463 Gallery Manager

Fax: (414)-289-9255

Fax: (414)-449-4774 (414)-344-2211

Professor of Women's Studies

Fax: (414)-229-4102

[email protected]

[email protected]

Fax: (414)-344-6972

(414)-288-7284 [email protected]

[email protected]

Dr. William Welburn

Equity/Diversity Services April Forrary North Campus

Executive Director of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion

(414)-229-5923 Fax: (414)-229-5592

Human Resources Director (414)-935-0500

[email protected]

Fax: (414)-755-7620

Mike Goetz

Building Manager

[email protected]

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

University of Pittsburgh Art Institue of Pittsburgh

The Center for Women Finding Solid Ground

University Art Gallery

Jackie Smith, PhD 2615 Wesley Posvar Hall 412-648-7594 [email protected] (800) 275-2470 (412)-421-4400 (412)-624-7640

University of Pittsburgh Kenneth P. Dietrich School of


Arts and Sciences Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies Program

St. Louis, Missouri

College Women's Agencies

St. Louis University Washington University- st Louis YWCA- St. Louis

Professional Women's Alliance

Dr Penny Weiss, Chair of Women's and Gender Studies- [email protected] 314-977-3619

Jean Allman, Director, Center for the Humanities, [email protected], 314-935-5576

314-531-1115 314-991-6144

Dr Karla Danette Scott, Assistant Dean Diversity and Inclusion- [email protected] 314-977-3635

Mary Ann Dzuback Chair, Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies [email protected] 314-935-5172

St. Paul, Minnesota

University of Minnesota

Concordia University

University of Saint Thomas

Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women

Minnesota Womens Consortium

The Grand Hand Gallery

Paul Whitney Larson Art Gallery

Kelly Dano Matthias, Kelly Dr. Karen Lange

Student Activities

Director of the Center for Community Action

Vice president for student affairs

Office: (651) 646-6177 or (800) 289-6177

Phone:(651) 228-0338

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

(651) 312-1122

(612) 624-4636

507-258-8014 (651) 641-8236 (651) 962-6120

Jay Hesley LaMott, Dr. Eric Brian Woitte

Chief of Staff Provost and Chief Operating Officer

For Internal Event Planners

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]


507-258-8061 (651) 641-8729 651-962-6311

Appendix 3- Positive Responses

Transcript of email from University of Minnesota:

发件人 : Jay Hesley <[email protected]> 发送时间 : 2016年 10月 20日 15:18 收件人 : Zhengyang Zhang 主题 : Re: Simply interview

Dear Yang, Thank you for your message. All the best with your capstone project. Our institution also requires capstones for our students and it proves to be difficult, but usually a very rewarding educational opportunity. As to your specific questions: How often do you have guest speakers? Yes we do have guest speakers. Some participate at UMR as part of a topic of study for students and arrangements for these engagements are primarily by faculty. We do have a weekly speaker series that is open to the public. It is promoted throughout the community. It is called UMR Connects. More information is available at: http://r.umn.edu/academics-research/programs/cepd/umrconnects

UMR CONNECTS | University of Minnesota Rochester

r.umn.edu

Are you looking for something FREE, interesting, and fun to do in downtown

Rochester, Minnesota, on a Tuesday night? Following a specific theme each month,

the UMR ...

How long in advance do you schedule guest speakers/exhibits? I can not speak to how long in advance faculty make arrangements for in class or coordinated with classes visits by invited speakers. I can tell you that UMR Connects is a speaker series that revolves around monthly themes and those

http://r.umn.edu/academics-research/programs/cepd/umrconnects

http://r.umn.edu/academics-research/programs/cepd/umrconnects


themes are usually set at least 6 months in advance of the presentation. Arrangements and if necessary contracting with speakers is usually finalized 90 days prior but efforts to fill the agendas begin shortly after the themes are determined. How many people can attend? It depends on venue, on campus indoors, we can accommodate approximately 200 people. Our average weekly attendance for UMR Connects is approximately 60. Depending on topic totals indoors can fluctuate from 30 to more than 150. Connects is also held outdoors for June, July and August. Groups there can be much larger. The only difference is that during the outdoor months the themes try to focus on entertaining themes that don't require slides, lectures and speeches. Can you direct us to other resources that we could connect to? Certainly our Community and Technical College (RCTC) is larger than UMR and has significantly more facilities and formats including auditoriums, gyms, and large all purpose rooms. I suggest you connect with the Office of the President, start with Judy at [email protected]. I would also suggest you connect with our local United Way. They are providers of services and may know specific groups that are interested in getting involved. I am sorry I do not have a name I would search out United Way of Olmsted County Would this be something that you may be interested in hosting? If it aligned with UMR Connects, possibly. That is a decision made by a community committee. Outside of Connects, no. We do not work to sponsor independent presentations. Our space is available for a small fee if someone wanted to use the space and manage all the aspects of audience recruitment and support the event. I hope this answers your questions. Please feel free to contact me if you have any additional questions. Best regards, Jay Jay Hesley Chief of Staff University of Minnesota Rochester Phone: 507-258-8061 E-Mail: [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]


Phone interview summary with the Katie Ginggrass Gallery:

The Katie Ginggrass Gallery appeared interested in Infamous Mothers, as the conversation continued, they notified me that they need a two to three month notice before the exhibit would take place. The positivity of this response was that they were interested, and even gave a timeline for Infamous Mothers to have an idea on how to go about contacting Katie Ginggrass Gallery for the second time. Another positive is that they revealed that they would also have the owner call back, with more information. Unfortunately, there was no call back from the Katie Ginggrass Gallery at the time of writing this report. Phone interview summary with Amy Blair, Marquette University:

Amy Blair, Director of Undergraduate Studies and Professor of Women’s Studies, answered her office phone the first time I called. She gave positive reassurance that she was interested in learning more about Infamous Mothers to see if it would be a good fit. Unfortunately, she was busy with midterms and fall break at Marquette, so she requested an email for me to ask all questions. With the time constraint of this report, I was unable to hear back from her.

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