Featured Non-Profit: Kiva

January 31, 2012
By admin

As you probably know, Brown Paper Tickets is a ticketing company. We sell tickets all over the world to events and have an unbelievable list (in my opinion) of free services and tools for event producers to put their events together. What you may not be fully aware of is this whole other branch of the company that is very involved in giving back to our communities. This is the realm I am fortunate enough to be immersed in.

One of the most recent additions to our company’s giving came from the Marketing and Communications team. The VP of Marketing and Communications, Kelsye Nelson, was given a budget of $25 a month to take her staff out to lunches or coffee, so instead, in the spirit of Brown Paper Tickets, she and her team decided to vote on one person a month who they feel has been rocking their job and exhibits the essence of Brown Paper Tickets. This month I was honoured with their votes. As the winner of the grand prize, I get to choose who the money goes to this month at Kiva. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWgAEJE1FuM]
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Spark Change: Pay it Forward

December 20, 2011
By admin

When I think about how ordinary people can change the world, I think about the many little things we could do to make a difference. I’m not talking about donating your life savings or taking a year off from work to devote yourself to starving children in Africa. While these would be amazing ways to create change, for the vast majority of us, they’re simply not practical.

What is possible is for everyone to focus on their day-to-day activities. We interact with hundreds of people a day, whether we realize it or not, and it is time to pay more attention to those interactions. Acknowledge their presence, create a positive interaction and spark change so that the hundreds of people you run into will positively impact the hundreds of people they run into.
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Featured Non-Profit: Locks of Love

December 16, 2011
By admin

After the big cut!

In the spirit of giving this holiday season I challenge you to find a gift in which you don’t receive anything in return (except maybe a warm fuzzy feeling inside). Think of a way you can volunteer your time at a soup kitchen, wrap presents for homeless kids, donate your old towels to an animal shelter. It can be easy to give BIG to an organization with little effort from you.

This year one of my big gives was 10 inches of my hair. It may seem like a lot (an believe me, it took me years to build up the courage to do it), but really, it’s just hair and it grows back.

There is an organization called Locks of Love. They are “a public non-profit organization that provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children in the United States and Canada under age 21 suffering from long-term medical hair loss from any diagnosis.” By taking donated hair, they create hair prosthetics which helps to restore the kid’s “self-esteem and their confidence, enabling them to face the world and their peers.” As if battling a life threatening disease isn’t hard enough, kids have to still face their peers and explain why they look different. Locks of Love gives them an opportunity to feel better inside and out.
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Featured Non-Profit: Girls On The Run

November 29, 2011
By admin

If you’re a runner, you know the powerful effect running can have on a person. Not only is running physically beneficial, it can help you mentally as well. Tired? Having a bad day? Frustrated by something?Need to get out of the house? Work it out with a good jog and you’ll feel better by the end. It’s amazing how a run can give you a new perspective on things. Need an excuse to get out there? How about running to help change lives and benefit communities? 5K events happen almost every weekend and the proceeds go to great community organizations.

This Saturday, December 3^rd, is the New Balance Girls on the Run 5k Community run. Women, men, children, leashed pets and all-terrain strollers are welcome to participate! “Girls on the Run of Puget Sound is a non-profit organization whose mission is to inspire girls to be joyful, healthy and confident using a fun experience-based curriculum which creatively integrates running. Since 2002, GOTRPS has operated as an after-school prevention program for 3rd through 5th grade girls throughout Puget Sound.”
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Featured Non-Profit: The Ladybug Project

October 31, 2011
By admin

Fresh out of school, with a dream to change the world, biologist Kim Reuter found herself on a plane to Equatorial Guinea; a country, according to Lonely Planet, “that is usually relegated to live under the staple in map books.” After a brief three months as a field biologist studying monkeys in the rainforest, she realized her mission there was not complete.

She spent the last two weeks of her time in Equatorial Guinea in a small mountain town call Moka where she was welcomed into the local inhabitants homes and lives. “Every time I saw injustice or poverty, I also saw hope. I heard that the country’s high GDP is causing many aid organizations to re-allocate their funding elsewhere, despite the clear need for any and all help. It inspired me to get active. I started to realize that I was so incredibly fortunate; I have never, ever had to worry about health care, water, or education. So I decided that I would try to help others worry less as well.”
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Featured Non-Profit: BrooklynSpeaks

September 30, 2011
By admin

Do you love New York? Me too!

A few weekends ago, I was fortunate enough to visit the Big Apple for the New York Worlds Maker Faire. Everything about the city was exciting; from dodging people at Grand Central Station, to strolling through the neighborhoods at midnight. I loved listening to the variety of languages being spoken on the subways and savoring different culinary flavors on every block. Being surrounded by so much energy and life was revitalizing, to say the least.
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Shellac: Still Touring, Still A Must-See

September 20, 2011
By admin

Steve Albini is one of those musicians that will never stop touring. At least, we hope. If you don’t know Albini as the frontman of Shellac, you may know him from an infinite number of other projects: he’s played in bands such as Big Black and Flour, and as a producer has lent his talents to the likes of Nirvana, The Breeders, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, The Pixies, PJ Harvey and countless others.

He takes that wealth of experience and continues, almost 30 years after the start of Big Black, to take it on the road. Their sound has been described as noise rock, math rock and post-hardcore — and certainly, they are all of these things at different points of songs or albums. What separates these guys from the pack (like most of Albini’s bands) is heavy, impossibly fast basslines, brutally honest and morality-blurring lyrical content, and a desire to explore the boundaries of musical composition.

The advantage to having Albini at the helm is a diverse set of musical influences and abilities combined with a refreshing lack of inhibition. That air of pretention? It just makes the music come out better. Trust us.
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Massachusetts: Celebrate Sustainability at the Open Road Music and Arts Festival September 10!

September 3, 2011
By admin

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdFzakOWJzI]

The Open Road Music and Arts festival, moving into year two, can now truly call itself an annual event. An outdoor festival perfectly timed to take in our last bit of sunshine, the festival takes over the newly-remodelled Institute Park in Worcester, Massachusetts (just an hour outside of Boston!) with art, music and community on September 10 from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
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Featured Non-Profit: Arts and Scraps

August 31, 2011
By admin

I had the pleasure of meeting the organization Arts & Scraps last month in Detroit for the Detroit Maker Faire (a faire based around new ideas for reusing, recycling and creating). At their booth, kids (and adults) used the recycled materials that were provided to creatively think about how these old pieces could be transformed into something new. It was so much fun to see the kids walking around with their creations.

Arts & Scraps started in 1989 with the mission of using recycled industrial scraps to help people of all ages and abilities think, create and learn. They accomplish this by making creative experiences affordable and accessible. Their vision for the future is to “reach every undeserved child in the Detroit metropolitan area with quality creative and educational experiences.”
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Pachtman Theatrics: A Little Bit of Everything in the Bay Area

August 25, 2011
By admin

We love the Bay Area, and one of the reasons why is the diversity of its strong, artistic communities. There is just so much going on! So it only makes sense that one of our longtime Bay Area producers would represent a variety of different San Francisco happenings: Pachtman Theatrics.

In addition to working with a ton of Bay Area performers, including BPT favorites like W. Kamau Bell, Bruce Pachtman produces three monthly events at StageWerx in Union Square: Solo Sundays, Previously Secret Information and Underground Sound.

Solo Sundays is a monthly showcase, focusing on select samplings of veteran virtuosos and top emerging talent in solo performance, from stand-up to storytelling to multimedia projects. Coming up this Sunday, August 28: “Meeting My Father,” where a woman meets her father who she had thought was dead for the past 20 years, “Be Careful What You Wish For,” where a woman in hard times has to make an even harder decision about whether to escape her past or stick to her roots, and “Jurassic Arc,” where a man goes on a religious mission to make a film showing man and dinosaur walking side-by-side.
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