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We’re very excited to announce the addition of three new staff members within the last two weeks.

Joanna Miles joins us as a Production Specialist in the Online Campaigns and Marketing group.  Joanna is responsible for ensuring the accuracy and timeliness of email campaigns and Web pages, statistical analysis, and a thorough knonwledge of the online tools used by our clients.  In other words, she’s all about the details.  Joanna’s background in research, analysis, and Web site management for Abt Associates, plus her majors in Mathematics and English with a minor in Computer Science from Oberlin College make her well equiped to take on this important position.  Joanna also worked as Head Cook for a consensus-based vegetarian food cooperative.

Kesah Schmitt joins us as a Client Manager for ongoing client relationships.  In this position, Kesah will be the primary point of contact for many of our ongoing clients, providing a mix of internet consulting, project management and hands-on execution.  Kesah was formerly a Technical Liaison for Soundpath Conferencing, where she provided customer service, Web site development, research and training.  Kesah holds a B.A. in Political Economy from Tulane University. Kesah recently returned from a six week trip to Brazil, where she traveled all around the country and was even able to be in Rio for Carnivale.

Adebowale Adeyiga becomes the newest member of our technical team as a Software Engineer.  With a strong background in software engineering, programming and analysis, Adebowale will be able to put his skills in .NET and php to immediate use developing content mangement systems, integrating back-end systems, and developing Web 2.0 applications.  Adebowale is a fan of almost every sports genre, although he spends less time playing these days now that he has a young son and another child on the way.

Joanna, Kesah and Adebowale have jumped into their roles very quickly and we look forward to you having the opportunity to meet each of them.

Tired of working for “The Man?”  Want to put your skills to use helping great causes like the American Lung Association, Heifer International, the Skillman Foundation and the ACLU further their missions? 

We’re currently hiring for several positions, and we’re always on the lookout for great people. 

Why work at Beaconfire?

Sure, we offer all the same things those other “cool” companies do…the snacks, the pizza, the casual dress, the fun office environment (where else can you bubble wrap the VP’s office while he’s away?), work/life balance, a free gym.  But we offer a lot more than that. 

We hire people who are:

• smart (you really know your stuff - and so do we)
• curious (you’re willing to learn more - and we’re willing to teach you)
• dedicated (you don’t just want a job, you want a job at Beaconfire - and we want you)
• passionate (you have a passion for technology and a desire to help nonprofits - and our clients are the best)
• interesting (you have a life outside of work - and we’ll let you keep it)
• team players (you play well with others - and we’ll play well with you)

We offer:

• top notch benefits including: health; dental; short- and long-term disability; life insurance
• competetive salaries
• 401(k) with company match
• bonus potential
• profit-sharing
• yearly professional development budget
• and the cool stuff (see above)

End hunger, save lives, protect the environment!  It’s all in a day’s work. 

Learn more about our current openings.

I’m excited on behalf of all of us here at Beaconfire to welcome Alison (Ali) Cherry as our new Online Campaigns & Marketing Director. 

Ali will provide executive-level consulting for our Online Campaigns & Marketing clients, expanding the level and depth of services we offer to our current clients and engaging new clients and projects.

Most recently, Ali was Director of Strategic Marketing at Grassroots Enterprise, working with nonprofits, trade associations and corporate clients to develop and implement innovative online communications strategies, including social media and Web 2.0. Prior to that, Ali worked with the National Partnership for Women & Families and YWCA Domestic Violence Services in Utica, New York.  Ali has a BA from Hamilton College and is completing her MBA at the University of Maryland.

Even more impressively, Ali completed the 109th Boston Marathon and was recently a member of a co-ed ice hockey team! We’re thrilled to have her experience and enthusiasm on our team!

Are you a fan of Beaconfire and our work helping non-profits achieve their online goals? If so, why not be one on Facebook as well?

We recently launched a Facebook page where you can keep up to date on what Beaconfire is working on, support the causes of some of our clients, see what’s new on the Beaconfire Wire, and learn about employment opportunities.

You can leave a comment on our Wall, or start a discussion in the pages-only Discussion Board section. We’ll also be premiering some of our upcoming Facebook-exclusive work on our page.

Being a fan of a company, candidate, or non-profit is akin to being their friend, with a couple small differences. First, you can always see us, but even if you’re a fan, we can’t see your profile. You also won’t get updates on your mini-feed about everything we do - just (very) occasional updates in your Facebook inbox from us.

Being a fan of our page is also a great way to see how pages work for when you’re ready to start one for your non-profit. As we’ve discovered, there are some similarities to profiles, but a few things you couldn’t do on a regular profile (like add free standing blocks of HTML or flash) and a few things you can’t do that you could on a profile (like add certain applications - pages have their own separate library).

So please click on that "Become a Fan" button in the top right of our Facebook page - we really appreciate your support.

Our Beaconfire offices in Arlington have been undergoing something of a transformation lately.  Our main conference room has been updated with fresh paint, new furniture and plush leather benches to accommodate our entire staff during large meetings.  We’ve added additional seating areas to make room for new staff members.  However, the most stunning transformation has been to our two small conference rooms.

Beaconfire staff participated in an in-house design challenge to spruce up our boring, white-walled conference rooms.  The office was divided into two groups, with each group decorating the conference room on the opposite side of the office.  Secret meetings were held, budgets were planned, mysterious packages arrived in the mail, and during a 24-hour period, two dull rooms were transformed into Café Luz and The Lodge.

The Café features soft lighting, staff-donated books to exchange and a bench seating area with fun, fuzzy pillows.  The Lodge features a stunning view of the mountains and lake and…a moose.

View all of the before and after pictures!

Frequent Beaconfire Wire visitors may have noticed some format changes over the weekend - as the number of staff writing grows, so too does our post width. We hope you find it easier to read posts at our new 500+ px width, particularly those that employ graphics. Other changes you may notice include:

• Authors have post counts after their name, so you can see what else your favorite authors have written
• The RSS link now lives on its own in the top right - be sure to subscribe to our feed if you haven’t already
• Unordered lists have new red square bullets
• As Amy noted, new photos have been added to our Flickr account
• The "Recent Comments" box no longer ambles into the main post column.

Keep an eye out for other changes coming soon!

Each year, the Key School in Arlington has a Halloween Parade in our neighborhood. And again this year, Beaconfire staff put on our Halloween finest and handed candy out to the adorable costumed kids. See our in-house fairy, phantom, ironman, and more on our Beaconfire Flickr page. Enjoy, and keep your eyes on the Flickr feed for additional photos in the future!

How often have you received an appeal from an environmental organization that’s loaded with jargon like “fossil fuels dependence” and “biodiversity”? Be honest. Do you really know what the heck they’re talking about?

Our own Eric Eckl is an evangelist for (on?) using words that us average joes and janes understand in marketing, fundraising, and advocacy appeals — words like “clean air” and “extinction”.

An editorial in the Annapolis City Times today says:

“Mr. Eckl is an environmentalist and also a marketing consultant who understands how to persuade people.”

When not applying his knack for persuading our client’s constituents to sign up, clean, up, open their wallets, or just do it, he’s also sharing his wisdom on his personal blog: waterwordsthatwork. His passion may be clean and available water, but his advice is valuable for all of us who have to communicate on scientific and technical issues. Check it out.

Learn more about Beaconfire’s bloggers:

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I set up this site a few weeks ago, but it’s been a busy summer, and we’re just now beginning to take it seriously. It still feels like an experiment, but we do expect it to serve a few specific purposes:

• Knowledge-Sharing: Beaconfire’s grown a lot in the past year, and it’s becoming more important to find efficient ways to share knowledge among the staff. We’ve used staff-wide email, the company intranet, and a wiki, and we’ll continue to use those tools in a variety of ways. But they all have serious shortcomings–poor search capability, lack of archives, difficult to use–and we expect that the blog is going to be a better space to capture, store and share knowledge.
• Conversations with Clients and Colleagues: Another major weakness of the other communication tools noted above is that they’re almost entirely internal to our company. There’s no effective way to open up conversations on those platforms with our clients and colleagues, but those are often the people we most want to involve in these discussions. A blog makes that possible, not only because these conversations are taking place in a public, archived, searchable space, but also because our clients and colleagues will be able to comment and join in the conversations directly.
• Blowing Our Own Horn: We’re really proud of the work we do with leading nonprofits across the country (and we’re proud of the work they do, too), and we’d like to spread the word. We sometimes put out press releases noting milestones in major projects, but those can take a lot of time and effort to produce, and there are plenty of accomplishments we’d like to note that somehow never clear the press-release hurdle. We think a blog will be an easier and more effective way to let folks know what we’re up to.

But that’s just for starters–this is a work in progress, and I’m excited to see what will happen that we haven’t even thought of yet. I’ve been actively blogging elsewhere for about 8 months, and I’ve been astounded by the ability of the platform to open up conversations, create connections among people and organizations, and spark ideas and creative thinking. I fully expect the same things to happen here for Beaconfire.