MACF, Other Local Organizations Partner With Catchafire To Bring Virtual Support To 200+ Nonprofits In The GLBR

Nine funders from the Great Lakes Bay Region (Midland Area Community Foundation, United Way of Midland County, Saginaw Community Foundation, United Way of Saginaw County, Bay Area Community Foundation, United Way of Bay County, Mt.Pleasant Area Community Foundation, United Way of Gratiot & Isabella Counties, and Greenleaf Trust), are thrilled to partner with Catchafire to bring time-sensitive, virtual support to more than 200 nonprofit organizations in the Great Lakes Bay region. Through this partnership, invited nonprofits will have access to skills-based volunteers on Catchafire’s virtual platform, where they can complete any number of operational or capacity-building projects together. This support will empower our nonprofit community to pivot within today’s workplace and environment to assure they are meeting the expectations and needs of the communities they serve. The Great Lakes Bay Region in particular has experienced multiple stressors in recent months, and Catchafire comes with tangible resources to help nonprofits respond and recover in the short term, and build resilience in the long term.
“Between the pandemic and the recent flood, demand for the services and supports of nonprofits has increased dramatically. At the same time, nonprofits are adapting to social distancing and grappling with the economic downturn,” said Sharon Mortensen, President & CEO of Midland Area Community Foundation. “The new partnership with Catchafire will allow area nonprofits to tap a network of highly-skilled volunteers, saving nonprofits time and money and offering important resources as nonprofits provide critically important services for our community.”
With this partnership, thirteen funders have now joined the One Michigan collaborative—a statewide program aimed at giving nonprofits in Michigan access to Catchafire’s on-demand support. Other grantmakers in the collaborative include founding member Michigan Health Endowment Fund (The Health Fund), Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation, the Skillman Foundation, and Washtenaw Coordinated Funders, inclusive of the Office of Community & Economic Development, United Way of Washtenaw County, and St. Joseph Mercy Ann Arbor.
As part of One Michigan, nonprofits get access to Catchafire’s innovative virtual platform and programming to leverage a network of more than 100,000 skilled volunteers who will help pro bono with needs such as website development, online marketing, strategic planning, professional development, and other areas of critical work in fundraising, program delivery, human resources, marketing & communications, finance, and technology & operations.
Nonprofits post their immediate needs by choosing from over 140 projects, already outlined with steps and deliverables. Talented professionals apply to complete these tasks, and the organizations select a volunteer to do the work. Through these engagements, nonprofits get critical needs filled, and volunteers become deeply connected to the nonprofits’ missions. Over time, these connections can establish long-term relationships where pro bono professionals become repeat volunteers, social media advocates, donors, and potential board members.
Now more than ever, nonprofits leverage virtual support services like Catchafire to help with emergency response, recovery, and resiliency efforts. In Michigan alone, nonprofits with access to Catchafire completed 347 virtual pro bono projects on the platform since March 1, 2020. These projects have focused on fulfilling time-sensitive needs like transitioning to remote work; developing HR policies to keep staff safe and healthy; planning and organizing virtual fundraisers; better understanding the needs of beneficiaries; transitioning programs to a virtual environment; and receiving support from the CARES Act, among other programmatic, fundraising and operational needs. In the process, they’ve leveraged nearly 5,700 hours of volunteers’ time, saving more than $1,224,000.
While our Great Lakes Bay community may be struggling since the onset of COVID-19 and the recent flooding, Catchafire is now a resource that will help strengthen nonprofits in the region so we are prepared for the long road of recovery ahead.
To learn more about One Michigan or to learn how to participate as a grantmaker, please reach out to Ash Didwania, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at Catchafire at ash@catchafire.org
About Catchafire
Catchafire is a full service, on-demand solution designed to address the wide-ranging and complex needs of nonprofits by connecting them with talented pro bono professionals. Through Catchafire’s innovative web-based platform and network of more than 10 million professionals, nonprofits have access to people with expert skills who can help them with operational needs such as developing a website, building a strategic plan, designing a brochure, professional development, and other areas of critical work. Catchafire’s scalable and cost-effective model makes it possible for grantmakers to provide a full suite of capacity building services to any nonprofit that the foundation seeks to serve. Catchafire and its foundation partners are not only helping nonprofits improve their capacity, sustainability, and effectiveness, but also leveling the playing field by making capacity building available to any nonprofit or changemaker.
Midland Area Community Foundation
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers).
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs. There may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to
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