Re: Thank You from Lisa and Poetry in America
[{"sender": "jeffrey E. [jeevacation@gmail.com]", "recipients": ["Lisa New"], "timestamp": "12/19/2016 3:01:54 PM", "subject": "Re: Thank You from Lisa and Poetry in America", "body": "from barnaby -\n\nshe could apply, but she should know that there are only a few grants in each round; most projects proposed\ndon't get funding. It is like rolling the dice. what people don't understand is that many grants are not funded not\nbecause they are defective in any way, but simply because there is not enough funding to cover even a part of\nwhat comes in (there are thousands of applications and hundreds of millions of dollars of requests that go all\nthrough different kinds of review; it is hard to know what will make it through because different people make\nthe priority decisions at different stages of review; and it depends what other applications are in the pool ina\ngiven cycle). There is no \"direct\" route anymore."}, {"sender": "Lisa New <Q>", "recipients": [], "timestamp": "Sun, Dec 18, 2016 at 11:36 PM", "subject": "Re: Thank You from Lisa and Poetry in America", "body": "Dear\nJeffrey\n(and please see note at bottom),\n\nThis end-of-the-year letter is to catch you up on developments and to report progress made in 2016\nby Poetry in America, by its associated non-profit production company, Verse Video Education, and\nby (and with) our new Harvard partner, the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. Whether\nyou are a longstanding adviser and supporter of Poetry in America, or you’ve more recently joined\nour circle of proponents, your contributions, thought partnership and enthusiasm have made this\nyear’s successes possible.\n\nLast fall, | knew this would be a crucial year. Goals for 2016 included moving our co-produced\ntelevision series, Poetry in America, toward a concrete release date (now entering post-production,\nwe launch nationwide in April 2018), converting our six HarvardX MOOC modules into for-credit\ncourses (now complete and being offered by Harvard’s Division of Continuing Education), and\ngetting the word out on our first course developed especially for K-12 educators, Poetry in America\nfor Teachers: The City from Whitman to Hip Hop. With a mission of creating and distributing the\nhighest-quality humanities content for a wide variety of learners, our projects now rely on a salaried\nproduction staff of five, a rotating corps of part timers and contractors, and a growing cohort of\nHarvard graduate students, undergraduates and interns whom we train in the public-facing\nhumanities. Growing fast, in 2016 we more firmly established Verse Video Education as a nimble\nand stable producer of humanities-based content (now including an archive of over 120 separate\ninterviews with distinguished discussants), while also defining a forward-looking partnership and\ngrowth strategy with Harvard. As 2016 draws to a close, | have much progress to report.\n\nVerse Video Education: Independent 501c3\n\nIn April 2016, Verse Video Education, the fledgling production company |’d founded in 2014,\nreceived IRS approval and became a 501c3. Now capable of accepting philanthropic contributions,\nVerse Video Education has also begun to generate revenue by producing high-quality educational\nmedia for other institutions. Clients within our first year included Greenwich Country Day School,\nYIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Schlesinger Library, Harvard Institute for Global Health, and\nProject Zero. While philanthropic donations remain essential, work for clients allows us to amplify the\nimpact of philanthropic donations, not only permitting additional investment in our flagship\npartnerships with WGBH and Harvard, but also fostering development of new partnerships and"}]