Jacob Reynolds and friends will collect unwanted items from neighbors over two weekends and donate them to Goodwill. Goodwill enhances lives by providing employment training and helping people find jobs. The skills learned in Jacob's IT class, such as project planning and feasibility analysis, can help him effectively conduct his donation drive. So far, Jacob has donated items such as toys, cribs and clothes, and expects the project to take 4-8 hours over two weekends with $10 in gas costs. Donating to Goodwill benefits the economy by reducing unemployment and giving people job skills.

1. Collecting Donations for Goodwill Conducted by Jacob Reynolds and friends

2. How I Will Conduct the Activity I will be helping some neighbors and others clean out some of their unwanted things and will bring the items to Goodwill to be donated. My transportation will be a pickup truck that I have borrowed for use of this activity. The donations will be collected over the course of a couple weekends.

3. What Goodwill Does Goodwill enhances the dignity and quality of life of individuals, families and communities by eliminating barriers to opportunity and helping people in need reach their fullest potential through the power of work. Goodwill put 1.9 million people through employment and training programs in 2009 alone. They use the goods that are donated to generate revenue in which they use to put people through work force development training and help people get jobs.

4. How This Class Can Help Me Conduct My Volunteer Activity? This class shows how an IT team would conduct a project or evaluate their organization in order to make improvements. In this case, Chapter 2 has shown me how to get ready to conduct my volunteer activity, starting with understanding the problem or opportunity. The opportunity in this case is collecting things that are no longer in use and donating them to an organization that helps to combat unemployment.

5. …Skills from This Class Continued A preliminary investigation is the steps a system analyst follows when evaluating an upcoming project. I already mentioned understanding the problem or opportunity, but other steps in the preliminary investigation are to define the project scope and constraints, fact-finding, analyze project usability, cost, benefit, and schedule data, evaluate feasibility, and present results and recommendations to management. All of these steps help you to identify every possible obstacle that may come in the way of your project.

6. Work so Far So far I have evaluated all of the time I expect my activity to take and all of my expected cost. I expect my project to take 4-8 hours of collecting and donating time within a couple of weekends (1/22/2011-1/29/2011) of work and about $10 gas money. I have already done about 3 hours of donating already. The items below are things that I have recently collected for donation. There are things such as children's toys, baby cribs, and clothes.

7. Why Should Time and Money be Spent on My Activity Instead of Yours? Goodwill helps to get people out in the workforce. When unemployment is low than more people have money to spend which stimulates the economy. They help to give people the jobs skills they need that they wouldn’t have been able to get on their own.

8. Thank you for your time. If you have any donations that you want to bring to Goodwill go to goodwill.org to find the store nearest you.