Date, 20XX

Dear Potential Partner:

At some point you indicated interest in having high school students who are participating in "Nonprofit Prophets" create a World Wide Web page for your organization. This letter outlines your chance to do that.

The first thing I want to do is to describe what it is that the students might do for you. Basically, they will help you design and then create a World Wide Web page for your nonprofit organization. This is a win-win from all sides: you get a Web page and the students get the chance to connect with you, individuals who share their passionate concern about a social or environmental issue.

Before you commit to being a "partner," you need to be certain that you have:

1. A communication need that a Web page could satisfy.
2. Some organizational or personal resources to support the work of the student. This would be a key person who will act as the contact point and mentor for students and any additional staff that might be needed to provide the students with timely feedback (1 week turnaround is the expectation). This key person should be interested in working with high school students and view the students' growth as at least as important as the completion of a Web page.

3. Access to the technologies of:
• e-mail
• Internet / World Wide Web
• Video Conferencing (optional, but useful)
• FAX (optional, but useful)

These technologies can often be accessed via the public libraries.

4. Eagerness to make sure that the project is successful - for you, your organization and the student. This is not an opportunity to wash your hands of a problem or to accept less than professional work, given that students have chances to revise their products after feedback from multiple sources. Enough support should exist in the form of technology mentors that the final World Wide Web page should be a source of pride for all involved.
5. Time to attend an initial presentation / orientation. Groups will meet via video conferencing to get everyone "on the same page." You will also need to allocate time for "virtual" meetings via e-mail and video conferences.

In preparing to participate in this project you should be able to identify:

• The needs of the target population served your organization.
• Your organization's main goals in serving this population.
• Your goals for a World Wide Web page.

The above three key points should be typed up and e-mailed to me so that they can be posted on the World Wide Web for students to access. This will help the students decide which groups match up with their interests.

It is my job to make sure that all student groups find some organization with whom to make contact. Unfortunately, I can not guarantee that there will be a student team for each nonprofit group interested in joining the project.

Obviously, some risk exists for partners as well as students. For partners, the risk comes from the fact that these are high school students learning to be professionals. For students, they must open themselves up to strangers and to give an all-out effort. Based upon a similar, though smaller scale, project conducted the past two years, both students and partners should see Nonprofit Prophets as a win-win endeavor. Those of us in the schools are proud of what our students can do when they are presented with an authentic and compelling challenge. We appreciate your interest in making this challenge come to life.

We need to have your commitment to serve as a partner in writing within one month. Will you please e-mail me (see email address in the heading of this letter) if you would like to submit yourself or your organization as a partner. .

I look forward to seeing you in September and anticipate a "prophetable" relationship.

Respectfully,