Author: Alison Cantor

Sister District

Alison Cantor

Sister District is a political organization aimed at electing Democrats to state legislatures. They hired me in December 2017 for a two month contract to give their social media a boost so that the founders could focus on their longer term strategic goals. I was responsible for generating relevant content for Twitter, Facebook and Medium in accordance with the Sister District calendar and other current events. I monitored and responded to social media messages and posts, and worked to accurately convey the voice and spirit of the organization.

In those two months, I promoted Sister District’s mission and amplified their reach. I grew their Twitter following by roughly 3,000 (from ~9k to ~12k followers) and sent approximately 1,700 tweets. I also expanded their Facebook audience by 1,500 new page likes, with 60 posts.

Fundraising was one of the organization’s outreach goals; Sister District was running a crowdfunding campaign at the time to fund their operations. I helped the organization raise $40,000 during my two month contract, surpassing their funding goal.

During this time, Sister District was also focused on one special election in Florida’s state legislature, backing Margaret Good’s campaign. With my help promoting this endorsement through social media channels, the organization raised more than $30,000 to support her race. She won her election, thereby staving off a Republican supermajority in Florida!

Every Folk

Alison Cantor

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I’m working alongside two of my folksiest friends to create Every Folk, a three day all-inclusive sleep-away camp for adults. The camp is designed to share traditional arts, knowledge and skills through music, storytelling, crafts and food. It will be held bi-yearly at Camp Krem in Boulder Creek, CA.

As co-founder, I’ve produced many of Every Folk’s key elements. I created the camp’s website and built out the social media profiles. I’ve also handled Every Folk’s finances, setting up the company bank account, managing Eventbrite ticket sales and pricing, and helping make decisions about the camp’s structure, budget, and staff and instructor pay. My co-founders lovingly refer to me as the Accountability Director because of my unique ability to wrangle their creative energy and put it to productive use.

Check out http://www.everyfolk.com to learn more.

The Nearly Now

Alison Cantor

The Nearly Now is a subscription based “anticipatory journalism” project written by Alex Steffen. Alex describes it as “a newsletter of provocative and compelling stories from the year 2025 — stories about people fighting for a better world, on a planet slipping into crisis.”

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Working as Alex’s Chief of Staff, I helped lay the groundwork for this project. I fine tuned the concept and brainstormed story ideas. I also drafted the logo, based on Alex’s idea, and then contracted a designer on Fivrr to perfect it. I created matching imagery for social media, and used Medium to build the project’s landing page. I spoke with with Medium’s product team to learn more about their membership program and researched the alternatives for subscriber payments before deciding to go with MailChimp in conjunction with Campaignzee.

Alex and I launched the project in late January, 2017, and he’s continued writing on this platform and building his audience of subscribers ever since.

The Heroic Future

Alison Cantor

In 2016, Alex Steffen and I produced a three-night talk series called The Heroic Future. The talks were filmed and later edited into a single video for general audiences. 

We successfully crowdfunded the project with a Kickstarter that generated more than $75,000. With Alex’s voiceover and some creative direction, I created the Kickstarter’s promotional video. I also edited the page content, gathered press mentions, and followed up on backer leads. Check out the page here and watch the video below.

Once the series was funded, I shifted my focus to planning and producing the three nights by zeroing in on the following tasks:

  • securing a venue
  • hiring a film crew
  • renting equipment
  • ensuring venue compliance
  • recruiting volunteers
  • designing programs
  • selling additional tickets
  • creating a scholarship ticket ticket program and offering tickets to applicants

By managing all these details, I enabled Alex to focus almost exclusively on content. The three nights ran smoothly and brought together hundreds of attendees. 

After the final curtain, I again shifted my focus, this time to working with a professional video editor to cut the six hours of raw footage from the series into something digestible for a general audience. I contracted this editor for the project, and worked with Alex to select highlights from the three nights and slice them into a cohesive flow. The resulting video can be found here.

Camp Orange

Alison Cantor

I was one of 32 friends who came together to create Camp Orange, a banana themed Burning Man camp, in 2013. I have since lead several committees, including Decor Committee, Play Things Committee and MOOP Committee, and I’ve [radically] participated in many more. In particular, I was responsible for procuring massive amounts of fabric for decor and dome covering, I made 10 yellow rip-stop nylon hammocks (5 for the “banana bunch” pictured below, 5 for inside the dome), I helped sew the fabric cover on the banana-stand top, and I lent my skills and labor to numerous other camp projects.

2012 – Just a banana and a dome!
2013 – Banana Bunch added
(Alison made the rip-stop nylon yellow hammocks for the bunch.)
2013 – The Largest Known Hammock makes it’s debut on the playa
2014 – The Largest Known Hamock comes home to live at camp
Our twice weekly gift every year – hundreds of chocolate covered frozen bananas
2015 – Camp Orange ups it’s decor game.

In 2015, I stitched more than a dozen custom embroidered patches for my camp-mates (of their respective playa names). Click through to see a sampling of them below:

As a founding member (aka an “orange banana”), I help push the camp to contribute to the Burn as best it can every year.

AlexSteffen.com + Newsletter

Alison Cantor

In the fall of 2014, I worked with Alex Steffen to relaunch his website, alexsteffen.com. Considering the design and functionality that Alex needed to run and promote his business of writing, public speaking and consulting, we decided to build a new site on the NationBuilder platform.

I worked with Alex to outline the necessary content and site framework, and we selected pieces of the old WordPress site to migrate. I then gathered quotes from several NationBuilder “architects” and conducted interviews to find the best candidate to fit our needs and budget. I selected Zac Maybury, and with my oversight and Alex’s final approval, he built the site as it stands today.

Once the site was live, we relaunched Alex’s newsletter through NationBuilder, carefully migrating the audience over from MailChimp. I edited that newsletter, which regularly reached more than 500 subscribers.

The Bar Method Websites

Alison Cantor

barmethod

As The Bar Method’s Marketing Assistant, I collaborated with a contracted web developer to completely rebuild barmethod.com, upgrading from an html site built in the early 2000s to a more user friendly site built on the WordPress platform. I acted as the primary contact for the developer, photo and copy editor, and facilitator in design review meetings. With input from the developer, the Bar Method’s CEO, COO, and Marketing Director, I worked to balance the various design constraints with diverse branding priorities to create a holistic company website.

Once the barmethod.com design and content was finalized, I helped generate replicates of the site so that each of the 76 franchisees could use their own subdomain version to promote their studio and classes. I wrote a step-by-step, back-end user guide, hosted several webinars, and held a number of one-on-one calls to help the franchise owners perfect their sites.

Cascade Bicycle Club Outreach

Alison Cantor

296480_10150371889949081_317180854_nI coordinated Cascade Bicycle Club’s ambassador outreach program. In my role there as Community Programs Assistant, I interviewed, hired, and trained our bicycle ambassadors to go out to events and talk to people about bicycling. We worked together to educate the public about the rights and responsibilities of people who bike, the bike education programs offered by Cascade, riding advice, the events and volunteer opportunities Cascade had to offer, and more.

I managed their schedules and kept them up to date with Cascade’s most current messaging. I often joined them, tabling at events alongside them, or occasionally filling in on my own when our ambassadors were unavailable.

I also recruited and trained volunteers to assist with dozens of helmet sale events that I organized across the city, providing low-cost helmets to communities in need.