This project came about when I saw the generic yard signs for police support. They were not designed well and they were not dedicated to the community they were placed. I thought I could do better. And it turns out that printing costs could enable interested citizens to purchase the signs AND enough could be made back to pay into a community cause or any charity desired.

I presented the idea to the Board of Alderman in Shrewsbury on Sept 25th, 2018. They took the idea well and I was able to get a few design tweaks from the mayor and a go-ahead from the Chief of Police.

The organization that the Chief was up for using proceeds for was BackStoppers. Alderman Steingruby mentioned the Cystic Fibrosis foundation as also a good target.

Looking forward to seeing how this plays out. I was given a spot at the Shrewsbury Fall Festival, so I'll be setting up our four ft table and a sample sign and will see about gathering pre-orders there. I'd like to try to get 20 or so, maybe 40 orders of signs for say $15.00 a piece. We'll see!

Got the municipality list for the greater STL area and nearby counties. I was able to order the list based on my own priority for design.

• https://stlmuni.org/the-league/about-us/municipality-link-list/

Need to get together the following:

• Advertisement Page / Sign
• This is a non-commercial project, in support, with an aim of solidarity and charity
• Diagram of what a buyer get and delivery time
• Outline cost and charity cause
• Pre-order Sheet - collect emails and phone numbers
• Payment box if cash is given
• Take photos of the order sheet as I go, so nothing lost
• Email marketing
• Facebook image ad
• Landing Page Design
• Notes if others give recommendations
• Laminations for some of the sheets (Does city have laminator to use?)

This past weekend was, I would say a success that the project was worthy. From about noon till 8:00pm at the Shrewsbury Fall Festival on Saturday I had my table set up and got 23 sign orders. People were very interested, some handed me money without even the full explanation. I'm glad they all understood the order process and they loved the charity component. Several were relatives of police officers. One veteran Firefighter gave me his thanks, which I definitely don't feel deserving of.

• One resident paid but didn't want a sign due to his obscure location out of view
• Everyone paid except two I have to get their checks or cash
• I created the spreadsheet with everyones phone numbers and emails
• I'm going to create an email blast to everyone
• Creating social media ad for outreach this week via facebook

I made a small adjustment to the design. I removed the darker orange border around the bottom text. it was creating a blur effect on the sign despite being a sharp solid color. Despite being an elegant border I think detracted from the design rather than helping it.

Reached out, belatedly to Backstopppers, hoping that they get all my notes on the project. I prepped a social media ad which I will share with Shrewsbury parks dept and the police to see if they might want to put it on their facebook pages. I will see if I can share it on the local fb shrewsbury community page as well, though the moderators say they do not want charities to be advertised. Maybe they'll make an exception.

We'll see! After I get these ads out, I'm going to try to hurry the rest of the orders and get these puppies ordered.

I've decided to set up an ecommerce site for the project. This way I can expand it to other regions. I need to partner with a printer to handle the sign printing where I can crank out a small or large number of signs and be able to get them shipped.

I'll be using the Fixture.app CMS with ecommerce created by Matt Smith. He's got paypal and stripe integrated into the app and I can sell based on shipping costs. If there's a case for getting my own printer to continue to the project I will do that if I can afford it for the project.

In the mean time, the idea is to get maybe some bulk shipments done. Maybe I can force a quantity to be purchased for the signs, minimum five and then the overhead will be handled. If there's a large quantity, they can be shipped to the city hall and tagged and picked up individually by the customer.

Need to look into printers for doing the signs, shipping boxes for the product or working with a printer that can help me with my orders and ship them, where I just facilitate the orders and donation portion.