2016 Keep Arkansas Beautiful Annual Report
Affiliate Profile:
State:Arkansas /Population: 2.9 Million
Number of Staff:Three: Executive Director; Volunteer Services Coordinator; Administrative Assistant
Organizational Structure:State Commission, a division of Arkansas Dept. of Parks and Tourism / Date Established: April 9, 1997
Governing Board Members: Nine:appointed by the Governor / Date of KAB Affiliation: June 13, 1989
Mission Statement: Inspiring and educating individuals to prevent litter, recycle and keep Arkansas beautiful.
2016 Total Budget: $686,608 / Funding Source:State Conservation Sales Tax (one-eighth cent): we receive one % of this.
Inactive Affiliates:Keep Jacksonville Beautiful- currently without a Director and needs reorganization.
State Affiliate Award Recognition Program:
Support Affiliate Good Standing:Keep Arkansas Beautiful supports the mission and objectives of Keep America Beautiful, Inc. by encouraging participation, compliance and benefit recognition from local KAB Affiliates in these ways:
Communications:We use email to alert affiliates to opportunities about KAB Webinars that offer training on Good Standing Requirements: standardizing the KAB/Affiliate Logo, Cost/Benefit Analysis and Community Appearance and Litter Indexes We monitor these ourselves so we can provide individual help to those needing it or who were unable to participate in the webinar, which is typically done by phone.
Education and Training: We produce, sometimes with partners, statewide training events, typically a day-long Seminarto provide affiliate directors and others the opportunity to further professional knowledge, skills and networking ability. We offer grants to aid and encourage attendance for this training, the KAB National Conference and allied mission related meetings (i.e. Arkansas Recycling Coalition Conference).
Continuing Support:We encourage Affiliate Good Standing compliance through prompts and reminders for annual, semi-annual and GAC reports. Further, we offer help in figuring Cost Benefit Analysis and Litter Index and assist in their reporting. We provide opportunities for professional development and funding to help attainment, as delineated above.
For local Affiliate programs which are in distress and in danger of failure, we offer to meet with local government and business leaders to strengthen understanding of the valuable community resource that KAB affiliation provides and to assist them in identifying prospective community leaders for membership and funding opportunities.
Arkansas’ contiguous states, excepting Missouri, have KAB state affiliates. We have never had opportunity to interact with any affiliates in Missouri or any other state that didn’t have a State Leader. We have mentored other new State Leaders through the State Leaders Council.
Marketing:Keep Arkansas Beautiful follows a proactive marketing plan to promote local community KAB affiliation which states our goals and the methods we will use to accomplish them.
Our formalized plan is updated from time to time, and includes a market analysis listing strengths and weaknesses, plus opportunities and challenges. It identifies and ranks prospective Affiliate communities in all 75 counties with probabilities of Most Likely, Somewhat Likely, Possible, Unknown Qualities and Unlikely. We also address marketing advantages, promotional opportunities and strategies that might strengthen KAB’s appeal to changing local circumstances or increase likelihood of our positive reception by a prospective community or interested group.
We aggressively marketKAB through speaking opportunities and our booth at the AR Municipal League and Association of County Governments Conferences, plus presentations at community civic and service clubs. We also successfully influenced the Arkansas Recycling Coalition to join KAB as a SRO member and support their efforts through Board membership and attendance at their annual conference.
Further, we inviteAffiliates to help us expand our Arkansas KAB family by furnishing us contacts they know in prospective affiliate communities through local groups they work with, (i.e. Master Gardeners, Scouts, FFA, Urban Forestry Council, etc.), and that maintain a presence in progressive communities. We also converted our KAB State Affiliate status in KAB’s new one shared brand initiative, and use it in all of our promotional efforts to continually raise awareness of the connection and shared mission between our two organizations.
When we are made aware of affiliation interest within a community, we personally contact by phone and/or email the lead individuals to arrange a meeting where we can explain the benefits and obligations of KAB affiliation, abetted by KAB.org and handout we prepare: A QuickOverview to KAB Affiliation, which succinctly explains the process.
When a pre-cert affiliate attains certification, we provide a matching grant which virtually covers the cost of the certification to the organization.
Communications: Keep Arkansas Beautiful is committed to timely communications and knowledge sharing to offer our affiliates maximum opportunity to be aware of all news that can affect their programs.
We continuously maintain contact with local coordinators electronically via personal emails and by phone. Additionally, we utilize Facebook (69,181 likes), twitter (938 followers), Instagram (2,460 followers), Pinterest (117 followers) and post videos to You Tube, to regularly share relevant information. Plus we invite visits to our continuously expanding website, encourage visits to and the KAB Affiliate’s Forum, and to follow KAB on Facebook.
We alert Affiliateswhen we are physically near their area and ask to meet with them. We invite all Affiliate organizations to attend and participate in our Keep Arkansas Beautiful Commission meetings, which are occasionally hosted by Affiliates in their local communities. Whether or not they attend our meetings, we solicit information of their activities, which is reported at Commission meetings, posted on our website and profiled in our electronic newsletter, eKeepsake.
We habitually re-sendemail information from KAB and other allied mission sources that we feel will benefit their programs. Additionally, we have redesigned our website to make registration and reporting easier for our statewide cleanups, as well as produce a new two minute video on How to Organize a Cleanup and provided an online Tool Kit to assist new cleanup coordinators.
We insure that allAffiliates are informed of KAB Webinars and urge monitoring and use of the Forum. We aggressively market the KAB system thoroughly targeting prospective communities to apply for affiliation. Further, we also notify our KAB Affiliates of Pre-Certification and new Affiliate Certification events, and invite their participation to help develop cohesion and networking between our affiliates. In 2017, we expect to certify two new local community affiliates.
KAB Programs and Tools: Keep Arkansas Beautiful encourages, supports and implements several Keep America Beautiful national programs through our offices and through our participating affiliates.
We produce the Great American Cleanup, acting as the state clearinghouse for all GAC supplies, shipping Affiliates requested quantities from our central warehouse, based upon their event registration. We further sustain them with pre-GAC training and the services of a statewide GAC coordinator to mentor and support their local activities. We provide t-shirts, gloves, safety vests, Glad bags and other incentives, plus we conduct statewide drawings for GAC prizes from locally furnished entries and from local youth poster contests.
We support Waste In Place, in conjunction with the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, the State Agency that oversees recycling in our state, by encouraging the curriculum and to certify interested teachers and present the program into our state’s schools. We also support attendance, through grants, to participate in partnering organization’s Recycling Workshops and regularly share KAB Recycling email blast about Webinar opportunities with teachers’ lists from ARCand ADEQ, encouraging them to sign up and attend
America Recycles Day and KAB school recycling programs are promoted through soliciting affiliates, and other organizations, to develop an event and to contact area elementary schools, high schools, colleges and universities to further support and drive participation in KAB’s fall recycling awareness efforts and Recycle Mania and Recycle Bowl competitions. Further, Commissioner John Pope, a Lions Club member, was instrumental in forming a partnership between Lions Club International and KAB Recycling to encourage affiliates to support their local Lions Club in their efforts to collect usable eyeglasses, which are recycled by providing them freely to needy eyeglasses wearers.
As a CLPP participant in the original formative stage, Arkansas has remained active with CLPP program implementations in the state each year. We offer grants and literature to support CLPP and encourage its use in non-affiliate communities and venues as well. In a related move, we are investigating a partnership with Terracycle to include their literature and postage-paid pouches in a personalized letter we send to vehicle owners who have been reported as littering tobacco waste through our Litter Hotline. We are hopeful that by offering a convenient and useful alternative to tossing out cigarette butts, smokers will adopt improved behaviors and littering will decrease.
Awards: Keep Arkansas Beautiful is currently exploring a new community awards program to replace our former Shine Awards, which had suffered lack of interest and participation due to habitual winners in several categories.
Due to the small number of affiliates that we have and recognizing that the majority of our affiliate directors are otherwise employed volunteers, we have suspended our statewide award program in favor of encouraging worthy programs to enter the KAB National Awards and award programs offered by ADEQ, ARC and the Municipal League Volunteer Community of the Year Award. This was necessitated to preserve the integrity in the awards process of recognizing new, worthy programs and accomplishments rather than randomly recognizing affiliates for existing programs or mediocrity. We are also reviewing some method of producing a statewide awards program to more adequately recognize and publicize community government, groups and individuals that demonstrate exceptional accomplishment in providing measurable quality of life improvements in their communities.
Realizing the importance of recognition, the proposed Clean and Green Awards program will encompass rewarding improvement excellence in the areas of litter prevention or remediation, recycling and waste reduction, scenic beautification, economic stability efforts, quality of life and livability, recreation and sustainability accomplishments. Within six population categories, each community will be judged against others of its size and resources to demonstrate why it deserves to be “a sustaining example” of an outstanding community where quality of life issues are addressed constructively. We plan on encouraging worthy examples of our winners to also enter the KAB National Awards, both the KAB affiliates and other winning community programs.
Training: Keep Arkansas Beautiful supports continuing education to help educate affiliatestomaximize their understanding of the functional aspects of providing a community environmental leadership through KAB principles and programs.
We produce training events for affiliates and GAC coordinators prior to the KAB spring campaign and again for our local Great Arkansas Cleanup. We also produce KAB specific training, typically a one-day, six hourevent to cover KAB topics and requirements. We currently are planning two of these, one on November 14th in Central AR; the other on November 15th in Northwest AR, to accommodate andserve our affiliates with convenient access to a personalized KAB training opportunity. Grants will provide expenses reimbursement to those attending.
We encourage and publicize the various Webinars offered by KAB, reminding affiliate directors of the requirement of six hours of annual training.We also provide grants to attend KAB national conferences for training and professional development opportunities, and to attend allied mission conferences within the State.
We invite all affiliates to our quarterly Commission meetings and schedule reports by them to offer networking among themselves and between the commissioners and affiliate directors. Additionally, to broaden the Commissioner’s understanding of the KAB Programs, we feature KAB program reviews during Commission meetings, explaining them and promoting their use/adoption in their districts.
Partnerships: At Keep Arkansas Beautiful,we believe in cultivating and nurturing partnerships between ourselves and other governmental entities, statewide businesses and organizations, trade associations and allied industry groups and with a variety of volunteer-led organizations and local community groups.
These partnerships includethe Arkansas Dept. of Parks and Tourism, the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Dept., The Arkansas Dept. of Environmental Quality, the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, the Dept. of Arkansas Heritage, the Arkansas Dept. of Finance and Administration, the Department of Education Extension Service, the Arkansas Highway Police, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Arkansas Municipal League, the Arkansas Association of County Governments, Arkansas Broadcasters Association, Arkansas Outdoor Advertisers Association, the Arkansas Press Association, Glad Manufacturing, Waste Management, Arkansas Recycling Coalition, Green Industries of Arkansas, FFA, Arkansas Environmental Educators Association, as well as several Regional Solid Waste Management Districts and many local garden clubs and youths organizations and schools across the state.
Additionally, we partner extensively with the Keep Arkansas Beautiful Foundation, a supporting 501 C3 educational and charitable organization that supplements our programs and activities financially.
Non-affiliate Involvement: Keep Arkansas Beautiful, as a State Agency Division funded through dedicated tax revenue, offers services equally to all communities and program participating organizations.
We solicit and enlist these in our Great American Cleanup and Great Arkansas Cleanup campaigns each year, distributing GLAD bags, cotton and vinyl gloves, safety vests, T-shirts and other materials and supplies based on the size of the cleanup, completed reports for the previous year, and their needs.
KAB certified Affiliates in good standing may each receive a proportionally larger allotment of these items for two basic reasons: Glad bags, and occasionally other campaign items, are furnished by KAB which we feel is foremost a benefit of affiliation that should be made available to the affiliates for their year-round utilization beyond typical distribution. And, by the very nature of their certification, KAB affiliates should be sustainable, ongoing organizations dedicated to continuous community improvement efforts, as opposed to some volunteer organization that may exist one year and not the next. KAB affiliates are also afforded special privilege when we utilize unique items furnished by KAB (machines and equipment and other premium donations) by allocating them to Affiliate cleanups as incentive prizes, etc.
We utilize our program and promotional budgets statewide to educate and inspire citizens to improve behaviors toward our environmental values and community quality of life. These funds always include KAB affiliate communities but also extend across the state. To help insure that our KAB communities have opportunities for training and special project aid, we do have a series of grants that are open only to them. We recognize that our KAB communities offer the best return for our fund expense, due to the commitment they demonstrate in community improvement and the benefits they return to their communities and our state.
SLC Meetings: I have attended and/or participated in the following SLC meetings and phone calls:
Business Meeting, KAB National Conference: February 1-3, 2016;
2016 Committee Service: KAB National Awards Committee, SLC Annual Report / Recognition Review Committee and KAB Committee: Task Force on Individual Giving
2016 SLC / Committee calls: January 13, March 9, April 13, June 7,8, August 8,9,10,11,25, September 14, October 12
Prepared and submitted by Robert Phelps, State Affiliate Director, November 1, 2016