I am amazed by the fact that the City of Cleveland, Ohio has so many concurrent events driven by civic organizations, community development organizations, social service organizations, businesses, veterans groups, institutions of higher learning, and philanthropic entities that continually cycle through the Cleveland region annually and that there is no 1 entity that tracks them all for their meeting dates, their event dates, and their administrative/organizational events which should-in most cases-be open to the public.

I am amazed that while 211: FIRST CALL FOR HELP logs and lists all of the referral agencies-that there is no one entity who sustains a systematic tracking of organizational issues that are being addressed.

There are currently THOUSANDS of not for profit agencies in NEO that address THOUSANDS of issues daily...and many have turned into referral only based entities that cycle through quotas (people) to serve the purpose of sustaining grant funding for administrative costs. Millions of dollars annually are cycled through these organizations-allegedly serving more folks than we have in our populace.

It's an extraordinary fact to be reckoned about the REDUNDANT service providers who all want to remain independent and only want to collaborate when it benefits them....because uniting to reduce redundancies would provide proof of OVERLAPPING services, abuse of the systems in place, and REDUCE wasteful spending...

I recommend that REALNEO makes a CALENDAR of EVENTS COMMITTEE who constantly tracks schedules, events, and activities in NEO. By sustaining that calendar-we can predict cycles, events, and review overlaps and recommend collaborations to the City at Large...because we are seeing things from a versatile seat-rather than as one organization-with tunnel vision.

Our tracking would really create accountability to agencies who attempt to deviate from the idea of transparency. Our tracking could become a point of reference for leadership to conquer the chaotic schedules of events throughout our community and to plan more effectively in reacting to those events. Then, more folks could plan ahead of time to attend various events...and we could then in turn make a delegation of our members who attend various areas of interest to give us feedback and offer insight about events of all levels.

I hereby make a motion to make REALNEO the leader in NEO tracking of public events and invite representatives from all organizations to submit their annual calendar of events to REALNEO so that we may maintain and sustain this systematic tracking for future purposes. We shall be the regional leader in tracking ALL events...and then watching organizational flaws as the years cycle through...

An example would be-when an organization has a "FIRST ANNUAL EVENT..." and then the  next year-they forget to rehost that event or continue it...When there are fundraisers for events-we can show those events too...and ask for the accountability of the events by the organizations. These are the things that folks wonder about...and we are the citizen activists who actually ask the tough questions....and share it publicly.

As we track events, we will be adding "ORGANIZATIONS", Leaders, addresses, contact info, and so forth to our databases. We can make info pages/links for all those organizations until we have collectively tracked every agency in NEO and we have the most comprehensively list of providers that has ever been collected in NEO..outside of the YELLOW PAGES-which does not have the critical thinkers and analysts available that REALNEO offers the public at large. We can also add an option which empowers folks to make surveys for those entitities to get public feedback... which is one of the best ways to assess organizations.

As we are setting an example of running REALNEO publicly and online-we are a leader of transparent accountability. Therefore, we can offer the integrity to the members at large and community that validates our actions at every step for the best interests of NEO.