Download and print the flier for this collaboration and then share it with people you know.

DO YOU:

• Need a meaningful Q&S chapter activity this semester?
• Hope to solve a problem in your community or school?
• Want to interact with policy-makers and journalists?

Quill and Scroll has partnered with TheChisel.com to help you develop skills in reporting on, writing about, and devising solutions for a problem in your school or hometown.

What’s TheChisel.com?

Inspired by journalist and statesman Benjamin Franklin, TheChisel’s new ChiselLabs is a pan-partisan online platform where you can post a policy proposal or community initiative. It’s an easy-to-use tool to help you — citizens and students alike — build your own initiatives to get feedback from your peers, members of the public and TheChisel’s professionals; improve your proposals; garner votes and support; and get your proposals into the hands of decision-makers.

Join experts from the nation’s top think tanks and policy organizations — Brookings Institution, American Enterprise Institute, Brady Campaign, NRA, US PIRG, National Taxpayers’ Union and others — who’ve already published on TheChisel.com!

How does it work?

USE THE PLATFORM IN TWO WAYS:

1) As Quill and Scroll chapters, you are encouraged to create a project that supports your community and the society’s goals; proposing a solution to a community problem is a great way to do that.

2) As journalists, you have an ideal opportunity to use ChiselLabs’ online platform to crowdsource, get feedback, and revise your ideas. Once you’ve gone through the publishing and feedback cycle on TheChisel.com, you can then start to plan coverage in your publication. Plus, TheChisel.com’s fun tools guide you through the process of creating your own customized, visually-compelling proposal and URL, which you can share with the public and on social media.

What’s in it for you?

PRIZES and INTERNSHIPS
We’re offering to proposal-winning Quill and Scroll chapters Amazon.com gift cards, which you can use to celebrate your successes or buy supplies for your chapter:

• The first three chapters to post proposals and add five substantive comments to others’ proposals earn $100 each;
• The proposal with the best visuals: $100;
• The proposal with the most votes: $100;
• The proposal with the best sourcing and documentation: $100
• The best overall proposal: $250; AND
• Two students will be eligible for Summer Internships with TheChisel.

What are the guidelines?

• Proposals must be complete and meaningful to be eligible.
• The best proposals will demonstrate multi-stakeholder perspectives, credibility, and rigorous analysis.
• A chapter may post as many proposals as it wishes.
• At least 10 eligible proposals from Quill and Scroll chapters must be submitted for prizes to be awarded.
• Together, TheChisel team of policy analysts, writers, and journalists,  and Quill and Scroll’s executive director will choose the winners.

How do we get started?

Check out the great proposals on TheChisel’s website, created by public policy professionals and the public. Use these as models or inspiration! Maybe you want to start a recycling program in your high school? Reconstitute your student government by-laws? Change your school district’s vacation policy? Or, go wider: propose a town-wide, statewide, or nationwide initiative!

Visit ChiselLabs.com and start thinking about a problem that needs to be solved. Then start developing a solution and begin doing the research needed for it, whether you choose to approach it as a chapter activity only, or whether you plan to produce journalism around the topic as well.

I want to share my proposal!

Do you want your important policy initiative spread far and wide? Do you want to maximize your impact? It’s easy! And you make it fun!

1. Check out this quick video to see how TheChisel works for the national experts. You’ll use the same tool to create your own proposals at the local, state, or federal level!
2. Take a 2-minute tour of the site. See how your proposal will show up on TheChisel.com and how your friends, family, and community can help you “chisel” your proposal to make it shine!
3. Create your account and your profile page. Upload your picture, tell us about yourself, and choose your favorite state picture!
4. Ready? Set? Start inputting your proposal at com/chisel-labs
5. Need ideas to make your proposal more effective?  Check out TheChisel’s “Bill of Writes” for helpful hints
6. Add pictures, videos, and other visuals to help your proposal shine!  For fun ideas on proposal design, check out TheChisel’s proposals on Campaign Finance Reform or Farm Subsidies or Corporate Income Tax Reform.
7. Share your proposal on TheChisel.com with your friends, family, community members, and lawmakers to generate feedback and votes on your proposal to increase your impact!

So, get started now!

Did you say ‘webinar’?

To help you submit, elicit feedback for, and revise your proposals, we will conduct a live webinar introducing TheChisel. We will tape the session and make it available if you are unable to make the live session.

A Webinar will be held Wednesday, Oct. 3: 7 p.m. ET/6 p.m. CT/5 p.m. MT/ 4 p.m. PT. Let us know if your school wants a different time, and we’ll make it happen.

Here’s a link to the Monday, Oct. 3 webinar.

We encourage posting of draft proposals by Nov. 4, 2018. That will allow you adequate time to generate community feedback and voting, and to improve your proposal by the final deadline date of Nov. 30, 2018. 

Get started today.

Each proposal will receive 20 minutes of personalized feedback from TheChisel professionals. This can be done via Skype or video conference.

Any questions?

Don’t hesitate to reach out to Q&S Executive Director Jeff Browne at [email protected] or to TheChisel’s Deborah Devedjian at [email protected].