Volunteers Needed

Note: Volunteers undertaking any of these opportunities will be provided training and assistance.

Night Sky News Gatherer

Duties:

Set up automated news feed for night sky/light pollution news from around the world.
Evaluate the news for possible interest to readers of the BCFNS Facebook page and website; choose at least two items per week for distribution.
Format the items selected so they can be easily used on the Facebook page and website.
Write a short introduction to the item.
Forward the formatted items to the Facebook Page Manager and Webmeister.

Duties:

Work with the Johnson City Chamber of Commerce to establish this program, modeled on the on-going program in Blanco.
Best if two volunteers work together on this.
Follow-up periodically to evaluate the success of the program and solicit suggestions for improvement.

Duties:

Work with the Hill Country Alliance to promote this program to developers currently in Blanco County as well as existing developments and neighborhoods within Blanco County.
Work with the Blanco County government to ascertain new developers who are coming into the county and make them aware of this program before their development begins.
Follow-up periodically to evaluate the success of the program and solicit suggestions for improvement.

Duties:

Set up this program from scratch, working with the Hill Country Alliance and the Chambers of Commerce in Blanco and Johnson City.
Program is to educate contractors on the benefits of night sky friendly outdoor lighting and get their cooperation in educating their clients, noting that the clients' desires will always take precedence.
Follow-up periodically to evaluate the success of the program and solicit suggestions for improvement.
Attend quarterly Contractor's Breakfast hosted by the Blanco Chamber of Commerce.

Duties:

Will become the “Night Sky Friendly Outdoor Lighting Fixture Guru” for the organization and work with businesses, organizations, and individual homeowners to find and facilitate purchase of night sky friendly lighting fixtures to retrofit aberrant outdoor lighting or to install in new construction.
Work will be done in conjunction with another BCFNS volunteer who will do an evaluation of outdoor lighting to determine if a particular fixture needs replacing.
In conjunction with other BCFNS volunteers, may work with contractors and developers to identify night sky friendly outdoor fixtures suitable for their clients.
Will have no role in the actual purchase of fixtures; will provide advice only.

Duties:

Use a BCFNS-supplied, hand-held Unihedron Dark Sky meter to take night sky darkness readings at selected sites in and around Blanco, Johnson City, and in the county.
Take readings at 4-6-month intervals; usually requires approximately three hours to take the readings if in the city and another hour to record the data.
Rationale is that if we can't measure the darkness of the night sky, we can't tell whether or not we're making progress on light pollution abatement.
Enter the readings on a BCFNS-electronically supplied Excel spreadsheet and email the data to a Texas Hill Country Regional Night Sky Data Coordinator for analysis.
At least four volunteers are needed: Blanco, Johnson City, Blanco County-North, and Blanco County-South.

Duties:

Coordinate the yearly BCFNS Night Sky Song contest to include promoting the contest to songwriters; conduct a “Sing Off” to select the best songs to be recorded on a CD or other medium; coordinate with Los Senderos Studio to schedule recording sessions and order completed CDs; promote the sale of the CDs as a major fund raising project for the BCFNS.
Note: This is a major project for the BCFNS and many members participate in making it a success.
This volunteer position is to coordinate these volunteer efforts.

Duties:

Make telephonic contact with new BCFNS members to welcome them to the organization and provide information about how to get more involved
As required, refer new members' questions to others in the organization who can answer them more completely.

With your help, we CAN preserve our night sky...one light and one star at a time.

Thank you!