Mad to Live, Inc.: Leveraging Free Cloud Computing!

Sara Johnson  is a very creative friend.  She has a passion for life and living.  After her brother's tragic suicide, she decided to quit her job and started up Mad to Live foundation.  The foundation is dedicated to suicide prevention and awareness.  The organization focuses on the arts as a way to augment healing mental illness.  It encourages individuals to capture and embrace life through creative expression as a therapeutic outlet.  The mission of Mad to Live is to raise awareness about the epidemic of suicide and fight stigma of mental illness through events as well as sponsoring national funding for healing art activities.  It is fascinating to observe the creativity and leverage Sara applies in using Free Internet IT based services to help launch her new foundation.

Sara uses facebook, myspace, yahoo, and google to conduct her email, social networking, recruiting volunteers, promoting events, and she leverages web presence on www.preventsuicide.net to fund-raise for our events!  As she began living off her savings to help kick off and start up Mad to Live, She tells me that she has become aware of the value of money and being prudent with IT expenses.  Our strategy is to leverage free IT cloud computing as best as we can. Thus, Mad to Live amazing leverage of so many free IT capabilities has really saved us so much money! It is amazing to see how much value IT has brought to organizations such as Sara's and how easy it has become for new entrepreneurs to start up a new foundation or a new business adventure.  For free we can blog, email, set up meetings, send out invitations, publish marketing materials, and set up fund raising events and collect funds over the Internet!

It is easy to get IT.  What is not easy is to build the brand, the foundation, the volunteers, the products, and the overall creation strategy.  I am so glad to see that instead of having to worry about IT and how we will manage IT infrastructure to communicate, plan, and build our network, we are free to focus on the business and IT is almost free!!  Of course, I know this model is not  fit for all organizations and for many security is still a barrier to entry and leverage of cloud computing! However, for a new entrepreneur and a none profit organization, free IT is an amazing gift.