RealImpact was created in the early days of the Internet to provide Web and streaming media development, design, and hosting services to organizations engaged in the business of progressive social change. Eileen created and built this operation during her seven years as an executive at RealNetworks.
From 1996-2003, RealImpact provided consulting services to 183 nonprofit organizations throughout the country; developed and deployed three generations of content management systems; designed and developed over 50 Web sites with a wide range of sophistication (from the complicated— Alternet site and Earthjustice to the elegant—The Legacy Project); created 60 streaming media projects, and numerous path-breaking online marketing tools.
Accomplishments included:
- Launching the first ever streaming media Internet advocacy campaign on Earth Day in 1998 with actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus who exhorted viewers to sign up to become e-mail activists for Environmental Defense
- Handling the online component of the Censure and Move On movement that became Moveon.org
- Webcasting live Vice President Al Gore’s announcement of his candidacy for President, the first time the Internet was used to announce a political candidacy
- RealImpact’s depiction for the Union of Concerned Scientists of the flaws in the US Government’s Star Wars program was featured on the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour, as well as in The Wall Street Journal and numerous other media outlets.
Over the course of directing RealImpact, Eileen became a nationally recognized expert on the use of the Internet as a marketing tool to engage users to become informed and take action and was invited to share her expertise with The Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and the Pew Charitable Trusts, as well as numerous other charitable and nonprofit entities eager to understand and tap the power of the Internet for social change. See here for a list of the presentations Eileen gave.