When the Quad Cities Community Vitality Scan was released this spring, it marked a welcome collaboration between five community organizations, but it was still easy to dismiss it as yet another study, one more evaluation of where we are.

What's potentially different about the Vitality Scan, though, is how those organizations plan to use it. If the five groups - the United Way of the Quad Cities Area, the Quad City Health Initiative, the Moline Foundation, the Community Foundation of the Great River Bend, and the Amy Helpenstell Foundation - can use the Vitality Scan and related efforts to guide their funding decisions, this is one study that could actually address community needs and shortcomings on a large scale.

People interested in writing in the Quad Cities might look at the list of organizations that offer classes in dance, music, art, and theatre and wonder: What about me?

For better or worse, there's only one organization in the Quad Cities that offers writing instruction to the community at-large: the Midwest Writing Center.

Most visibly, the organization hosts the David R. Collins Writers' Conference each summer.

You won't be alone if you doubt that David Wise can turn his plans for a long-neglected part of downtown Moline into reality. Plenty of other people have questioned whether he can do it.

"I had a lot of skepticism that I could pull this off," Wise said last week. "I've been hearing that I've made a believer out of some skeptics."

One of those skeptics phrased it even more forcefully.

"He made a liar out of me," said Jim Bowman, executive director of Renew Moline. "I didn't think at first that he could pull it off. ... The odds were overwhelmingly against him to succeed."

Jim Graham, former station manager for KWQC-TV6 and current goodwill ambassador and president emeritus for the station, has been awarded the 2007 Governor's Volunteer Award in Iowa in the category of "individual volunteer's exceptional achievement or contribution to [an] agency/organization." The nomination for Graham, submitted by United Way, included the following excerpt: "Jim exemplifies the meaning behind his station's tagline 'The Station That Cares for You' as a tireless and enthusiastic champion for youth in our community. Through United Way, Jim Graham served as a founding member of the Success by 6 Governing Body, led a record-breaking United Way campaign, and currently serves on the United Way board of directors as a co-chair for the Successful Children & Youth Focus Team - all while serving in leadership roles with Boy Scouts and organizationally leading efforts to support the American Red Cross, Race for the Cure, Gilda's Club, Habitat for Humanity, Toys for Tots, Scott County Kids, and the Student Hunger Drive."