Change.org Becoming "Ning for Nonprofits"

Yesterday, I received an email from Change.org founder Ben Rattray about the launch of their Ning-style Social Networking solution for non-profits. Ning is a social network that shares a common user-base but allows individuals to setup stand-alone social networks with their own look and feel.

Nonprofits can now build branded social networks on Change.org that have many of the features a non-profit would want to offer its supporters: individual project listings, a news section, fundraising pages, fundraising widgets, and more.

The branded service costs US$20 / month and comes with Facebook integegration. The actions that an individual takes in support of a non-profit will also show-up on the supporter's Facebook profile, provided they have added the Change.org application in Facebook.

TechCrunch covered the story on Sunday night. Check the comments section for a range of responses.

In Ben's words, here are more details about the program:

• Branding – similar to Ning, these branded networks will have the look and feel of a nonprofit's website.
• Data – organizations will be able to capture a significant amount of supporter data (all of which users can opt-out of) – including contact and demographic information as well as information on who in their network is the most active and effective at recruiting additional members, etc. As you know, this is hugely important for most orgs.
• Integration – we are working on integrating with several of the major nonprofit CRM/CMS providers (Democracy In Action will be the first) so content that organizations post through their CMS (such as an email campaign targeting congress) automatically appears on their Change.org network, and data captured through Change.org from donations or actions is automatically dumped back into their CRM as if the transaction occurred on their website. Our aim is to be a social layer on top of an organization's website and to plug directly into their existing CRM/CMS infrastructure.
• Features – the branded networks have all the social networking functionality nonprofits might want along with enhanced features for starting social fundraising campaigns and online advocacy campaigns and allowing users to create their own personal fundraising pages. We'll be expanding these features in the next few months (and are currently working on making many of these features portable through OpenSocial).
• Communication – organizations can now send broadcast messages to all their supporters on Change.org and pro-actively recruit Change.org users from around the site to join their community. We'll be enhancing these communication/recruitment tools over the next couple months as well.

Screenshots of branded networks on Change.org: