p2psocialchange

For advocates of peer-to-peer fundraising, the mood at this year's Nonprofit Technology Conference in New Orleans came as a bit of a shock.

At least three sessions focused on the role of social networks in fundraising. All of them were aimed at lowering expectations.

Change.org founder Ben Rattray emphasized "exponential decay" instead of "exponential growth" in how person-to-person fundraising campaigns pan out.

Care2's Justin Perkins said the word viral should be dropped altogether. He also devoted several minutes to explaining why Seth Godin's notion of Flipping th Funnel may be a "pipe dream."

As someone who has written about person-to-person fundraising for the last year and a half, I am committed to identifying the sources of this pessimism. I have a few ideas on where it's coming from. Stay tuned for feature blog entries on the subject.

In the meantime, I wanted to share with you the slides from "Group Fundraising: How Does It Work and What's Out There" by Change.org's Ben Rattray and "Turning Your Social Network into Donations" by Care2's Justin Perkins and Heather Holdridge.

For notes on "The Web 2.0 ROI: Are All These New Tools Really Delivering Value to the Sector," see these notes by Nancy Schwartz of the Getting Attention Blog.

Group Fundraising: How Does It Work and What's Out There

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Turning Your Social Networks Into Donations

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If a conference can inspire new ideas, clarify one’s mission, and connect the people who can put those new ideas into action, then it rocks! That was my experience yesterday at the Nonprofit Technology Conference in New Orleans.

After a lackluster performance by David Pogue (I realize that 75% of the conference attendees disagree with me on this point), my day got rolling with an awesome presentation by Brian Reich of EchoDitto (author of Media Rules). Few people can sum up the unique qualities of 30+ niche social networks and then contextualize these distinctions for the nonprofit sector. Reich’s presentation did just that and got the wheels turning in my head.

In the afternoon, I headed over to “APIs for Beginners”, presented by Kurt Voelker (Forum One Communications), Tompkins Spann (Convio), and Jeremy Carbaugh (Sunlight Foundation). This is where my mind really started churning.

I was in the second row, a real keener, thinking about the big elephant in the room: collaboration.

API’s allow for the integration and mashing of data, services and hardware. Data in the broadest sense can include the actions that constituents take in support of nonprofits, independent projects, and specific outcomes.

It’s no leap to imagine APIs that allow for seamless, on the fly, coalition building among nonprofits and social action platforms. Merge (temporarily) the constituent databases of three leading nonprofits, present an opportunity to take action in support of the common mission these nonprofits share, and carry out those actions by drawing on the toolset of two or more social action platforms.

That would be making the most of APIs for social change work.

The problem, as Jeremy Carbaugh pointed out in response to a question I posed, is the culture that nonprofits work within. We tend to think about technology in terms of advancing specific programs at specific nonprofits instead of delivering on the promises we have made to fulfill our mission.

Let’s take some time to examine the culture in which we do our work. Let’s bring programmers to the table before we spec out our programmatic work (hat tip to Tompkins Spann) and rule out the possibility of working toward our mission in full partnership with the nonprofits that also work in our area.

My "Mashup of 29+ Social Action Platforms" could be a first step toward this vision. I’m trying to create a meta-level “cloud” of all social action opportunities that individuals can take in support of nonprofits, independent projects, and specific outcomes. This “cloud” draws from 16 social action platforms, and offers real opportunities for individuals to engage with social issues. Often these opportunities are created by individuals themselves.

The "cloud," once turned into “a search engine for social change,” ‘’a map of social change,” or “a recommendation engine for social change” will result in an integration of the nonprofit sector in ways we can’t fully imagine.

Through “A Mashup of 29+ Social Action Platforms,” social action platforms like Change.org, SixDegrees, DonorsChoose, ZaZengo, and others are showing that opening data to 3rd party developers can result in more opportunities for engagement and (I hate to borrow from Milton Friedman) “lift all boats.”

On the fly technology-enabled coalition building is the future of nonprofit tech. Getting there won’t be easy. Thank you to the presenters I met yesterday for sparking these reflections.

PS – The enthusiasm for my work that Idealist.org founder Ami Dar offered toward the end of last night, during the Calder Strategies launch party, served as extra affirmation that I’m on the right track. Thanks Ami! I’ll make sure Idealist.org knows about the open-API of social action opportunities as soon as it’s ready. In the meantime, people can test drive the mashup here.

PPS – If you like what I'm up to, please cast a vote for "A Mashup of 29+ Social Action Platforms" in the NetSquared Mashup Challenge. (Voting ends on Monday, March 24 at 5PM PST)

This is a quick reminder that voting ends soon in the NetSquared Mashup Challenge.

If you are getting this message on Saturday morning (via FeedBlitz), it's not too late to vote. NetSquared has extended the deadline for voting until Monday at 5 p.m. PST. Please take just 20 minutes to vote for “A Mashup of 29+ Social Action Platforms.”

View a full description of my project.

Test drive the mashup of 29+ Social Action Platforms

Your support will help me get to the NetSquared Conference in May, with an opportunity to present my work to leading technology companies, funders, and pontential collaborators. The top prize is a large portion of $100,000 in funding.

Thank you in advance for your support.

Simple Instructions for Casting Your Ballot

1) Create a free user account at NetSquared

2) Add "A Mashup of 29+ Social Action Platforms" to your ballot (You must be logged-in to do this; click "Add Project to Ballot" on this page)

3) Add four other mashups to your ballot

4) Review your ballot (Make sure "A Mashup of 29+ Social Action Platforms" is listed)

5) At the bottom of your ballot, click the "Cast Ballot" button

Note: The ballot submission process is a little bit confusing. If you get lost in the process, email me.

Thank you!

After you have cast your ballot, please email me. This is the only way for me to know when and to whom to send a thank you note.

I’ll let you know how it turns out.

All the best,

Peter

Help me out by posting this request on Facebook

Dear readers,

I am asking for your support in an online contest called the NetSquared Mashup Challenge.

Below, you will find simple instructions on how you can vote for my contest submission. Your support will help me attend a conference in San Jose at the end of May and take my work in micro-philanthropy to the next level.

It will take 20 minutes at the most to complete this request.

I have spent the last 18 months working independently on my blog, About Micro-Philanthropy and building Social Actions.

Without financial support, I have devoted my time and computer skills to advancing the notion that technology, used in the right way, can help people create, identify, and support grassroots solutions to urgent social problems.

I want to continue this work. But to do so, I need to find funders, foundations, and collaborators in the nonprofit technology sector who are interested in my mission. Enter an online contest called the NetSquared Mashup Challenge.

About the NetSquared Mashup Challenge

In early January, NetSquared put out a call for the most innovative mashups for social change. A mashup is an online tool that combines multiple data sources with some kind of visualization or search function. To determine which contest submissions are the most innovative, the staff at NetSquared decided to “crowd-source” the winners. Anyone and everyone can vote for their favorite mashup proposals.

The polls opened on Monday at 8am. And they will be closing on Friday at 5pm PST.

The 20 mashup proposals with the most votes will attend the annual NetSquared Conference in San Jose, May 27 & 28, 2008. During the conference, the creators of the 20 most popular mashups will have a chance to pitch their projects to funders, foundations, and fellow nonprofit tech professionals. I hope to be among the people promoting their mashups at the conference.

About My Contest Submission

I have submitted a project called “A Mashup of 29+ Social Action Platforms.” My mashup combines the latest peer-to-peer social change campaigns from a range of social action platforms (Change.org, FirstGiving, GiveMeaning, Kiva, and others). The dataset as a whole is made available through a search engine and the Google Maps API.

A colleague and I built the initial version last week. You can test drive it here.

To read the full description of my project, visit “A Mashup of 29+ Social Action Platforms.”

In brief:

I feel strongly that these innovations will move the field of peer-to-peer social change in the right direction. The goal is to simplify the process in finding relevant campaigns for end users of social action platforms.

At this point, I need votes in order to secure a spot among the top 20 mashups for social change. Please take just 20 minutes to vote for “A Mashup of 29+ Social Action Platforms.” Thank you in advance for your support.

Simple Instructions for Casting Your Ballot

1) Create a free user account at NetSquared

2) Add "A Mashup of 29+ Social Action Platforms" to your ballot (You must be logged-in to do this; at the top of my proposal page, click "Add Project to Ballot")

3) Add four other mashups to your ballot

4) Review your ballot (Make sure "A Mashup of 29+ Social Action Platforms" is listed)

5) At the bottom of your ballot, click the "Cast Ballot" button

Note: The ballot submission process is a little bit confusing. If you get lost in the process, email me.

Thank you so much for your support!

After you have cast your ballot, please email me. This is the only way for me to know when to send a thank you note.

Thank you so much! I’ll let you know how it turns out.

All the best,

Peter

PS -- If you have a blog, I’d appreciate any link love you can share. Email me a link to your blog post, and I'll be sure to post a comment.

Next week, NetSquared will open the polls for people to vote on the most impressive example of a mashup for social change. Identify your top five mashups by looking at all of the proposals.

I have submitted a proposal called, "A Mashup of 29+ Social Action Platforms." I am hoping that readers of About Micro-Philanthropy will see the potential in this initiative. I am working with a developer to have a working version of the mashup available on Monday morning (when voting starts).

Stay tuned next week for daily blog posts about the need for a mashup of social action platforms, as well as live blogging from New Orleans covering the Nonprofit Technology Conference.

A few weeks ago, you may have noticed my blog post about SproutBuilder, a widget generator from the founders of ChipIn. Today, I took a test drive of SproutBuilder. It's pretty amazing. In less than 3 hours, I created the sprout below in support of my mashup proposal on NetSquared:

And here's a sprout describing the Nonprofit Technology Conference, from which I will be live blogging next week.

Below is a remixed version of the presentation I made last Tuesday at the NY Tech Meetup. I have selected the excerpts that relate to my proposal on the NetSquared Mashup Challenge, and created the following video.

Please post your comments on NetSquared.