All Blog Posts Tagged 'socialactions' - My Social Actions

How Microphilanthropy is Changing Giving

2010-03-09T21:30:00.000Z

Today, I had the honour of presenting at Social Venture Partner Toronto's panel discussion on, "How Microphilanthropy Is Changing Giving."

Below are my 'slides' from the presentation...

How Microphilanthropy is Changing Giving on Prezi

And here's a description of the event...

Microphilathropy is an approach to philanthropy based on smaller, more direct interaction between those who are in need and those who can give. Platforms such as Kiva, DonorsChoose and Facebook Causes have the ability to aggregate thousands of relatively small donations to make a big difference. To date, Kiva has distributed over $119 million to 297,000 small business entrepreneurs in developing countries, with an average loan size of $400 and a 98.27% repayment rate.

Come hear from three Canadian leaders as they describe how their initiatives are changing how, why and where people give:

Peter Deitz is the founder of Social Actions, a social enterprise that curates open source and collaborative projects to make it easier for people to take action on the causes they care
about.

Ruth Richardson is the co-founder of the Small Change Fund, which enables social change at the grassroots level and helps Canadians invest in local actions that make a difference for the planet.

Anil Patel is the Executive Director of the Framework Foundation, which empowers Canadians to ‘get in the picture’ to participate in volunteering and philanthropy.

From collection to system: suggested next steps for social action platforms

2010-03-01T18:00:00.000Z

A recent exchange on Sean Stannard-Stockton's Tactical Philanthropy blog gave me an opportunity to share some thoughts on the proliferation of social action platforms and the steps we could take that would transform that collection into "an open, coherent, & sustainable system."

Below is the comment I shared, but be sure to catch the entire thread, which includes comment-posts by Ami Dar of Idealist.org and Jacob Harold of the Hewlett Foundation.

Social Actions partners, what do you think? If you agree with the suggestions I'm making here that there aren't too many of you, and that stronger connections among you would be beneficial, what steps would you like to take (and see taken) in that direction?

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Social Actions maintains a list of online philanthropy platforms of all shapes and sizes. It’s up to 200+ and continues to grow.

Like Ami in the previous comment thread, I applaud Jacob’s suggestion to “transform this (extraordinary!) decentralized innovation into an open, coherent & sustainable system that can serve our shared needs over the long run.” It begs the question: what would that require? What characteristics define a “coherent and sustainable system” and what steps can be taken to generate such a thing?

From my understanding of systems and network theories, healthy systems of the kind we’re looking at here — online networks dedicated to resource-sharing whether that resource is information, money, our volunteer time, etc. — share the following characteristics:

Diversity — in other words, it is OK to see a list of 200+ platforms and know the list is growing. Problematizing the number and variety of these sites, and calling for measures to reduce their proliferation would be counter-productive IF the goal is the system’s sustainability.

Redundancy — in other words, it is OK to see similarities among each of the 200+ platforms. Having multiple, even similar ways for resources to travel from point A to point B via an online philanthropy platform is OK. (Again, if the goal is to shrink the system because we’re carrying concepts about efficiency from other models into this one, that’s also a completely different list).

Strong connections between the points in this decentralized network — in other words, aggregators like Social Actions drawing attention to them collectively, and groups outside of the network studying and analyzing it, might be worthwhile (we think so!) but they don’t directly contribute to a sustainable system. In order for this collection of platforms to adopt that the platforms themselves must be connected, learning from and working with each other in some way.

These first two characteristics point to things we don’t want to do. The third points to a possible course of action (and corresponding investment): creating opportunities for online philanthropy platforms to work together. This isn’t a new idea (Tom Watson's been calling for it ever since he wrote CauseWired) and it’s one that’s been played out to a limited extent on small, invite-only stages for a handful of platforms from time to time. The role of the sector, to borrow Jacob’s term, would be to fund those opportunities, online and offline, as lightly facilitated and orchestrated as possible, devoting primary attention to promoting connections between platforms.

If that’s a direction we can move in together, add our name to the list after Ami’s.

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Simple, portable search tools for social entrepreneurs launch on Social Edge

2010-02-24T16:00:00.000Z

It's a great time to be a social entrepreneur. It's a great time to be someone who wants to see social entrepreneurialism thrive, too.

Strong case in point: the launch of a suite of tools that make it easier than ever to find and support vetted social entrepreneurs participating in the Social Entrepreneur API.*

Announcing the Social Entrepreneur Search, tools developed by Social Edge and Exygy "for social entrepreneurs, funders, and finders (people who want to learn about and support do-gooders). "

"I tried it using "textile" and discovered a lot of very neat companies, that did very similar things to what I have in mind. Very useful to have them at my fingertips, rather than spending hours googling!"

-- Ingrid Vercruyssen, launching UK-based social enterprise Lilou Textiles

Hop over to Social Edge for a clear and comprehensive post (kudos to Marketing Director Jill Finlayson) that covers just about everything you'd want to know about using and contributing to these tools:

How it works and why it's a win:
* For emerging social entrepreneurs
* For vetted social entrepreneurs included in the database
* For funders (award and fellowship programs)
* For journalists and other writers
* For researchers, corporations, emergency response teams

How to make it better:
* Adopt it
* Expand it
* Innovate with it
* Include it in tools drawing from multiple open datasets
* Fund it (more details about funding and what that will support is posted here)

You can also check out the Social Entrepreneur Search Widget Store, where you can pick up the code for any of three kinds of search tools and pop them anywhere on the web: the Full Social Entrepreneur Search, the Funder Fan Club, and the Instant Social Entrepreneur List.

Huge congratulations on this launch to Social Edge and Exygy, the applications development company responsible for their build-out, not just for what they've built but they way they've done it -- working with all of the organizations involved in this project through every phase, from design to implementation.

Who will you find in the database? The Social Entrepreneur API already includes fellows and awardees of Civic Ventures (sponsor of The Purpose Prize), The Draper Richards Foundation, PopTech, The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, and The Skoll Foundation.

This list is expanding -- Global Social Benefit Incubators' participation was announced last month, and Echoing Green's was announced just yesterday!

More about that exciting news in a separate post. For now, hop over to Social Edge for more details and a chance to 'shop' at the widget store.

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The Social Entrepreneur API (Application Programming Interface) is the first open database of information about social entrepreneurs who have won fellowships and awards from social enterprise funders. The tool allows philanthropists, investors, press, and fellow entrepreneurs to find social entrepreneurs based on keyword, location, cause area, population served, and a variety of other factors. Learn more…

Venturing into Social Actions

2010-02-24T03:25:56.000Z

Hello, everyone!

I want to introduce myself: my name is Mariel, I'm a philosophy student who wants to make the world a better place, and I am now 'interning' with Social Actions. Even though Christine already wrote about my presence in Social Actions here, I thought it was time for me to start making use of this space to keep track of the process, and to be in touch with all of you.

As I commented on Christine's post, it has been a great experience for me so far. I have learned a lot about Social Actions and its ideas, I have had the opportunity to reflect on the ideas involved in the world of philanthropy and activism, and I have also put some skills into practice.

I have been working on a communications review of Social Actions. As I commented on that post, too, we want to present the content of Social Actions in a way that is clear and effective without sacrificing its diversity and deepness. Maybe a way to do this is by providing a guided tour through the website to empower the users to then navigate faster and more easily on their own? This review is documented in this wiki page.

I am looking forward to seeing how this all shapes up, and will be very happy to hear your comments on the process and on Social Actions. The point of this exercise is to make Social Actions easier to use for the public, so anything you can tell us about it is going to be very valuable!

You can get in touch with me here, on My Social Actions, or at magarciamo at gmail dot com.

Social Actions Communications: Benefiting from the attention of Mariel Garcia

2010-02-15T20:30:00.000Z

Just before the holidays, Peter Deitz posted an announcement that Social Actions was looking for a Community Engagement Intern. That might have seemed a strange thing to do, coming from an organization that enjoys not having an org chart. If you share Social Actions' mission and it makes sense to work together towards it, by all means let's just do that and we'll figure out titles and such later (if at all). But it seemed the right time for a clearly-defined invitation for someone to work with us on Social Actions communications, especially on the way we describe our work, and how people and organizations can benefit from it and be a part of it. If that content isn't clear, then it's hard to figure out where the potential for working together might begin.

For the next few months, Mariel Garcia will be focusing on just that. Mariel is a social media-savvy philosophy student with plenty of experience in online community building and social entrepreneurialism to boot. She has a gift for speaking plainly without reducing the complexity of the ideas she's describing. Most importantly, her mission for wanting to help people find and connect with opportunities to take action on the issues they care about aligns with Social Actions' beautifully.

We're looking forward to joining Mariel in that broader work for years to come. In the short term, especially over the next few months, her focus will be to create "guided tours" of Social Actions, to help people visiting our website and wiki more easily understand what we do and how it links into what their goals are. We're looking forward to sharing updates on that process in future posts, and in the meantime don't hesitate to learn more on our wiki, or join Mariel and the rest of our team on Social Actions' monthly Communications call -- the next one is March 10th 1pmET -- more details on that coming soon too. :)

Wisdom 2.0 Conference and more: funding campaign

2010-02-11T20:30:00.000Z

Thank you for reading up on this campaign, and participating in any way. Looking forward to hearing your suggestions, too, on how to make the very most of this opportunity. Call me any time -- 248 787-4917 -- or email christine@socialactions.com or find me on Twitter at @CDEgger. Thanks!

What kind of world do we want to live in?

What's the highest potential for
using internet technologies to create that world?

The Wisdom 2.0 Conference embraces both of these questions with equal amounts of passion and attention, and approaches them through exploring topics that overlap significantly with my interests in:

- Microphilanthropy
- Systems and network theories
- The complexity sciences
- Reiki and other mindfulness practices
- The concept of development or betterment

In a word, I would love to will(!) be there to:

- Actively engage with those at the conference (see link in comment below for more info), in building a better understanding how internet technologies can encourage wisdom and mindfulness, and to find ways to build toward that potential
- Lead a session on Gentle Action building on the webinar described here, either during the conference if possible or as a follow-up event on Sunday
- Bring more people into the conversation by building discussions on Twitter throughout the conference
- Host two BlogTalkRadio sessions after the conference (one on implications for Social Actions, and a second on Network Weaving)

And then there are all the bonuses that would will(!) come with being in the Bay Area – opportunities to:

- Represent Social Actions on a panel discussion at the Social Enterprise Alliance Summit
- Co-create a Network Weaving meetup/workshop with a number of colleagues
- Meet with Social Actions partners in the area (there are dozens! perhaps a gathering at the Hub?)

*** The tipping point has been reached: everything outlined above WILL be happening -- hooray!!! ***

This ChipIn widget provides a place to collect funds. The original budget of $859 reflected estimates of $309 registration, $350 airfare, and $200 for being-out-of-town costs (food, transportation, miscellaneous costs that come with being away from home).

3/7/10 update: Got a better price than expected on the registration, and will adjust the fundraising goal after seeing what the plane ticket comes to.

3/19/10 update: Beth Kanter just made my day with a Random Act of Frequent Flier Mile Kindness. A no-cost round-trip ticket is in hand!!

*** Huge amounts of gratitude to this growing list of contributors ***

Jean Russell
Beth Kanter
Peter Deitz
JD Lasica
Mike Lewkewitz
Britt Bravo
Valdis Krebs
June Holley
Pamela Miles
Edward Harran
Joe Solomon
Shawn and Christine Egger
Cesar Castro
Jill Finlayson
Ingrid Vercruysson

*** Watch for more updates as planning around all that this support is making possible continues ***

The ChipIn widget above will remain in play as an easy way to collect funds for anything we dream up that may have additional costs attached. Thank you for contributing or getting in touch if you’d like to build something around this event together. Don't hesitate to ask any questions about this campaign, or propose more activities and take-aways too. Find me here, at christine@socialactions.com, 248 787-4917, or @CDEgger, or let me know where to find you and I'll meet you there. :)

The Overhead Question: (More) opportunity to reflect on the future of nonprofit assessment and reporting

2010-02-04T03:00:00.000Z

This evening, I needed to do some thinking out loud about the ideas I wanted to carry to tomorrow's teleconference, "The Overhead Question: The Future of Nonprofit Assessment and Reporting." (Catch my first post with more info about the event and participants here).

A summary of the twitter stream, slightly edited for formatting, follows. No, this isn't a proper substitute for a thoughtful blog post on the subject, but at least gets some of my ideas "out in public" in advance of tomorrow's call :)

Many thanks to @HildyGottlieb for helping me think through these questions & goals, and to @4KM @zenext @MIWomensForum and @HeidiEKMassey for listening & sharing through this evening's stream of tweets.

Many thanks, too, to everyone listed here whose writings I've been drawing from in researching this topic.

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Tweeting some out loud thinking in advance of tomorrow's teleconference on "how we should judge #nonprofits" (http://bit.ly/judgingnonprofits)...

Questions raised:
* How should nonprofits be judged? (aka evaluated, assessed)
* Where should the info used in those assessments come from?
* And when is it helpful (and when harmful) to translate info into metrics? (aka change qualitative info like stories into numbers)

Some goals to bake into the design:
1) encourage accuracy, accessibility, detail;
2) honor complexity
3) encourage collaborations, community engagement, etc.

How to encourage accuracy?
* Ask for info from the person/collab/org/community that has it.
* Provide resources (time, $) needed to provide it

How to encourage collaboration?
When asking for information more than one entity holds (i.e. "outcomes), ask for that information to be generated collaboratively

How to encourage detail?
Make it technically easy, & culturally acceptable, to share bits of information at a time

How to honor complexity?
Devote resources to better understanding complex, qualitative, nuanced environments.

As nonprofit, I'm not sure I want to make it "easy" for people to take shortcuts (read a chart of #'s) that "explains" the impact of my work. I'd rather someone took the time to get to know our mission, why we choose to do what we do, and the outcomes we believe we contribute to. Evaluations should serve the nonprofit as an iterative learning tool, not serve first as shortcut tool for people uncomfortable w/ subjectivity.

During Thursday's call
6 panelists, 2 moderator/facilitators, and 200+ nonprofit representatives who'll have chance to text chat throughout.

My goal for the call:
That nonprofits taking part feel trusted, respected, included, supported, understood by 'judging mechanisms' being proposed.

Also, that we have a chance to note the difference between
1) sharing (more) info about nonprofits, and
2) understanding nonprofits better.

Such a challenge, to ask of ourselves: take in MORE information, and then make meaning from it-- really understand it-- without reducing it. That's what qualitative analysis requires, imho, what the nonprofit sector *deserves* from us, & we're not learning it in too many places.

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The Overhead Question: Opportunity to reflect on the future of nonprofit assessment and reporting

2010-01-19T21:00:00.000Z

A short eight weeks ago, Great Nonprofits, GiveWell, Philanthropedia, Charity Navigator, Guidestar, the Hewlett Foundation, and Philanthropy Action signed a joint press release espousing the limitations of relying too heavily on overhead ratios and other financial data when evaluating a nonprofit’s impact.

If you agree with that premise -- I know I do -- then the declaration serves as a welcome touchpoint for exploring just what a balanced nonprofit evaluation process should include.

That's the topic of a free online event to be hosted by NTEN on February 4th, titled The Overhead Question: The Future of Nonprofit Assessment and Reporting. From the event description, organizations such as the ones listed above are "looking to use new metrics that will assess indicators such as (but not limited to) financial health and sustainability; accountability, governance and transparency; and outcomes. This is good news for the sector, but what data will be tracked and how we will be asked to provide it is still up in the air. How will effectiveness be measured? What will be required of nonprofits in order to support this effort? What impact will these changes have on the standard operations of a charitable organization?"

NTEN kindly invited Social Actions to participate, and I'll be joining Bob Ottenhoff (Guidestar), David Geilhufe (NetSuite), Ken Berger (Charity Navigator), Lucy Bernholz (Blueprint R&D and Philanthropy2173), and Peter Campbell (TechCafeteria) on the panel. NTEN's Holly Ross will host, and Tactical Philanthropy's Sean Stannard-Stockton will moderate.

It's an exciting event not just because the topic is so important but because -- like the best events always are -- it's a great opportunity to do some careful reflection leading up to and following the event itself.

I hope you'll have a chance to attend and just as importantly to join in that reflection, online and off. Don't hesitate to use this space -- from adding comments to authoring a post -- to share your thoughts. Lots of listening going on here :)

Social Entrepreneur API expands to include Global Social Benefit Incubator Alumni

2010-01-14T15:00:00.000Z

I’m thrilled to share this update on one of my favorite projects: the Social Entrepreneur API, a powerful new resource for finding and supporting vetted social entrepreneurs.

Global Social Benefit Incubator™ Alumni will soon be featured in the Social Entrepreneur API alongside social entrepreneurs who have received fellowship and awards from Civic Ventures, the Draper Richards Foundation, PopTech, the Schwab Foundation, and the Skoll Foundation.

The Global Social Benefit Incubator (GSBI™) is the signature program of Santa Clara University's Center for Science, Technology and Society (CSTS). It works with social entrepreneurs to empower them and their organizations and to overcome barriers to scale and impact. Since 2003, 101 award-winning social enterprises have attended this program and become part of a growing network of path finding alumni for creating a more just and sustainable world.

Click here for more information about GSBI™ -- including an opportunity to apply for this year’s program (hurry, applications are due this Friday!) – and we’ll share more updates on their participation in the Social Entrepreneur API as that process continues.

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A surprise party for Beth Kanter: Happy Birthday, Beth!

2010-01-11T14:30:00.000Z

Beth Kanter is one of my mentors, someone I learn from on a daily basis. If you haven’t already discovered her tremendous contributions to the nonprofit technology and social media fields, make a note to bookmark her site. Spend a few hours diving into the volumes of material she’s generated, and you’ll begin to understand why many in the sector (including me) hold her in such high regard.

Today is Beth’s 53rd birthday. According to her blog, she’ll be celebrating by raising money for Cambodian children with social media, teaching a social media nonprofit strategy class, and eating chocolate.

She didn't know it until this morning, but she’ll also be spending a little time at an online birthday party whipped up by Stacey Monk and Amy Sample Ward. You’re invited, too! It includes this post and dozens more, all sharing ways that Beth has impacted the social sector and sharing her birthday wish to send 53 Cambodian children to school via donations to the Sharing Foundation.

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How has Beth impacted my work? In short, she raises my game.

By her example, in countless ways, she inspires my commitment to authentic walk-the-talk openness, inclusivity, critical thinking, and collaboration.

And she inspires me to have fun with it, which I often forget to do.

Margot Fonteyn wrote, “The most important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one’s work seriously and taking one’s self seriously. The first is imperative, and the second disastrous.”

I think one of the reasons Beth has such a tremendous influence in this sector is because she gets that distinction, and by extension gives us all permission to take ourselves less seriously too.

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Walk around the room at Beth’s virtual birthday party, and listen to what others are saying about our guest of honor. More links coming through the day! And f you’d like to make a donation to the Sharing Foundation in honor of Beth’s birthday, follow this link – thank you!

“Beth is a terrific chronicler. She takes notes, constantly. She shares those notes in real time (or as near as she can). She’s always open to suggestions, feedback, and comments—and strategically uses those to help herself flesh out the notes as they develop into ideas and insights. When she comes up with a new thread, she finds ways of linking it to other ideas by including reference links to previous blog posts (including her own or by others) to keep track of how developments happened.” Amy Sample Ward

“She has made me feel in many moments like I knew what I was doing and, in even more important ones, like it was often okay not to know – but to do it anyway…. Most importantly, she’s been there. I’m not sure how – but when I’ve really needed advice or reassurance, she’s picked up the phone or responded to a late-night email, tweet or IM.” Stacey Monk

"Beth helps the little guys like me do big things." Mark aka @hardlynormal

"Of the many reasons why we’re big fans of Beth, she’s pioneering the concepts of web-based analytics for the non-profit / charity sector." Sean Power

"She has been a great teacher, friend and source of inspiration. I am grateful for each of our interactions, and often find myself contemplating her suggestions for a day or two afterwards.... She gives for the sake of doing the right thing, and accepts whatever comes back as gravy." Geoff Livingston

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Photo by ginnerobot

Disruptive Philanthropy: Important resource in the works for online giving community

2010-01-08T20:30:00.000Z

Lucy Bernholz, Edward Skloot, and Barry Varela have co-authored an exceptionally important paper titled "Disrupting Philanthropy: Technology and the Future of the Social Sector."

"Disrupting Philanthropy" will be the latest in very short list of comprehensive resources on the online giving sector, and the first that places the question of second- and third-order changes -- the ones that will "ripple out from digitization" of the philanthropic sector -- at the front and center of an inquiry.*

Here's a quick summary in Lucy's words:

-- The point: data are the new platform for change. They will continue to fundamentally alter how philanthropic capital flows.
-- The changes are not about the digital technologies that allow access, or about the data themselves. They are about the expectations and behaviors they unleash.
-- These changes, coupled with changes in the public and private sectors, are pushing a transition to a "social economy" made up of interdependent public, private and philanthropic capital and creators of social goods.
-- All of these changes are not an end of a story, they are simply the beginning.
-- Philanthropy is an industry of passion and volunteerism in which collusion should be encouraged. It may not change in the same way, at the same speed, or driven by the same forces as the newspaper or music industries or the public sector."

Don't let the matter-of-fact tone of this blog post fool you. This is Incredibly Exciting Stuff and Required Reading for all of us in the sector. Hop over to Philanthropy 2173, download a copy, and share your feedback as the paper works its way to final form over the next couple of months.

* That short list includes Keystone's "Online Philanthropy Markets" report and Tom Watson's CauseWired, and David Koken's recent research paper "The Current State of Online Philanthropy".

Social Actions 2009 Year End Summary and Dashboard

2009-12-18T16:00:00.000Z

'Tis the season for year-end wrap ups of all kinds. This year, we've prepared two summaries:

Social Actions 2009 Year End Summary, a review of the community, projects, and conversations that have defined our work in 2009

Social Actions Dashboard, covering 2008 and 2009 "by the numbers"

A sincere, heart-filled thank you for the chance to look back on this year with you. Blog posts, tweets, phone calls -- even the rare in-person connections that conferences and meetups bring -- none do justice to expressing just how grateful we are to be working in this field, with and for an amazing community.

Looking forward to more great things in 2010 :)

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Easy tweet:

Social Actions 2009 Year End Summary and Dashboard: http://bit.ly/sa-2009summary, http://bit.ly/sa-dashboard

Artists Win This House: Crowdfunded Essay Contest Pays the Mortgage

2009-12-12T15:30:00.000Z

A couple in Maine is launching an essay contest to give a home to an artist. From their website, http://artistswinthishouse.blogspot.com:

We are both artists, (a musician and an illustrator) we got together and found that we had one house too many. This house is standing empty. That seems like such a waste. It is a tough economy and we know how hard it can be to obtain a mortgage when you are a self-employed artist. We are going on the road and don't want to wait for the house to regain value next year. We LOVE the idea of being able to give a home to someone who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford or qualify for one. That is the most exciting part of all. We don't have a lot of equity in the house so we are limiting the amount of entries to just paying off the mortgage and lawyers fees. The house is in move in condition, sweet, in a great little neighborhood...

The contest is open to anyone in the Arts, any field; musical, dramatic, visual, writing etc. if in doubt, ask. Entries will be limited to 4,000. when we reach that number the contest will close. If we do not reach 4,000 entries by June 1st 2010, we will close the contest and determine if the house can still be given away if not, everyone who submitted will receive a refund. We will post when the entry level is reaching maximum. We will post when the limit is reached and the contest is closed. You must be at least 18 years of age at the time you enter the contest.

You must write 500 words or less expressing how the world will be a better place if you win this house. You cannot use names of people or names of specific towns. Essay entries will be anonymous. Pertinent information must be submitted on the separate form provided to insure anonymity. Spelling does not count, (we are artists after all) but content does. The essay can take the form of poetry, dialog or song verse if you choose....

What a creative way to "sell" a house in this economy, effectively crowdfunding the mortgage.

I'm curious, if you're eligible for this contest and have an interest in living in a small town in Maine, would $50 and time spent crafting an essay entry be a reasonable investment for a chance at winning this house?

Does selecting the winner based on subjectively judging the essays (rather than selecting one at random, or some kind of crowdsourced judging) make you more or less likely to enter?

What other questions or ideas does this story ignite, and will you be sharing the link with others in the art community?

Social Actions is Looking for a Community Engagement Intern

2009-12-11T17:30:00.000Z

Also posted on Idealist >>

Social Actions is looking for a Community Engagement Intern to help manage and grow Social Actions' online communities.

Responsibilities
- Help develop and implement Social Actions' social media strategy
- Send introductions, answer questions, highlight community members and group activity, and otherwise engage with Social Actions' community on My Social Actions, Twitter, and Facebook
- Make introductions between Social Actions community members with shared interests
- Help prepare weekly round-ups of news and happenings in Social Actions' community
- Participate in weekly Social Actions team calls

Commitment
Hours are flexible (~8h+ / week). Work is remote -- from your computer at home or in a cafe. The ideal candidate will be friendly, outgoing, and an excellent communicator in English.

For more information
Visit Social Actions and our community site, My Social Actions.

How to apply
Please send us a summary of your offline and online community engagement experience, and any other information we should know about who you are and why you're drawn to this opportunity.

Email inquiries and application to:
Christine Egger
Social Actions, Founding Team Member
christine@socialactions.com

CDEgger Tweets: A week in review

2009-12-08T15:30:00.000Z

One of my goals for 2010 is to better sync the news passing through my twitter account and this blog.

In the interim, here's a subjective and very partial summary of news that's warranted retweeting over the past week (in expanded greater-than-140-character format!):

On the intersection of philanthropy and technology

Lucy Bernholz (@p2173) (with Edward Skloot and Barry Varela) has posted a draft "Disrupting Philanthropy: Technology and the Future of the Social Sector." It's a must-read even in draft form, and input is welcome as the paper works its way to final form over the next couple of months. Follow the twitter-convo about it via #DisruptPhil.

A to-be-celebrated joint press release expanding the emphasis on nonprofit evaluation from overhead ratios to a "finances, outcomes, and accountability" combo. From Charity Navigator (@CharityNav), Philanthropy Action (@philaction) Philanthropedia (@philanthropedia), GuideStar (@guidestarusa), Great Nonprofits (@greatnonprofits), GiveWell (@givewell) and the Hewlett Foundation http://bit.ly/6kjV9d

Allison Fine (@afine) is seeking suggestions for a list of "women influencers using social media" to go with this great article

Sean Stannard-Stockton (@tactphil) posted this thoughtful description of the New Social Impact Exchange

Another article from Allison Fine (@fine), suggested required reading for nonprofit execs/staff struggling w/ social media, trust, control, and fear issues.

Microphilanthropy and other peer-to-peer action

Ushahidi (@ushahidi) announced funding from the Omidyar Network (HT@neddotcom)

Change.org (@change) posted a beautifully comprehensive and easy-to-navigate Holiday Gift Guide (HT @socialentrprnr)

An engaging write-up of the Peer-to-Peer University experience, recently wrapped in Berlin

ChangeXchange describes their Corporate Social Responsibility program as "Collaborative Micro-Philanthropy" (TM!) (HT@siirimorley)

From the world of foundations

Beth Kanter (@kanter) invited Twitter into the Packard Foundation boardroom. Visit #packfound for an archive of the ensuing Q&A

Bill Somerville, author of Grassroots Philanthropy (a wonderful guidebook that reframes the role foundations can play in supporting individuals), is now on Twitter (@philanthropicvf)

That's all for now ~ more summaries to come, or follow @CDEgger in real time ~

Creating a Network to Nurture Social Entrepreneurs and 3BL Businesses: Notes from 2009 Net Impact Conference session

2009-11-17T15:48:44.000Z

This past Friday I had the great pleasure of participating in a panel discussion at the 2009 Net Impact Conference:

Creating a Network to Nurture Social Entrepreneurs and Triple Bottom Line Businesses

What would happen if ordinary people could seamlessly contribute to the work of social entrepreneurs? Silicon Valley has a sophisticated structure designed to identify and develop young creative people with innovative ideas. In the social sector, this structure is in its infancy. Join a panel of leaders from Ashoka, Social Actions, StartingBloc, AllDayBuffet, and PURE as they explore connections and next steps in the evolution of a similarly sophisticated structure for social entrepreneurialism.

Jane Hexter moderated the panel, which included Jerri Chou, Ryan Fix, Lennon Flowers, and Adriana Pentz. It was a fantastically rich presentation. Unfortunately, technical glitches precluded us from recording or videotaping the session, so I thought it might be helpful to post the notes I prepared in advance of the session.

There's a wonderfully informative wiki page, developed in advance of the session, that contains a wealth of suggested resources. It's been viewed several hundred times already, and everyone is invited to add content. You'll find contact information for all of the panelists there, as well as hyperlinks for anything mentioned below that's hyperlink-able.

Notes

Introduce yourself, your motivation for this work, and your intentions for this session

My name is Christine Egger. I work with a group called Social Actions. We create the kinds of online infrastructure we’ll be talking about today.

One of our projects is especially relevant: the Social Entrepreneur API

-- First open cross-organizational database of information about social entrepreneurs who have won fellowships and awards from various funders.

-- Right now, pulling from the Skoll Foundation, Draper Richards, PopTech, Civic Ventures, the Schwab Foundation, and ideablob.

-- The API (shorthand for “open, aggregated dataset”) allows you to search across all of these programs by funder, keyword, location, cause area, population served, and a variety of other factors.

-- We launched during September’s Social Capital Markets conference in San Francisco, and look forward to adding Ashoka, TED, Echoing Green and other funders over time.

Social Actions has also built an API for philanthropic actions – volunteering, donating, etc. – collecting them from online platforms like Change.org and GlobalGiving, GiveIndia, Greater Good South Africa, idealist. Anyone can build a search engine, iPhone app or other kind of app to sort, filter, and distribute these actions across the web.

Over time, these projects will weave together, and we’ll see common datasets for people, actions, organizations, entire movements that will make it easier to find and connect to what’s going on around us.

My personal motivation for this work: Life is short. It is WAY too short to not be doing what feels incredibly important to you., whether or not it comes easily to you. And I remember as a kid wondering why every single grown-up wasn’t working to make the world better than they found it, and I want to be able to look any child in the eyes and tell them that’s what I’m working on, every day.

My intention for today’s session is to introduce you to the projects we’re working on, participate in describing the context of resources it resides in and contributes to, and help you come away more informed, empowered, and prepared to co-create and benefit from that system.

What does success look like? What would be possible if a support structure for social and triple bottom line entrepreneurs existed?

-- People of all kinds are seamlessly finding and contributing to the work of social entrepreneurs.

-- The entrepreneurs themselves are easily finding peers and connecting, creating, collaborating around their shared missions

-- The entire context within which you operate is aligned towards your success.

-- YOUR organization is equally aligned to maximize on all that this support structure is making available to you.

-- You’re open, collaborative, and engaged, and you are seeing a net gain across the board for actively plugging into the infrastructure we’ll be describing

-- The infrastructure reflects distinctions across a range of characteristics: age, stage of organization, issue area, regions, theory of change, intended impact, industry, etc.

-- It contains funders, media, education programs, open data, and applications (see Jill Finlayson’s illustration).

What currently exists both virtually and physically to link them to resources that they need to develop their organizations?

Virtually:

-- See the ton of links on the wiki – competitions, funders, etc. etc. -- Including of the organizations participating in the Social Entrepreneur API

-- Social Edge – phenomenal wealth of blogs, discussions, links to educational programs all on, for, by social entrepreneurs. This is where, as a social entrepreneur, you can find peers grappling with all angles of the work you’re doing.

-- Twitter lists and handles and hashtag conversations -- #socent alone is a really great stream

-- Increasing amounts of open and linked data – NY Times recently made their archives available in linked data.

Want to also add “culturally”: There is a movement underway driving resources towards sustainable and triple bottom line businesses. The power of this shouldn’t be underestimated or under-appreciated.

What's missing that if it were to exist would make the vision outlined come to fruition?

-- We need more people deciding to do what they can right now, even if it feels small, working with what they have from where they are.

-- We need to make it easier to find out what everyone in this sector is doing. Not more firehoses of information, not more huge spotlights, but devices that filter and make sense of what’s going on.

-- We need to keep making progress on the culture of openness, transparency, information-sharing, and collaboration that’s building.

-- We need more entrepreneurs to design a consistent thread from their vision to their mission to the methods they’re using.

-- And of course a lot of what we do at Social Actions is about moving information into an open-to-the-public data cloud where it can be filtered, sorted, and seen by as many people as possible. We need more open data, more organizations willing to share what they’re building and learning and creating. We need more applications that mash-up and combine that data – so the work each of you are doing is visually and tangibly embedded in that context.

What is working well from each of these directions?

What I see working well is in the middle ground, with an iterative process that draws from both bottom up and top down directions. This works well when there’s time and an inclination toward it.

Described process for governing the Social Entrepreneur API, where the project and dataset are truly generated in that “middle space.”

-- Gathering inspiration and a starting point from a discussion on Social Edge – very bottom up. It came out of a discussion on Social Edge entitled The Case for Online Support for Social Entrepreneurs that our founder Peter Deitz hosted. Last December, a huge discussion like this one – what’s being built? What does the sector still need? And this idea was born. (bottom up)

-- Middle-ground build-out of the initial partners, contents, and governing process

-- The raw materials were:
o Modeling off of another open cross-platform dataset we’d already built, one that collects opportunities to take action from over 60 online giving platforms
o Already publicly-available information about vetted social entrepreneurs from a number of award and fellowship programs
o Some light facilitation on our part -- Sufficient organization while allowing the diversity of actors and voices to remain intact.
o Seed funding (top down)
o and some authentic buy-in from the groups participating – Skoll, Draper Richards, PopTech, and the others – to build start small and work together to create something that was more than the sum of its parts.

I want to emphasize that more than these raw materials, it’s the collaborative process that makes this project so powerful and an important model.

Also, “what works well” includes getting really clear about what you can remain unclear about. For projects like ours that involves not getting caught up in definitions that would alienate and cause friction (i.e. defining social entrepreneur)

Ways to organize an exploration of "what's yet to be built"

-- Think in terms of identifying the negative space – who’s not here around the table with me? In our board room, in our conference room, on this online network? Why are they missing? What do I lose by not including them?

-- Thinking about this from a chaos theory or complexity science perspective – there is a lot of uncertainty and finding-our-way that cannot be designed out of this work. Very little in social entrepreneurial work is lined up in a cause-and-effect way. Would encourage us not to think of building this system as engineers, or fixing problems, but creating conditions that encourage the most positive possible side effects.

-- The take-away here is to find a metaphor or perspective that works for you, figure out what a ladder of engagement for your own participation would look like, and then get going.

:cde

Social Actions and Open Data Standards: A conversation is building

2009-11-04T20:57:29.000Z

Watching several conversations unfold related to open data, and open data standards, for the philanthropic sector. I caught up with most of them just last night, and had a hard time falling asleep. It's fantastic to feel the momentum shift from either-or questions about whether an organization should be transparent or not, to the kind of nuanced Q&A engaged in here. Of course, I'm excited, especially, for the potential to more broadly encourage data standards for the nonprofit sector (see Marnie Webb's post especially). Looking forward to linking that topic more explicitly into Social Actions' Open Actions XML initiative in future posts.

For now, some quick links:

Lucy Bernholz responds to Lawrence Lessig's recent article "Against Transparency: The perils of openness in government." with a post that asks "What are the downsides of transparency? Which of these are due to technology or existing legal frameworks, and which of them come from elsewhere, from our norms and assumptions about how giving works or what philanthropy is for? And what scenarios can we imagine from greater data sharing that we'd prefer to avoid?"

Alison Fine on nonprofits and transparency ("Nonprofits need to begin to ask themselves questions about transparency to guide their work.")

Rachel Weidinger proposes an NTEN panel that would provide nonprofits a ""basic framework of things to consider including identity and anonymity, digital inclusion and access, community management, taxonomy, content ownership, and your data ecosystem" among other things (it's a very robust proposal, I hope you'll check it out).

Marnie Webb pulls inspiration all of the above to tentatively suggest "aggressively sharing our data, collecting and share the representative stories and, agreeing on some data standards across the sector so that we can achieve the dream of having simplified, relevant data that informs decision-makers and provides support to the social changes we seek."

Peter Campbell ties the issue of transparency to that of security, reminding us that the appropriateness of data-sharing is linked to the organization's mission.

And Beth Kanter asks about the pros and cons of nonprofit dashboards (data presentation), interesting in its own right but especially because Holly Ross reveals in the comments that one for NTEN might be on its way (woot!).

Social Entrepreneur API: ThinkSocial Award Nomination -- vote today!

2009-11-02T20:00:00.000Z

The Social Entrepreneur API has been selected as a finalist for a ThinkSocial "Outstanding Collaboration" Award!

With this award, ThinkSocial will recognize three outstanding examples of innovation -- featuring an individual, an initiative, and a collaboration between institutions -- which together represent powerful models for how social media can be used to address global problems.

Public votes and comments will play an important role in selecting award winners:

1. Please click here to cast your vote by midnight tonight (Monday, November 2nd)

2. Then, spread the word by blogging or tweeting a link to this page. If it's a tweet, maybe something like this:

"I just voted for the @SEapi ThinkSocial Award nomination, and you can too! http://bit.ly/seapi-thinksocial"

Thanks in advance for voting and helping to spread the word about ThinkSocial and the Social Entrepreneur API nomination!

Networks, social change, and tech tools

2009-10-19T14:30:00.000Z

On her Philanthropy 2173 blog, Lucy Bernholz recently posted a request for "examples of networks that have made some kind of positive social change happen. Ideally these are networks that:

* Consist of unaffiliated individuals, not coalitions or alliances of existing nonprofits
* Made something concrete, and socially positive, happen
* Continue to exist after making a change - so they are more than 'just' a protest group (this is the hardest one to find)"

I have to think that My Social Actions members are especially familiar with these kinds of networks. Manny Hernandez' Tu Diabetes and Juan Carlos Zaldivar's Art Tribes Network come quickly to mind. Tori Tuncan has already added Lend4Health to Lucy's list, and I proposed Social Actions, which grew out of a loosely-affiliated network that came together in a Google group.

What other networks should be added to Lucy's list? Hop over to the blog post and leave a comment with your suggestions.

The Social Actions suggestion prompted Lucy to ask a follow-up question that's also of interest to My Social Actions members and got me thinking:

"Seems that many of the examples we can find are about human networks + tech tools so that organizing happens more easily, faster, and on a grander scale. It is also much more distributed organizing. So if that is what we can learn from what has already happened, can we "apply" them prospectively to hypothesize about how change might happen on tangible, nearby challenges (homelessness, prenatal care, job training....)."

How do you see your local initiatives affected by the availability of tech tools, if at all (yet)? Are you seeing groups make use of mobile phone technology, social media, and tools like the Social Actions API to gather and mobilize resources for on-the-ground efforts? If that's a ways off -- and I suspect that for most communities it is -- what do expect that "change-making" will look like?

One of the things I'm struck by, when I talk with local nonprofit-development-charitable organizations, is how dismissive they are about social media and online tools as a resource for what they're doing locally. If they've always been able to get by with phone calls, check-writing, and an occasional emailed newsletter and article in the local paper, why should they deal with the challenge of figuring out Facebook or Firstgiving pages? If their cause and work are geographically centralized, why should they leverage technologies that are clearly about connecting with people far away?

So I'm contacted daily by nonprofits from far away, using these tools to connect with me where I am. And I hear very little from the organizations in my town because if I'm not already on their email list, and miss the blurb in the local paper about their next event, I'm out of the loop.

(Technologically) distributed organizing and communication doesn't have to mean (geographically) distributed impact. The more quickly that's understood, the more quickly we'll see a groundswell of networks + tools + transformation.

Social Actions Adds Five New Action Sources; Connects to the WiserEarth API

2009-09-11T16:00:00.000Z

Today, we added five new action sources to the Social Actions API, an open database of opportunities to make a difference. For a full list and profiles of the latest innovators contributing to Social Actions, please see Our Guide to 60+ Action Sources.

As part of this update, we're excited to announce that Social Actions has connected to the WiserEarth API. Applications powered by the Social Actions API can now feature rich information about job opportunities and events from across the global WiserEarth community. We built a similar plugin for the DonorsChoose.org API in the fall of last year.

Welcome to all of the new partners!

New Action Sources

ChristianVolunteering.org -> Volunteer
GetInvolved -> Support a campaign
Givology -> Donate
PopTech -> Join a group
WiserEarth -> Apply for a job & Attend an event

The Full List of Action Sources Contributing to Social Actions

Amazee
Apathy is Boring
betterplace
BringLight
CanadaHelps
Care2 Petition Site
Celsias
Change.org
Changents
ChangingthePresent
CharityFocus
ChristianVolunteering.org
ChristmasFuture
ClimatePath
Delicious
DemocracyInAction
DonorsChoose.org
Do Something
DreamBank
Earth Justice
Firstgiving
FREEDOM SPEAKS
Fundable
GetInvolved
GiveIndia
GiveMeaning
Givology
GlobalGiving
GlobalGiving UK
Greater Good SA
Helpalot
ideablob.com
Idealist
Kiva
KnightPulse
Lend4Health
Live Earth
MicroGiving
Modest Needs
NABUUR
NGO Post
OptINnow
PincGiving
PledgeBank
Policy Pitch
PopTech
Prax.ca
Razoo
SASIX
SixDegrees
Stop Climate Chaos
TakingITGlobal
ThePoint
Twitter
VolunteerMatch
WildlifeDirect
WiserEarth
Wokai
YouthNoise
Zazengo

Analytics

2009-09-11T01:46:12.000Z

Another cross-post from my blog at http://preludeinteractive.com

Social Actions recently started releasing their corpus of volunteer, donation, and other opportunities (social actions) as a nightly dump. I think that's super! I've started setting up some analytics for the data, as I think there is a lot of wisdom and science to be found within. The eventual goal is to do some fancy topic modeling using the data, but since I accidentally stomped the file I was starting with, I decided to try a few simpler things first.

First, I did some simple averages across the database.

12.7886 hits per action. Not too shabby!
The average action specifying a goal amount (typically US dollars) is 77% achieved. Neato!
The average action was updated 10.33 days ago.
The average action was created 218.56 days ago.

Why is this useful? If split by action source, you can give the people posting these actions a good idea of the relative health of their data. There might be good reasons why some actions take 20 days to find resolution, while others only take 5. But what are those reasons? Maybe some are novel and interesting and unknown?

Next, interested by the average ages of the actions, I made a couple simple plots of how recently the actions were updated or created.

I think those big spikes correspond to the dates various action sources were added, but I could be wrong. It's also interesting that the long tail of actions goes all the way to 2000+ days old. They were discussing cutting really old actions out of the database (since the information is probably no longer valid anyway), and I think that might be a good idea.

This exponential decrease is not surprising. The 16 day shift right is because I was testing with a dump a little more than 2 weeks old. The real puzzling thing is the big spike around 205 days. What's that all about?

Sure, the Social Actions folks could have run these figures anytime they wanted, but the great part about them being so open is that they don't have to. Maybe something we uncover can inform the action sources (and ultimately those in need of volunteers, donations, votes, etc) and allow them to reach people quicker and more efficiently.

Social Entrepreneur API interim report, July 2009

2009-09-08T14:10:20.000Z

Social Actions prepared this interim report for the Social Entrepreneur API in mid-July. It describes the project's process and progress in anticipation of last week's public launch, announced at SOCAP09. The full report is posted to the Social Entrepreneur API Google group pages (http://groups.google.com/group/social-entrepreneur-api).

SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR API
Interim Report, July 16, 2009

About Social Actions

Social Actions is a non-profit committed to making it easier for people to find and share opportunities to make a difference. Our team helps nonprofits, foundations, and companies engage and activate people to take action on the issues they care about.

About the Social Entrepreneur API

The Social Entrepreneur API (Application Programming Interface) is the first open database of publicly available information about social entrepreneurs who have won fellowships or awards from esteemed organizations like Ashoka, Civic Ventures, the Draper Richards Foundation, Echoing Green, ideablob, PopTech, the Schwab Foundation, the Skoll Foundation, and TED.

The Social Entrepreneur API will serve as a resource for philanthropists, investors, press, and fellow entrepreneurs. These groups will be able to use the open database to find social entrepreneurs based on factors such as fellowship/funding program, social entrepreneur name, organization, award date, keyword, location, cause area, and population served.

Update summary

Process: We dramatically underestimated the time required to engage the initial participating organizations in this project. Fortunately, developing the initial taxonomy/schema proceeded smoothly. We attribute this to 1) the participants having developed a shared commitment to the Social Entrepreneur API during that engagement process, 2) not requiring any changes to the organization’s record-keeping in order to submit data, and 3) encouraging submissions via XML feed or spreadsheet, according to each participating organization’s available developer resources.

Scheduled launch: The Social Entrepreneur API is scheduled to launch on August 31st with a minimum of five participating organizations: Social Edge (Skoll Fellows), PopTech, the Draper Richards Foundation, Civic Ventures (Purpose Prize Fellows), and the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. ideablob will most likely participate, provided they find a new financial sponsor to continue their initiative. [Note: ideablob is participating, and anticipates finding a new sponsor before year-end.]

Governance/sustainability: To date, Social Actions’ team has logged well over 80 hours to get the project to this point, which at our rate of $125/hr equates to an investment of more than $10,000. We anticipate the Social Entrepreneur API will require $2,500 per month to maintain, including staff time, reporting, support, and hosting.

Review of proposal responsibilities

1. Host an invite-only online discussion and a series of conference calls with leaders in social entrepreneurship and key staff at the participating websites.

Ongoing: The series of conference calls has been well-attended by participating organizations since its inception on February 27, 2009. [Note: a list of attendees is provided in the full interim report, link above.]

An invite-only Google group discussion forum was created on February 4 (http://groups.google.com/group/social-entrepreneur-api). Participating organizations have so far elected to conduct most communication by email, but the forum has been heavily used to post conference call notes, schedule/calendar details, XML schema details, factsheet and FAQ summaries, and additional resources.

2. Interview participants and funders on the desired outcomes and use cases for the open database of opportunities to support social entrepreneurs.

Ongoing: Social Actions has conducted one-on-one interviews with the following confirmed and potential participating organizations:

Ashoka: Tom Dawkins
Civic Ventures (Purpose Prize): Alexandra Kent
Draper Richards Foundation: Anne Marie Burgoyne
Echoing Green: Lara Galinsky, Anthony Showalter
ideablob: Darren Sudman
PopTech: Louis Juska, Andrew Zolli
Schwab Foundation: Parag Gupta
Social Edge (Skoll Fellows): Jill Finlayson

Throughout, a strong interest in the Social Entrepreneur API as a resource for drawing attention and funding to social entrepreneurs, as well as peer-to-peer collaboration among them, were cited as reasons to participate.

The two potential participating organizations that have yet to join the project, Ashoka and Echoing Green, shared two reasons for their hesitancy: 1) undefined ongoing governance and sustainability plan, and 2) undefined cost/benefit ratio between the time required to participate and the anticipated positive impact on their programs. We expect both programs will join the Social Entrepreneur API when the sustainability plan is in place and/or the API has launched and participation would be of clear, demonstrable benefit to their Fellows.

3. Enhance and deploy the existing open source software that powers Social Actions to meet the specific needs of this initiative.

Pending: Jason Mott of the Ronin Tech Collective will log hours through the end of July to deploy the existing open source code-base for the purpose of aggregating information about social entrepreneurs. He has estimated this task will require 20 hours.

4. Setup a long-term and affordable web server to host the open database of opportunities to support social entrepreneurs.

Pending: Social Actions’ existing server will accommodate the Social Entrepreneur API in the short-term and possibly long-term, depending on how conversations about sustainability and governance evolve.

5. Provide full documentation on how the open database functions, can be accessed, and should be maintained.

Pending: Target date: prior to the August 31st public launch.

6. Work with participating websites to create initial widgets, web applications, and search engines that draw on the open database.

Ongoing: Social Actions has engaged a number of organizations interested in drawing on the open database. We have initiated a beta test process for several of these organizations to test and create case studies of the Social Entrepreneur API use prior to its public launch, including the following:

Business Catapult: Greg Berry
Change.org: Nathaniel Whittemore
Dowser: Emily Spivack, Manuel Rosaldo
Fast Forward Fund: Diana Ayton-Shenker
Foundation Source: Sharon Schneider, Jamie Buck
PureProject: Ryan Fix
Social Capital Markets: Paula Sen
Social Capital Media: Amy Benziger
RJK Wealth Management/Time to Impact: Richard Krasney
StartingBloc: Taryn Miller-Stevens
TakePart (Participant Media): Patrick Kearney

Benchmarks

Achieved
May 13th: Public announcement; launch of http://www.socialentrepreneurapi.org.
June 5th: Participating organizations collectively determined XML schema.
June 30th: Participating organizations submitted data.
July 10th: Social Actions provided feedback/requests for data revisions.
July 17th: Participating organizations submit revised data.

Pending

July 31st: Social Entrepreneur API ready for beta testers. [Note: achieved]
August 31st: Social Entrepreneur API ready for public beta. [Note: achieved]

For more information

http://www.socialentrepreneurapi.org

Social Entrepreneur API launches at SOCAP09

2009-09-02T18:00:00.000Z

It’s a thrill to share today's public launch of the Social Entrepreneur API, formally announced at SOCAP09. From the project's website:

Lifting the Social Sector: Fellowship and Award Programs Collaborate to Make Data about Social Entrepreneurs More Accessible

Civic Ventures (sponsor of The Purpose Prize), The Draper Richards Foundation, ideablob, PopTech, The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, and The Skoll Foundation are pooling their data to create an open database of information about vetted social entrepreneurs.

The Social Entrepreneur API (Application Programming Interface) is the first open database of information about social entrepreneurs who have won fellowships and awards from social enterprise funders. The tool allows philanthropists, investors, press, and fellow entrepreneurs to find social entrepreneurs based on keyword, location, cause area, population served, and a variety of other factors. As with the Social Actions API, this open dataset will be available for any website or individual to search, syndicate, republish, or use to build web applications, widgets, and search engines... Read more

As you might have heard, Social Actions has been facilitating the Social Entrepreneur API’s development with seed funding from the Peery Foundation.

Peter Deitz and I had a chance to describe this work in some detail in July’s issue of Open Source Business Resource. There, we drew attention to the open and collaborative process that’s been a part of the Social Entrepreneur API’s conceptualization and build-out.

Using terms like open and collaborative to describe projects like this is often a stretch, but not in this case. Even a cursory review of the Social Entrepreneur API Google group (where a full history of the project, answers to frequently asked questions, and other documentation can be found) demonstrate the extent to which those design principles have been followed. The organizations whose social entrepreneurs are profiled in the API will continue to govern the process for adding more profile sources, building out the data taxonomy, and addressing other issues relevant to the project’s development.

That intentional design, combined with the cooperative spirit and shared commitment of each of the organizations involved, has made the Social Entrepreneur API initiative a joy to be a part of.

I hope you’ll take a closer look at the Social Entrepreneur API website (where you’ll find invitations to get involved) and search interface (the first of many applications this API will inspire), and join me in congratulating everyone involved creating – and officially launching! – the Social Entrepreneur API.

The Future of Social Actions, Part III: A Constellation of Consultants

2009-07-28T17:30:00.000Z

Open Standards, Yes We Can

2009-07-17T14:00:00.000Z

(Source: Robotson on Flickr)

I don't know about you, but I am a big fan of open standards, particularly when my bladder Direct Messages me with the hashtag #urgent. Open standards (see picture above) guide me to a place where I can @reply in a hurry.

In the non-profit technology community, open standards of a different variety could help us all become more effective at what we urgently need to do: raise money, recruit and coordinate volunteers, promote events, create profiles on social networks, generate reports for grant-makers, and the list goes on.

In June, I hosted a discussion about Collaboration and Competition on Social Edge in which the topic of open standards for the nonprofit sector was raised.

In response to a comment from David Wolff, I wrote:

"When a sector comes together to create a standard, anything from the diameter of a bottle cap to protocols for mobile devices, businesses and consumers in the sector benefit. Businesses reduce their costs because manufacturers don't have to build custom factories / product lines each time they sign a contract. Consumers also benefit. Anyone who has fastened a Pepsi cap onto a Coco-Cola bottle and then ridden their bike home knows what I'm talking about ... Sometimes collaborating in one area raises the bar of competition in another. Chris Messina recently made this point at the NetSquared conference as it relates to open standards for managing one's identity online, '... [Social networks] should compete on the quality of the service that they're providing, as opposed to just their lock in.' Have a look at this interview, Building a Ubiquitous Social Network - Interview With Chris Messina for more information."

Jo Davidson then replied:

"I agree with you Peter, a single universal standard would be the best way to work collaboration into competition, setting everyone up on a level playing field to bloom and grow."

I replied to Jo:

"The beauty of widespread adoption of universal standards in the social sector is that they could be used to both compete better _and_ collaborate better, depending on one's personal preference. I envision the adoption of open standards for nonprofits and philanthropy leading to dramatic and meaningful collaborations that can form on the fly. Rather than bringing the boards of multiple organizations together to have conversations about sharing data and knowledge, the data would already be exposed and already be interchangeable. The collaboration question becomes when and how, instead of if. Coming up with the standard, to ensure that it reflects as much nuances in the form of the data and knowledge is difficult. But the process absolutely can and should be done, across the social sector and in business as well. ... Open data is a powerful force that can drive both collaboration and innovation. But a collaborative and innovative mindset is critical to ensuring that the open data that emerges is rich and reflects the best interests of everyone involved."

Where to go from here

The nonprofit technology community is filled with many bright minds and innovative thinkers. For better or worse, this passion often gets channeled toward one-off projects that benefit a single organization or a coalition of organizations.

I would like to see the brightest minds and most innovative thinkers in the social sector come together to create open standards that lift all organizations making use of the social web. The open standards that I'd like to see developed and adopted would help social benefit organizations seamlessly publish rich information about their donation opportunities in a structured format, helping major grant-makers and citizen philanthropists make smarter choices about their giving. I'd also like to see open standards developed and adopted that help organizations publish rich information about their volunteer opportunities and the events they are hosting, helping individuals connect with service opportunities and events effortlessly. Finally, I'd like to see open standards developed and adopted that help nonprofits fill out their social media profile once and have it syndicated everywhere and anywhere on the fly.

From a technological perspective, these are modest goals. Where they become difficult to achieve is at the level of organizational culture, grant-making priorities, and leadership. I understand fully that this conversation has been launched on many occasions over the years. I'm hoping that in 2009, we can overcome cultural, funding, and leadership barriers to create a non-profit sector that charts its own course toward open standards, open data and collaborative innovation.

If you are interested in participating in the open standards and open data conversation, please leave a comment on this blog post.

The next time your nonprofit's stakeholders collectively Direct Message you with the hashtag #urgent, you'll be able to @reply with a simple message: Open standards and open data are helping you respond quickly and effectively.

Jolkona Foundation and UniversalGiving Join the Social Actions API

2009-07-14T16:19:07.000Z

Today, Social Actions added two new action sources to its open database of opportunities to make a difference. For a full list and profiles of the latest innovators contributing to Social Actions, please see Our Guide to 50+ Action Sources.

New Action Sources

Jolkona Foundation -> Donate
UniversalGiving -> Donate

The Full List of Action Sources Contributing to Social Actions

Amazee
Apathy is Boring
betterplace
BringLight
CanadaHelps
Care2 Petition Site
Cause Caller
Celsias
Change.org
Changents
ChangingthePresent
CharityFocus
ChristmasFuture
ClimatePath
Delicious
DemocracyInAction
DonorsChoose.org
Do Something
DreamBank
Earth Justice
Firstgiving
FREEDOM SPEAKS
Fundable
GiveIndia
GiveMeaning
GlobalGiving
GlobalGiving UK
Greater Good SA
Helpalot
ideablob.com
Idealist.org
Jolkona Foundation
JustMeans
Kiva
KnightPulse
Lend4Health
Live Earth
MicroGiving
Modest Needs
NABUUR
NGO Post
OptINnow
PincGiving
PledgeBank
Policy Pitch
Prax.ca
Razoo
SASIX
SixDegrees
Stop Climate Chaos
TakingITGlobal
ThePoint
Twitter
UniversalGiving
VolunteerMatch
WildlifeDirect
Wokai
YouthNoise
Zazengo

The Future of Social Actions, Part II: Projects in the Pipeline

2009-07-08T15:30:00.000Z

Over the next several weeks, I will be thinking out loud about the Future of Social Actions. Our initiative is approaching its two year anniversary at the end of August, and would benefit from some community participation in creating a long-term plan going forward. I hope this blog post, and others in the series, will serve as a spark for brainstorming where Social Actions should be headed, how to get there, and how best to make the operation fully sustainable.

Part II: Projects in the Pipeline

For the first six months of 2009, I was on the road far more than would reasonably be considered productive and healthy for the founder of a budding organization. Nevertheless, I returned home at the end of June with a treasure trove of new contacts and inspirations. Below are a few of the project ideas that I would like to see Social Actions amplify or launch in the coming months, consistent with our commitment to collaborative innovation in the social sector and our desire to work on a range of high-impact projects that help engage people in making a difference.

Ongoing development of the Social Actions API and related web applications
Social Actions' primary contribution to the world to date is the Social Actions API, a pioneering effort to aggregate opportunities to make a difference and distribute them across the web sites, social networks, and mobile phones that millions of people use everyday via third-party applications. To take this project to the next level, we need to do more to engage our developer community and potential distribution partners. So far, our focus has been primarily on core functionality of the Social Actions API itself. I'd like to see Social Actions shift its focus to the developers and distribution partners that are building web applications from the Social Actions API. What resources / incentives / support do they need to make the greatest impact? I don't have an answer to this question but look forward to developing a strategy that effectively engages this community.

Advocating for open standards for publishing and sharing actions
Since the very beginning of Social Actions, I have been writing and talking about the importance of open standards for publishing and sharing actions. At this point, we have proposed a format called Open Actions that can serve as an open standard for all kinds of social actions: volunteer opportunities, donation opportunities, events, campaigns, petitions, groups, do it yourself actions, and micro-loans. We need to increase awareness, interest in, and adoption of this format and others to add coherence to the online social activism and philanthropy sectors. Suggestions on how to go about this are encouraged.

Building community among the 50+ partners we work with
We work with an impressive group of social innovators from around the world. When we first launched My Social Actions in January, I though that this social network would serve as a meeting point for the partners we work with. To date, this has not happened. Instead, My Social Actions has developed in an entirely different direction, attracting a wide range of social change professionals and providing a forum for them to blog about and post events related to the work they're doing. To build community among our 50+ partners, I am considering two parallel solutions -- 1) regular conference calls and in person events for the partners we work with focused on specific projects (Social Actions API, Social Entrepreneur API, Open Actions, My Social Actions, etc) and 2) a private social network (kind of like an intranet) just for our partners. The private social network would also serve as the main channel for regularly communicating with our partners and creating a safe and secure environment for them to network with one another. We don't normally create projects that do not leave a public archive. At this point, however, I can sense a need to create a private space for a the staff of Social Actions' partners to network with one another. The combination of regular conference calls, in person events, and a private social network would provide fertile ground for our partners to not only deepen their relationships with Social Actions but also to identify collaborative opportunities among themselves.

Open-sourcing the inspiring 1-to-1 conversations we have on a regular basis
For over six months, I have been contemplating open-sourcing many of the phone calls I have on a regular basis. I spend at least 6-8 hours per week hearing about amazing online platforms and brainstorming who the founders should be talking to, how to integrate with Social Actions, and how new initiatives fit into the broader online social activism landscape. While I love every minute of these calls, they don't contribute to the public archive and public conversation about our sector. To fix the problem, I have setup a BlogTalkRadio channel and will be scheduling public calls throughout each week. The format will be incredibly informal -- just a conversation between me and/or Christine and one or our current or potential partners. The calls will focus on the partner and will be publicly archived and available for comments, download, etc. Thoughts?

Telling the stories of our high-impact partners and friends
This project idea came up through conversations with Amy Sample Ward and Rachel Weidinger. Social Actions is all about the impact that its partners are making. We don't, however, always do a very good job of demonstrating this commitment to our partners. Nothing would show interest more than profiling the work of our inspiring partners and friends. Over the next several weeks, it would be awesome if members of the Social Actions community (Amy, Rachel, Christine, myself, and others) started writing profiles about the inspiring work we see our partners doing on the ground. All of the infrastructure is in place for this story-telling. My Social Actions provides an ideal place in which to post an event or write a blog entry about anyone or group you find who is affiliated in some way with Social Actions. Do we need a story-telling calendar or Basecamp project? Let me know if this would help kick-start the story-telling.

Drawing more attention to our paid consulting work, trainings and events
Over the last six months, Social Actions has been involved in a range of innovative consulting projects, trainings, and events. Our most notable paid consulting projects to date are the Social Entrepreneur API (Launching on August, 31, 2009) and Mozilla Service Week (September 14-22, 2009). We've also been doing work with Social Capital Markets 2009, The Case Foundation, The Skoll Foundation, TakePart, NABUUR, Music National Service, Consulting Within Reach, and Small Change Fund. Since we've been so busy working on these projects, we haven't successfully drawn attention to the work we're doing. I would like to use My Social Actions and the main Social Actions website to feature the work we're doing for hire. After all, that's what keeps us afloat financially. Any suggestions on how to draw more attention to our paid consulting work, trainings, and events.

Doing a much better job of reporting back on the impact our partners and projects are making
One of the biggest embarrassments for me is that the footer of the main Social Actions website, My Social Actions, and search.socialactions.com has statistics that are from December 2008. This shortcoming is a sign of just how poorly we have been conveying the impact of main project, the Social Actions API. Somehow, we need to find a way to loop the reporting on impact into our daily work-flows and find ways to automate the sharing of this information. Similarly, we have not asked our partners for metrics on the impact they are having nor have we crunched the numbers on the impact our other projects are making. Of course, measuring impact is never simple. But at least making an effort would be better than what we're currently doing. I'm not sure how to frame the reporting of impact as a project. Your advice is welcome.

If you have any thoughts on these projects, please share them below. I'd also be interested in hearing about other projects ideas that Social Actions can/should be prioritizing. Thanks for taking a moment to leave a comment.

The Future of Social Actions, Part I: Partners and Projects

2009-07-07T15:30:00.000Z

Social Actions in Open Source Business Resource (OSBR) July 2009 Issue

2009-07-03T13:56:00.000Z

Social Actions had the opportunity to share its story in the July 2009 issue of Open Source Business Resource (OSBR), a peer-reviewed monthly publication for individuals and organizations contributing to, and interested in, open source projects and technologies. Guest Editor Stephen Huddart extended an invitation to feature Social Actions as an example of collaborative, open source principles in action. Peter and I had a great time co-authoring what effectively is the most comprehensive description of Social Actions' development to date. There's much more to tell about why and how Social Actions is developing in the way that it is, and what could and will come next for this initiative, but there's alot here that hadn't yet been put to paper (or cyber ink).

"Social Actions: Making the Web More Philanthropic" by Peter Deitz & Christine Egger

Social Actions makes it easier for people to turn their good intentions into meaningful action. The organization has created an open source database of actions people can take on any issue.... This article describes how Social Actions applies open source principles to the organization's products and processes. In its entirety, Social Actions is intentionally designed to contribute to the ongoing and vibrant conversations about open source practices and principles.

For an insightful overview of where those conversations might take the entire social sector, and the kind of infrastructure that would facilitate a truly collaborative process along the way, read Stephen Huddart and Anil Patel's article in the same issue:

"Applied Collaboration Studios: Transforming Complex Problems into Systems of Continuous Social Innovation" by Stephen Huddart & Anil Patel

This paper asserts that the voluntary or social sector plays a pivotal role in generating and disseminating social innovations through collaboration with diverse partners. The authors explore the potential to engender a quantum shift in the sector's efficiency, reach, and impact through the combined use of open source technologies, social process tools and collaboration platforms.

Social Actions Community Call, July 2009

2009-07-02T11:30:00.000Z

On July 1, 2009, Social Actions convened a Community Conference Call. Below is the transcript from that discussion ~

Participants

Jason Mott
Ehren Foss
Amy Sample Ward
Megan Schiebe
Celine Takatsuno
Tori Tuncan
Tom Watson
Peter Deitz
Christine Egger

Welcome & Introductions

Social Actions update (Christine)

We want to first catch everyone up with a quick overview of all that Social Actions has been up to recently. Incredibly, we’re halfway into the year already, and have a number of highlights of the past 6 months to share. Then we’ll do a little forward-visioning and strategizing out loud about where Social Actions could and should go next.

Peter and I can share some ideas that are already underway, but we also want this to be a reminder and an opportunity for truly community-sourcing that work going forward. Peter gave a keynote recently where he talked about flipping around the way that nonprofits usually describe what they do and how they do it: they talk about their work and their mission, and then they invite people to “help” them. Social Actions has fast forwarded from being a plucky and promising project at last year’s NetSquared to being a bonafide nonprofit initiative with ALOT going on, but at its core it is about empowering people to take action on issues that they care about – that’s what this is all about – and where people care about this intersection of taking action online, this causewired space that Tom writes about, developing the philanthropic web as Peter describes it – when its about this space that Social Actions contributes to as an organization, we are still all about empowering people to take action.

So these conference calls for Social Actions’ community are just as much about listening to what each of you want to see Social Actions make possible for you. Maybe you’re on the call because you’re just mildly curious about what Social Actions is up to, but we hope you’re here because something about this work feels important and empowering to you and we want to hear what that is and make sure that’s what we’re moving towards – making it easier, or perhaps just more possible, for you to do what seems most important in this causewired space.

So news to share from the Social Actions galaxy:

The number of kinds of online platforms and action sources for the Social Actions API continues to soar – well over 50 sites, now, plus Twitter and Delicious #takeaction tags. The most important update on this front, though, is that there’s an open, inclusive API that continues to grow and reflect an increasingly global cloud of actions. GiveIndia, Greater Good South Africa, the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition from the UK were all in the most batch of additions. Back at the start of the year, in envisioning what we wanted 2009 to hold for Social Actions, internationalizing the Social Actions API was near the top of the list, and it feels great to see that happening.

The number of APIs out there continues to grow, too, and we’re continuing to make it as easy as possible for every action source to not only tap into the Social Actions API but others that are available, too. One of these of course is the All for Good API, which I’ll mention by name so it doesn’t feel like the elephant in the room . That was disappointing, to not be included that project’s development, but there’s a great deal we can do and are doing to coordinate not only our two APIs but others as well, and Peter’ll describe all of that tech-activity in a couple of minutes.

On the distribution side, the Change the Web Challenge was a phenomenal success, thanks to Joe Solomon’s amazing stewardship: a dozen sponsors; $10,000 in prizes; 35 fully functional applications to distribute the Social Actions API across the web; 100 members of the Social Actions Developers Google group keeping up on ways to make even more applications – just a fantastic project that continues to create ripple effects.

And we hung out our consulting sign in February. We haven’t been blogging about or talking about this work publicly much, but there are some fantastic projects that more people should know about. We’ll share more news about these shortly, but let us know if you have any questions about this part of our work.

One of those projects – we consider it a consulting project even though seed funding came from the Peery Foundation – is the Social Entrepreneur API (quick description ~ see http://www.socialentrepreneurapi.org).

Along the way, Peter especially has been sharing Social Actions story and commitment to building this open, philanthropic web literally around the world – keynotes or plenary or panel speaking opps at Connecting Up in Australia, the Semantic Technology Conference and Nonprofit Technology Conference in the Bay Area, My Charity Connects – part of Net Change Week – in Toronto. There’ve been online opportunities, too – the discussion on competition and collaboration on Social Edge is still going on, and Peter and I coauthored our first article for a peer-reviewed journal – July’s issue of the Open Source Business Review, which will be published online later this week.

Also along the way, the My Social Actions network has grown to 1,300 members, which is crazy and inspiring and makes us wonder what we could or should be doing to empower a real community there. Which is a great segway into the forward-looking, visioning, strategizing part of the call!

Looking ahead (Peter)

The only update I would add to Christine’s description: we’ve been working with Mozilla on the Mozilla Service Week project – to come up with the concept, identify partners, reach out to them, engage the Mozilla community in technology service. Many of you on the call will receive an email from me or Mike Everett-Lane in the next few weeks inquiring on the role you could play in making the Mozilla Service Week a huge success (http://www.mozilla.com).

As far as Social Actions being in the middle of 2009 and having a chance to step back – I’m fortunately not going anywhere in the next few months. Will be planting myself into Montreal and working on some important long-term strategic and development. First and foremost, Social Actions needs to be doing more of presenting itself as a resource to the sector, for amplifying the impact that our partners are making. Traditionally Social Actions partners have been considered the action sources that we work with – you can review all of their profiles at http://www.socialactions.com/meet-the-platforms -- but I think there’s an opportunity over the summer to broaden our definition of partners to reflect the full range of groups we work with and amplify. Include for example foundations that participate in the Social Entrepreneur API, Mozilla, and the Case Foundation who we did some work with earlier this year in a consulting capacity.

Then there are our projects and I don’t think they’re fully visible from a new person’s perspective. The Social Actions API, which is a core flagship project we oversee and manage, and we have a collection of other projects that are hugely exciting – the Social Entrepreneur API, Mozilla Service Week, all of the applications that build off of the Social Actions API, initiatives like the Change the Web Challenge or blog series we did on embedded philanthropy, and our push for creating an open standards for the philanthropic web – what we refer to as the Open Actions XML schema – we consider that a project and feel it needs more visibility in our material and our website. If you can think of Social Actions as composed of projects and partners, I think we have a lot of work to do over the summer on the website, to reflect that focus and really present ourselves as a mature open source project that has a lot of momentum and that is having a tremendous impact through the partnerships and project it gets involved with, which would be really consistent with my message at My Charity Connects: your people are your impact. Our partners are our impact, and the projects we work on. We’ll be reaching out to all of you to restructure our website to reflect all of that work. I’ll be interested in knowing how each of you might want to be involved in that redesign.

Jason, our lead developer created a plugins functionality for our API. Allows us to look at any data that’s out there, publishing opportunities to take action, and transfer that data to our schema for aggregation and distribution. One of the things we’ll be doing in July is building plugins for the All for Good API, Kiva API, GlobalGiving API, etc. so that we can aggregate really rich information about actions without needing these groups to integrate with and adopt the Open Actions XML schema. That’s a tremendous development; I’m not doing full justice to its funcationality; you’ll see us promoting it in the next few weeks.

I attended the Semantic Technology Conference in San Francisco. The idea of a linked open data cloud completely blew my mind. Seems there’s an opportunity to present and plug into this linked dataset a node that relates to action. This would allow any site that publishes any kind of information to seamlessly query the action data cloud and import actions from our partners around the world. Going to have to figure out what the linked open data cloud is about and how Social Actions can contribute. You’ll see some leadership from us on that. It’s really cutting edge, bleeding edge as Ehren described it. The project’s being overseen by the WC3, the group that invented the web, created the initial standards for the web.

There are other conversations we want to embrace – standards, transition in how nonprofits work and engage people. We want to draw attention to them and participate as much as possible.

To fuel all of this – a news alert, although not signed sealed and delivered – there is major support coming to Social Actions in the form of a grant/services agreement. Participant Media’s TakePart network will be providing a hefty sum to make sure our lights stay on and to make sure that our contributions to the open standards conversation move forward. I’m looking forward to being able to announce this support in more detail as soon as the kinks are worked out. [Yay!] Yes, this is huge. Social Actions is a bus that’s been running on financial fuel; will be nice to add some financial fuel to the mix as well.

And of course need community support, input, direction, to make sure that this initiative that grew out of NetSquared becomes a movement to build the philanthropic web.

Open discussion

Celine: I was lucky to sit down with Peter at semantic technology conference – it really is "bleeding edge." The Linked Open Data cloud is pretty huge and important. As technology and the web grow, it’s been a web of people and pages. Now, companies are uploading data to the cloud to be able to link the data. The New York Times will be uploading their entire corpus. The data cloud connects related data so that if someone is building a site or application or coding something, they can draw directly on the taxonomies that are already developed. Someone trying to find out about philanthropic activity in any location would be able to draw from the cloud and find data from the New York Times or Social Actions. There’s no action-oriented taxonomy right now. The opportunity for Social Actions to drive this is huge. When it comes to setting standards – in two years when people figure out that this cloud is important, Social Actions will already be the de facto leader. Very exciting, Peter.

Christine: I can imagine creating a Social Actions task force, or something like that, for people who want to participate in Social Actions work in that area.

Ehren: What Peter and I talked about with open data cloud is very interesting. As was mentioned, it’s an idea that’s been around for a while, but it’ll be a critical mass issue – people jumping in and contributing to it. What’s interesting to me, Zemanta and others are doing a really good job not using keywords, but using uniquely identified topics that people using different languages can tie into. A friend, Jake, and I are getting into – instead of searching for actions – we’re getting into the problem of searching for people based on their actions. Even if the action isn’t very detailed, trying to get location, topic, and areas of expertise down, and then locating people who have identified themselves as resources for that area.

Jason: The Social Actions API is already really far ahead in term of semantic technology. We’ve designed the API to be really easy to figure out. Haven’t looked into linked open data much yet, but looking forward to.

Peter: Was reassured by Ivan of WC3 that it’s a simple step, publishing in RDS. We’re already, as you say, ahead of the game in being prepared to take these steps. Need to get caught up with help from Wc3 and Zemanta. Also exciting – using freebase – we have our twitter action pack with 30 feeds of actions, but sometimes the actions that show up aren’t what you expect. If we can know for sure that actions are in the right issue area, those twitter feeds will be of higher quality. This topic we’ll get into more deeply during Friday’s developer call.

Christine: Social Actions is about actions where the Social Actions API is concerned, now with the Social Entrepreneur API we’re creating resources for finding people. It sounds like these resources will help us create resources that meet in the middle, so there’s less of a divide. Tom, an invitation to chime in. Social Actions caught your attention long ago. Any big picture thoughts on where Social Actions is heading, could be heading, to make sure we’re contributing to a CauseWired sector you could get really excited about?

Tom: First, congratulations on TakePart’s support. Setting technical things aside – which I think is going brilliantly – I still think there’s need for more public conversation in this CauseWired/Social Actions sector. Even though some of the platforms are talking to each other at conferences, there’s room for more and I think Social Actions should be seen not only as a leader on the development side of things but a real leader in the conversation. That’s there to be done, and the experience you bring to the table having negotiated these waters over the past several years is invaluable and contrasts to the top-down efforts we’ve seen come along recently. Picked up at Personal Democracy Forum, that you should be aware of: Think-Social.org, launched by Jamie Daves (?), believe he has some ties if not directly to the Participant Media crowd. I’ll be talking with them and looking for ways to introduce you. They want to create a big conversation, maybe host an awards process or event. I don’t think they should be competing with the NTEN, TechSoup, etc. I think that space is very well served, and there isn’t much to add there. If they want to be of service, some of the more blended new things that are coming along are where the action is. The attention they might be able to generate would be helpful to Social Actions.

Peter: Great. If I could address your point – when we think of the Social Actions API and what it provides the platforms, we think of click-throughs, drawing attention to actions and the platforms behind them. But we also provide them with the support they need to do what they do better. Means introductions to other partners, partnering into initiatives like Mozilla Service Week, etc. We should take these conversations on what an offline event should look like –

Tom: I think so, too, and it doesn’t have to be a big-ticket item to get started. It can almost be like the way Social Actions got started. We can talk about that, although there’s probably some sponsorship money available.

Peter: I like what Allen Gun says – under-promise and over-deliver. Perhaps the first few could take the form of a barcamp or unconference.

Tom: Although could probably get some good speakers… a bit of both, perhaps a new kind of conference.

Peter: Social Actions would very much love to help convening that group with CauseWired and others, because if our partners are our impact, it’s not just delivering eyeballs that will create that impact. This is what we’re going to be spending the summer figuring out: how do we explain that deep commitment to our partners, and then moving the sector in the direction we were discussing on the recent Social Edge discussion.

Christine: Thinking about Tori and Amy and Megan – where I hope your passions overlap with what you’ve seen Social Actions do, is in creating this space where the stories are celebrated, whether it’s your story Tori in creating Lend4Health; Amy your work in celebrating the nonprofit organizations that are involved and connecting them with the philanthropic web if you want to call it that, or just this social media universe, to have the impact they want to have; Megan, the interviews you’ve shared with us, you clearly have an interest in exploring globally how people’s lives are being changed because of these services and conversations that Social Actions is leading. There are only 10 minutes left on the call but I’d love to fill the space with hearing from you about what you wish we could be doing, would love to see us creating and amplifying even further in those areas.

Megan: What I really like about Social Actions – it’s very accessible, not complicated. It’s easy to connect with people with similar issues, and I like that when you login you can easily see what’s been happening over the last couple of hours. Visually, very accessible.

Amy: What Christine and I were talking about the other day, was about pushing the stories, so it’s not just about the infrastructure and the technical opportunity that has been created by Social Actions, but also sharing stories about new partners – who they are and what they do – and make that story focused about them with maybe a little paragraph that says, “This platform is a part of Social Actions” but it’s really a post about that group. To take that further, not just to say that Social Actions is about it’s partners but show that it is: there could be a webinar series – do you want to learn about these things. For example, today’s webinar is about Kiva – actual people who have used it, people who have benefited from it. Social Actions is putting this on, by the way, but really exciting ways to tell the stories of the partners and the people that are actually changing the world via those partners.

Peter: Featuring Ehren, for example, and the applications he’s creating.

Amy: Exactly.

Peter: Love it.

Celine: Awesome idea.

Tori: Interesting, because I’m just putting the finishing touches on another blog post. I love having that space to blog on. It’s not like blogging on Lend4Health. It’s a very different audience. I feel like I get to take a vacation from Lend4Health when I’m blogging there. What I love about Social Actions is that it’s going to help Lend4Health. I have limited money and time, I’m at the point where I need a lot more eyes on Lend4Health but am not able to make that happen all myself. Having you guys doing what you’re doing, putting Lend4Health in front of other people, is exactly what I need. Keep doing what you’re doing because it’s exactly what I need.

Peter: Eyeballs, yes, but we can provide other services as well. We have so much to bring to bear to make sure your initiative is a success. Let me put more thought into that.

Tori: You’re already being so helpful. You’re basically giving me free consulting.

Megan: I think I’ve done a number of interviews just from people I’ve met on Social Actions, just over the past four weeks.

Peter: That’s wonderful. We have just a few minutes left. I don’t want to use that time to schedule another call, but want you to know we will be scheduling these regularly. They’re incredibly supportive, I’m feeling the excitement and the interest in what we’ve created here. We’ll be looking to schedule these biweekly or triweekly. I’ll close with just a thought, something that’s shocking to me: Social Actions could be evolving into a foundation. It’s shocking because I’m in personal debt and Social Actions is just barely not in debt. But in providing support of all kinds for our partners, and creating projects that profile them, this is peer-to-peer but also foundation-esque as we identify initiatives to support. This cascading effect, it isn’t hierarchical, but ripples. When we relaunch our website and can relay that rippling impact, very exciting to think we’ll be articulating that over the next several weeks.

Christine: Thank you, Peter. We’ll have a full hour Friday to get into some of the technical issues covered here and more updates from Jason. On My Social Actions there are feedback tabs now. Keep the feedback coming. Let us know what could be added to or even taken away so it becomes even more intuitive. Amy, I really heard your message that we have not just be saying we’re about our partners and their stories but we have to BE about that. So whether we have to create resources for that or as a group get out of our own way for those stories to be told, we’ll be doing careful exploration of that, too. Tori, looking forward for your next blog post. Thank you for sharing those with us. Celine, thanks for the words of wisdom and I know there are more to come. Tom, thank you for the visioning. Ehren and Jason, thank you both. Goodbye for now, but before the end of July we’ll be scheduling a call and look forward to keeping in touch in the meantime.

:end