If your group is ready to organize, DemocracyInAction is ready to help! DemocracyInAction is a nonprofit dedicated to building a strong progressive infrastructure through effective online organizing. They’ve just launched the Occupy Wall Street Empowers Grant!

DIA will award “Salsa” – their organizing platform for nonprofits – to five organizations that demonstrate the ability to effectively organize. The first grant was awarded to Occupy Philly already! The deadline to submit is Tuesday, November 15th.

Grants will waive setup and monthly fees for one year. Groups not selected for an Empowers Grant are eligible for a $500 award towards Salsa.

Get the full details and apply for your grant today!

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• The Revolutions Were Tweeted: Visualizing Prominent Information Flows during the Tunisia and Egypt Revolutions – This is a very cool visualization from danah boyd pulling together twitter accounts and displaying tweets, reactions, and much more. Really interesting to see the combination of various kinds of information sources – from traditional media outlets to individuals.
• Too Many Messages and Only One Facebook Page: April 6th Movement in Post-Mubarak Egypt | technosociology – Check out this great guest post by Susannah Vila on the technosociology blog! "This post draws from over 30 in-depth, semi structured interviews conducted with coordinators of and participants in the Egyptian revolution between March and August 2011."
• A Roundup of Valuable Twitter Tools – Noupe – A great round up of Twitter tools – some great long-time favorites and some newer tools. Any others you'd add? "It is hard to argue against the value of Twitter these days, especially for businesses and professionals looking to network and stay ahead of the curve. Like the throngs of designers and developers that have flooded this social media outlet’s streams and sapped its API since its inception. And with so many amazing tools available to expand on, and enhance the overall user’s experience, Twitter is becoming even more useful and handy than ever before."
• How Much Money Do Americans Give Online? [INFOGRAPHIC] – "Everyone says it’s hard to measure social good success. Well, non-profit consultancy Convio begs to differ. The firm recently put out an infographic showing that the Internet is the fastest-growing channel for non-profits. The graphic compares money raised, awareness gained and a variety of other factors across a three-year period. Since 2008, non-profits have cracked the $1 billion mark for online fundraising. In 2010, the average online gift jumped up to $91.94."
• Five Ways for Human Service Nonprofits to Reset their Funding Models – "…most nonprofits have in effect two customers— the beneficiaries they are supporting, and the funders who are paying for the work. In most instances (unlike business) these are not the same parties. … But this is a balance that very few nonprofits manage to strike; the lion’s share of their energy and focus goes into their program model, not their funding model. The big empirical finding runs counter to the conventional wisdom that nonprofits need to diversify their funding across multiple funding sources— foundations, high net worth donors, small individual contributors, corporate philanthropy, government, etc.— in order to grow and become more sustainable. What we have found instead is that for the vast majority of large nonprofits, especially for those with budgets of $50 million and up, it pays to focus, not diversify across different sources."

Lessons and Opportunities for Supporting Technology Innovation

 In the innovation marketplace, adoption is the only currency that matters.

As the speed at which new ideas can step out on the stage continues to increase, it is less about finding a great idea and pitching it for support. Ultimately, it’s the adoption by the community that matters in the long-run, and now can be proven even in the short-term. The advantage of the technology sector is that even if it is rudimentary or preliminary functionality, you can expose a new idea/tool/app/platform to the community from the very beginning, getting their feedback and support. This can help prove the value and need, as well as begin the iteration and development with the community’s engagement from the beginning.

Look to fund projects, not products.

The infrastructure that supports new innovations and social enterprise requires capacity, just like any other organization. Likewise, what we have as far as a product on Day 1, could and should look different on Day 15 and Day 50 and Day 500. Funding projects instead of just a specific product ensures that organizations or teams can fail quickly and softly while working towards something better, can invest in research and evaluation, and engage the community not just market to them.

Recognize the role of technology across all our work.

Technology is a catalyst for data, analysis, scalability, effectiveness and efficiency. It is not something confined to an “IT department” any more as everyone (if we are looking at a nonprofit, for example, staff use the website, database, email marketing, etc.) can be harnessing technology to improve their work and impact. As such, we need to invest in raising the level of technology education and understanding across the social impact space so that the organizational catalysts, those in a nonprofit that are not in the IT department but would be the ones engaging with the community or program, have enough technological familiarity that they can recognize the value and opportunity for adopting a new application or tool and implementing it in their organization. After all, the potential to scale one entrepreneur or organization’s new application is hugely tied to the numbers of organizations and communities that can adopt it and spread it.

Focus on why, not if, something works.

To work on scale and replication of any tool, we have to understand why it is working now, not just whether it is or isn’t. Once we know why it is working, we can know if it is even able to scale or the success is tied too closely to the specific segment already engaged. We can also look at the why to understand the ecosystem for new or complimentary tools. Supporting analysis and evaluation may not sound as exciting to your board as funding a new tool, but it can be at least as important!

Let the community drive the innovations you want to support.

As it turns out, the community knows far more about itself than you do (unless you are actually part of that community, of course!). So, look for opportunities to be a catalyst, supporting an environment for the community to help itself. As a recent MIT study showed, communities were better able to align aid with those that needed it than objective measures were to assigning that same support, and they felt far better about it. The same has been true in my experience with supporting new technologies.

Debunking Myths About Funding Tech Innovation

After the panel remarks, there was some great discussion with questions from participants. One question was raised, and I want to share my response as it is something I’ve been asked by foundations and philanthropists before: what are the biggest mistakes funders can make when supporting tech innovation? I have three key myths to highlight:

“Money is Gold”

For many projects, money is obviously a key ingredient to staying afloat and going forward. But so often, supports (whether financial supporters or other sponsors/partners) overlook the power their endorsement carries. Sometimes what is really needed is a recommendation, or an introduction, or a stamp of approval publicly. When projects are small, involve people that haven’t yet “created something” to get their name out there, a few thousand dollars is important, but so is your support.

“History is Enough”

Just because some person created Facebook, doesn’t mean their next idea will be the “next Facebook.” Obviously that’s an exaggeration. But what I’m really getting at is that the it shouldn’t matter whether someone or some team has created the coolest, shiniest, sexiest application in the past, but whether they can show their new application addresses a real need (and isn’t just another random “solution”) and has community interest. We are all learning from the success and failure of others in this sector, so a first try or a 50th try shouldn’t be the deciding factor.

“New is Better”

If there are funds to give out, they may as well be for something new, right? Not always. Sometimes the funds could actually go much further towards scale and impact by supporting a project that already has a tool but can use your support to fund staff and time to create documentation or clean up code so that it can be released to the open source community, or (as said above) quality investigation can go into the why of it’s success. Looking at deeper or wider can be more exciting than just new.

I’d love to hear your ideas, experiences and additions to these remarks though and especially any examples you have!

Image credit: Flickr opensourceway

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Social Media: What I Learned This Year | Millennial Marketing – Carol Phillips has a great post recapping what she learned about social media in 2009, including: "Effective use of Social Media requires enthusiasm and diligence." Read all of the lessons Carol learned – and I'd love to hear what you learned!
• NonProfit 2.0 UnConference and holiday discount | NetSquared, an initiative of TechSoupGlobal.org – NonProfit 2.0 Unconference is coming to Washington, D.C., February 12, 2010, and promises to be "more than just a conference on the next generation web." Plus, if you register soon you can get a 20% discount! Simply use "HolidayDiscount" when you register for the Nonprofit 2.0 Unconference here: http://nonprofit20.eventbrite.com/?discount=
• Yahoo! Will Kill MyBlogLog Next Month – "Five years to the month after it was founded, cross-blog social networking widget MyBlogLog will be closed down by Yahoo! in January, we're hearing from sources close to the project. MyBlogLog is a service that shows blog writers and readers the faces and profile information of other MyBlogLog users that visit their sites." I've used MyBlogLog on this blog as a chance for readers visiting the website to be welcomed by the faces of fellow readers, and not just me; I think, as is explained in this article from ReadWriteWeb, that the MyBlogLog service opened the door to some very interesting uses of community data and will be watching the developments on its future closely.
• Fundraising Sources for Social Entrepreneurs – December 2009 Edition – "Each month Ashoka compiles a list of fundraising and other resources for Ashoka Fellows. These opportunities are typically open to all sorts of social entrepreneurs as well. Download the December 2009 version of this list here. (Also available in French and Spanish)."
• Wikispaces Blog " Blog Archive " How Non-Profits Are Using Wikis – The Wikispaces Blog has some great examples of organizations using wikis in their work. "This month, we bring you some great examples of how non-profits are using wikis. Read on to see how wikis help these organizations reach out to their communities, manage volunteers, create resources, and more."

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• FT.com / Weekend columnists / Tim Harford – Perhaps microfinance isn’t such a big deal after all – "Last December, I showed some unwitting prescience by worrying about a backlash against microfinance, the practice of providing small loans – or perhaps savings products or insurance – to poor people. I fretted that there was little compelling evidence that it worked. A year later, the evidence is arriving and the backlash has begun. The Boston Globe published an article in September, subtitled, “Billions of dollars and a Nobel Prize later, it looks like ‘microlending’ doesn’t actually do much to fight poverty.” " – I'm interested to hear what you all think about this issue, especially now during the 'giving season.'
• Open Source Is Dead! Long Live Open Source! | NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network – "That's right, I said it. Promise to read the rest of this before you send me hate mail, though. What I mean is that open source, as we knew it, is dead. For the last decade, what we've been talking about when we say "open source" is "open code" — a set of zeroes and ones that we can configure to our heart's desire."
• Net2 Think Tank Round-Up: Best of 2009 | NetSquared, an initiative of TechSoupGlobal.org – Check out the diverse submissions to the December Net2 Think Tank that simply asked for the best blog posts of 2009! I'm sure there are some resources, conversations and pointers in here that are new to everyone.
• What Matters Now eBook – Get the ebook now for free! "We want to shake things up. More than seventy extraordinary authors and thinkers contributed to this ebook. It's designed to make you sit up and think, to change your new year's resolutions, to foster some difficult conversations with your team."
• Orchestras and Social Media Survey: Key Findings and Full Report | Dutch Perspective by Marc van Bree – "In short, the survey found that social media activities, familiarity and usage seem to be widespread among orchestras. Managers find social media important and organizations are generally enthusiastic. However, the efforts are far from organized and strategic. It seems many orchestras are dipping their feet in the social media pool, but do not have the policies, budgets, and metrics in place to effectively use the tools at their disposal, even if they do recognize the need for checks and balances."

Social Innovation Camp: the story so far.  Started with an idea two years ago that the web is important because it helps people organize for themselves and impacts how we make things work; but in order to make that happen you have to bring people together who are interested in making it real.  We are all about moving ideas into something that might work and do so by running competitions and weekend-long prototyping events.  Think about 5 things: what’s the problem, what technology you’ll use, design sustainability, how will people come to use it and how will you distribute it.  Award a prize to those that show most potential.  Have run 3 competitions so far with over 300 ideas submitted.

Note: the “I” in the following is my capture of Anna speaking.

What We’ve Learnt

1. From cliques to talent scouts

A great idea is nothing unless you have people to get it off the ground, and those people may be anyone with certain attributes:

• people who can bring an insight
• practical optimists, can see things being different in the future (have to go find them)

We need to move away from “social entrepreneurs” and “socail innovation” towards “solve problems” and “make stuff” so that it’s more accessible.  It took us a while to learn this!  The first competition we had a slick website and everything else and had barely any submissions.  So, we went to talk people about it.  We brought people together around the same kind of idea and the buzz in the room was incredible, people realized they didn’t have to just complain about something but about making things the way you want.  So, we learned from that and now are conversation driven.  Our competitions are talent scouted: we go out and talk to as many people as possible, run workshops and trainings and get people to think about what they might solve and then submit.  I think we pay a lot of lip service to “user centered design” and so on, but sometimes we are talking about many different worlds colliding and a number of them are very problem focused and then solution focused groups.  So, when you have top-down definition of what you’re interested in and then bottom up creation it doesn’t work.  Create a “tentacle-based” approach.

2. From paperwork to relationships

That’s a lot of work. Is it worth it to go talk to all of those people and so on?  What we are doing when we talent scout isn’t just about creating a pool of projects but about starting relationships.  Normal application processes are very good for people who are good at writing or following a system.  But, are proposal based approaches good for finding people who are going to start new things?  Instead, you start to build relationships with individuals – find interesting people and working with them in incremental ways and build trust. And then find people to support and fund; particularly important when funding entirely new things.  It’s hard for those people to say what their impact will be when it’s something so new, so it’s hard as a support organization to believe in the project.  But, as a support organization that knows you are an interesting implementer of good stuff, it’s easier to make the decision to support them.  We do this through scouting and in the weekends as they are high pressure and fund and collaborative so you can really, really see how people work.  I think the world works like this anyway, we just don’t admit it.  What we should be doing is appreciating that and design systems that take into consideration the ways humans work.  This is how the investment world works: based on relationships and trust.

3. From advisors to connectors

What’s next?  What do you need other than money?  We asked our prototype projects what else they need. The answer was they need advice.  Organizations that are trying to support people to do new things know this.  What I’m suggesting is 2 things: first, giving all the advice yourself is not efficient or entirely valuable, so you should grow a community around the ideas where they connect; and second, the advice you need as a radically new group/project is very different as there aren’t models or examples, so the only way these projects will work is by changing behavior… How comfortable we are with meeting people offline we only know online, how we share personal data, etc.  These changes will have to happen in order for these projects to work.  Rather than having standard business advice but a place where they can experiment.  The way we move from advisors to connectors is that at the weekends where we get the great ideas, we go out and try to find people who can help them and bring them there.  Building an audience around the 6 ideas for the weekend.  If you come to a weekend, you come out with a training experience.

4. From grants to venturing

How do we change the different ways we distribute money?  Not about finding people to give it to or the decision process, but the different financial instruments we could use.  Early stage ideas need early stage risk capital and there’s a gap in providing that.  Something to show that a really good radical idea has a good chance.  We also have to find new sustainable ways to fund projects. Fundraise, grant, spend – it’s not efficient.  Finally, a lot of new ideas, the newness is the business model.  It needs a different way to be funded.  Need finance that’s responsive to business models that aren’t charities or companies.

What might that look like?

What if we ran a larger SICamp process that formed small teams around packaged ideas and take teams of 2-3 people and choose 10 groups and each a 15,000 stipend wherein they come and work in a shared space for 3 months.  Set targets and help to accelerate project development and build community.  At the end of the 3 months we have a demo day with possible funders and we we take a finders fee and also pay-back for the 15,000 starter grant.  Potentially creating a sustainable way of starting projects and recycling your capital.  It already exists in projects like Y Combinator.  We think it would be interesting to start a Y Combinator for social projects here in the UK.

I don’t think that’s the answer to everything.  You have to design your support process around the people you are working with.  What can we do with groups like Kiva?  What if we used that system to find projects to fund?  Or what about KickStarter’s model with pledging/small contributions/crowdsourcing?  What if we applied that to the NHS?  4ip is already doing some of this stuff, too, and it’s really interesting.

This talk was inspired by lots of conversations with people who are looking for support for an idea AND interesting people and organizations looking for projects to support.  There has to be an opportunity there!

“In recent days, Causes has left MySpace and IdeaBlob has shutdown. To some, these events were unimportant. In reaction to the Causes announcement, Economist bureau chief Matthew Bishop tweeted “Who knew it was on MySpace?” to which New York Times reporter Stephanie Strom tweeted back “No kidding.”

But to many people active in online social action communities, these events had deeper meaning. This is a guest post from Amy Sample Ward, NetSquared’s Global Community Development Manager.”

—–

There’s something in the wind, other than in-coming winter, that has my attention.  It’s something I can only wrap my mind around by talking to others and hope that this is a chance to further a very important conversation.

First, let’s start at the beginning:

Causes Leaves MySpace

Two weeks ago, Causes, the application that lets individuals and organizations campaign and fundraise, removed itself and all Causes-related content/data from MySpace.  (Read more about Causes leaving MySpace here.)

This separation came with no public announcement, either before the move or when it happened, except for a very short email sent a couple days beforehand to account administrators as a warning.  The message explained that Causes would be focusing on only providing service to the Facebook platform, encouraging any MySpace users that wanted to continue using the application to migrate, too.

and then…

ideablob Shuts Down

By now, you may have heard about the very abrupt closedown of ideablob, a competition and promotion platform for entrepreneurs.    Late last week, registered users, interested supporters and social changemakers participating in a funding competition were all greeted with the message below when visiting the ideablob website:

Users (whether they were people with a project in the competition, those that had voted to support an idea, or were general registered users of the site) received no notice that the closure was coming, or even when it happened. The only bread crumbs to find were some business reports about Advanta declaring bankruptcy, like this one, that don’t even mention ideablob.

Here’s a bit of John Brennan‘s story (an ideablob member who was competition in the competition) from his comment on my original blog post:

“It’s upsetting that companies like this aren’t actually thinking or caring about the real people and ideas they are effecting. This week our idea was up for the sprint and in the top 3. Why did they even start the competition when they already were going through bankruptcy talks?”

and so…

The Conversation

What’s this mean to you as an activist, supporter, volunteer, changemaker, entrepreneur, innovator or *insert preferred title* online? Well, it means a lot.  We can see (and learn a valuable lesson about) the way current ecosystem of social media works in regards to transparency, data, and community.  To unpack this, let’s narrow in on each:

Transparency
The lack of communication about the actual decision, but more so in the lack of communication about the development, direction and intention of Causes and ideablob indicates that transparency isn’t a part of the package.  There are many who approach the online landscape with very different views than their offline business decisions.  For example, if ideablob or Causes were a product offline, and you were a funder, an investor, or a consumer/user of ideablob or Causes as offline products providing no integral communication, you would probably not have ever considered participating/consuming.   Just because you aren’t meeting offline, in real-time, in the same room with your supporters and the competitors in the ideablob competition, does not mean likewise that you do not need to know if the platform will even be around for your competition to finish.

The transparency issue is a steep mountain to climb with social media.  Unless you knew that ideablob was part of Advanta, and you were reading the business sections of the papers last week, you wouldn’t have had any idea ideablob was even considering discontinuing.  But, transparency is even more than this, and really is a part of the Data and Community, too.

Data
We can count our Twitter followers or how many people have commented on our blog post, or could have counted the number of supporters on Causes or voters on ideablob, but that doesn’t mean we connect with them.  Now that Causes removed itself, it’s content, and any related data from MySpace, organizations cannot connect with their supporters who were using Causes.  ideablob particpants are locked out from seeing any comments or feedback on their ideas.  The fact that access to data, whether it’s supporters’ email addresses, tracking actions taken, or anything else, is instantly gone should be a big alert bell to those working in a “networked” way via social media to grow their community. To connect with supporters, organizations and individuals working on projects will need to be sure that data gets back to them.

How are you encouraging your supporters all over the web to connect with you directly?  For example, when you post a message (whether it’s on Twitter, Facebook, or even Change.org) telling your supporters that you’re ramping up for some big news, a new project or something else, include a link where they can sign up with you to be on the email/announcement list.  When supporters sign a petition or take action on your organization’s behalf in social media platforms, include “thank you” and “learn more” links wherever possible that link to ways to connect directly with your organization, ensuring the contact information is in your database, not just Facebook’s.

Community
In the Causes move, the issues around community are very clearly focused on the different demographic groups represented on MySpace and Facebook.  With ideablob, it isn’t so much that groups are being separated/segregated, but entirely shut off.  These events raise many questions and flags about diversity, opportunity, and even corporate decision-making.  Communities on both platforms were clearly not part of the development and communications process, yet they were actively using the platform (for example, a grant from ideablob helped Epic Change implement a technology lab in a school in Tanzania).

What is the difference between a community actively using a platform and one actively involved in the evolution of the platform?  If a platform were to disappear, would the community be able to continue on?  Perhaps so if it had been active in the development and direction (or, perhaps that would indicate that the platform would be more unlikely to disappear or at least not without notice)?

What’s Next

I don’t necessarily want to call for the communities on MySpace or on ideablob to call for the return of the tools. We can see by the issues raised above that the platforms weren’t necessarily operating in the best ethos anyway.  But, I do want an arena for the communities to describe what they do want and be an integral part of the process to building and sustaining whatever that is.

How can this work? I can’t speak for others working in the “innovation sector,” but at NetSquared we can’t emphasize enough that our Community is what drives us – whether’s it’s online or offline.  Community feedback shapes everything from our goals to our website and everything in between.  We are able to work as a small team on the organization side because of the passionate, collaborative, dedicated Community.

For example, you can follow the website redesign process via the blog where the feedback and directives for the redesign, the people who stepped up to implement, and the step-by-step process have all been open and Community centered.  This isn’t about creating a new splash page, this is involving the users in the design of the Gallery where their Projects are housed, showcased and voted on; involving bloggers in the design of the collaborative sharing space they contribute to already; involving Community members in telling us both the bad stuff and the good stuff, so we can work to make it everything they want.  As another example, the Net Tuesday network is now up 56+ groups meeting every month around the world—a global network of events, bringing the NetSquared Community together offline—and growing in an entirely organic way.

That doesn’t mean NetSquared’s perfect, by any measure, but it does mean that a quick abandonment isn’t in store.  That also doesn’t mean that NetSquared is the *only* or the *best* place for absolutely everyone to find what they are looking for.  It is, though, one example of trying to make it work.

Your invitation:  Join this conversation.  Tell me what the recent Causes/ideablob announcements means for our sector and for you.  And share your ideas with your friends and colleagues to further the breadth of the conversation.  The more voices the better!  Here are some places to start:

• Evaluate your use of social media tools: do you encourage your supporters on other platforms to register on your website, ensuring you have their contact details?
• Evaluate your community: are you reaching a diverse community or operating in a silo?
• Evaluate your relationship with developers: are you using tools that allow you to surface suggestions, ideas, and useful functionality for development? Do you know what the plans are for the tools you are using?