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I’m really excited by tools that enable digital or transmedia storytelling. I think there’s huge potential for organizations to use multiple mediums, content, and locations to help document and advocate for the change they want in their communities and around the world. I recently attended the US launch event for Historypin is a new (and free) application for Android, iPhone, or the web that arranges photos, videos, and text in the context of time and location (leveraging the Google Maps API). I was so energized by the tool—both its current functionality and its potential for future application—that I downloaded the mobile (Android) version and started testing it on the spot. It’s been a few weeks now; I’ve used it to share photos from a work trip to Portland, Maine, and to explore my neighborhood in New York.

In the most basic terms, I see Historypin as the interface between people (you can be in the exact spot you’re looking at on the map, or around the world), places (the geography, the buildings), and things (the events, small and large, that change those people and places over time). It’s a way of interacting with other people, other places, and other times from anywhere you are. So how can social good organizations take advantage of an innovative tool like this? Here are some ideas:

Share Community History – Non-organizational community groups and nonprofits that focus on a specific locality can create hyperlocal community engagement through pictures and documentation. Do you have a hyperlocal online network/space? Encourage volunteers, program officers, donors, or other community members to become social reporters and document events in their neighborhood.

Promote Campaigns – Pull together information, data, and multimedia power (maps, photos, videos) to create a compelling, interactive campaign story for your nonprofit organization. Encourage community members to join, follow, or share their own related media, giving them a way to participate in and connect with the campaign.

Create Digital Classrooms – Education programs—schools, after-school programs, and youth-focused nonprofit—can work with established collections in the classroom; and students can document the area around their school to create their own collections, and potentially trade collections with other schools.

Create a Custom “Tour” – Your organization can arrange pieces of media and information so that they unfold in order—great for telling a story, or walking people through highlights or history of an area or place. People can follow along via the mobile application or the website. Museums, tour groups, and history societies could all make use of Historypin for sharing tours and routes, complete with images and stories. Nonprofits: What if you created a digital annual report that walked viewers through your service area, giving them a tour of your work and impact?

Go explore the map: Use the time slider and address search to wander around the world and check out the 51,000-plus photos already uploaded.

What other ways do you think this tool could be used to support the social sector? I’d love to hear your ideas.

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There’s been some interesting discussion about Apple, donations and This American Life‘s iPhone application lately that I want to touch on.  Not because I’m really all that invested in either pro- or anti- Apple camp, and not because I love This American Life (which I do – and yes, I have donated).  It’s because this is another example of how our tools are defining community.  (Last month’s post focused on that topic using Causes, Ideablob and Ning as references for the conversation.)  Let’s start at the beginning…

A recent conversation sparked on the Ars Technica blog focused on the use of push-notifications by the This American Life application on iPhones – the pop-up messages asked users to make a donation to the program as, it is, like other public radio/media, listener supported.  Personally, I don’t feel impassioned by the discussion because 1. notifications, pop-ups, and the ins-and-outs of what works with apps are still being figured out, 2. the user is always in control to either turn off notifications, uninstall apps, or give feedback (all of which contributes to the developers’ learning about what works and what doesn’t), and 3. public media is all about donations.

A few days ago, Jake Shapiro’s guest post appeared on the Ars Technica blog acknowledging the conversation about push-notifications but diving deeper into the real issues around the This American Life application.  This is where things start to spark for me.  In Jake’s post, he notes that Apple is essentially denying nonprofits “the most powerful direct-payment platform in the mobile marketplace” by denying access to 1-click payments. Jake suggests:

One option would be allowing in-app donations using Apple’s payment infrastructure, but this immediately runs into the next deal-breaking issue: Apple’s 30 percent cut is untenable for charities and nonprofits, and for the donors themselves.

This is where we really start to touch on the issues around the tools we use defining how we can build and connect with our communities. Taking a 30% cut of donations seems incredible.  I can’t imagine organizations or donors feeling comfortable with that deal.  As I said before, “Market” does not equal “Community”. Here’s Jake again:

I suspect the deeper reasons for Apple’s uncharitable stance is that the nonprofit and education markets are just that—“markets” that represent hundreds of millions of dollars of annual revenue to Apple in the form of computer, software, iPod, and now iPhone and iPad sales.

Part of what sparked my exploration of this topic a year ago was the way Causes left MySpace, without public notice and leaving organizations unconnected to supporters. Though I would love to see many improvements to Causes, they are getting better about connecting the benefiting organizations with the donors and campaigners supporting them.  Apple, though, seems to have a cripplingly closed system; here’s Jake:

The other issue gets to Apple’s broader competitive approach. If Apple permitted donations by users, it might have to change another restrictive policy: passing certain individual information to app owners/developers and content providers. Currently app developers get zero data from Apple about who buys and uses their apps, just a flat report of total downloads and resulting revenue if it’s a paid app.

In order for organizations to cultivate community, thank donors and supporters, and encourage deeper engagement, they need to be able to say thank you directly, provide opportunities to donate directly, and capture information, registration or other sign-ups directly.  The key here is that the platform (the phone) and the provider (Apple) do not represent hurdles that make that “direct” connection and action impossible.

The example of This American Life‘s application shows the crippling power that tools and providers can have on the way organizations want to define what community means and what kind of options for engagement organizations want to provide to their community.  It sparked Beth Kanter to question whether Apple or Andriod is more nonprofit friendly.

What does it mean to you? How are your tools defining the way you can work or the way you can engage with your community?

Join the Conversation

Details:

• Date: Tuesday, March 10th
• Time: 11 am – 12 pm PST
• RSVP: be sure to RSVP to receive the link to the chat before the event

Featured Guests:
Ben Rigby & Jacob Colker, TheExtraordinaries
Rich Grote & Dave Angulo, iVolunteer

Moderator: Amy Sample Ward, NetSquared

The community will be invited to ask questions, share examples & ideas, and in general rock the discussion.  This session is inspired by Britt Bravo’s great post iPhone Apps for Nonprofits.

“iPhones for Good” is part of the Change the Web Conversation Series, a series of open chats that explore specific technology platforms for good, running concurrent with the Change the Web Challenge.