We all know the business-as-usual town hall meeting: Some experts talk a lot and during the 5 minutes allocated to public feedback or Q&A the most vocal members of the audience - often fundamentalists, completely captivated by their own agenda - get up to talk while the rest is left without a say. And while technology can't change the way those meetings happen , a lot of the progressive leaders we've met over the past are willing to reconsider. Not only them, but grassroots campaigns, community organizers or activists would all benefit from a simple way to collect feedback from large audiences. This is where TextTheMob.com comes to play: TextTheMob.com is a feedback tool for town hall meetings, conferences, workshops, campaigns etc. It enables users to collect feedback (polls and messages) from their audience via mobile phone. Responses are displayed on a screen or monitor in real-time.
While our tool itself doesn't make the world a better place, it's built to give the people that do a tool to easily harvest and act upon the wisdom of their crowds.

BMP is an experimental attempt to create a map of the business world that starts from critical information regarding certain companies, extends to their organizational structures, and spreads out to their shareholders, partners, etc.

Our database grows through two main efforts:

1. Searching for articles featuring a business element criticized for issues such as war profiteering, worker abuse and a bad environmental record, taking these companies and extracting all possible information on their business structure – including subsidiaries, affiliates, shareholders, owners and investments.

2. Charting as much of the general business world as possible, with an emphasis on household names and companies that supply common services and produce consumer products.

This growing map of the business world provides a scale by which to measure companies of interest, and to judge how much “blood money” runs through their corporate veins.

By looking up their preferred toothpaste brand, local gas stations, insurance company or stock portfolios, users will help in the effort to make BMP a comprehensive tool that covers much of the business world.

We hope to see ethical considerations become a stronger influence on shopping habits, and offer BMP as a research tool for professionals, activists, and consumers. Our view is that all our efforts in condemning these corporations are diminished when we end up buying their products, and that the public battle should be taken to the financial field. Instead of cooing at some of these companies when they pledge to make minor concessions, we should promote their best available competitors, and keep our grudge until the corporate climate and culture changes.

Those who want to contribute while traveling will be able to get the information and support they need; they will also be able to give back information and support needed by others.

The world will change because contributive travel will become easier and more commonplace: more contributive acts -> more good examples, more help given, traveler is better in touch with a community, community is better in touch with the traveler. we all learn, we all improve.  

Our country is facing the Iraq War, the War on Terror, the Drug War, environmental policies, support for Africa, education, and health.

Our congressional representatives are supposed to represent our interest, but are under increasing pressure from lobbyist, corporations, and big money. 

Govit is a website that is inspired to help balance the power, and get your voice heard on the issues.

•  On Govit you can learn about popular legislation, and discuss it
• Vote on legislation and have your vote sent instantly to your representatives
• Compare your votes to your representative and other members
• Connect with other members and rally support for issues

Givvy is a comprehensive online giving management system launching in early June. This is a real project with a dedicated team working without funding at this point.

Charitiable giving is personally and emotionally rewarding. By providing a framework and set of tools to improve the way we support our causes, Givvy users will feel more satisfied and successful with their giving.

Givvy is a system to enable donors to accomplish the following:

1. easily create and manage their giving plan
2. research over 1 million charities/nonprofits
3. execute their giving (donate thorugh Network for Good) and track donations made via other methods (mail, phone, etc.)
4. analyze their giving footprint - what types of charities, what geographic reach, how close their actual giving is to their plan, etc.

At Givvy we believe that better tools for giving can result in a better world.

This is a simple mashup using Network for Good’s donation API, with a particular focus on enhancing the donor experience with a virtualization of recent donations.

The NFG API mashed-up with a Google map would show all donations made to specific causes (by location) for a given time period over a US or World map.

This could be used on the homepage of Network for Good - to inspire others based on the action currently taking place.

If we join the user base of Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and AOL AIM, we have more than 300 million people around the world.
Plus, if we consider that the best method to communicate/inform about a cause is the mouth-to-mouth.
Then, we have the P2P Donation via Instant Messaging mashup.

My idea consist in a serie of Instant Messenger add-ons that permit the users donate and invite more users to get more information and
donate for a charity through the Network for Good API, giving quick and easy access to donation, and improving the donator experience.

The features of this add-ons are:
* Search for charities or volunteer oportunities
* Share/Tell your friends about a charity
* Make a donation for an specific charity
* Get news/information about the charities that you support
* Use Badges/images/icons for the charities that you support

Please, feel free to leave feedback/suggestions about this idea.

Topology Framework .NET is more a support to other projects aiming SEA and other GIS-related Environmental Protection and Community Improvement incentives.

Thousands of communities will be able to access data and map resources in their neighborhoods quickly, easily and at no cost to them. Advocates and service providers will be able to use a high-quality, well-designed, reliable platform for uploading data of their choosing and mapping that data against a wide range of demographic data, area resources, and other variables. This project will also allow nonprofit and community advocates across the U.S. to share and learn from each other how they can better use the power of mapping to advocate for and inform change. Not least, communities will be spared countless hours of effort and scarce dollars trying to build such tools from scratch, enabling them to focus more on the important work of finding the right data locally and interacting with people and organizations in their communities. The goal of our project is to make the public functionality of HealthyCity.org, the mapping tool we developed to serve Los Angeles, available throughout the U.S., free of charge, to nonprofit and community organizations. We believe this can be done in a fairly cost-effective and sustainable way, and we are looking for good thinking on how best to do it.
Examples of how Healthy City has worked in Los Angeles include:
- Mapping of overcrowded, multi-track calendar schools, to support a proposal of $25 billion in school construction bonds approved by California voters
- Analysis of areas of highest need for preschool facilities in Los Angeles, leading to over $100 million commitment of funds to develop preschool space
- Mapping of violent crimes and analysis of prevalence of gang crime, to identify priority areas for the City of Los Angeles
- Mapping the mismatch between concentrations of homeless people and availability of shelter space
- Grants analysis for foundations, including determining the location of grantees, the dimensions of their service areas (with information gathered by survey), and the magnitude of grant dollars relative to target population in grantees’ service areas

• Stories Matter. According to recent research by Wharton professor Deborah Small, stories are far better than statistics at generating an emotional response that inspires giving.
• Pictures = 1,000 Words. “Fund-raising appeals do best when they are crafted around a single gripping image." (The Chronicle of Philanthropy, 7/17/07)