Hi Net2, Here's another article on the social networking potential of group fundraising campaigns. 

I wrote up the text in December, but haven't had a chance to post it until now.   The ideas re still relevant, even if Idealist.org has started to move in the right direction with its Imagine project.

Leave comments below, and I'll be sure to respond to them.  -Peter

Craigslist, Idealist.org and the Rise of Philanthropy Classifieds

For a brief period in 2006, everything I owned, earned, and enjoyed in life seemed to come from a classified ad on either Craigslist or Idealist.org.

Back in August, Britt wrote about the wiki we built to collect notes from the Craigslist Foundation Nonprofit Boot Camp. Now that Cragslist & Social Innovations have begun posting podcasts of the sessions, we've also started to post audio indices of the recordings (here's an example). We encourage you to make some indices of your own, and to share them on the wiki.

The Craigslist Foundation had it's annual Nonprofit Boot Camp at UC Berkeley last weekend, and they've set up a wiki where participants can post their notes from the event.  Contributors don't have to register, and if they've never used a wiki before and are confused, they can email their notes to the wiki moderator and he will post them. 

I know I always have tons of notes after a conference.  A public, easy to access wiki is a nice way to be able to share them.

I'm considering attending the Craigslist Foundation's Nonprofit Boot Camp in Berkeley this August, to bring back some skills to St. James Infirmary. We offer free, confidential, nonjudgmental medical and social services for female, transgendered, and male sex workers. We are also the first occupational safety and health clinic for sex workers anywhere run by and for sex workers.  Sex workers and craigslist, seems like an obvious fit, and one Mr. Newmark himself is often asked about in the press. The good things I've heard about the Foundation also make me curious to check it out.

Craig Newmark is the founder of Craig's List (spelled craigslist), a site that provides free classified ads for people in more than 200 cities around the world. Started in 1995, it is now one of the most visited sites on the internet.

Craigslist includes notices for public events and only charges a fee for job and real estate listings in some large cities. The organization and Craig in particular are notable for both their groundbreaking work in making Web 2.0 usable for everyday purposes and their support of non profit organizations.