NetSquared enables social benefit organizations to leverage the tools of the social web.

Grassroots

Energizing the World's Grassroots - Interview with Jeremy Heimans from Purpose Campaigns

Jeremy Heimans Jeremy Heimans, founding director of Purpose Campaigns, tells us how GetUp.org became the largest political organization in Australia and why I shouldn't be so cynical about the grassroots' ability to shape global discourse.

N2Y2 Con: Economic Sustainability Session Five

Hello! Our last economic sustainability session will be more conversational thanks to our panelist, we will be mixing it up for a bit. This is Evonne Heyning and I will do my best to liveblog this session as it flows.

Panelists:

Anita Figer, Nonprofit Finance Fund, hired by foundations to look at economic sustainaiblity of nonprofits

Susan Walters, California Emerging Technology Fund, broadband technologies in low income communities Panel leader: Ask tough questions! Don't be afraid to share what you think.

TAKING IT GLOBAL

Stop Family Violence

Voting Summary (Elevator Pitch): 

Stop Family Violence will use Web 2.0 technologies to empower local programs, enhance information sharing, help people find the services they need, promote local leadership, and coordinate activism that will keep women and children safe.

Type of expertise needed: 
Technical Expertise

NEAR TERM: help us determine open source options vs. custom build. ONGOING: advice on state of the art server, website and user security features since our members are at high risk of cyberstalking.

Type of expertise needed: 
Marketing/Media Expertise

NEAR TERM: Develop collateral materials to market our new website. In-kind gifts for printing, mailing. ONGOING: Identify strategies to increase site visibility. Corporate sponsors for advertising to help drive traffic to our site.

Type of expertise needed: 
Other

~ Program evaluation to assess social change
~ Mobilizing from online to community activism
~ Building engaged online community
~ Message development and dealing with backlash
~ Financial support, planning
~ Board members

Grassroots.org Toolbox

Voting Summary (Elevator Pitch): 

The Grassroots.org Toolbox will empower nonprofit organizations by granting free access to a suite of fully configured & hosted online tools, including content management, online event registration software, and CRM.

Type of expertise needed: 
Other

Above all else, we need financial support to help lay the foundation for the Toolbox’s ultimate success.

We know what technology tools our grassroots nonprofit clients need. We know how to configure those tools, we know how to build infrastructure to deploy those tools on a massive scale, and we have partners who can help us host those tools. We even know how to train and support those tools. What we need is the initial support to help us turn this knowledge into action.

Our ultimate goal is to empower 10,000 nonprofit organizations with the $10,000 worth of services through the free technology in the Grassroots.org Toolbox. Your seed funding will help make this is possible. Help us help us others grow.

Type of expertise needed: 
Technical Expertise

We need development assistance specifically for:

  1. The integration of a client intake system with a CRM.
  2. The development of a custom provisioning system to automate Toolbox deployment.
  3. Additional tools and resources. Have a tool that you'd like to make available to nonprofits for free? Think it meets a demonstrated need among grassroots organizations? Work with us to make it happen!
Type of expertise needed: 
Marketing/Media Expertise

We currently offer a complete guide to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) available at seo.grassroots.org. Alongside this service, we also offer free telephone consulting, made possible through in-kind donations from an SEO consulting firm.

We'd love to expand the SEO project to cover other aspects of internet marketing for nonprofits (how to use blogs, leverage social networking sites or bookmarking sites, use new media, etc to further a nonprofit organization's mission). Assistance could be in the form of expert articles or guides, telephone or online consulting, or something entirely different. Surprise us.

Technology Vision: 

Many of the tools we are integrating into the Grassroots.org Toolbox are open source, and thus have been freely downloadable for years. However, “Free” though they may be, these tools cost thousands of dollars to install, learn, configure and support. In short, these tools may have no list price, but they are far from free to implement. The result? They're not empowering as many nonprofits as they could be.

    The Toolbox will automatically:
  • provision and install these technology tools,
  • configure them correctly for immediate use,
  • host them permanently,
  • -provide comprehensive training and support resources (both in traditional text and in new media, such as screencasts and training videos)

All for free.

To achieve this, we'll build an integrated user interface to manage Toolbox applications and services, under which we'll develop a flexible and scalable automatic provisioning system. We are assigning multiple staff members to develop exhaustive training and support materials in response to the needs of incoming clients and creating a publicly-available end-user guide for each of the tools we offer. The goal is the technological empowerment of nonprofit organizations everywhere.

HIV Collaborative Fund

Voting Summary (Elevator Pitch): 
Shouldn't people living with AIDS be involved in figuring out how AIDS money is spent? We raise the money. People living with HIV/AIDS around the world decide where the money goes through a process relying on social networking and technology.

CommunityGoals - The Online Goal Marketplace

Voting Summary (Elevator Pitch): 
CommunityGoals is a goal marketplace. Post a goal, even if you don't know the solution! Small individual contributions are transformed into funded community projects.

International Network of Victims of Terrorism and War

Voting Summary (Elevator Pitch): 
The INVTW seeks to unite victims of political violence, war and terrorism to amplify the voices of victims speaking out for nonviolence and to create grassroots structures which support a culture of peace and common security.

Kabissa 2.0: Strengthening the Social Web in Africa

Voting Summary (Elevator Pitch): 

Marries power of Web 2.0 with passion of 950+ African orgs in our network. Savvy Web 2.0 Ambassadors will collaborate through the Kabissa site and face to face to develop and promote homegrown strategies for employing Web 2.0 for social change.

Type of expertise needed: 
Management Expertise
We welcome help in creating a detailed sustainability model, which includes Kabissa and a network of 20 partners in Africa. Advice on how to structure the relationship with the partners would be very helpful, e.g., contract and payment structures.
Type of expertise needed: 
Marketing/Media Expertise
We need help in creating Web 2.0 features that are visually compelling, simple to use, and engaging for a wide range of stakeholders. We are looking for innovative ways to tell the individual stories of our Web 2.0 ambassadors to a larger audience.
Type of expertise needed: 
Technical Expertise
We would love expertise in customizing Drupal to be extremely user friendly for people working in difficult low-bandwidth environments, e.g., creating new modules, browser and usability testing, email/mobile phone integration, working offline, etc.

Net2 Podcast: Human Rights, Free Wireless, Grassroots Marketing and Revenue

 Our wonderful podcast volunteers, Ryan MacArthur and David Collin, put up some more audio recordings from the NetSquared Conference on the NetSquared Podcast this weekend for your listening enjoyment:

New Web Tools and Their Revenue Models with panelists:

Human Rights and New Communication Technologies with panelists:

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