social change
EPIC CHANGE: Story-Powered Activism
This mashup will create a storybank (i.e., database) of images & videos from various non-profits & charitable organizations that consumers/activists can personalize as eCards & eGifts and send to friends via email and social networking sites for $1 each. Here’s why this story-based tool will make an important difference in raising funds and generating awareness for many important causes:
- 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)
Epic Change founders Stacey Monk and Sanjay Patel have over 15 years combined experience using creative media to inspire transformation in corporate and public sector organizations. Building on their change management & IT consulting experience they launched Epic Change, after a recent volunteer trip to Tanzania. In only 6 months since they received their 501(c)3 status, Epic Change has:
- raised nearly $40K from 350+ donors;
- provided $35K in loans to a primary school partner in Tanzania who used the funds to open 4 new classrooms in less than 100 days;
- initiated development of products based on the stories, photos and artwork of the school’s students, including postcards, greeting cards & t-shirts; and
- Received a $1000 grant from the Case Foundation for ranking in the top 5% of nearly 500 participating US-based nonprofits in America’s Giving Challenge.
- Project Manager
- Graphics & User Interface Designers
- Programmers & Engineers
- Business Analysts
- Hardware
A Mashup of 29+ Social Action Platforms -- Social Actions
Social Actions aggregates peer-to-peer social change campaigns so that individuals, organizations, and 3rd-party developers can find, support and mashup grassroots solutions to local and global problems.
View the widget we are using to promote the mashup proposal.
Test drive the current version of the Social Actions mashup
Social Actions brings together active campaigns from 29+ platforms into a single open API and search interface. The aggregator uses mark-up in the feeds to identify semantic data relating to the location, subject, time-frame, and goal of each campaign.
This innovation permits prospective donors, individuals and web apps to run queries on and map visually the dataset as a whole. We see a huge potential in the 29+ platforms to promote peer-to-peer social change. We’re pursuing this work to amplify their impact and to bring about a world in which everyone is a changemaker.
Here's a screen shot of the front end:
Social action platforms that are currently contributing content include: BringLight, Care2, Change.org, ChangingthePresent, DemocracyInAction, DonorsChoose, Firstgiving, Fundable, GiveMeaning, GlobalGiving, Helpalot, Kiva, MicroGiving, PincGiving, PledgeBank, Razoo, SixDegrees, ThePoint, and ZaZengo.
See our response above for a description of the information users will interact with.
Related to the DonateNow Mashup Challenge
Goal: Enhance the donor experience using NetworkforGood's open API.
Uniqueness & Creativity - By June 30, we will embed in the search results page of Social Actions an expandable donation form for each person-to-person fundraising campaign that originates from Change.org, SixDegrees, or any platform that uses NetworkforGood as a payment processesor.
Utility - The Social Actions / NetworkforGood integration will allow prospective donors to quickly mark a range of person-to-person campaigns they want to support. As more platforms make use of NetworkforGood's open API, our search interface will showcase the full range of how individuals are using NFG to raise money on behalf of organizations.
User Experience - Embedding the 'donate now' feature into the search results of Social Actions will permit prospective donors to participate in multiple campaigns across several platforms. For example, a user could donate to the top three campaigns on a given 'keyword' without leaving the search results page of Social Actions. These campaigns could originate from three different platforms.
Execution - Please test drive the current version of our mashup. The 'donate now' feature has not yet been implemented.
I am the founder of Social Actions and the author of a blog called About Micro-Philanthropy.
Social Actions helps individuals and organizations use social media to plan, implement, and support peer-to-peer social change campaigns so that grassroots solutions to local and global problems can flourish.
About Micro-Philanthropy covers the peer-to-peer social change movement. The blog features the individuals, organizations, and thought-leaders that are using social media to increase small-scale giving and create social change.
I have presented webinars for NTEN on the subject of person-to-person fundraising and micro-philanthropy. I have also written and published articles on Personal Democracy Forum, TechSoup, and NTEN about launching peer-to-peer social change campaigns and selecting the right combination of technology platforms.
The underlying assumption of my work is that peer-to-peer citizen initiatives are the best incubator for broad social change.
The Social Actions mashup needs data integration experts and Flash developers.
When the mashup team has developed an open standard for indexing peer-to-peer social change campaigns, I will present this information to the staff and founders of social action platforms.
Enthusiastic platforms will implement the standard and present the mashup team with a feed of the latest campaigns on their platforms. At that point, the Flash developers will develop examples of how this data can be mapped visually.
I can envision more than a few Flash productions. Here are two ideas:
- A world map where the latest campaigns in different cities light up as they are created or updated;
- A search engine where the campaigns appear in the center of the screen based on a keyword search and link by a single line to related campaigns.
If you can visualize additional mashups of this content, please post your idea in the comments section.
