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:
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.
We have found 2 major problems that the Internet presents for both the western world and the 3 billion people living on less than $2/day (see http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Facts.asp):
1) Those without Internet have comparatively no information
2) Those with the Internet have information overload
What if we were to solve 2 problems at one time? What if we delivered information to people without Internet access via the quickly expanding 2 billion cellular phone users worldwide? And what if we did it all through keyword-filtering of RSS feeds of their favorite sites and information?
What if we created a partnership of CellAlert.net with non-profits that can apply to use a CellAlert Open API which allows them a completely customized mashup of their own design (within the CellAlert Open API rules)?
In short, we have so many mashup possibilities, we hope you'll want to mash CellAlert.net and FreeAlert.org with non-profit organizations anywhere they need to distribute urgent content to the 2 billion cell phones in the world. So why not go with the approach of an "API mashup"?
I am the co-founder and CEO of FreeAlert.org and of CellAlert.net. My applications are RSS search technologies that instantly notify subscribers 24 hours per day by cell phone and/or email of the items that the subscribers are seeking when the item appears in any RSS feed they search worldwide. The flagship application we started with is called FreeAlert.org. Since that time, we've expanded to include http://www.cellalert.net and expanding soon to http://www.Africalert.org, http://www.Asialert.org and http://www.Americasalert.org
FreeAlert.org is an RSS search technology that instantly notifies subscribers 24 hours per day by cell phone and/or email of the *free* items that they are seeking on Craigslist whenever the item appears in any Craigslist RSS feed they search worldwide.
We hope that one of our mashup ideas will be something that you will facilitate.
Currently we are focused on El Salvador, but we see tremendous potential for good purposes being served and facilitated by text alerts in developing nations worldwide!
Once upon a time, we all knew our neighbors.
We knew Daisy, the golden retriever addicted to soggy tennis balls. We knew the saggy sofa in the den, stained by one too many Strawberry Jello spills by the kids. We knew the noise of the lawnmower, the squeek of the garage door or the buzz of the doorbell. We knew just when we'd hear footsteps slogging up the stairway or when the elevator would ping open.
Now. in all too many cases, we only see 'neighborhood' on Sunday nights via Desperate Housewives or via Big Brother.
One of the best things about knowing your neighbors was knowing things like which house has the twins with chicken pox . . . which street has a couple of persistent gushers bubbling up . . . who has been 'down' with the flu or fighting breast cancer . . what new building/development is going on . . is that creek still flowing or drying up . . .
If we all still had BLOCK PARTIES, yes, that remnant of the 50's or 60's or whatever Leave It To Beaver era in which those organic mob-projects occurred, maybe we would have enough information to protect us and each other.
Yes, there are a wide variety of domestic and international public health/service agencies that track disease, safety issues, environmental trends, etc. But there are certainly legions of examples of why perhaps even the most ethical of public or corporate organizations seldom tell the whole or even the most realistic stories.
Which is why we must tap into the power of citizen journalism . . . or Neighbor-Sourcing to complete a realistic picture of health trends of all kinds, from traditional health care issues (including insurance) to environmental and safety. By harvesting glocallogy tools such as mapping, crowdsourcing and even crowdfunding, we may be able to act more quickly on trends, problems -- or opportunities -- as they occur. We need not wait for the government to announce issues long after it is too late to do something.
Alchemlist will make donating (stuff) as easy as item, zip, search while creating and expanding community around donation. People will discover non-profits that exist in their own communities, perhaps right next door, that they never knew existed, become aware of their needs, and be inspired to take action to help meet those needs.
Non-profits (especially small non-profits) will receive increased donation of in-kind items and greater visibility that leads not only to donations but to more volunteers and monetary donations as well. The site will help raise awareness about all the non-profits working in our communities and their needs as well as the issues that they formed to address so that we can help ease the needs of our neighbors.
Alchemlist will help save landfill space (and closet space!) as people find homes for items they would have thrown in the trash or gathered dust in their home.
A greater sense of community and altruism will be fostered.
People are becoming more socially responsible, and want to be up-to-date with news about social change and impact. Plus, they are self organizing in online and real world communities to work together and bring change.
CBC (Change Broadcasting Channels) allows users to select channels of social change, and receive instant news about these channels on a mobile phone through SMS or twitter. Every channel has a community of subsribers that use the community tools to promote and share big stories and events. create momentum to find solutions to problems and trigger change.
Today there are a few barriers to getting instant access to socially relevant news:
· Relevant news needs to be obtained from sites dedicated to socially responsibility.
· Most of these sites have information from blogs and RSS feeds. Very few if any, have information from global news wires.
· These sites by nature offer a pull-based model, rather than an alert-based one where the user is notified of any news of interest as it happens.
· The user does not have much flexibility in choosing the news they want to track.
The idea of Change Broadcasting Channel is to create channels of news about issues of social change, and the endpoint for these channels is your mobile phone. Twitter serves basic phones with only SMS functionality. Flurry serves phones with a data plan.
A user can subscribe to an existing channel or create their own, based on a set of keywords.
Each channel has a community which is the group of subscribers to the channel. And this community gets triggers (the SMSes/twitters from a river of news) that create momentum, driving them to address their cause.
CBC will also integrate with http://www.groundreport.com to bring real user-reporting on channels mixed with mainstream media news from Daylife.
Change Broadcasting Channels will change the world by instantly informing socially active individuals of news of their interest, eliminating any delay in action. These users are part of communities where they actively use the modern tools to bring out the most relevant stories and issues and cultivate a discussion to find solutions.
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Writers have always written, not knowing about who or where their readers are. This mashup will show where the readers are coming from, who read a writer's article, or where the readers come from, who care about the same topics as any tag in the system.
We will use zip codes, which we have on record, for our members, or IP address, for non-registered visitors, to map where readers of a specific article come from. Since articles are also tagged, we can pull tag contact data for people as well, and map tags based on who's visited from where-- for any article.
When writers know more about where their readers come from, that could/will change the way they think about their readers and could change how they write.
This could have a powerful effect upon editorial decisions too. Since thousands of tags will be easily checked for how they "map", it will be possible to asses reach of the site and editorial policy in new ways.
Writing, news, Op-eds, the media-- they are essential elements of democracy. Understanding which aspects of the writing are reaching WHERE, for each article, or groups of articles, or by the author-- all of these should be easily pulled together using the system we've already built for managing content. Even on more local levels, if we can tap the power of google analytics to pull IP info and map it to local, county or state levels, this could be powerful, since we also tag our content by locale. For example, if a writer writing on water pollution discovers that the lower part of a county is seeing the articles, but not the upper level, and a river runs through the county, that could easily help the writer identify where further outreach is needed.
Three major empowering things would be improved in the world if this project happens.
One: Empowering local public citizens to learn about their neighborhood and take action when they identify a need. Citizens can view interesting things happening around their home and office on a map, and get notified when new things happen.
Two: Empowering local people to collect information that is currently locked up in government databases, and use our toolset to load that data and make it geographically and visually accessible to the public.
Three: Empowering local websites, blogs, news organizations, and companies by allowing them to embed searchable, interactive maps on their site as a service to their site audience.
Your Mapper is an online news organization that empowers people to obtain and load information in their home town, and make it available to their neighbors. We provide the tools that make this happen.
People who load the data (called "Mappers") only have to decide on what data they want, contact their local government agency for it, and assemble it into a spreadsheet. Once the spreadsheet is ready we provide the tools to load it into Your Mapper, turn it into a public searchable map, and let the Mappers manage the data online and updates to the data.
People who look at the the online maps (called "Citizens") can type in any address in the United States, and see a list of all the maps available. They can subscribe to feeds and updates and downloads. Each map will have meta information provided by the Mappers, and Citizens can rate the quality of the data and map content, leave comments, flag inappropriate data, and save their favorite maps.
The community aspects and rating system ensures that the best maps bubble to the top of the site, and even allow Mappers in the same city to 'compete' to load the highest quality, most valuable information to for the Citizens.
Local websites and businesses (called "Community Sites") can choose which maps they might like to put on their own websites, choose the starting point, map size, and other options, and with a little cut & paste can have these maps on their site in no time.
A Superfund site is an uncontrolled or abandoned place where hazardous waste is located, possibly affecting local ecosystems or people. Sites are listed on the National Priorities List (NPL) upon completion of Hazard Ranking System (HRS) screening, public solicitation of comments about the proposed site, and after all comments have been addressed.
For many years, I lived in a very large Superfund site area without knowing and I'm sure many are in the same situation. This is because the EPA's pollution information is buried in the files on the web that are not easily human readable. Even the information provided by the EPA is only cursory, naming possible hazards and whether is has yet been deemed "clean."
The "EPA Superfund Mashup: Exposing Environmental Hazards In Your Area" Project will make the 200+ Superfund Site's information visually available and human readable. It will promote engagement and accountability in private and public cleanup efforts and encourage those who live and work in those areas to document cleanup efforts and the human effect of large scale air, water, and soil pollution.
Currently, in New Orleans, there is a run away process for the demolition of housing.
From Kelly Voight in the comments of Squandered Heritage.
My house at 5537 Franklin Avenue was demolished without proper notification to me or the mortgage company. Out of 4 notification channels, the city only followed 2 of their 4 channels.
We had been waiting for the city to issue us a renovation permit for almost 18 months. I had called and traveled to the 5th floor of City Hall. I had taken pictures and filled out all correct forms for my permit. As of the day that they knocked my house down, the permit was still “pending.”
My house was a 1945 Gentilly bungalow with double parlor, original floors, the Gentilly tile, and deco molding. It was in no danger of falling down. My contractor drove by, called, and asked why there were bulldozers on the property the morning they tore it down. Before he could reach us, the house was gone.
I cannot return to the city now. I feel such pure fury when I think of my house being torn down. City bulldozers trespassed on my property and tore down my lovely Gentilly bungalow. New Orleans has nothing to do with America anymore. New Orleans is dead to me, and I will not lift a finger to help or give back to it again.
Was this an accident? No. I is a pattern of negligence on the part of the city. An unimaginable abuse of power.
People have returned for the weekend to work on their homes, only to find them gone as noted in the Wall Street Journal story Katrina Survivors Face New Threat: City Demolition . People have been awoken to the sound of Entergy cutting the wires to the house in which they live as described in this NPR story New Orleans' Wrecking Ball Levels Healthy Homes.
The Recovery School District is now requesting permits to demolish dozens of schools, while HUD is in the midst of destorying thousands of units of public housing.
It is all happening quietly, while we struggle to rebuilding our homes. This project will tell people which structures are being demolished and where.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
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