A Mashup of 29+ Social Action Platforms -- Social Actions

N2Y3: Mashup (2008)

N2Y3: Mashup (2008)

Challenges Entered:

You make a difference. We make it easy.

What else have you done in this area of work?

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.

Project Details

Project url:

http://mashup.socialactions.com

Project video:

Project RSS:

http://www.netsquared.org/blog/peterdeitz/feed

Supporting organization:

Social Actions

Project Assessment

Financial support:

Project has financial support

Project goals:

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 mashupSocial 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. Weâ€™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.

Identified Obstacles:

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.

Location

Montreal, QC

Canada

See map: Google Maps

Submitted by peterdeitz on February 9, 2008 - 7:35am

Using hListing to create the Social Actions mashup

Submitted by peterdeitz on February 20, 2008 - 1:35am.

Here's a link from last April by Michael Everett-Lane of DonorsChoose, which describes in more detail how the hListing micro-format could be used for creating a feed of micro-philanthropy campaigns.

I'd love to hear from Michael on what he thinks of the mashup proposal above and what came of his proposal from last year:

Tweaking hListing for microphilanthropy

DonorsChoose.org, where I work, both gives grants (to teachers) and receives them (from the public). We have thousands of proposals that public school teachers have posted on our site, and individuals can give directly to those projects. See here for an example of one of our listings:

http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=64964

Similar microphilanthropy sites include Kiva, Modest Needs, Global Giving, and GiveMeaning. All are essentially philanthropic marketplaces that bring together givers and recipients. And thus all could benefit from opening our data in a way that would make them accessible beyond our own websites. (Some of my ideas I've posted at http://triptronix.net/ishbadiddle/archives/2007/02/15/15.20.40/ )

I had initially thought we needed a new format (hGive) but thankfully was put straight by Benjamin who suggested here that I should look into hListing.

I think with a few tweaks, hListing could be used for microphilanthropy, and for volunteer clearinghouse sites as well:

* Adding 'Donate', as Rohit suggested on http://microformats.org/wiki/hlisting-feedback#Donations , to the set of "listing actions" would enable both offering and seeking items (and cash) to be donated.

-- So an organization seeking a donation would format it Listing Type: Wanted, Listing Action: Donate, Listing Item: Cash

-- Someone looking to donate an old PC would format it Listing Type: Offer, Listing Action: Donate, Listing Item: Product

-- An organization trying to find a volunteer would have Listing Type: Wanted, Listing Action: Donate, Listing Item: Service

* Some organizations (like Kiva) are doing microloans, instead of microphilanthropy. So in addition to Sell, Rent, Trade, Meet, Announce, and Donate, "Loan" would be useful as a Listing Action. (Could also be useful for facilitating borrowing relationships of items.)

* One other addition to hListing that might be useful in this context is "Cost" (in addition to "Price"). In a commercial setting (say, you're trying to sell a used item on eBay), Cost would represent what you paid for the item. So Price - Cost would get you the markup (or markdown). In a philanthropic context, Cost would represent the cost to make a project happen. If the project were already partially funded, then Price < Cost, and Price / Cost would give you the % remaining to completely fund that project. (Many microphilanthropy sites bundle lots of donations to make up one project.) That's probably the least important tweak but I thought I'd put it out there while I was thinking about it.

Thanks and I look forward to your feedback on this.

-- Mike Everett-Lane

Hi Peter, my name is Ingmar

Submitted by Ingmar Redel (not verified) on February 19, 2008 - 3:52pm.

Hi Peter,

my name is Ingmar Redel, I`m from Germany and I work with many NGOs and we plan with the name OneAim.org the same, what you want with socialactions.com and the goals are not new and three years old - the problem is now: how can we work together? ;-)

Our goal has also a bigger context: its more a step to a decentralized and encrypted word civil web, which respect the privacy of the people and bring the people together beyond single webpages.

So we should think about, how we can bring this two projects together, because they are bloody simila and we also plan a world dialogue about this topics, called "World Social Web Dialogue".

So, what can we do now?

I'm curious about it. :)

My email is: virtualoffice@gmx.org

Maybe we could share the work for america, europe, asia and africa... this could be a good way.

Bye,

Ingmar

Re: Hi Peter, my name is Ingmar

Submitted by peterdeitz on February 20, 2008 - 2:03am.

Hi Ingmar, I'm so glad you found my project proposal. Yes, we can definitely use your help in conceiving and implementing the social actions mashup.

Remember, we're trying to create a public domain feed of new peer-to-peer social change campaigns. What you do with the feed is up to you. The more web applications that have a use for the feed, the more momentum we can create in getting it built. I've accepted your invitation to join the Social Actions google group, and look forward to collaborating.

By the way, I went to OneAim.org and couldn't find more details about your project. Can you post some more information about what you're trying to accomplish here or on the Google Group?

All the best, Peter

on the front end...

Submitted by justinmassa on February 9, 2008 - 9:33am.

I love the idea, but from my prespective (a small start-up non-profit founder), I'd love to see a single interface created for the front end, when organizations start campaigns. If there was a social campaigns "wallet" of sorts, from which I could create and manage campaigns and then send them to those 29 sites, that would be an incredibly powerful tool (and would make life much simpler, especially for start-ups and small orgs).

Don't get me wrong, the back-end aggregation of all of these sites into one would be fantastic (especially the map-based interface), but from a non-profit staff angle, I think the front-end is even more exciting.

Finally, a question: would Social Actions syndicate its aggregated feed (and break it into geographic/type/issue chunks)? In the project I'm working on - http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/movesmart-org-beta - it would be amazing to feature, as a map layer, the locations of geo-tagged campaigns of community based organizations from those 29 sites.

Yes, a single interface

Submitted by Julius on February 16, 2008 - 3:57pm.

Yes, a single interface would be great. I wrote a blogpost on this topic.

Julius
Helpalot.org

Re: Yes, A Single Interface

Submitted by peterdeitz on February 20, 2008 - 2:06am.

Hi Julius, Thanks again for your response to the Social Actions mashup idea. For those who haven't clicked through to Julius's blog post, here's an except:

I hope this is the beginning of something big. It deals with a problem that you see on the internet in many fields; There are a number of sites dealing with (user generated) content in a field. There is no monopoly of one site and it is difficult to find out for users where to search or become active.

We want ways to make use of the diversity and different evolutionary paths different sites are taking to make sure a field keeps innovative, but also we want an easy overview and integration of information.

It all deals with the fragmentation and integration of information, and aligning common goals while keeping individual custom tailored goals in place. Probably one of thÃ© problems of the internet right now and even more so in the near future.

Once we find out/design a good model for how to set up a collaboration in the field of social causes that works on all levels and for all parties involved, it might serve as a good example for other fields.

So I guess the question is, how to design such a model. Getting the different websites involved with this problem by working on this social actions mash-up is step one.

In my project proposal, I mentioned that a micro-format based on hListing would be helpful. But if we get the social action platforms to truly collaborate in the process, maybe we can develop an open API of new peer-to-peer social change campaigns.

An API would allow for continuously updated information about all of the campaigns from the 29+ social action platforms (not just the new ones), allowing for more rich mashups, modeled on the Digg Labs mashups or the Top 10 Last.fm mashups.

I'm so excited to get to work on this project. Potential collaborators are encouraged to leave a comment below, add a 'star' to the proposal, and join the Google Group.

Syndication

Submitted by peterdeitz on February 20, 2008 - 2:07am.

I neglected to fully address your question in my previous post. Yes, the complete feed of campaigns from 29+ social action platforms would be available to everyone.

Movesmart could use it to map campaigns in neighborhoods
A human-rights blog could search for relevant campaigns and then post a feed on their site
Friends could even use it to create a feed of projects that their friends are involved in.

Once the partnership is created among the 29+ social action platforms and the content marked-up using the hListing micro-format, or something similar, anything is posisble: mapping, reblogging, making a universal tag cloud of all actions, creating a reputation system that works across the social action platforms, setting up a ratings system to rank peer-to-peer social change campaigns by certain criteria.

Because the system will be available to the public, anyone or organization can develop a web application that creates the features described above.

PS -- You can see the beginnings of this universal feed of social change campaigns on my initial attempt to aggregate content from social action platforms:

http://www.socialactions.com/new-actions/feed

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Re: On the front end...

Submitted by peterdeitz on February 10, 2008 - 3:54am.

Thanks for your comment on my NET2 mashup challenge proposal.

In addition to this mashup, I'm working with colleagues in the nonprofit tech community to develop a 'front end' solution for individuals and small nonprofits that want to start peer-to-peer social change campaigns.

You can read about it here:
http://www.socialactions.com/help-me-clone-beth-kanter

The wizard will guide people through the process of choosing the right social media tools for a campaign and applying the 'best practices' for getting the message out.

If you (or anyone reading this) would like to help brainstorm the concept, a bunch of us are talking about the wizard at this google group:
http://groups.google.com/group/social-actions

I'm glad the back-end aggregation and visualization of social change campaigns also has your support.

Good luck with your project proposal. I enjoyed reading about the MoveSmart project.

Thanks for your comment. I

Submitted by tyleramerican on April 27, 2009 - 11:18pm.

Thanks for your comment. I agree the messaging system is central to how people will interact with each other, Online Bachelors Degree and how they will interact with organizations on the site. The key is making sure that the nature of the communication on the site doesn't just make people feel good about themselves, it actually needs to encourage people to get out and do good things - offline and online. Translating the online social dynamic into offline activity is one of the holy grails of this project.
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exciting

Submitted by justinmassa on February 10, 2008 - 7:26am.

Peter: this is very, very exciting. I've requested membership to the Google group and would love to help out (probably as a tester - I'm not much of a designer/coder) your front end solutions.

On the back-end, that is fantastic. There will be hundreds of ways to remix this info for almost unlimited uses and I will definitely be adding it as a layer to MoveSmart.org.

That said, a suggestion/question: what about adding into the mix a feed from volunteermatch.org (or it's loal equivalents like chicagocares.org)? It's not really a "campaign", but I see it as pretty close...

Thanks for checking out the MoveSmart.org project!

It's been interesting to see

Submitted by tyleramerican on April 29, 2009 - 8:35pm.

It's been interesting to see how much the internet has changed political campaigning. Looks like it can do the same thing for social movements.

Re: Exciting

Submitted by peterdeitz on February 11, 2008 - 1:09am.

Hi Justin, Thanks again for taking an interest in this mashup. There's no limit to the number and type of social action platforms that could encode content from their site using the micro-format and then contribute to the XML feed.

As long as the new social action platforms can demonstrate that the actions on their sites fall within a peer-to-peer social change rubric, they will be more than welcome to contribute.

I like your example of volunteer platforms like VolunteerMatch and ChicagoCares. Do you know of other platforms? I'm always on the look out for new social action platforms.

I'm looking forward to your participation in the google group. We'll probably end up discussing the mashup as well as the wizard.

All the best, Peter

exciting

Submitted by justinmassa on February 10, 2008 - 7:23am.

Peter: this is very, very exciting. I've requested membership to the Google group and would love to help out (probably as a tester - I'm not much of a designer/coder) your front end solutions.

On the back-end, that is fantastic. There will be hundreds of ways to remix this info for almost unlimited uses and I will definitely be adding it as a layer to MoveSmart.org.

One Stop Shop

Submitted by brownbag on February 9, 2008 - 8:28am.

Aggregation is very helpful but is there a way to synthesize similar actions towards a collective goal?

Re: One stop shop

Submitted by peterdeitz on February 9, 2008 - 8:34am.

The mashup I'm describing would go a step beyond aggregation. It would highlight the most relevant campaigns happening in a location or area of interest.

It's possible that this effort would prevent redundant campaigns from be created. If people could find an easy way to connect with the people around them, then they would have less of a need to create their own campaigns.

What do you think? Is it possible to create a tool that points out where campaigns with the same goal can be synthesized into one?