Our mission is to help non-profit organizations understand, use and expand the social web.There's a whole new generation of online tools available – tools that make it easier than ever before to collaborate, share information and mobilize support. These tools include blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, podcasting, and more. Some people describe them as "Web 2.0"; we call them the social web, because their power comes from the relationships they enable.

Why nonprofits need Net²

Non-profit organizations thrive on relationships – which means the social web holds tremendous potential to transform their effectiveness and impact. We want to help you build the strategic capacity, knowledge and skills you need to put these powerful new online tools to work achieving positive changes like:

• mobilizing new levels of grassroots participation with social networking
• boosting public awareness of community issues through blogs
• building dynamic new arenas for collaboration with wikis
• reaching young people with podcasts
• creating new networks to carry your message through RSS feeds
• sharing and enriching knowledge through social bookmarking

Read more about why we launched Net²

Read more about Net²'s Goals

How we Net²

We work with you in three ways:

• The NetSquared.org online community, focused around this web site, is a venue for learning skills, sharing experiences and developing expertise.
• Net Tuesday is a monthly real-world gathering of Net² members and friends.
• The NetSquared Conference, running May 30 and 31, 2006 in San Jose, CA will bring together non-profits, tech practitioners, innovators, philanthropists and visionaries for two days of intense discussion.

The conference will be an important step – but the focus remains the ongoing on- and offline community that we're building for the long haul. Come join us!

Find out more about how we Net² 

Read more about the Net² Conference

Find out more about sponsoring Net²

New to the social web? Here are three ways to get started right now

• Subscribe to our interview series with this RSS feed. You'll get the very latest interviews with leaders and innovators working at the intersection of technology and the non-profit world.
• Tell us what you need from technology here. Our wishlist lets a growing community of developers know where their efforts can make the biggest difference for non-profits.
• Find out more about specific tools and strategies at Net2Learn. The Net² community has built a resource center filled with tutorials, tips and links to get you up and running with tools from blogs to podcasts, and challenges like online fundraising and managing virtual teams.

Find out more about how you can participate

Comfortable with the social web? Here are three ways you can start contributing to Net².

• Answer our four questions about the social web, and what it means to you. Encourage your colleagues to chime in.
• Start your own Net² blog, and join the conversation. Or, if you run your own blog, tag any post as "net2" to have it picked up by our aggregators.
• Start a resource center at Net2Learn, or add your knowledge to one of the resource center's that are already there.

Who we are

Net2 is created by  TechSoup, a project of CompuMentor. Our organization has worked directly with non-profits for nearly two decades, providing direct assistance, web-based knowledge and resources, and donated technology.

We will catalyze the catalyzers. We will use the new tools and culture shift to engender conversations among the early adopters (who often don't know of each other), between early and later adopters, between nonprofits and technology developers, between nonprofits and the growing army of technology helpers, and between all of the foregoing and the major technology companies (who have so much to gain from this dialogue in terms of marketing and realizing technology's social potential).

 Read Daniel Ben-Horin's welcome message