Check out this video about Social Actions' Change the Web Challenge. Thanks Convio for putting this video together and spreading the word about Change the Web.

Social Actions is grateful to Convio for being one of three official sponsors of the Change the Web Challenge.

Below is a special MLK day / Obama inauguration version of the Social Actions round-up. We have added a section with links to MLK and Obama-related initiatives. Feel free to add resources by posting a comment.

MLK / Day of Service / Obama Inauguration

CauseGlobal posts a guide to participating in the Obama inaurguration using social media.

Seth Godin reflects on the National Day of Service.

Online giving markets and other websites that facilitate online action hit the ground running in 2009. Below is our latest weekly round-up of news and recent discoveries.

News Roundup

SocialEdge is welcoming applications for the annual Global Social Benefit Incubator Competition.

RisingVoices is welcoming applications for its annual new media outreach micro-grants of $5k.

Over the holidays, online changemakers did not cease to churn out news. Below you will find the latest Social Actions round-up, bringing us up to date with the movers and shakers of online social activism. We'd like to start the New Year by featuring three breaking stories.

Each week, Social Actions community members post links and news about online social activism - This round-up is a summary of the links that surfaced in the last 7 days. You can share links and news for future Social Actions rounds-ups in the Peer-to-Peer Social Change FriendFeed Room. Check out past roundups here. You can also tag your delicious bookmarks with "p2pchange" or include "#p2pchange" in your tweets - we'll scoop them up and review them for future Social Actions Roundups.

Despite the holiday schedule, we witnessed an explosion of reports, articles and presentations over the last seven days on how the online philanthropic landscape is shifting. In this round up, you'll find links to material from The Hewlett Foundation, The MacAurther Foundation, The Mozilla Foundation, MSNBC, Cone Inc, Beth Kanter, Tom Watson, TechCrunch, and more.

Hello NetSquared. Joe, Eric, Christine, and I wanted you all to be among the first to know about the latest web application from Social Actions. This one is a biggy. It would never have come together without the support and connections we made at N2Y3.

Below is a excerpt from the launch announcement, called AdWords-Style Widget Recommends Related Ways to Take Action

Hi Net2, Wow, I can't believe it's already been two months since the NetSquared Mashup Challenge. Since you gave Social Actions the huge honor of a third place finish at the conference, I've been keeping extremely busy and have officially brought two consultants on to help: Joe Solomon (of the KnowMore Firefox Extension) and Christine Egger (my co-presentor at N2Y3). I'll be posting a video update for all of you shortly with details on much of the work we have been doing and have planned.

For now, Christine, Joe, and I would like to invite you to a conference call about the work we've been doing for the last few months.

Here are the details

Please RSVP to this event >>

Join Social Actions founder Peter Deitz as well as Platform Liaison Christine Egger and Lead Scientist and Evangelist Joe Solomon for a 1.5 hour conference call about Social Actions and the future of micro-philanthropy. Peter, Christine, and Joe will each take 10-15 minutes to present their work on Social Actions since the NetSquared Mashup Challenge in May 2008.

We will then open the conference line for a Q&A about Social Actions and the social action platforms we're trying to help. Of course, please bring questions as well as ideas for where the project and the sector should be headed.

How to get there:

On July 30, 2008 at 2:00pm EDT (New York time), call:

+1 616-597-8000 from your U.S. phone or Skype

Access Code: 1002410#

Please RSVP to this event. We want to know how many people to expect. Thanks, Peter

Quick shout out to the Net2 community -- I'm still in shock from the double honour (Canadian spelling) you gave Social Actions last week.

Thanks for choosing A Mashup of 29+ Social Action Platforms as one of the top three mashups. My plan is to use your vote of confidence and the prize money to fully build out the search interface and open API for finding actionable opportunities in quick order. You won't be disappointed.

Let's start building those bridging between the silos in our sector. If you have ideas, inspiration, or knowledge to share, don't hesitate to get in touch.

All the best and thanks again! Peter

Hello Net2, I am working on my personal intro to the NetSquared community. In the meantime, here are several statements of support for the Social Actions mashup from participating social action platforms.

By the way, the Net2 attendee list is an allstar line-up. I am super excited to connect with friends and make new ones next week.

All the best, Peter

PS -- We added RSS support for our mashup search results over the weekend. We invite you to test drive the current version of "Social Actions -- A Mashup of 29+ Social Action Platforms."

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PledgeBank is excited to be part of the Social Actions platform because it reflects one of the fundamental philosophies behind our site: that you can do more things to create a better world in a group than you can on your own. In a world that encourages isolationism and territorialism, Social Actions reflects a real sense of collaboration -- the embodiment of working collectively for the "greater good." As a platform that is geared toward collective action, we strongly support the idea of Social Actions and are excited by the energy demonstrated by the group that is moving this idea into reality.

We encourage you -- NetSquared community members, nonprofit staff, developers, and funders -- to join this collaborative effort. We look forward to finding more ways to help people around the world do good things, whether that's donating money, building libraries, petitioning their elected representatives, or educating their friends about a cause. More good, with more people, in more ways -- that is Social Actions!

- Heather Cronk, former Outreach Coordinator, PledgeBank

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DonorsChoose.org is excited about the Social Actions mashup because we believe that this will be the first of many such efforts to open up individual involvement with the social sector. At DonorsChoose.org we have long been guided by our philosophy of citizen philanthropy, the idea that an ordinary individual should have the same level of choice, impact, transparency and accountability that has traditionally been reserved for established philanthropists. This kind of mashup has the power to extend that philosophy to encompass many more social causes and many more kinds of involvement, from microphilanthropy to volunteering. We hope this points the way toward future digital collaborations of this type.

- Michael Everett-Lane, Executive Director for the NorthEast Region, DonorsChoose

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By combining and aligning the strengths of like minded people and their web applications, Social Actions has a good chance of making a structural contribution to a world that is more transparent and fair.

-Julius Huijnk, Founder, Helpalot

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At Bring Light, our goal has always been to help donors find specific projects from legitimate charities that they can contribute to. We appreciate the work Social Actions is doing to increase the impact we can have on creating social change.

- Melissa Dyrdahl, Co-founder, BringLight

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At Firstgiving our mission is to connect people who care with the causes they care about. We want to, make it as easy as possible for them to help make a difference. Social Actions and its open API approach can help us - and others in the space - achieve this mission with greater velocity and greater impact. Every additional information channel and every additional forum helps empower people who want to make a difference, and that's good for everybody.

-Mark Sutton, CEO, Firstgiving