NetSquared recently followed up with the N2Y3 Featured Projects to develop these short case studies, with the goal to expand the knowledgebase of best practices for applying social media in the nonprofit context. We interviewed participants from the N2Y3 Featured Project teams to gain a better understanding of the way they used social media to increase their reach and carry out their missions. We are very happy to bring you their stories!

Today's spotlight: OpenCongress.org!

Project Details:

• Name of Organization: OpenCongress.org
• URL: www.opencongress.org
• Location: Web-based

Project Description:

OpenCongress brings together official government data with news coverage, blog posts, public comments, and more to give users the "real story" behind what's happening in Congress. OpenCongress is a free, open-source, non-profit, and non-partisan web resource with a mission to make government more transparent and to encourage civic engagement. OpenCongress is a joint project of the Sunlight Foundation and the Participatory Politics Foundation (PPF).

Social media tool or tactic used:

Social wisdom, news/blog aggregation, social networking, collaborative analysis, public comments, open APIs.

How was it used?

Their previous proposal was titled "Track Congress with Social Data" and proposed integrating new data from sources such as Open Calais, Daylife, and others in order to make it easier for users to follow their interests in Congress.   New data mashups on "My OpenCongress" will allow users to customize the stream of info they receive about their tracked items. In other words, it can be a lot easier to separate the signal from the noise on Capitol Hill-- to figure out what bills and votes are important or meaningful to you.

Outcome:

After NetSquared, their programmers incorporated news coverage of Congress from the Daylife API, with help from the Daylife development team. They have not yet prioritized integrating data from Open Calais, and we are in the process of integrating data from other APIs and partner groups, including but not limited to: MAPLight.org, Change Congress, Sunlight Labs, Watchdog.net, and more.

Lessons learned:

• Our development team could use the volunteer assistance of a Database Administrator (DBA) with experience in optimizing postgres databases.
• Agile development recommends regular & steady updates & improvements to web resources -- in this case, steady integration of new outside data sources. This is what they've been doing and is more helpful for their open user community than a rush of major updates.
• They could use volunteer time from developers with experience in Ruby on Rails or semantic MediaWiki.

For more information:

• See the full list of N2Y3 Featured Projects here.    
• Read all of the N2Y3 Case Studies as they are published.

The work to create this case study series was funded by a grant from the Packard Foundation.