This is Brenda Hough, live-blogging from the NetSquared Conference. Votes are being counted and we will soon know the winners of this year's Featured Projects competition. While we're waiting to hear the results, we're hearing a panel discuss "What's changed since last year?"

Rick Hess, TechSoup board member, is moderating the panel discussion, which consists of three individuals representing last year's winning projects.

Nicholas Reville, Miro, Participatory Culture Foundation

Coming out of last year, name changed from Democracy Player to Miro. They have gone from idea stage to really serving their mission on a daily basis. Most important things out of N2Y2 ... meeting Rick Hess, who is now President of their board. He has served as a business mentor, has been instrumental in settiing up sustainability and a funding pipeline. They met Jesse Patel last year and now he heads sustainability efforts. Looking to follow in Mozilla's footsteps, finding a way to be self-sustaining, self-funding. It's early and it's difficult but he's optimistic. Place they have the most trouble is funding.... funding crisis in Feb 08. 2 or 3 grant opportunities fell through around the same moment, which left them falling way short on budget. They had to cut the budget by 40-45% instantaneously, lost two developers, and the rest of staff took 30% pay cut. They have recovered some, most now taking 9% pay cut. Everything can be going well on mission and product and funding just isnt' there. Mozilla shines as an ex for him. Came out of profit world and became non-profit. On way to becoming institution protecting free speech and open standards. Another ex is Wikipedia.

Deron Beal, Freecycle Network

Been around for 5 years. Set up member driven 501c3 non-profit. Have expanded into 85 countries, have been translated into 16 languages. Message spreading in a viral sort of way. Part of the funding from last year (in addition to grants) has enabled them to hire some key staff.

Dan Newman, MAPLight.org

Published two widgets - candidates how much $$ they have raised and another widget that allows you to track the races you're following. In past four months, half million views of those widets. He's discovered that the more you do, the more they want! The biggest challenge is the financial challenge, as others have said. They are working to increase individual donors. They have invested in creating a newsletter.

Questions from the audience:

Q: What portion of your time is spent on fundraising?

Nicholas - 40-50% of his personal time. Coworker does full-time for org. It's always there, pretty constant.

Deron - 20- 25% of his time. Spends a great deal of time coordinating people who are volunteering. Should spend more, but... having something to show for them giving you funding for... it's tough.

Dan - We have a full-time person dedicated to development. I spend a lot of time on communications and networking. Fundraising is telling the story of our organization. For me and my colleagues, we think of it as explaining our mission and it just becomes part of what we do.

Q: How can we have a better conversation with the foundation community?

Nicholas - pitch the social benefit more directly (instead of the forum).

Deron - doors opened more when he was w/little non-profit non-web thing. Now it's hard to get them to understand potential of "web things". Awareness is not quite there yet.

Daniel (TechSoup CompuMentor) Classic joke... if you meet one foundation, you've met one foundation. It's true!... find individuals who resonate with where you are and what you do.

Q: How are you, Deron, changing your website to generate income?

Deron - my answer is probably a bad answer, but we have so many eyeballs at this point, that a google adsense or something like that would help meet our needs.

Q: Businesses that are doing social good, how do you talk about what they are doing?

Nicholas - Mozilla, could easily be a for-profit. Miro, too, has venture capitalists knock on door now and then. But they decided early on they want to build mission into organization in very real way. It's harder in some ways, but it's worth it in the long run.

Q: Foundations give 10% away each year. What about using investment dollars? Mission related investing? Has anyone tried that?

Vince Stehle - It's actually 5% that is given away each year. Recommends site http://www.primakers.net/home . Great opportunities....