The Overbrook Foundation recently published, "Web 2.0 Assessment of The Overbrook Foundation's Human Rights Grantees" by Allison Fine, author of Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age,

The Foundation provides financial support to 55 human rights organizations with a range of budgets and staff size. Most of the organiations are based in New York City or Washington DC.

All of the organizations have web sites and about half have blogs (although about half of the blogs don't allow comments). Of the 34 organizations who responded to the survey, half post videos on their site, a third have podcasts and four host webchats. 94% accept online donations.

Overall, they are struggling to incorporate the social web into their work:

• Overall, the grantees are firmly entrenched in the Web 1.0 world, meaning that they use the web largely as a source of information rather than a tool for interactivity.

• A small handful of grantees, such as WITNESS, the ACLU, Breakthrough, and WYNC Public Radio, are using social media in spectacular ways to engage their constituents in conversations.

• Most grantees are not taking advantage of easy-to-use social media tools effectively. For instance, Only half of them have blogs, and only half of these groups allow comments on their blogs.

• Survey respondents and group discussion participants often felt a “common struggle” in understanding which tools are critically important to their work and were at a loss as to where and how to get help for selecting and using new social media tools

The study recommends that the Foundation become an online hub for human rights nonprofits to get information about using the social web, post case studies, organize face-to-face discussion groups and facilitate trainings.

You can see from their web site, that they are already taking the report's suggestions into consideration and have published a list of places nonprofits can go for more information and support (including NetSquared). They also plan to post case studies, and have put out a call to nonprofits to let them know how they can help.

How do you think NetSquared can better serve these nonprofits?

Logo from Overbrook Foundation site.