I am the co-founder of two related non-profit start-up organizations: Slurve and the Concerned Citizens Coalition.   We came to Net2 because we're looking for like-minded individuals to become part of our team and help us build the web infrastructure that will allow our ideas to reach their potential.   And we really believe our ideas have a lot of potential.

Here is a quick overview of the two organizations:

 Slurve Magazine is the arts and culture review that masquerades as a baseball publication, and a non-profit organization of socially responsible individuals. It is our belief that literature and the arts are a vital part of our culture, providing not only entertainment and social commentary, but inspiring imagination, engendering compassion, and in its better moments, showing us a world to which we all can aspire. We are particularly interested in the education of young minds, and believe that literature and the arts are indispensable in fostering creativity, and raising well-rounded, socially conscious future generations. We also believe that a healthy body is as important as a strong mind, that you learn things on the playground that you can't learn in the classroom, and that baseball will always be America's national pastime.

The Slurve Fund is being developed to:
    1. Provide a platform for emerging and established artists.
    2. Support emerging and established artists through awards, and fellowships.
    3. Support young artists through scholarship awards.
    4. Support other organizations that promote social welfare and responsibility, and share a common mission or are working for a common good.
    5. Create and support after-school arts programs for underserved youth.
    6. Support youth baseball and softball organizations.

Slurve was launched in April 2007, and can be found at www.slurvemag.com.   We are currently working to develop new features and could really use help bringing our site into the 2.0 era.

The Concerned Citizens Coalition was a concept that came out of Slurve, and is still in the developmental phase.   The goal of the Concerned Citizens Coalition is to create change through a mechanism which allows concerned citizens to coalesce into a coalition that is concerned with the concerns of the citizenry. The CCC will consist of several components.

1. Humorous/satirical videos that deal with every issue from real to ridiculous. (Think of it as like the internet's version of the Daily Show, but with more Concern).

2. Actual Content on real issues from places like Good Magazine, AdBusters, and our readership

3. A forum where members can discuss both real and fake concerns

4. A place for charities to upload profiles, and a mechanism for them to raise funds through the CCC.

5. An events/meetup calendar searchable by location and cause that will allow members/charities to get together and promote fundraisers and other community events.  

6. A store/membership plan that will allow people to donate to the charity of their choice consisting of CCC merchandise and products from affiliate organizations that will also benefit charity (access to forums and events calendar is free).

7. A mechanism to leverage other existing social/cause networking sites and help raise our profile

If you've read this far and are interested in becoming part of our team to develop these projects, or know someone who might be, please email me and we can talk more.  

Mike Gentilucci

gentiluc [at] post.harvard.edu