Hi, Evonne Heyning here liveblogging from the Social Impact room at N2Y2.    

Second Track of the Social Impact Section Panel

Micah Sifry, Personal Democracy Forum

Diana Scearce, Monitor Institute

Alexandra Samuel, Social Signal

Projects Presenting

Genocide Intervention Network: to build out the idea (or brand) of the anti-genocide movement. Give people the idea and space to come together for resources. Content available to everyone regardless of organizational affiliation, use these tools to speak with your own voice: GINet facilitates this dialogue.

Ivan Boothe, Genocide Intervention Network

Ruby Sinreich, champion

ASAMUEL: Have you thought about ways to make the "endgame outcome" surface on your site?

IVAN: http://www.genocideintervention.net/sample/ has images. Giving people real visual feedback and metrics on how many people are taking action. We want people to tell their own stories on activism; we bring those together to amplify voices on Darfur and beyond.

DSCAERCE: In bottom-up advocacy how do you know you are making progress? What do you measure, and at what scale do you reach critical mass?

IVAN: We hope to integrate with Darfur Scores report card as well as other organizations. Potentially we can down the line integrate with widgets from change.org or other fundraising/networking applets.

MSIFRY: Why spend the money on your website versus hiring two more organizers for your existing campaigns on myspace/facebook?

IVAN: It is important for us to build an identity around anti-genocide movement. Building something that is open both in structure and philosophy gives people leadership and offers things that myspace/facebook cannot offer.

Chris @ Packard: How do you know that the people you see as activists see themselves that way, and do they want to be engaged and identified in that way?

IVAN: We have done some collaboration with other organizations, the Armenian national committee, etc. and the response has been good from our members. People recognize Darfur as the crisis at hand but that's not the only thing that our members care about.

AUDIENCE: Where does GINet fit in with other groups working on this issue?

IVAN: We consider ourselves to be catalysts and facilitators. We work with HRW, USHMM and other information/educational groups and we also work with humanitarian relief groups like Oxfam, MSW/DWB. The piece that separates us is that we're focused on a permanent anti-genocide constituency.

MSIFRY: How many members and what is your staff budget?

IVAN: Staff of 10, budget is $1.5mil a year now. Membership 30,000 on email list, no dues required. Part of our organization is STAND, chapter based, 800 college and high school groups working with us.

MSIFRY: How have you engaged younger activists?

IVAN: We started as a student organization at Swarthmore and we have stayed close to student groups. We've seen ad hoc groups rise up before and get close so there's a sense that if we work a little harder we can get to that.

Nabuur

Christine @ Empower, their champion, introduces this template/framework to connect people and projects around the world.

DSCAERCE: Tell us about scale. As you become more widely used, what is your process for learning and adaptation as you scale? How do you intend to adapt, change, grow?

NABUUR: The local community likes it when they have control to make their own decisions. There's great adaptability as communities use these tools.

ASAMUEL: I like the Social Source Commons P2P model, connecting people to be both contributors and recipients. You've got all of these villages and communities but the paradigm seems to be helper/helpee. What are the opportunities to shift and surface those villages as resources for knowledge?

NABUUR: Most volunteers are from the south! Africa and Indian villages are helping other villages to know what works and does not work. The whole interaction is very flat, writeup and picture. You do not see the hunger, HIV, war, the hard realities. On the positive side, there are people who stand up and want to do something about it. Been in NGO community for 30 years; we meet people on a whole new level now, astonishing. The positive and negative is not yet FELT but there are cards on every table and we would like your help to answer these questions and bring this process to life.

MSIFRY: What is the engine for Nabuur? Is it coming from the villages? Who keeps demand going?

NABUUR: It can only start with the local community. Local communities are telling other communities, 5-10 applications every week, more than we can match with online volunteers. If we were to open the tap there would be hundreds a week; we need to find ways to meet that need.

AUDIENCE: Are you building functionality to bring this site to me?

NABUUR: Matchmaker on the site so you can find how to match your skills and interest with existing projects.

AUDIENCE: One of the challenges of skills-based P2P offering is that of quality. How does your model insure that deliverables are of good quality?

NABUUR: It's the aggregate. The function of nabuurs they are not experts...they have an interest in keeping the place well. The answer is "I'd like to do something but I don't know how"....making connections to find that expertise is our key.

AUDIENCE: Quality assurance and expectations in the villages: it's very difficult to sustain volunteer projects. Can you comment on volunteerism asynchronously around the world?

NABUUR: We hear back from the communities that they are finding the help they need. People come over, give training, help find sponsors. The local communities have a few they cannot afford to lose: time and risk. We don't have many complaints so far. Keeping volunteers involved is another matter. If you cannot see what your action contributed people will turn off and right now this is not good enough. The basics are there but we are eager to grow this project.

AUDIENCE: Where are most end users accessing the internet?

NABUUR: Internet cafes. 30 minutes by bike or bus usually, if people log in once a week that's enough to keep the process going. People ask about SMS integration and we are not there yet but we would love that help in tech innovation.

Global Women's Network Leadership

Loretta Donovan, champion, Worksmarts

Linda Alepin GWNL, Santa Clara University

LALEPIN: On Social Impact: 55 women have come through the program. We measure our social impact by the impact of our graduates.

DSCAERCE: Specific social impact: who is your audience and what are their needs? How will they benefit?

LALEPIN: With projects in the developing world, it's too expensive to bring 20 people here for training. We have to go to these countries, build partnerships and they can find the women and build leaders. How do we continue beyond groups and conference calls, how can they empower each other?

ASAMUEL: What you are proposing to do is much different than what currently exists. One thing that struck me as inspiration the GINet or Nabuur sites have very clear calls to action. What are the opportunities for people who see your work and want to support you, are there opportunities when people first come in to contribute?

LALEPIN: Until I came to this conference I didn't know half of these technologies existed. There is an opportunity here; we are an all-volunteer virtual organization. Start with what you have (in spanish, she speaks) -- we can have a substantial impact through these exchanges.

MSIFRY: What is the engine for growth? What itch do you scratch?

LALEPIN: Partners in the countries. We go to Turkey next.

MSIFRY: So other organizations are the engine?

LALEPIN: Yes, organizations, more than individuals. We partner with local groups for cultural customization and execution of projects.

DSCAERCE: How does this connect with current programs in the network?

LALEPIN: The current organization will be empowered by the online network of partners. We figure that they will provide the beachheads in their countries.

AUDIENCE: What happens next? What's the sustaining aspect and how do you track it?

LALEPIN: We're piloting a few approaches to study impact, we are nascent in these technologies. No answer yet, but we're looking at the models.

AUDIENCE: Target demographics? Countries are so different...older women in one country, younger in another?

LALEPIN: We've had women as young as 24, as old as 73. Important to us is their ability to leverage change along with passion and interest. Some countries the average age is 42 so we will be in younger groups in those countries.

DSCAERCE: Benchmarking these concept vs. other concepts out there. How do you see GWLN working with other organizations?

LALEPIN: Vital Voices does good work in global leadership, Global Fund for Women is a partner organization, providing grants to women outside of US. There are other people in the field, we think we are unique in our impact given the depth of training we offer.

MSIFRY: Tell us your biggest success so far

LALEPIN: I fell in love with Lydia when I first met her, from Uganda working on behalf of land rights. She came to us and invented the project to settle 100 women and kids on 123 acres; now living in the US she has appeared and lobbied on behalf of land rights.

AUDIENCE: Specific metrics to determine whether a project is successful. What are you looking for?

LALEPIN: During the training we look at projects that aren't working, and we look at 3 month viable targets to achieve. We coach every two weeks in small groups, and in most cases the results are far greater than possible. We only track for three months by phone, then via yahoo groups for antedotal evidence.

Aspiration: Social Source Commons

Gunner (Allen Gunn): Aspiration

Tim Westcott, SSC project manager and advocate

ASAMUEL: There's a limit to how much social impact you can have off one URL. How are you going to reach out the big hand onto other websites? I want my toolbox on my sidebar.

GUNNER: A badge will be next so you can take your toolboxes can be put on your own website. APIs will also be available so you can reformat the data as you see fit.

DSCAERCE: Metrics for social impact: as a service provider the impact assessment is tough. What are you attracting and how you will know you are having success?

GUNNER: We see ourselves as plumbing in the larger facility, it's hard to get people excited about the plumbing. We work with people in all fields trying to do tech selection and by creating an aggregation model that tells you who is using it and how to use it, our social impact gives people more time to spend on their mission. We get lots of "lovebombs" -- we go back to them and ask for more details to help us understand.

Wireless Working for the Development World Handbook was looking for a knowledge sharing solution; SSC is now an online station for tools in that book. As we launch the web toolbox we look at how to share knowledge, track new tools and aggregate new opportunities. We do not have a matrix...yet.

MSIFRY: Is this just for tech experts?

GUNNER: We looked getting social change techies, creating a space where the open source community feels at home. We have 1700 tools, we're near critical mass, we're doubling in traffic every month. Next we layer on top with Idealware and smarter people than us to start storytelling and offering case studies beyond the lists and RSS. We want to create all sorts of consummable content.

MSIFRY: How much through search? How much US/world users?

GUNNER: 25% - 40% is coming from searches. Page views are going up quite well but we do not know how many are RSS pulls vs unique page visits. We have specifically targeted international audiences. There's at least 25% use from outside US. We pick data models that localize to other languages easily.

AUDIENCE: (missed question on audiences and users)

GUNNER: We have been very user-driven; now that we've seen what's out there we want to see what the subcommunities are and give them the collaborative tools needed with powerful tech support from other organizations that get it. Right now SSC is like a very compelling silent movie; the sound and voice is still being developed.

AUDIENCE: Can you talk about the rest of the environment with these tools, and how are you trying to interact with other orgs?

GUNNER: We explicitly do not want to compete with anyone. The glue that ties it together is missing and SSC is talking to Idealware and technology syndication/aggregation to find out how to share this information about these tools. Right now we do our feeds and filter on the backend; next we automate and find a format or microformat to get smarter atom feeds. At a fundamental level we care about tools; we are now looking at the best way to aggregate all of the discussions on these tools to pick up and share this information.

AUDIENCE:   If I know that 7 sites use this slew of programs, can I enter this information?   Does it matter for a user to say that I have these affiliations?   Can I see what tools others are using?

GUNNER:     The web2.0 model is created and populated by individuals, orgs, networks.   If you have lists like the Wireless for Developing Worlds you can bring these entire lists in.   There are also community toolboxes with lots of editorial flexibility.

AUDIENCE:   Why only for nonprofits?

GUNNER:   1)   Far too often nonprofits are forced to use business-oriented tools like Salesforce that use channels, leads, a language not for nonprofits.   We want to publish in the language of nonprofits, in social outcome terms.   2)   It's also the signal to noise problem -- only a few tools are not useful for nonprofits, so this editorial model gives the platform focus and flexibility to give you information that's right for you.