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How Can We Jump the Shark of Connecting Nonprofits Online?
Photo by Bill Ward - Thank you John Dumbrille!
We're on the edge of using the web for change in ways we are just beginning to imagine. One thing I'm really interested in is how we can connect nonprofit data together. There are so many different 'green' nonprofit websites - so many different 'human rights' websites - so many different 'health' websites, etc. How can we connect the dots so these orgs' sites can talk to each other and help us find the information we need from across their issue-based networks?
Let's get a bit more specific ...
What if when you visited 1Sky.org - You could see events, petitions, and engage with changemakers across the climate change movement?
Zanby is working on providing this technology - and is currently weaving 1Sky and TheUpTake, 350.org, and The Energy Action Coalition's online communities together. Engaging on any one organization's website means you're also engaging with the other networks!
What if when you visited Amnesty.org - You could explore the latest human rights news and research across orgs like Amnesty, Humans Right Watch, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights?
IssueLab is working to aggregate research on social issues and push that research back out to other online communities and end-users. A human rights focused nonprofit could, for example, grab their Human Rights feed and share it on their website!
What if when you visited a nonprofit website that focused on disability issues, you could easily find the resources for the stuff you were looking for from that first site + a range of sites dedicated to disability issues?
I used to be roommates with the Founder of DisabledCommunity.org - an index of resources for disability-related issues. Hooking up Google Custom Search, any nonprofit website (or any website for that matter) focused on disabilities could add a widget that enabled their users to search across DisabledCommunity.org on their site.
The potential of sharing events, communities, actions, research, resources, and news across nonprofit sites could be huge for raising awareness, increasing impact, and helping us find the most relevant information.
What are some ways we could build on these approaches (and others) to make it even easier and more effective for organizations to share across their online presences? How can we 'jump the shark' of webbing nonprofit & social change orgs together? Is this kind of cross-pollination something your oganization would be interested in adopting? What would be the consequences (both positive and negative)? Are shared resources something YOU would want to engage with on your favorite nonprofit websites? How would YOU want to interact with this information?
I'm very excited for folks' thoughts on this topic, about how we can connect nonprofits & orgs together online and help people discover nonprofit and social change data. Looking forward to the comments & conversations!
- JoeSolomon's blog
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Very important topic
It seems the aggragation of information by category is so central to how people will spend their time online. So like your blog states, why would I want to go to 10 different foundation websites to get the latest industry news if I could learn about them all in one place. I realize this is stating the obvious, but where it is happening in other spaces, I do not see it happening very rapidly in the non-profit space. Social Edge is one shining example of a proper aggregation of topics and media formats. For my sake, I would love to partner with other microfinance orgs to provide this type of aggragation and centralized information source, but the persuit of new donors is a barrier, a limited source of funding in a tough financial context.
Jumping the shark..
This is an excellent question. The real power, however, will come when the collected knowledge of people in the field is unified so projects don't lose momentum and aren't forgotten. I'd like to speak with you about this. Please do contact me.
Connecting non-profits (and others) on the Internet..
Hi Joe, I'm also interested in is how we can connect nonprofit data together - or in fact all data and knowledge that is the a prerequisite to finding the cross-border solutions for the 21st Century. www.globalcitizen.net is still in the making it will take another two-three years before we go public (big scale) but our concept is clear (I hope): We have developed an outline that will make it possible to deal with a lot of information and data from a variety of sources. I think this is one of the things we need to do.. All best Søren