Idealist.org, the same place you've listed or looked for jobs and resources in the nonprofit sector, has just launched its Pro Bono Design services in partnership with the Art Directors Club!

Do you need a poster or a new brocher in your organization?  Maybe a new website re-design or a video?  Well, now Idealist can help connect you to designers that can help you produce these and other projects, for free!

How does it work?

Scott Stadum, User Experience Analyst from Idealist.org talks to us about the importance of data portability and shares his vision of a perfectly optimized online network of volunteers.

Meg Busse, Director of the Non-Profit Career Transitions Program for Idealist explains why you need to know what you're talking about, make it catchy, scour the social networks, and at least try to make personal contact with people if you want a job in the non-profit sector. Also, she is awesome.

Last week, I wrote about a request I got from Idealist.org to help them prepare a "How to Wiki" guide - to help hosts who are organizing groups around the world, in support of their "Imagine a Better World" initiative (see Britt's interview with Ami Dar about this campaign here).

If you are reading this blog, there is a good chance that you are an idealist, and perhaps you would like to meet other idealists to work together to make the world a better place. I talked with Ami Dar, the Founder and Executive Director of Action Without Borders, the organization that maintains Idealist.org, about their Imagine a Better World campaign that is working to connect idealists all over the world. Ami shares his reflections a week or so after the first Imagine a Better meetings that happened all over the world February 5-11, 2007.

I got the note below from Joanna Eng of Idealist.org. I have until Friday 3/2, to answer their questions. Between two jobs and my volunteer work, this is going to be quite a challenge, so if y’all can help by posting your suggestions in reply to this post, bonus karma points for you. Thanks; Leo

Subject: Idealist.org Start-up Meetings and your use of the wiki

Dear Leo, Thanks for taking the initiative to set up the wiki for your start-up meeting! We admire your effective use of online tools to enhance the start-up meeting for all of the participants. Would you like to help us make it easier for other meeting hosts to do the same? We are planning to provide a series of "How To" guides on Idealist for start-up meeting hosts, including "How To Use a Wiki for Your Start-Up Meeting." Drawing from your experience, you can help us create this guide!
Here are some things you can do to help:

We did our Idealist.org startup meeting on Sunday. People asked me how I thought it went, and I couldn’t really tell, since I was bouncing around so much. But going by the feedback that’s trickling in, I guess it went okay. And now for the hard part: how do we keep this new community going?

Ami Dar of idealist.org saw the wiki I made for the Silicon Valley group, and now I'm working with them to develop a new wiki site to improve collaboration on the Imagine Initiative worldwide. If you could please look at our wiki and tell me how we can improve it as a possible template for all the other groups, that would be a huge help.

 

“On different floors of an apartment building somewhere in your country, two people are looking out their windows and wishing there were a garden or a playground below instead of a dirty courtyard. But acting alone can be difficult, and in many neighborhoods, both rich and poor, there is no way for people to know that they are not alone - that down the street, or two floors above or below them, there may be others who would gladly work with them if they only knew where or how to find them.”

So began the invitation sent the other night by Ami Dar, Director of Idealist.org. He asked members to “imagine a better community and a better world, and to see how we can build it together”, then to launch a series of start-up meetings around the world, on the week of February 5-11.

I forwarded Ami’s note to members of the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network, wondering if anyone wanted to get together to form a Silicon Valley group. Several said yes, so I submitted an event request, which was approved yesterday. If you’re in the valley and want to join the meeting, please register here. (Please note that the venue is tentative, will depend on the number of registrants, but will be thereabouts).

I also created a wiki for members of the Silicon Valley group. You can use it to post your ideas & suggestions for the meeting. Please join us, or host your own meeting by clicking here.

Ami Dar and Lea Policoff of Idealist.org attended the Netsquared conference. They share some of their thoughts and favorite moments of the first day.  

 

This video is part of NetSquared's video profile series. You can subscribe to this RSS feed with your favorite video catcher, such as iTunes, Democracy or FireAnt.