The following is a shout-out to all of my peeps in the business of online community management / outreach, many of whom have expressed, in one form or another, a moderate sense of terror regarding job stability in the present financial crisis. Considering I am not an economist, and that I have a mere bachelors degree in political science and philosophy from a state university, one might want to take the following with a grain of salt but... I do have a bit of hope regarding the opportunities provided by this somewhat grim economic environment.

There are many different 'charity mall' providers for nonprofits and shoppers to choose from, and the launch of We-Care.com adds one more to the mix!

The funcation of a charity mall portal is to provide a co-branded space where nonprofits can direct supporters to make many of their ordinary online purchases while supporting the organization.

In the Netherlands an online market place was started for private initiatives in development: The 1% club. They use almost all web 2.0 tools thinkable. I believe in this instance many more 'official organisations' could learn a lot from them with regard to use of interactivity and open initiative.

They look a bit like Kiva, but the difference is that they are not an organisation. They rather match organisations with donors.