Each month we ask you to weigh in on a Net2ThinkTank question in a post on your blog, or the NetSquared Blog. It's getting to be that time of month again, and I'm wondering, what do you think should be this month's Net2ThinkTank question?

Inspired by Allison Fine's report for the Case Foundation, "Social Citizens," this month's Net2ThinkTank question was, "Is Online Activism Good for Social Change?"

Ivan Boothe of thequixoticlife says that online activism is good for social change, but the bigger question is:

Answers to this month's Net2ThinkTank question, "Is Online Activism Good for Social Change?" are still coming in after the May 14th deadline so I'm going to give y'all till over the weekend to post your answers on your blog or the NetSquared Blog.

Howabout you email your post's URL to me at bbravo@techsoup.org by Monday, May 19 at 5 PM PT?

We've got 3 deadlines coming up. Please pass them on to interested folks:

May 16: Deadline to register for the 2008 NetSquared Conference (N2Y3). The NetSquared Conference will take place May 27th – 28th, 2008 (just after Memorial Day) at the Cisco Systems’ Vineyard Conference Center in San Jose, California. Check out the Working Agenda and register today!

May 19: Deadline to submit your idea for how to mashup the Network for Good donation processing service with other services to make it easier for nonprofits to raise money online.

Allison Fine, author of Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age, has authored a report for the Case Foundation called Social Citizens about "Millenial" activism.

The paper describes how, "the largest living generation, out-numbering living Baby Boomers 77.6 million to 74.1 million," is changing the meaning of civic engagement with its interactive, collaborative, entrepreneurial and social networked activism. (For purposes of the report, Millenials are defined as people born between 1978-1993).

On the Social Citizens Blog, Fine asks one of the key questions that arose from the report:

Is our tendency to connect only with like-minded people using our online and on land social networks a good thing for activism or a critical bottleneck to the effective scaling for causes?

This month's Net2ThinkTank question was:

"How Can Nonprofits and NGOs Succeed in the Online Attention Economy?"

Wikipedia defines attention economics as,

"an approach to the management of information that treats human attention as a scarce commodity, and applies economic theory to solve various information management problems."

As more nonprofits, businesses and individuals create blogs, podcasts, rss news feeds, wikis, social networks, YouTube accounts, Twitter feeds, fundraising widgets, mashups, etc. what do you think nonprofits need to do to attract and maintain people's attention online?

To learn more about attention economics, Rich Reader comments on the Net2 Blog that folks should check out AttentionTrust.org, and start or join an Attention Data Meetup, like the San Francisco Bay Area Attention Data Meetup.

Amy Sample Ward of Amy Sample Ward's Version of NPTech says that organizations need to be both the best resource for themselves AND for their community

Hi my name is jonathan

My 3 kids live through their mobile. The computer has become a school tool OR a cool tool. Gen y-less need immediate mobile engagement.

 So the challenge for NGO's is to understand social engagement that has timely connected relevence for youth.

Once experiment I'm involved with is a mobile social network for fundraising.

It's at minute.ning.com 

My previous experience involves being a fundraiser for more than 20 years, a blogger and a senior technology / marketing comms strategist. I'm familiar with open source and am a user of a few!

So I hope I'm not too late to contribute to this question!

Jonathan Crabtree

This month's Net2ThinkTank question is, "How can nonprofits and NGOs succeed in the online attention economy?"

A few folks have contacted me to say, "I'd like to participate, but I don't really understand what the attention economy is," so, here is a little more info:

Wikipedia defines attention economics as,

"an approach to the management of information that treats human attention as a scarce commodity, and applies economic theory to solve various information management problems."

In his ReadWriteWeb post, Attention Economy: All You Need to Know, Richard MacManus writes:

"A key point is that The Attention Economy is about the consumer having choice - they get to choose where their attention is 'spent'. Another key ingredient in the attention game is relevancy. As long as the consumer sees relevant content, he/she is going to stick around - and that creates more opportunities to sell."

In the case of nonprofits, organizations are trying to keep supporters and potentional supporters' attention in order to "sell" the opportunity to make a difference in the world through the channels and services their organization provides (information, donation, membership, volunteering, advocacy, media creation etc.).

In his post, Why Words Matter in the Attention Economy, Steve Cebalt of the Nonprofit PR blog writes:

One of the many cool things about the social web is how it gives nonprofits and other social benefit organizations the tools to make their own media and to reach more people. On the other hand, as more nonprofits, businesses and individuals create blogs, podcasts, rss news feeds, wikis, social networks, YouTube accounts, Twitter feeds, fundraising widgets, mashups etc., the amount of media, news and calls to action flowing into potential supporters' feed readers and email in-boxes is tremendous.

The Net2ThinkTank question for this month is:

This month's Net2ThinkTank questions was:

How Can Nonprofits and NGOs Use Mobile Phones and SMS for Social Change?

Ken Banks of Kiwanja.net, submitted the post, Social Mobile and the Long Tail. You can listen to Ken Banks' presentation at Net Tuesday San Francisco and David Collins' interview with Ken on the NetSquared Podcast.

Sokari at Kabissa posted about Ken this month in the post, Ken Banks at the Mobile World Congress

You also might want to read the Pan African Mobile Activist Network (PAMOMNet)'s notes from The Mobile World Congress.

Katrin Verclas and Corey Ramey at MobileActive submitted a multitude of useful posts covering a range of ways nonprofits and NGOs can use mobile technology for their work: