Rootwork Blog: Technology, Social Change and Nonprofits

We need to talk about your stylesheets: An interview with Jonathan Snook at Drupalcon Portland

Ivan Boothe — Tue, 21 May 2013 15:34:24 +0000

This is an intervention.

CSS is pretty simple. Classes, IDs, elements and pseudo-elements, with style definitions attached to each. Calling it a "language" is a bit of a stretch (though preprocessors like Sass fit the bill).

But let's be honest, for years our stylesheets cascaded right on out to infinity.

Huge files with table-of-contents comments to try to make some sense of it — until a quick fix got pasted down at the bottom. Brittle style definitions relying on tight coupling with HTML structure. Pieces of styles being replicated here and there for different components with similar features, without any way to tell they were related in the CSS.

My stylesheets were like that too, because strategies for writing CSS had barely altered since the days when it was used to change the colors of the scroll bars in Internet Explorer. Luckily, in the past couple of years both CSS architecture and CSS preprocessors came into their own.

SMACSS, or Scalable and Modular Architecture for CSS, was developed by Jonathan Snook, a featured speaker at Drupalcon Portland. I'm really excited to get the opportunity to have Jonathan speak, not only because of my personally well-dog-eared copy of SMACSS, but because Drupal itself is adopting a SMACSS approach to its CSS.

I spoke with Jonathan about sustainable stylesheets and the future of SMACSS. For an even more detailed look, please join me at Jonathan Snook's featured Drupalcon Portland this afternon, Tuesday, May 21 at 4:30 PM.

IB: What's the biggest mistake you see people making when writing CSS?

JS: I think the biggest mistake is thinking of everything in the context of a single page. We're no longer just building sites with a design for a home page and an inside page. We're developing complex systems that need to work in a variety of contexts and we need a development approach that complements that.

IB: What's the biggest "win" you see in using the SMACSS approach? Why should frontend developers change their approach to CSS?

JS: The biggest win is maintainability. The SMACSS methodology makes it easier to build larger projects by breaking things down into smaller components. Like the move from spaghetti code to MVC frameworks on the server side, this separation of concerns on the CSS side improves the process of putting a site or web app together.

IB: In the last part of your book, you talk about how the SMACSS approach fits in to work using a preprocessor like Sass. There have been a lot of developments in Sass in the past year — have they had any positive effects on your use of the SMACSS approach?

JS: With Sass, the introduction of placeholders was a positive step forward. Overall, Sass (and other preprocessors) are a great way to augment — but not replace — the way people write CSS.

IB: What are your thoughts on BEM? Do you see it as compatible with SMACSS?

JS: I see BEM as very compatible. BEM really enforces naming convention, which is a very important concept in SMACSS. They both take a modular approach to site development.

IB: What are you tacking next when it comes to CSS and frontend development? Will there be a "SMACSS Part Two"? Or something else entirely?

JS: I'd love to augment SMACSS with case studies and expand on some of the ideas in the book based on things that come up in the workshops I do. I'd also like to work on a prototyping/site development tool that uses the SMACSS concepts. We had built something like this when I was at Yahoo! that I think many people in the industry would find really useful. Hopefully I can find the time to work on it!

Image credit Flickr user stevensnodgrass. It's spaghetti! (As in code.)

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

Drupalcon Portland: Responsive web design in a snap with Breakpoint and Sass

Ivan Boothe — Fri, 17 May 2013 19:51:58 +0000

Media queries are a key part of responsive web design, because they control at what width (among other things) different CSS rules kick in.

"Breakpoint makes writing media queries in Sass super simple," say Mason Wendell and Sam Richard, creators of the extension to Compass, and they're right. It's not surprising that we'd want them to present at Drupalcon, since design in Drupal, like web design everywhere, has been embracing responsive web design as a fundamental principle. (Side note: This website is in the midst of a responsive web design overhaul. Cobbler's children and all that.)

I spoke to Mason and Sam about how Breakpoint makes responsive web design even easier. Don't miss their Drupalcon Portland frontend session, “Managing Responsive Web Design with Sass and Breakpoint,” on Thursday at 10:45 AM.

IB: What motivated you to create Breakpoint? How has it changed your own workflow?

MW: Before Sass 3.2 came out I had written an article for The Sass Way that previewed some of it's new features, including the ability to use variables in media queries. I created an example that baked in some names for breakpoints into a kind of "master mixin" for media queries. On my next responsive project I put the theories I'd written for that post into practice, and found that I could refine that approach. If I assigned a variable to each media query first the approach would be very flexible. Then when noticed that I wrote min-width queries way more often than any other type I set up defaults that made creating media queries very fast.

MW: There was a side effect that I think is more useful though. By assigning names to each of my media queries I'm able to keep them in context in a much more effective way. If I some media queries to deal with the width of a nav element, and then later I add an item to that nav, I can change the value of that variable and all the associated queries are adjusted. This is even more effective when handing code back and forth within a team.

SR: Breakpoint was created with the motivation to ease many of the pain points of working with media queries in CSS. The biggest pain point that Breakpoint solves is providing meaningful semantics to your media queries. When building content based responsive sites, early in your design process two unrelated items may happen to break at the same points, but as your project grows, those points may change and a simple find and replace will have unintended consequences. This is probably the biggest workflow win to using Breakpoint, all of your media queries now have proper semantics.

SR: The other big win for my workflow is Breakpoint's no-query fallback, allowing me to very easily add in fallback code for any of the media queries I write.

IB: What can Breakpoint do that just assigning variable names to specific min-widths can't?

SR: For starters, Breakpoint handles much more than min-width queries. It is designed to be future friendly and currently supports all CSS level 3 and level 4 media queries. Additionally, it's syntax is easy to use to create complex media queries, including both and and or media queries. It has native handling for all of the different media query requirement for resolution (of which you need to write at least four different queries for currently) while just writing the standard. The no-query fallbacks are a huge win as well.

MW: The main benefit is that you can assign names and manage your media queries with variables. This helps you avoid having them scattered around your SCSS, and makes is easy to understand how they're related and affect each other.

MW: While Breakpoint is optimized for min-width because they're used most often it doesn't stop there. There are a number of shortcuts built in, for fencing min- and max- values, converting pixels to ems, and even vendor prefixed queries like resolution.

MW: We even created a way to Breakpoint to report back to you what queries are in a particular context. Singularity GS uses this feature to kind of magically create responsive grid systems.

SR: Of all of Breakpoint's features, probably the least used, but most powerful is Breakpoint Context. This allows you to call a function anywhere and get the current media query context allowing for amazingly intelligent mixins and functions to be written in Sass, something unique to Breakpoint that you simply don't have with interpolating variables.

IB: Are there any responsive web design aspects specific to Drupal theming/frontend development that Breakpoint helps with?

SR: There is nothing Drupal specific that Breakpoint helps with. Breakpoint, like Sass, was built to be backend independent. This means that if you are building any site, regardless of if it's a Drupal site or a Node site or a static site, Breakpoint is able to do its job handily without being caught up in being tied to a specific backend technology.

MW: One of the things I love about working with Sass is that it's not Drupal-specific, and it's meant to be used anywhere on the web. Breakpoint follows that example.

IB: Is Breakpoint a successor to Respond-To, or will that continue to get developed?

SR: In a way, yes and no. Respond-To was written before Breakpoint, but upon Breakpoint's release, it was decided that our efforts should be focused on a unified Media Query engine, with Respond-To as a wrapper syntax for Breakpoint. This is how the current Respond-To project exists. As of Breakpoint 2.0, the Respond-To mixin has been incorporated into Breakpoint core, so you now can use Respond-To without needing an additional Compass extension!

IB: Do you use Breakpoints module (in Drupal 8 core)? Or do you just do all of that through Sass?

SR: I personally truly dislike the Breakpoint module. Every use case I've heard for it seems to be based on the thinking that sites have three or four breakpoints and that everything can be boiled down into an easy to use admin interface. There are no standard breakpoints, period, and good, reasonably complex responsive sites will usually have 20 or more breakpoints. Responsive cannot be done from the backend, and the Breakpoint module encourages you to do so (as does the Spark layout initiative).

IB: Do you think any aspects of Breakpoint might get rolled directly into Sass in the future?

MW: It's possible, but we probably won't move the obvious parts to the Sass language. There are some helper functions that we've written in Ruby that would be very useful in Sass core. Once that's in we'll be able to offer Breakpoint without Compass.

SR: I do not believe Breakpoint will be rolled directly into Sass, nor would I want it to be, as it is out of scope of Sass core. As much as I like them, I even think the color functions in Sass are out of scope for it. Sass core should simply be the language and the bare minimum function base for it to be useable. Sass doesn't ship with any mixins, and I think it should probably stay that way. That being said, Breakpoint is fairly stable; our 1.3 release stood stable for six or so months without needing any changes until we rewrote the whole thing for our 2.x release, so maybe being merged into Compass isn't out of the question, but I do not see a need for that.

IB: I hear in addition to Breakpoint, Sam went and created some kind of magic box of Sass called Toolkit. Want to say more about that?

SR: Toolkit started life as RWD Kickstart, a project Mason and I kind of made up on the spot a year ago at one of the first New York Sass meetups. Its original goal was simply to be a collection of Compass templates to make pulling in media query and grid solutions together easily. Since then, it's evolved to be more of a collection of Progressive Enhancement, Design in Browser, and Modern Web Development tools, a toolkit if you'll let me, of useful tools. I'd say the four biggest thing that Toolkit has are a modern Clearfix mixin, progressive enhancement replace text mixins, a triangle generation mixin, and an intrinsic ratio mixin to make using intrinsic ratios super easy. It also adds *, *:before, *:after { box-sizing: border-box} and img, video { max-width: 100%; height: auto; } to your stylesheets, which are the first two things I do for any responsive project.

SR: Toolkit's templates have also evolved, Where originally there were five some odd different templates to choose from, now there are just two, a basic one to set up a basic partial structure, and a responsive web design one that pulls in Breakpoint 2.x for media queries and Singularity 1.x for grids.

IB: You sure know those late twentieth-century presidents.

MW: With a name like Breakpoint, how could I not revisit the cinema classic Point Break. Bodhi and his gang of thrill-seeking bank-robbing surfers evaded the FBI for years until the newly minted Special Agent Johnny Utah was on the case. I think we can all agree that there's a poignant metaphor for web designer there. And some pretty sweet gifs.

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

Drupal 8 and the power of Twig: A Drupalcon Portland featured session

Ivan Boothe — Fri, 17 May 2013 02:33:58 +0000

A new theming engine, Twig, is coming along with Drupal 8's adoption of the Symfony framework. And it's downright magical.

Instead of having theme functions that have to be overridden, everything becomes an (easy to read, easy to modify) template. Instead of having to figure out render arrays, themers can use consistent template variables. And instead of having insecure output, Twig sanitizes everything by default.

If you've ever worked on a WordPress or Tumblr theme, the approach will feel pretty similar. Here's what it looks like:

And oh by the way, it's well-documented — no small point in the Drupal community!

Sound too good to be true? Well, it almost might be, because a lot has to happen in order to get this into Drupal 8. There's a Twig-focused sprint happening right after Drupalcon, so if you think this is great, come pitch in! Because if things don't get done, Twig will be held until Drupal 9. No Drupal themer, veteran or newbie, kitten or human, wants that to happen.

I spoke to Jen Lampton (with a contribution from Fabian Franz) about how Twig will result in happier veteran Drupal themers, happier new Drupal themers, and happier Drupal kittens. Be sure to show up for their featured Drupalcon session (along with Drupal CSS innovator John Albin Wilkins), “Using Twig: The new template engine in Drupal 8,” on Wednesday at 3:45 PM.

IB: What's one thing you're most excited about with Twig?

JL: Replacing the template engine with something completely different means that we get to take a good hard look at absolutely everything in the current theme system, so we can do a clean sweep.

FF: What I love the most about Twig is the syntax, and how it cleverly makes it possible to lazy-render things. The possibilities of having an interpreted language are endless.

IB: Can theme developers start converting/creating their themes now?

JL: No! If you have the time to start converting your own themes, then please, please, please use the time to help us make the theme system what you want it to be — instead. There will be time to convert your themes later, but Drupal itself can only be monumentally improved right now.

IB: Will frontend developers and themers coming from other CMSes — like WordPress — find Twig easier to use?

JL: Yes. Front end developers coming from everywhere will find Twig easier to use. For starters, Twig looks a lot more like HTML, so if you don't know PHP you'll still be right at home. For people who do know PHP and don't know Twig, there will be a learning curve, but it's far far FAR less steep than learning about what Drupal had done to PHPTemplate.

IB: Twig sounds great! What can people do to help make sure it happens for Drupal 8?

JL: There are four main areas where we need help right now, as outlined in our Twig TODO wiki.

1. Help us test all the patches.
2. Help us fix issues with the patches.
3. Help us improve the markup in core (after being converted to Twig).
4. Help us clean up the rest of the theme system.

If people are interested in any one of these four areas, they can come to the sprint immediately following DrupalCon and get some hands-on help making Drupal better. We need all the hands we can get since we are up against some major deadlines, so please please please come help us!

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

Drupal 8, aural interfaces and groundbreaking accessibility at Drupalcon Portland

Ivan Boothe — Thu, 16 May 2013 13:30:00 +0000

I'm a millennial, but even I remember the experience of calling the telephone operator and getting a live human to look up the number of a business or place a collect call. We have the digital means to complete lots of tasks like that today, but that doesn't mean all of our methods are equally effective for everyone.

"Drupal 8 will be the most accessible version of Drupal yet," declare J. Renée Beach and Wim Leers in their Drupalcon Portland session description.

They're both part of the Spark team, an initiative to improve the authoring experience in Drupal for everyone.

Spark is more well known for things like in-place editing and a mobile friendly toolbar, which you can see at right. But from the beginning, improving the experience for everyone has been a big priority, and one of the most exciting developments is a new aural interface.

That's right, Drupal is getting a switchboard operator:

OK, so that doesn't look terribly exciting all on its own. But trust me, when you watch the videos of people interacting with Drupal 8 and having menus and selections read as they go, it's pretty cool.

When I spoke with J. Renée about Drupal 8 and the nature of working on accessibility, the passion for this work really shown through. I'm really looking forward to their session with Wim, "Drupal Speaks: Aural user interfaces, new Drupal 8 accessibility features," on Wednesday at 10:45 AM. Hope to see you there!

IB: What are we missing when we talk about accessibility right now?

JRB: I want developers to understand that accessibility is fundamental to user interface development. We tend to talk about accessibility like we talk about gender. Both have coded values. When we speak of being gendered, we are often talking about being non-male. Male is a kind of genderless base state. So is it with accessibility. When we speak of making something accessible, we tend to refer to making an interface for blind users or for users with physical capabilities that make keyboard and mouse use difficult, as examples. Visual is a kind of accessible base state.

We risk "othering" folks for whom accessibility is an issue because as developers, in general, non-visual accessibility has not been a primary concern. I know what is is like to be othered. In some ways, highlighting otherness can be an effective way to bring focus to a problem. Eventually though, we need to resolve those issues and close the loop on the otherness. We can be other and also be equal. Now is the time for front end developers to start thinking about accessibility as a multi-modal effort. We no longer have the excuse that the tools and technologies available to us do not support efficient workflows for non-visual UI development.

IB: Where is Drupal 8 going to do better?

JRB: Most importantly, we have more individual core contributors this cycle who truly believe in addressing accessibility issues. And they are all smart, wonderful people which makes working with them a pleasure!

For example, take this issue about requirement warnings during installation. For a sighted user, a warning during installation is immediately apparent. The missing requirement is made distinct with color contrast. For a blind user, they must traverse every cell in the table to discover a missing requirement. Would we ever impose such a burden on a sight user through the UI? No, not without grumbles in the issue queues at least. With more contributors invested in improving these types of non-visual details, we are polishing all the rough edges — the ones we see and the ones we don't.

IB: How important is context in aural interfaces?

JRB: Context is important to all interfaces. As front end developers we build templates that expose context in a predictable, consumable way. As a practice we have established and then refined patterns of visual expression over the past 30-plus years.

Metaphors grounded visual pointer displays on a virtual desktop. We talk of visual affordances in rounded, gradient-embellished, reflective buttons. Skeumorphic designs bring our understanding of the physical world to bear on pixels and bits.

Where are the metaphors in aural interface design? I know of none. To me, these interfaces are flat. The metal is bare underneath them.

Perhaps non-visual interfaces have one less level of abstraction to traverse. Maybe there's no need to translate language into symbol and then back into language. But that little bit of designer in me, that memory of a linguist I almost was, remembers being thunderstruck with insight reading Jackendoff's unfurling of metaphor after I had just so recently fallen smitten with the strict generative grammar of early Chomsky. Jackendoff gives us a way of understanding language that starts at basic physical dichotomies — up/down and near/far — and from there offers us a model of communication. He gives us pattern. (Early) Chomsky gave us metal. So much that we humans do starts with structure that softens with time to fit our curvy, winding nature.

I want to believe that the aural interfaces we have today still just the awkward first attempts to build an abstract audio interface pattern language. That non-visual interface design is still working through its structuralist phase. We are still learning how to pack context into denser forms through non-visual expressions.

IB: Will the Drupal 8 improvements have things to offer module developers?

JRB: In Drupal 8, we are building tools that manage a couple of the trickier components of accessibility in a browser. These are:

1. Outputting audio updates
2. Managing tabbing in constrained workflows

Module developers will be able to pass a string to a method called "announce" on the Drupal object and have that string read by a screen reader.

Another method on the Drupal object called "tabbingManager" will constrain tabbable elements on the page. A developer will select those elements, either through JavaScript methods or jQuery, and pass them to the tabbingManager. Tabbing is then constrained to those elements until the constraint is superseded or released. I know that must not be completely clear, but that's why we're presenting a session about aural user interfaces and how we can use these new tools to build them!

Top image: Public domain. Drupal images from the drupal.org issue queue and the session slides.

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

Grow your own: Learning custom base themes at Drupalcon Portland

Ivan Boothe — Wed, 15 May 2013 18:26:35 +0000

Ah, base themes.

If there's an analogue to the Windows/Mac/Linux battle in Drupal land, it's probably Zen vs. Omega vs. AdaptiveTheme.

Garrett Dawson and John Ferris have a way out of that eternal struggle: Custom base themes. As they put it in their Drupalcon Portland session description:

"By necessity, base themes make assumptions about how teams and individuals work. By rolling your own, you’ll become much more comfortable and informed about the Drupal theming layer, and have a better launchpad for your front-end projects."

Here in Portland we take home gardening and permaculture seriously, so what better place to talk about "growing your own" custom base theme!

I spoke with John and Garrett about how creating your own base theme can make work for you and your team easier. Take a gander at their session, “Dapper Drupal: Custom Tailored Themes,” on Thursday at 2:15 PM for the full story!

IB: Base themes that are out there make some assumptions about how you want to theme. What's the advantage to rolling your own base theme rather than finding the theme that already makes the assumptions you do?

JF and GD: If you can find a base theme in contrib that fits perfectly into your workflow, by all means, use it. There's a lot of solid tools out there. We don't want to deter people from using and contributing to them. With that said, we feel it's unlikely a contributed base theme will be ticking all the boxes and making all the right assumptions about your workflow.

There's no one-size-fits-all approach. Your front-end process is heavily influenced by team dynamics, contrib module choices and a whole host of other considerations. The majority of base themes cannot account for those variables like you can. We want front-end developers to take a critical look at their tools to see where they can make improvements. That may mean creating a custom base theme; a custom starter theme for use with an existing base theme; or even a set of helper modules.

All the popular base themes started because someone wasn't happy with what was available at the time. The ultimate goal is increasing efficiency while improving the quality of the final HTML, CSS and JS.

IB: Do you recommend custom base themes for big shops? Small distributed teams? Freelancers? Everyone?

JF/GD: Yes, all of the above. At least consider it as an option. If you find yourself doing any kind of repetitive work, there's an opportunity for improvement. The only people who should steer clear of custom base themes are those new to Drupal. You need to be familiar with the tools that are available before setting out to create your own.

IB: Besides your the custom base themes you developed yourselves (Center and Prototype) what other custom base themes have you seen in the wild?

JF/GD: Yes! We've learned a lot working with and iterating on Center and Prototype. They work well for the structure of our team and the type of work we do at Aten. However, we realize every team is unique. We were really interested in seeing how other organizations were approaching the front-end problem space. We chatted with a range of teams of varying sizes working across different industries. Everyone has their own unique set of tools based on their own strengths and constraints. We're excited to share those with you, but you'll just have to come and see for yourself!

Images: National Archives and Flickr user McBeth.

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

Ninjas in your code at Drupalcon Portland: SASS with extends and placeholders

Ivan Boothe — Wed, 15 May 2013 03:09:34 +0000

It's fair to say that in the last year, adopting the CSS preprocessor SASS has completely changed frontend development for me. That's a sentiment I've heard others express when they started using it — and I was pretty late to the party.

I got attracted to it initially through variables. We've all been there when a client or a designer wants to change a color and suddenly we have to change dozens or hundreds of values across CSS.

Dale Sande captures that kind of revolution in efficiency that SASS brings, as seen in a screenshot from his upcoming presentation at Drupalcon Portland.

But Dale, who's spoken plenty on SASS and organizes the Seattle SASS meetup, is taking us way past the SASS basics like variables, and that's why I'm excited to see his presentation next week.

Around the same time SASS came onto the scene, some thoughtful people were exploring more maintainable frontend development and CSS architecture through ideas/acronyms like OOCSS, SMACSS and BEM, and folks like Nicole Sullivan, Jonathan Snook (a Drupalcon featured speaker!), Nicolas Gallagher, and Harry Roberts.

I spoke with Dale about SASS, object-oriented CSS and some the things he'll be covering at Drupalcon. Be sure to join me at his session, "Sass: OO'S'CSS w/Extends and Silent Placeholders," on Wednesday at 2:15 PM!

IB: Some people argue SASS creates bloated code — do you see placeholders addressing that concern effectively?

DS: Sass doesn’t create bad code. Bad coders do.

The whole concept of placeholder selectors was designed to fight code bloat and be a more pragmatic solution to OOCSS. In my presentation, I illustrate how using the various techniques generate code.

The real "ah-ha" moment comes when we see how using placeholder selectors makes it easier to manage and literally re-use code — thus reducing dreaded CSS bloat.

IB: What's the advantage to using silent placeholders over mixins for a set of rules?

DS: Simply put, being able to re-use code without duplicating code. The use of mixins was the first part of being DRY with our code. Looking at the Sass it felt AWESOME! But when we looked at the output CSS, this is when we realized that we were all living a lie.

Our CSS rules were being duplicated tens, if not hundreds of times. We weren't being DRY, we simply put the onus of duplication on the machine.

Placeholder selectors embrace the one of the oldest concepts of CSS and that is to extend the CSS selector for reuse. But with traditional CSS this was difficult to do, especially when you were dealing with thousands of lines of code. Sass' @extend directive allows developers to create name-spaced reusable chunks of code that is portable, re-usable and extendable without duplicating anything.

IB: Do you see placeholders as helping to reduce the amount of tight coupling — scattering pieces of styles in multiple places?

DS: While Placeholder Selectors are a tool that can help with scattered code, it is not the only solution. Having a file/folder structure that embraces the different types of code, e.g. CSS selectors, placeholder selectors, mixins and functions, can assist in creating reusable modulare code and maintain a process of control over the many parts.

Images: Screenshot from Dale Sande's presentation.

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

A world-class frontend track at Drupalcon Portland

Ivan Boothe — Mon, 13 May 2013 22:35:51 +0000

The big news at Drupalcon Portland is that, for the first time at a Drupalcon, we're having separate frontend and user experience (UX) tracks. That means we were able to offer even more sessions targeted directly at frontend developers, and as the local track chair for frontend, I'm really excited about what we've ended up with!

Groundbreaking frontend featured speakers

First and foremost, of course, we have Jonathan Snook presenting on his concept (and book) Scalable and Modular Architecture for CSS.

SMACSS has had a big impact on a lot of frontend developers and themers — and in fact it's had a huge impact on Drupal itself. The Zen base theme, the most-downloaded Drupal theme out there, has adopted a SMACSS approach.

And Drupal itself is moving toward SMACSS with a re-organization of its CSS in the upcoming Drupal 8 release.

Join Jonathan Snook at Drupalcon Portland on Tuesday, May 21 at 4:30 PM.

Drupal 8 and Twig

Oh yeah, so there's this new version of Drupal coming out pretty soon.

Among the many, many awesome things happening with Drupal 8, one of the most relevant to frontend developers is the adoption (with a little luck) of the Twig templating engine.

Twig, a component of Symfony — a framework being adopted by Drupal 8 — will enable themers to write much cleaner (and safer!) code, and enable module developers to simplify the theming components of their modules.

No joke, at the BADCamp 2012 Twig session, there were literally gasps in the audience as we all saw how cool it was. If you're a themer or a frontend developer, don't miss this!

Join Jen Lampton, Fabian Franz and John Albin Wilkins presenting Twig on Wednesday, May 22 at 3:45 PM.

And so much more!

I've just touched on two of the featured sessions at Drupalcon Portland. In the coming week I'll be posting more about some of the other sessions, but you can browse the frontend sessions right now and start planning to attend your favorites! (Don't forget the User Experience sessions too.)

And if you don't yet have your ticket to Drupalcon Portland, there's still time! Grab your ticket by this Friday and save $50 off the on-site ticket price.

I can't wait to see everyone here in Portland!

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

Uncharitable: How businesses co-opt nonprofits and undermine their potential

Ivan Boothe — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 23:33:23 +0000

Dan Pallotta, whose TED talk, "The way we think about charity is dead wrong," spoke at the Nonprofit Technology Conference this morning.

His arguments, which are not particularly new, are that nonprofits are under restraints — some culturally, and some self-imposed — that limit their potential. If only charities were run more like businesses, he says — with high executive pay and less belief in large "overhead" being a stand-in for inefficiency — they'd be able to do more.

Dan follows in the long tradition of successful businessmen (it's almost always men) arriving on the nonprofit scene talking loudly and listening rarely.

His ideas are wrong almost by design, because Dan isn't interested in making nonprofits more powerful; he's interested in making society more receptive to unrestrained business — nonprofits, in this case, are merely a proxy.

"He is not a credible defender of nonprofits because he doesn’t seem to really care for them. He appears not to grasp the notion that markets fail—and that one of nonprofits’ primary roles is to address those failures, not mimic corporations. He has consistently disparaged nonprofits. In a Harvard Business Review blog, he wrote that he’d be hard pressed to think of any business that wasn’t making more of a positive difference in society than nonprofits."

— Phil Buchanan, The Chronicle of Philanthropy

"Just as he makes a fetish out of unrestrained capitalism, he makes a fetish out of cash over other means of securing happiness and satisfaction at work. How insulting to think that, if we make less pay than our for profit counterparts, we must be less creative, talented, intelligent and less capable of helping others."

— Ken Berger, Charity Navigator

The entire approach is based on the scarcity-model, zero-sum game that people like to play with charities. In the past I've referred to this as nonprofit deathmatch.

Yet lots of research has shown people who donate once are more likely to donate again, even to other organizations in the same field — it's why some nonprofits sell their lists. And the same principle is at work with advocacy: get people interested and they'll keep taking action.

Getting away from the scarcity model allows organizations to build movements instead of just lists.

It's not suprising that his views are so limited when he consistently groups all organizations into "nonprofits" or "charities" without recognizing the huge differences among them.

Service organizations have very different goals from advocacy-based organizations, to say nothing of institutional nonprofits like universities, hospitals and museums. But they're all just the "nonprofit sector" to him.

"To Mr. Pallotta, it’s the total amount of funds raised that is the ultimate measure. His defense of CEO pay justifies compensation in the context of revenue, apparently assuming that a charity that has more money will inevitably get better results."

— Phil Buchanan, The Chronicle of Philanthropy

"Myth #1: There are $400,000 talents. The first falsehood is that there are people who are just worth more. Defending wide inequality relies upon the notion that some people are worth much more, based on training, ability, or certain special qualities. This notion makes inequality appear legitimate to people at all levels, and thereby harder to redress. The use of the phrase 'low-wage worker,' instead of 'worker who is paid a low wage,' hints at a peculiarly American sleight of hand: Someone’s place in the wage structure is an indicator of their true merit."

— Michelle Kweder, Gerald Denis, and Maureen Scully, Stanford Social Innovation Review

Dan also has little use for any vision of social change, or any apparent understanding of social movements, since none that could be called successful have in any way fit his vision. Because Dan's vision isn't one of social change, it's one of a perpetuation of wealth, with nonprofits simply one more business sector in which to advertise.

.@danpalotta The ? I have is, why should NPOs be more like biz? Isn't what's necessary to change the game, not make more of the same? #13NTC
— Jenn Yoo (@jooy8) April 12, 2013

"He makes more references to Steve Jobs, Apple, and its products—the index lists seven, though I counted more—in Charity Case than to any nonprofit organization. Yet he says he is rising to the defense of nonprofits: comparing the 'movement' he seeks to lead to the civil-rights movement."

— Phil Buchanan, The Chronicle of Philanthropy

Capitalism isn't the solution. It's the problem, and many of us are fighting it.

Capitalism created inequalities, but we won't let NPOs use capitalist tools to address them--missing a logical step? #13ntc
— Jenn Yoo (@jooy8) April 12, 2013

"[A] theme in the book is Dan’s idealization of capitalism almost as a God that can lead to self fulfillment and 'stunning change' through the wonderful motive of personal gain."

— Ken Berger, Charity Navigator

#13NTC Lots to agree with in Dan Palotta's plenary, but as an anti-capitalist I want to destroy the system, not compete w/it.
— Laura Shapiro (@laurajshapiro) April 12, 2013

"He co-opts our national conversation about income inequality to advance his goals and the goals of a socio-economic elite that is content to believe in meritocracy and their own meritoriousness. We argue that it is misguided to base the pay of executives in inequality-alleviating nonprofits on ideological myths that have done much to reproduce and legitimate inequality."

— Michelle Kweder, Gerald Denis, and Maureen Scully, Stanford Social Innovation Review

It's no wonder Dan is so popular among the TED crowd — business leaders and wealthy technologists who can see a product in every social trend.

What's more mystifying is why Dan Pallotta would be popular among nonprofits, activists, and social changemakers. It's clear Dan has no substantive message for them.

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

Free Drupal Q&A call for nonprofits and social change tomorrow, Feb. 28

Ivan Boothe — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 19:58:20 +0000

Tomorrow at 1PM Eastern/10AM Pacific, Johanna Bates and I will be co-hosting the monthly Nonprofit Drupal Community of Practice discussion and Q&A call.

This is a free conference call, sponsored by the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) but open to anyone. Please join us!

What will we talk about?

This is a time to chat informally with other nonprofit-tech Drupalists — an open Q&A discussion for anyone with or in nonprofits or social change groups using Drupal. But generally speaking:

Stuck on something? Have a question? Drupal experts will be on hand to answer questions. (No question is too basic. Really.)
Psyched about a module or a Drupal event? Come tell us about it on the call!
What's happening with Drupal 8? Some of us know stuff. Join us, let's chat about it.

We're open to questions or topic suggestions ahead of time — just leave a comment below or message me on Twitter @rootwork.

Johanna and I will take collaborative notes on the call (notes from January's discussion are here) so if you can't make it just let us know if you'd like a link to the notes.

Join the call!

On Thursday, Feb. 28 at 1PM Eastern/10AM Pacfic, just dial in to (866) 740-1260 and enter the access code 3979222.

Talk to you soon!

Image: The BADCamp Nonprofit Summit.

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

Domain Registry of America is a scam. Don't let your nonprofit get fooled.

Ivan Boothe — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 19:07:44 +0000

I know how registering a website domain goes in a small nonprofit: A volunteer or an intern or a staff person's nephew set up the website years ago and registered the domain somewhere — which perhaps you only found out when it suddenly expired, the email address renewal messages were being sent to having long ago been deleted or moved. Remembering to renew your domain is probably something you learned (perhaps the hard way) to schedule on your calendar, to make sure the website doesn't go down — as it did once for me — when the single "tech person" on staff is away at a conference.

[[wysiwyg_imageupload:3:]]Into this confusion steps Domain Registry of America, a bottomfeeding company that intentionally misleads low-information website owners into vastly overpaying for their domain registration by switching to their "service."

You don't need to and shouldn't register your nonprofit website with Domain Registry of America — don't be fooled!

Here's how it works: Domain Registry of America sends the owner of a website domain an official-looking "expiration notice" (pictured at right), urging the owner to "act today" to prevent "loss of your online identity making it difficult for your customers and friends to locate you."

How does it get your mailing address? Domain Registry of America trawls "whois" records, the official listings of contact information every website has.

Many domain registrars offer "whois privacy" or "whois anonymization," enabling registrants to substitute the registrar's own contact information for yours. But nonprofits, either because of a need for transparency or a lack of knowledge about the service, often have their official mailing address listed.

Domain Registry of America isn't any kind of official or government-sanctioned company (I've intentionally refrained from referring to it as the Domain Registry of America), although that's clearly the impression they're aiming for with their name.

When a harried nonprofit staffer gets a letter that says "domain name expiration notice" in big letters at the top, they might well think back to the last time their website unexpectedly expired and send back their "renewal" — not realizing they've unintentionally transferred their domain.

Now to be fair, Domain Registry of America carefully words its documents to specify that this "is not a bill" and that responding will "switch your domain name registration." But they're clearly banking on people not reading closely.

Domain Registry of America vastly overcharges for domain registrations — $35 per year with their "service," whereas reputable registrars usually charge between $10 and $15 per year.

This company can't compete on price or service; their entire business model is built on swindling people into switching their registration. Because nonprofits are more likely to be low-information customers in this space, and because they're likely to have their real contact information listed, nonprofits are at particular risk of being exploited by Domain Registry of America. I've seen at least two nonprofits nearly go through with the switch before they realized what was happening.

Don't let it happen to your nonprofit. Just say no to Domain Registry of America!

Other resources on Domain Registry of America

"Domain name scams," from Wikipedia
"Domain Registry of America," by Peter Forret
"Domain Registry of America scam" from GreenNet
"Scam Alert: Domain Registry of America," from Moore Web Exposure
"Domain Registry of America Scam Alert," from studio1c
"Domain Registry Of America: Scam Alert!," by Garrett Blanton
"The Domain Registry of America scam," by Michael Reynolds
and my favorite, "Want an Example of Everything That Is Wrong in This World? Domain Registry of America Does Us the Honors," by The Naming Dude

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

Frontend session proposals to Portland Drupalcon due today!

Ivan Boothe — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 18:26:12 +0000

As the local track chair for the frontend track, I'm posting this to encourage any last-minute session proposals bouncing around in your head to get typed out and proposed today.

That's right: Today's the Portland Drupalcon session proposal deadline. Submit your proposal now!

(And yes, nonprofit and nonprofit developer friends, there's an NGO track too.)

This year, the frontend track has been split off from the user experience track, so you can be even more specific in your proposals. Here are the descriptions for both tracks:

Frontend: Connecting new tools and techniques to create an effective Drupal frontend experience

The frontend experience of a website is crucial to its success. Though the backend of a site may be impeccable, the frontend experience gives the user the first impression of an organization or company. Without a good frontend experience, a site can turn users away. Let's discover ways in which we can connect our knowledge of different frontend tools and techniques with Drupal — and make Drupal a better experience for all users.

Main Themes

The importance of frontend development in creating websites + web apps

What frontend developers need to know to work well with backend devs, PMs, UX, Content Strategists

Preparing frontend devs for D8 and Twig

Frontend for mobile

Using frontend frameworks such as Foundation and Bootstrap

Speeding up the design process

Frontend development for multilingual sites

Audience

Frontend developers

Backend devs that do Frontend work

PMs that work with Frontend devs

User Experience (UX)

The User Experience process is key to the success of the development of websites and web applications. From user research, interviews and analytics, we learn what the user actually wants and needs; not what we assume they want. At this year's DrupalCon we present a new User Experience track to show our community's dedication to user needs.

Main Themes

Explaining what user experience is and why it’s important

UX for mobile and tablet, Responsive UX

Speeding up the design process using UX tools and techniques

UX for multilingual sites - especially RTL

Content Strategy

Audience

UX professionals - Drupal

UX professionals outside of Drupal

Backend devs that are interested in UX

Frontend devs interested in UX

For the frontend track, global track chair John Ferris and I are looking for balance among three big areas: CSS and CSS metalanguages like SASS and LESS; jQuery and JavaScript; and Drupal 8's new template engine, Twig. There are also topics that span those areas, such as frontend mobile development (including responsiveness) and multilingual frontend development.

If you're wondering whether you should submit a session proposal, as track chair let me clear it up for you: You should!

Awesome frontend speakers

Drupalcon has some exciting keynote speakers, such as Karen McGrane. But the frontend track has some special guests we're really looking forward to:

Jonathan Snook, author of Scalable and Modular Architecture for CSS (SMACSS), will be presenting some of his ideas for writing great stylesheets. I'm personally very excited about this one!
Jen Lampton, Fabian Franz, and John Albin Wilkins will be doing an in-depth look at the aforementioned Twig, Drupal 8's new template engine. At a similar presentation at BADCamp last fall, I heard audible gasps from the audience. No joke, Twig is that cool.

So if you haven't already, be sure to grab a ticket and get your travel figured out to my (new) hometown of Portland for the 2013 North American Drupalcon!

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

Two-click button foils Facebook tracking, a new tool for privacy-concerned nonprofits

Ivan Boothe — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 16:04:12 +0000

Last month, the privacy commissioner for the German state Schleswig-Holstein, Thilo Weichert, announced that he would fine websites in his state €50,000 if they included Facebook's "Like" button.

Weichert argues that this popular function breaches privacy by making it possible for the social networking giant to guess user preferences and opinions by compiling a profile of all the sites marked on one computer.

The issue is that even if you don't click the "Like" button, Facebook still knows you visited the page because its server gets called to display the button code. For individuals already on Facebook, it can compile a detailed profile of you around the web, based on what you visit (again, whether or not you click the button) and serve you or your friends particular ads on Facebook as a result. For those who are not on Facebook, or who aren't logged in, it can still tie the profile to your IP address, and could theoretically link that information to you, should you subsequently show up on Facebook.

This isn't unique to Facebook

Most "free" third-party apps do exactly the same thing, although few have the reach of Facebook. The other big player is Google, who tracks you (by IP address) using Google Analytics, which many websites have installed in exchange for free website statistics, and tracks you (by Google profile) using Google's new "+1" button released as part of the Google Plus social network. Since Google makes so much of its money from advertising, its interest in knowing which sites you visit is pretty self-explanatory.

Other social networks' widgets, such as Twitter's "Tweet" button, the Pinterest button, etc. also are certainly tracking who is accessing them, but to date there have been fewer examples of them using this information to build profiles of people. Social "plugin" applications, like AddThis, ShareThis and Disqus also compile profiles of people as a way to present them what they think will be the most useful social network buttons (and in some cases links to other content), but it's less clear whether they've been using that information for any other purposes.

Organizations concerned about the privacy of their visitors — especially those at risk of being tracked by repressive governments who could lean on social networking companies to release user data — should carefully weigh whether a given social widget is worth the risk in privacy. Moreover, these organizations should absolutely provide a privacy policy that specifically lays out what's being collected and by whom, and may also want to consider suggesting ways for those at risk to circumvent this data tracking.

Several organizations I've seen have prominently linked to the Tor Project, and there are good resources from the EFF and Ethan Zuckerman on using Tor for anonymous blogging. There are also several Firefox plugins that anonymize your browsing. Any of these methods would defeat tracking by social networking widgets.

A two-click solution for websites

For organizations that want to ensure their users are only tracked by social networking websites if they explicitly opt-in, there's an exciting new development.

Last week, as a response to the German privacy commissioner's declaration against social networking buttons, German website Heise has released a script that disables social networking buttons by default.

[[wysiwyg_imageupload:2:]]

The script renders three social networking buttons — Facebook's Like, Google's +1 and Twitter's Tweet — as greyed-out images hosted locally on the website. After flicking a virtual switch, site visitors enable the actual social networking button, which calls the web servers of Facebook, Google or Twitter and would thus trigger the data collection. There's also a handy settings button to the right, that allows you to permanently opt-in to one or all of the services for that site. You can see it in use at the bottom of the post where they announce it.

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

A grant for your mission, as a poem

Ivan Boothe — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 19:01:00 +0000

The Community TechKnowledge Foundation announced today a grant of $10,000 for a nonprofit that submits a description of their mission — in the form of a poem. Along with the grant, the poetry will be turned into a song by Bill Dillon, a songwriter who was wrongfully imprisoned for 27 years and freed by the Innocence Project of Florida.

There are also secondary prizes for $5,000, $1,000, and guitars autographed by members of Los Lonely Boys. (A tertiary prize, "tech grants" from CTK, probably aren't worth it as they only last for three months and lock you into their proprietary system — but you don't have to include an application for these grants in your submission.)

Read more information about the grant, or take a look at the grant application. The deadline is March 28.

If you don't feel up to turning your mission into poetry, this is a great opportunity to solicit submissions from your supporters. Even if you don't win, you may have some useful new language to talk about what you do!

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

Google Chrome for a cause, or, nonprofit deathmatch strikes again

Ivan Boothe — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 16:07:10 +0000

Google has initiated a project it calls Chrome for a Cause, in which every person who uses its Chrome browser will generate a small donation for each tab that they open, to a charity of their choice. The project runs from Dec. 15 to 19, and includes five charities: The Nature Conservancy, charity: water, Doctors Without Borders, Un Techo para mi País, and Room to Read. Google will donate a combined total of up to $1 million to the five charities.

To have your Chrome tabs count, you must first install a small extension to your copy of Chrome. There's a maximum of 250 tabs per day, and one tab per second, that count toward your cause. You also must have a Google account to submit your totals.

What I like about it

It's great that Google is directing money to nonprofits, and not the usual milquetoast public awareness charities, but organizations that do good, concrete things. And it's nice that on the Chrome for a Cause page, they have links to "donate directly" under the description of each organization.

It's also nice that people who participate in Chrome for a Cause get to choose — from Google's list of five charities — where they want their portion of the money generated to go.

What I'm less thrilled about

The cleverness of it is lost on me. "We'll donate money for every tab you open, if you download an extension for it," seems like if a car dealer said, "Hey, for the month of December, every time you open the back left door of your car, I'll donate 10 cents to a charity that you choose. (But you have to come in to the dealership to get a counter installed on that door.)"

I get that it's tied to the use of the browser, and anything that gets people to use the browser more (and set up Google accounts if they don't have them) is a plus for them. So it makes sense for Google to put the tabs-for-charity schtick on this project, but I don't see how it makes any kind of sense at all to the public. Which leads me to...

It feels creepy that Google is exploiting the holiday season of goodwill to get more usage out of its browser. I know that corporations don't make donations to nonprofits without getting something in return, but this seems more gratuitous than usual. And, of course, it could breed the ultimate form of "slacktivism" — ineffective digital activism — in which opening a tab to donate a few cents assuages a person's sense of needing to contribute to making the world a better place.

Not even a glancing mention on their page of how much is donated for each tab. Once you download the extension, it calculates how much your tabs have donated so far, in things rather than dollars (e.g. 0.3 trees; the full breakdown is on their blog), so it's hard to know exactly how much each tab is worth in monetary terms. But even measuring it in what it will buy, why should we have to install the extension in order to find out what our possible impact will be?

It promotes the idea of organizational competition — the nonprofit deathmatch. Take a look at the screenshot above: You can either donate 9 vaccinations, or 23 books, or one person's clean water. I know that these kinds of competitions are all the rage — they even have a name, crowdsourcing philanthropy — but it's frustrating to me how it's rooted in a scarcity model, in which organizations must compete rather than collaborate. I'm sure, for instance, that each of these nonprofits is encouraging their members to "donate tabs" to them, rather than others.

In fact, since Google has capped its donation at $1 million, and it's relatively certain they will reach that amount given their reach, what participants are really voting for is allocation. "We've got a million dollars; vote with your tabs on what percentage should go to The Nature Conservancy," they're saying. So every vote to one organization takes money away from another.

How it could be better

Be transparent about what the impact is. Google should say, on the Chrome for Cause page itself, how many tabs you have to open to plant a tree (for instance).

Integrate concrete actions from the charities. Doctors Without Borders doesn't just ask people for money — they have, for instance, a big campaign to pressure governments not to prevent affordable generic medicines from being exported to the Global South, and another advocating for humanitarian food aid that provides adequate nutrition. At the end of each day, when a person submits their votes, why not end with something like "Great! Now here are more things you can do to support this charity..."

Pick one charity each week/month/season. This might be a little controversial, since more exposure for more nonprofits seems like a good thing, and part of this project's appeal is the ability for people to pick where their money goes. But by acting as a kind of "matching grant" for a nonprofit — "We'll donate $1 million to this organization, if our users open at least 1 million tabs this week" — Google can generate exposure for the organization and its browser, without forcing groups into the boxing ring against one another.

Pick one charity field each week/month/season. Instead of choosing a single environmental group for its donation, Google could choose to donate money equally to five or ten nonprofits in the same sector. This would encourage collaboration between nonprofits working on the same issue to work together in asking their supporters to participate.

Support nonprofits year-round. It's cute that Google is donating some money in December, to (sort of) coincide with the holidays, but there's no reason they can't do this for longer than a week. By making it an ongoing project and cycling through different organizations, Google can donate money to nonprofits, but also give its far more lucrative asset: attention.

What are your thoughts on Chrome for a Cause?

Be sure to follow Rootwork on Facebook!

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

Facebook removes default landing tab for new nonprofit pages

Ivan Boothe — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 00:31:37 +0000

If you're a nonprofit with a mailing address, you may have already received the card in the mail from Facebook: An invitation to claim your organization's Facebook Places page. Facebook Places allows people to "check in" when they're at your organization, publicizing you to their friends. Places also allows companies to offer "deals" to people who check in (like 10% off), although how that applies to a nonprofit is less clear.

If you already had a Facebook Page, when you go to claim your Facebook Place, you'll be prompted to merge the two.

This new, merged page will look a little different from your old page. Among other differences, what were formerly tabs across the top of your page will now be links underneath your profile picture, similar to the new Facebook Profiles.

And that's where the trouble starts: On your new merged Facebook Page — as the picture above shows — you will no longer be able to specify a default landing tab.

Default landing tabs are a powerful way to convert visitors to fans. Instead of new visitors simply being dumped on your Wall, nonprofits (and other companies) could create custom tabs, welcoming new visitors, introducing them to the organization, and encouraging them to "Like" the nonprofit.

Earlier this year, Facebook announced they were dropping support for new custom tabs that used Facebook Markup Language (FBML), although you could still specify a particular application tab as your landing page, including custom-page-creating applications. Indeed, a custom landing tab was recommended as a Facebook best practice for nonprofits.

Now, however, it appears all visitors to a nonprofit's Facebook Page will be directed to the Wall. What's more, with tabs being de-emphasized by their move to smaller links under your profile, it's less obvious how new visitors can find out more about your organization.

Since at the moment this only appears to affect Places pages, and any existing Pages merged with a Place, it's unclear whether this is simply a roll-out bug or something more long-term. But given that Facebook first removed the default landing tab a few months ago, reinstating it after an uproar — but only "temporarily" — I would guess that this is the direction of things on Facebook.

It's possible that this might only apply to pages in some categories, e.g. nonprofits but not companies; I don't have access to any company Facebook pages to investigate this on. It appears a default landing tab has never been available on things categorized as Community Pages — initially auto-generated from interests listed on profiles.

It appears that default landing tabs are not available on Places pages — or any traditional Pages "merged" with Places. My prediction is that it won't stick around for the rest of the Pages on Facebook.

It's not clear to me what the advantage of this is to Facebook, other than a general "standardness of experience" for users. Yet without any way to (substantially) customize the Wall, this seems like a net loss for both organizations and regular users. New visitors will no longer have an easy way to be introduced to an organization, and organizations will have to carefully cultivate their Wall to — at any moment — appeal to both current fans and new visitors.

I'm not sure what possible solutions out there, although one might be to make sure your Page's image/logo quickly communicates exactly what your nonprofit is about.

What are your thoughts on these changes to Facebook?

Note: If you blog about this, feel free to re-use the image above, with credit. It, like everything of mine on this site, is licensed under Creative Commons.

Be sure to follow Rootwork on Facebook!

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

Too few women in tech? Blame sexism.

Ivan Boothe — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:49:40 +0000

Michael Arrington has a tedious post on TechCrunch up about the fact that there aren't as many women in technology, or — more to the point — in positions of leadership in technology companies or on panels at tech conferences isn't men's fault.

But you know what? I think he's right.

Men aren't to blame for the lack of representation by women in technology. Nor, clearly, are women to blame. What causes this disparity? One word: Sexism.

"But wait!" you cry. "Surely there must be someone carrying out this sexism." And indeed, that's true — many individual men, and some women, often put forth ideas or enact policies that are rooted in sexism.

But sexism is bigger than any one person; it's a system in which our entire society — certainly the privileged, Western technology community — is enmeshed.

Too often, such systematic discrimination as treated as discrete, individual acts, disconnected from the larger reality. And so Arrington can complain:

Every damn time we have a conference we fret over how we can find women to fill speaking slots.

By attempting to fill a quota, he thinks he can inoculate himself (or his conference) against the charge of sexism. (He then makes the absurd point that, really, women are getting annoyed by being asked to speak at conferences all the time — which tends to undo that inoculation a small bit.)

Men are privileged most directly by sexism, of course, which is why Arrington's post is so galling. He suggests "we" need women "who go out and start companies" rather than "complain about how there are too few women in tech," as if justice in the technology community and the larger society is only the job of those who are marginalized, and never the ones who hold power.

Part of this is due to the retreat from full-fledged feminism into what Tim Wise has called "the diversity trap," in which a commitment only to "different backgrounds" motivates any kind of diversity. He's writing about racism and affirmative action, but the movement is the same — away from working to end sexism or racism, and toward an anodyne pledge to provide different perspectives. Wise quotes then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan, upon signing affirmative action into law in 1974:

Time and experience have shown that laws and edicts of non-discrimination are not enough. Justice demands that each and every citizen consciously adopt and accentuate a commitment to affirmative action, which will make equal opportunity a reality.

Providing opportunity alone won't work when the playing field is already tilted. Simply inviting speakers from a field from which women have been systematically filtered since birth is too late in the game.

Arrington makes the mind-boggling assertion that women are at an advantage, because there are so few of them that the press wants to write about the ones who "make it." This is the "talented tenth" turned on its head — that because a few individuals have struggled against overwhelming odds toward success, and that the media naturally wants to cover such extraordinary stories, the institutional oppression that existed to make those stories exceptional in the first place somehow disappears. As the death threats against tech writer Kathy Sierra demonstrated, straight-up sexism still holds sway among large parts of this male-domainted field.

In the sub-field of nonprofit technology, many if not most of the people I look to are women: Beth Kanter, Amy Sample Ward, Michelle Murrain, Alexandra Samuel, Marnie Webb, Allyson Kapin, Deborah Elizabeth Finn, Allison Fine, Debra Askanase, Katrin Verclas, Britt Bravo, Laura Quinn, Mary Joyce, Holly Ross, Jocelyn Harmon, Carie Lewis, Rebecca Leaman, Danielle Brigida, Christine Egger, Heather Mansfield, Shireen Mitchell, Nancy Schwartz, Ruby Sinreich, Susan Tenby, danah boyd, Nancy Scola, Kivi Leroux Miller, Judith Freeman, Jordan Dossett, Roz Lemieux, Wendy Harman, Eve Simon, Alnisa Allgood, Jean Russell, Susan Gordon, Katya Andresen, Maddie Grant, Margaux O'Malley — and that's just off the top of my head (sorry if I missed anyone).

Yet even in this space, women leaders are repeatedly judged on their appearance. In the nonprofit field as a whole, despite there being more women than men in leadership, they're still paid less across the board, although the gap is slowly shrinking. In part this may explain the success of women in this field, as any kind of social work is seen as women's work.

Arrington is feeling put-upon because he's experiencing women who point out the inequity in representation and leadership as a personal attack on him. It's not that unusual of a response — it's the same experience white folks have when people of color talk about racism, straight people have when queers demand equal treatment, and able-bodied individuals have when persons with disabilities expect equal access.

This is how oppression is set up — forcing individuals to compete against one another as individuals and rendering its pervasive influence invisible.

Michael Arrington is right to be outraged. But the outrage should be focused on the sexism that keeps both men and women down.

While it's women who bear the overwhelming amount of oppression from sexism, it's a force that inhibits men's growth as well. Men are expected to take on unbelievable obstacles, toil without complaint and settle for stunted emotional connections to family and friends.

Many successful men, when confronted with evidence of institutionalized sexism, feel that their accomplishments are being degraded, because they had to struggle mightily under such harsh conditions.

What too many men miss is the reality that the system under which they face such inhumane expectations is the same one that limits the potential of women.

Of course, there are individual men and women who help to support such a system. Their actions are rightly be identified and they should be given the support and resources to help to change these actions. But changing individual actions isn't enough by itself — the system must be confronted as a whole.

The BlogHer, Women Who Tech, She's Geeky and WebGrrls conferences are one component, as a place for women to strategize and support one another; continually pressing for more visibility for women at tech conferences dominated by men who are simply unaware of women techies is another component.

What would be even more exciting? A conference of male-identified folks interested in supporting women who take on positions of leadership in the tech community. Part of that involves men looking at what gets in the way of them supporting more women in "their" space, and men working through that might not always look pretty to women. But belittling women who point out systematic inequities as Arrington does is a reactionary response to being asked to account for one's privilege.

This needs to be an effort undertaken by both women and men, not for some vague goal of "diverse voices" but as a way to realize all of our potentials in technology and beyond.

Updates: Allyson Kapin has a great list of specific suggestions to address this issue, and Michael Arrington followed up by saying he knows more needs to be done, but he might delete the post in favor of something "far less painful." It's likely that to really address sexism — if that is what he wants to do — he'll have to face some painful truths, however. Jon Pincus says it much more succinctly: "Yes, it's hard. Take some responsibility."

P.S. It's worth pointing out that Allyson Kapin, Shireen Mitchell, Jocelyn Harmon and I are proposing a session on just this topic at next year's Nonprofit Technology Conference: To Diversity and Beyond! Engagement, Accountability and Nonprofits. We hosted a similar discussion earlier this year.

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

Email Service Provider Comparison

Ivan Boothe — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 23:29:19 +0000

Stop overwhelming your web host by sending out your email newsletter through Outlook — and start sending out targeted messages to subsets of your subscriber lists. Groundwire’s report compares 10 “best of breed” email service providers for nonprofits — companies that give your organization the ability to send out mass emails or “eblasts” to your supporters. While Vertical Response is a great starting point (see our review of its free service, below), if you have a large list or specific needs, you’ll want to find the best option. This is an up-to-date guide to exactly that.

http://groundwire.org/support/articles/email-servi...

What online activism can learn from community organizing

Ivan Boothe — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 14:03:10 +0000

Online activism didn't come out of nowhere. The methods and tactics of online activists — be they individuals or international nonprofits with hundreds of staff — are drawn on social change movements and community organizing strategies that have been tried, experimented with, failed, tweaked, and tried again, long before the Internet existed.

Yet there's often a disconnect between what's seen as online activism — referred to as "slacktivism," sometimes accurately but oftentimes sloppily — and community-based social change. And that's what I'm covering today at the 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference, along with Debra Askanase and Amy Sample Ward, in a session called Bringing Community Organizing Into Online Campaigns.

What I mean by community organizing

The idea of community organizing has always been weighted with both political implications and social context, and so one person's interpretation of what "counts" as community organizing — and what its implications are — will vary from the next.

For my purposes here, I'm using community organizing as the idea that individuals have more power to create change by coming together than by acting alone. Community organizing empowers these individuals, creates long-term change and challenges the structure of power.

Previously I've argued that with the rise of "web 2.0," everybody is learning how to be a community organizer. The principles of how to mobilize friends and neighbors around a particular issue — whether it's a social cause or a hot party — are being learned every time someone creates a Facebook event.

So I think it's reasonable to look at how traditional, on-the-street community organizing can inform purposeful online activism. Once we move beyond the "blast all your friends with a link to a petition" phase, there are concrete strategies to which we can turn. And many of those strategies are drawn directly from a century or more of social mobilization.

Principles of community organizing

There are five primary ideas in which traditional community organizing is rooted: movement-building, strategy, community accountability, going where the people are, and cultivating leadership. There are more principles and strategies to be sure (and you may disagree whether these five are at the top), but I see these as having the most to say to online activism.

Organizing for a movement

Community organizing is based on long-term strategy. "Empowerment" — that is, facilitating the realization among individuals and communities that they have the power to effect change — is not something you expect to occur overnight.

How this relates to online activism: Every action should be pointing people toward a greater goal. It's straightfoward enough to get people out to a single event, or taking a single online action. But cultivating those individuals so they see their action as part of a long-term campaign is something that takes...

Strategy, strategy, strategy

I've written before about the fact that social media isn't about doing less organizing, it's about doing it better. A theory of social change is critical to an individual or organization engaging in online activism. Will signing this petition against the war put pressure on elected leaders to alter policies? Will this upcoming rally (or "virtual march") demonstrate a community's growing power — or is it "busy work" for supporters who haven't been asked to do anything in a while?

How this relates to online activism: Too many nonprofits, unfortunately, seem to engage in token actions that don't move things forward as part of an overall strategy. And even when a given action is a part of a strategy, nonprofits are often vague about communicating that to supporters. Exactly how will calling this legislator advance a critical piece of legislation? Is there a chance the bill will actually pass? If not, there could be other legitimate strategy to build public support for it — things are long-term, remember? — but organizations must be clear to supporters that "victory" in this case won't be a new law, but, for instance, 10 vocal new supporters in Congress.

Being accountable to a real-world community

Community organizers are often derided as rabble-rousers, troublemakers, or professional activists who dupe people into following them. But true community organizing isn't about swooping in and ginning up outrage by telling the locals to fight the man. It's generally approached as much more Freirian — taking direction from and being accountable to the local community. Organizers bring their experience of tactics and strategy, and may serve to inspire people that they do have the power to make change. But the causes around which communities organize should come from the community itself.

How this relates to online activism: Technology is too often seen as a strategy in and of itself. But the Internet and social media — like fax machines, phone trees and the printing press before them — are simply tools, able to be used tactically to great effect, but only when part of a larger strategy. Focusing on the tech divorces a campaign from its community, and leaves the online organizer in the role of the "expert" — "I'll show you how to use Twitter to clean up your city!" — leaving little room for a community to actually control the direction of a campaign.

Remembering that the community's long-term strategy is paramount — and being willing to listen, discern and collaborate with that community — will help keep the people whose lives and livelihoods are on the line actually in charge.

Go where the people are

Social change happens in communal spaces — not always public, but nearly always intimate to the community as it exists. Workers' homes and pubs in the labor movement, black churches in the US civil rights movement, gay bars in the gay rights movement, and college campuses in numerous student movements attest to this fact.

How this relates to online activism: Rarely will it be effective to create a private "walled garden" social network that you have to convince people to join and become active on. Different communities are on different social networks online — and it's important to know where your constituencies are — on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter or somewhere else. The places where a community is most active socially are most likely to be the places where it's most effective to organize. If you're organizing in a sensitive environment, you may have to establish some level of privacy around your campaign, but only after you've already engaged people where they are.

Cultivating sustainable leadership

This is an area to which traditional community organizing aspires, but doesn't always succeed. The temptation for a "charismatic leader" to emerge and indefinitely control the direction of a social change campaign can be strong. Participants may initially be relieved that they don't have to "take the heat" when things get tough, and can look to their leader for direction.

Yet time and again we've seen movements collapse when the leader — having captured power within the movement or had it thrust upon him or her — burns out or becomes unable to continue. Increasingly in the past half-century, social movements have attempted to make their approaches more sustainable by cultivating leadership, bringing people from the margins into the center and mentoring and encouraging emerging leaders.

How this relates to online activism: Seek to put yourself out of a job. The best online campaigns are the ones that are self-sustaining. Encourage those who are taking the most action to begin to brainstorm new ideas and actions for the campaign. Reward people who are doing the most recruiting, and make them feel that they're a part of the "core" of the organizing. For nonprofits — and I know this will be hard to hear — stop pretending that you're the only organization active on the issue. Support your members who become active in allied groups and consider working in coalitions early and often. Not only will this cement your supporters' dedication to the cause, it will build the identity of a long-term movement, rather than a limited "card-carrying member" view of participation.

Help continue this conversation

Below, I've embedded the slides of our presentation, which goes beyond the things I've discussed above and includes an exciting interactive workshop component — so if you're at NTC, please do stop by!

I welcome any thoughts, comments or ideas. How do you see community organizing informing — or being separate from — online activism? What examples have you seen of successes or failures?

Ivan Boothe is a social change scholar with a degree in peace and conflict studies. With hundreds of hours of training in community organizing and years of experience in real-world social change, he's excited about the ways in which social media can, when used strategically, amplify the ability of activists to change the world.

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

Government accountability through web 2.0: A case study

Ivan Boothe — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 20:32:46 +0000

This was originally posted on techPresident.

Last week, Special Envoy to Sudan Gen. Scott Gration sat down with representatives from Save Darfur and the student network STAND for an unprecedented live Q&A, webcast directly from the White House website.

The event served as the launch of an initiative the White House is calling Ask U.S., "an effort to reach out to the advocacy communities and to solicit questions on the U.S. Sudan policy from activists deeply and passionately engaged" around Sudan.

Watch a recording of the webcast:

Save Darfur Coalition Executive Director Jerry Fowler and STAND Student Director Layla Amjadi were joined by Samantha Power — now the National Security Council's Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs, but known more widely as the author of "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide, a history of the United States' response to mass atrocities from Armenia to Rwanda. Power herself was an inspiration for many of the anti-genocide organizations which exist today, including the two that participated in this online exchange.

Full disclosure: I was a co-founder of the Genocide Intervention Network, STAND's parent organization, and worked there until 2008.

Calling for transparency, pushing for accountability

The webcast was notable not just for its interactivity — members of both STAND and Save Darfur were encouraged to submit questions, which were then asked directly of Gration on air — but for its accountability.

Some anti-genocide activists have been critical of the Obama administration for positioning Darfur and Sudan as a prominent human rights issue during the campaign, but taking little action since the election. Here was a chance for anti-genocide activists to put the White House's point person on Sudan on the spot and demand answers.

The responses from Gration — Power, other than introducing and concluding the event, largely remained silent — were generally panned by activists watching the chat via Twitter and Facebook. "In his opening remarks Gration said 'we owe you answers' — you still do," said Will Fischer. "I respect the hell out of Sam Power but I'm not going to buy Gration's vague answers just because she's sitting there," said Genocide Intervention Network Director of Membership Janessa Goldbeck.

Bec Hamilton, who is writing a book about the advocacy movement around Sudan and has worked with the Genocide Intervention Network, reported that the questions for Gration had to be submitted ahead of time, so it's a little surprising his answers weren't more sure-footed. Hamilton said a former official at the State Department had seen the event as a way to "manage" the "noise" of activists, but:

As it turned out, the shoe was on the other foot. Activists were given the opportunity to ask follow-up questions, and they pursued that avenue with such vigor that any fear of them being co-opted by their well-publicized access to the White House ceased to be a concern. What was a concern was the administration's inability to provide concrete answers to the advocates' questions.

If the White House was hoping the webcast would placate activists who had been critical of US policy on Sudan, it seemed to do just the opposite. Goldbeck, responding to Gration's statement that "we know we are going to be held accountable by you," Tweeted "Yes you will," a message widely reposted by others.

Emily Diamond-Falk, a spokesperson for the Save Darfur Coalition, was more amiable about the exchange with the White House. "As much transparency as they can give us, they will do, without compromising their policy," she told me. "He wasn't able to disclose as much information as we asked, which is going to happen in these sorts of things. ... It's a very delicate line, so engaging policy behind the scenes will still be necessary."

Making the online Q&A possible

Andrea Clarke, director of communications for the Save Darfur Coalition, pitched the idea of a "live online town hall" to Gration's communications director in August. "We thought it would be something beneficial for activists to be directly engaged around the [Sudan] policy," Clarke said.

After suggesting the idea of an online town hall to Gration, the special envoy suggested the student organization STAND be a part of the conversation as well. "The special envoy's office was very committed to answering as many questions as possible, and the involvement of STAND was key to that process," Clarke said. "It made for a greater diversity of questions, and we feel the activist community was very well represented."

Gration's travel itinerary made scheduling difficult, and in the end it occurred without much advance notice. Clarke said Save Darfur received at least 500 questions from activists for the special envoy, and "I think if we have more lead time we'll have even more questions."

As Micah Sifry wrote on Monday, the willingness of the State Department and White House to engage openly and publicly with advocates who are often critical seems unprecedented. Given the negative response to Gration's responses, might this kind of transparency be short-lived?

Clarke said she had "no reason to believe there won't be" similar events in the future as part of the "Ask U.S." program. Gration "appears to be working very hard to get feedback," she said. Gration himself wrote that the State Department is "eager to continue an active and robust dialogue with the advocacy community."

Layla Amjadi of STAND lamented the lack of specificity in Gration's answers, telling the Voice of America that activists "were really frustrated by how vague the policy review was on benchmarks and pressures and incentives." She called for an approach involving bigger players than Gration alone — "Obama, Biden and Clinton" — and declared:

Now that we know that we've got their ear, let's talk to them. They're looking for us to hold them accountable. So let's do it.

"There are certainly questions that activists who are voices for those who cannot necessarily be heard right now have, and it's important that those questions are answered by the administration," said Diamond-Falk. "The fact that [Gration] engaged the Save Darfur Coalition and the student movement ... proves that activists have to have a voice on this issue and in this administration."

The future of high-level advocacy?

"We certainly hope that this can be one tactic that other advocacy groups can use to demand accountability of the administration," Clarke said. "I hope this is something that's taken on board by communications departments of other advocacy groups."

Most organizations may not have the political pressure necessary to convince public officials to host a live, online questioning. The broad constituency that has been active around Darfur and Southern Sudan for the past five years was a definite advantage to making the webcast happen, Clarke said, as was President Obama's stated support on the campaign trail for resolving the crises in Sudan.

Gration's willingness to engage activists on the issue, however, may have been the most critical element — it's hard to imagine a live Q&A happening without a public official's support. "Gration appears to be working very hard to get feedback," Clarke said.

Engaging more than one organization made the proposal more attractive to public officials. Save Darfur asked for the event, and the special envoy's office suggested a representative of student activists join as well. Gration's office wanted the event to be seen as legitimately representing the entire Sudan advocacy movement, not simply a single pressure group.

Cautious criticism seemed to have paid off in helping make the dialogue possible. Many Sudan advocacy organizations including STAND and Save Darfur have been publicly supportive of the special envoy, while continuing to push for more transparency and specifics. Gration had been criticized by some activists as "naive" with some going so far as demanding his resignation, but responses from Save Darfur and STAND's parent organization, the Genocide Intervention Network, had largely not suggested that level of displeasure. "I think that we don't always agree with the special envoy's office, but we maintain an open line of communication, and that has helped us a lot," Clarke said.

As for the issue of Sudan, could pressure on legislators coupled with Gration's limited responses provoke more Congressional action? The online event with Gration directly followed a conference for anti-genocide activists, including a full day of meetings with members of Congress. Diamond-Falk pointed out that following the student lobbying and live webchat, 44 members of Congress signed a letter to President Obama ahead of his visit to China, a major trading partner of Sudan's, urging the president to make Sudan a priority in his discussions there.

Clarke said if a second online Q&A occurs, Save Darfur "will be pushing for questions that are extremely direct from those who are suffering on the ground," suggesting the event can not only be a chance to connect activists to the administration, but survivors of the genocide and wars in Sudan as well.

Update: Bec Hamilton reported that a former State Department official had called Sudan activists "noise we had to manage," and I mistakenly attributed it to current State Department officials; it's been corrected in the text above.

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

Causes abandons 184,674 nonprofit supporters on MySpace

Ivan Boothe — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:44:48 +0000

This morning, the fundraising application Causes quietly shut down their presence on MySpace. In their email to administrators of Causes on MySpace, they wrote:

Thank you for the work you've done on Causes on MySpace. Due to the lack of activity on MySpace, we've decided to focus our efforts on the Causes application on Facebook. On Friday at noon EDT, we will be removing all causes from MySpace. In the meantime, you can post a link to a cause on Facebook (or create one at http://apps.facebook.com/causes) asking your members to change over. We appreciate the work you've put into your cause community on MySpace and we hope that the broader functionality available on the Causes application on Facebook will offer you even more opportunities to raise awareness, advocate for change and fundraise for your nonprofit. If you have questions, please email support@causes.com.

At that exact moment, Causes on MySpace had 184,674 current users. That's 184,674 individual people (minus a few nonprofit staffers) who had taken the time to install an application on MySpace specifically so they could show their support for a nonprofit charity or advocacy group on the social network.

As of today, those nonprofit badges have been removed from each of those 184,674 profiles, with no notice to those supporters as to why their Causes badges have disappeared. (The application's page on MySpace is still up, with no notification that it's being shut down; new users who try to add it get a message saying it's "temporarily unavailable.")

No notice has been posted to the Causes blog; Susan Gordon, the Senior Nonprofit Coordinator of Causes, said in an email to me, "We didn't put the announcement on the blog before because the number of people using the MySpace app is so small."

Why Causes on MySpace failed: Lack of engagement

It's not clear from either email when Causes decided to shut down the MySpace side of its operation, or why it chose to do so within just a few days. Causes began on Facebook and has always had more users on there (currently 35.2 million). From Causes' point of view, MySpace was probably more trouble than it was worth given the percentage of their total users, though I wouldn't call nearly 200,000 people a "small" number.

Causes on Facebook had, from the beginning, more to offer nonprofits than its MySpace version. Nonprofits could, for instance, send email messages to all their Causes supporters on Facebook — something not possible using Fan Pages or Facebook Groups over 2,000 people. On MySpace, probably due to the limitations of the network itself, there was no such functionality.

In fact, in one of my first write-ups on using social networks for fundraising and advocacy, I highlighted Causes not as a great way to fundraise but as a great way to engage members. There was less chance for engagement on MySpace; though supporters could still put up a badge demonstrating their support and make donations, in my experience those were actually the least useful parts of Causes.

Again, I suspect this was a limitation imposed by MySpace, so I don't necessarily fault Causes. The lesson here, though, is that a fundraising widget is not enough of a draw. The chance for engaging supporters — not just in things like one-way email blasts but in things like leaderboards showing the top fundraisers among supporter-created Causes — is, in the end, the "killer" part of this app.

What this means for nonprofits on MySpace

Despite repeated claims that MySpace is "dead," I continue to think it's a smart move for many nonprofits to have a presence there.

Sociologist danah boyd has documented the clear socioeconomic differences between MySpace and Facebook, and Amy Sample Ward has stressed the need to know your community and where it is. Facebook, after all, was built by and for middle- and owning-class college-educated folks — exactly those people who fill nonprofit staffs. But if your organization serves a different community, then simply going where your staff is familiar might not be the best choice.

For those who want to do peer-to-peer fundraising on MySpace, there are still widgets like ChipIn available for that purpose. They won't have the "built-in" feel that Causes on MySpace did, but they're fairly easy to guide people through with a quick training or video.

What this means for nonprofit fundraising on social networks

The bigger lesson here is that you can't rely on third-party, often for-profit services to support your organization's interests. To Causes, leaving MySpace to focus on its core community on Facebook made good business sense, but certainly those organizations left in the lurch on MySpace feel otherwise.

I think Rebecca Leaman said it best — don't put "all fundraising eggs in one third-party basket!" These services are useful, and can help your organization advance its mission, but it's not accountable to you — and you need to have other options.

Letting go of your message, holding on to your relationships

I (and many others) have often said that in order to be successful in social media, nonprofits need to be willing to give up some control over their message — to let supporters speak in their own voice. What Causes' move has exposed, though, is that while it's important to let go of your message, you still need to have control over your relationships.

Nonprofits don't own or even control the connections they have with their supporters in these spaces — the comments, messages, badges and memberships of supporters within social networks are all locked within those social networks and are used under contract (terms of service) from the social network.

Systems like Facebook Connect or OpenSocial allow those relationships to be exposed elsewhere, but that's not the same as control. If the social network or service decides the nonprofit has run afoul of the contract, or the company goes bankrupt, cancels services or features, or gets sold to a different company who does — there's nothing an organization will be able to do.

That's why it's important to have multiple channels of communication with supporters and to continually try to move people toward the center of your organization by deepening involvement, so that if you lose them in one space they don't simply fade off into the ether.

Open-source, open data, open networks

Amy Sample Ward makes some great points that social change communities may have to take the lead on technology by pushing for more openness and transparency. I've written before, for instance, that community blogs run better on open-source software, and I think in principle the same is true for social networks.

But nonprofits and social change movements will always have to go where the supporters are — and in many cases that will mean closed, proprietary, walled-garden social networks.

What would it look like if nonprofits and social change movements — which these third party applications often use to market themselves as effective and "good" — started demanding some openness?

Is it reasonable to assert that organizations and individuals should "own" their relationships, even when within a proprietary network? Can long-term social change happen when connections must be re-built on each new online social network to be developed?

While Causes on MySpace may be no more, I think this event raises some important questions for the relationship between nonprofits, social change, and for-profit software and services. What are your thoughts?

Update: I hadn't seen Read Write Web's coverage of this, but I think it's worth a read. As I say above, I think Causes' supposed "failures" to raise tons of money for nonprofits is less of an issue than some might think (for a great perspective on this, see Allison Fine). But as many of the commenters suggest, the way forward is to explore mechanisms for open-sourcing our relationships from these closed, proprietary systems, be they widgets like Causes or networks like Facebook and MySpace.

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

Finding the movement's voice: Online social networks and social change

Ivan Boothe — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:46:58 +0000

Today at the Peace and Justice Studies Association 2009 Conference at Marquette University, I hosted a workshop called, "Finding the Movement's Voice: Online Social Networks and Social Change":

The subtitle of this workshop could be, "Social change has always relied on social networks — they just weren't called Facebook." I'm going to be talking concretely about the strategy of using online tools for social change. This won't be an ain't-it-cool presentation of shiny technology, nor will it be a technical exploration of complicated software. It will be an interactive how-to on making social change work more effective by using online social technology.

While I did use a set of slides, the workshop was participatory and the slides were mostly illustrative; I hope to publish them here and on Slideshare with a voiceover soon, but they're probably not worth posting otherwise.

What I can post is an extended set of resources and tools for those pursuing social change and want to engage folks online. In addition, much of my presentation was drawn on earlier presentations and writing, including:

You may also be interested in some of my earlier academic work on third-party nonviolent intervention and unarmed peacekeeping, including a presentation from the 2005 PJSA conference and some of my analysis published in the journal Peace & Change.

Resources related to technology and social change

You can download a PDF of a shorter version of this list; feel free to use or distribute as you like.

Guides, case studies and places for inspiration

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media — "A place to capture and share ideas, experiment with and exchange links and resources about the adoption challenges, strategy, and ROI of nonprofits and social media." Beth Kanter explores the social use by nonprofits of images (e.g., Flickr), video (YouTube) and microblogs (Twitter), among other technologies.
DigiActive — A team of activists and writers chronicling successful uses and case studies of technology for social change. Many invaluable resources, such as a guide to using Twitter for activism and a guide to secure communication.
Dear SoSi — Social Signal's Alexandra Samuel and Rob Cottingham are leaders in social media integration and online community development for nonprofits and social change groups. They've collected some of their best advice and grouped it by audience — so whether you're a nonprofit executive, a membership director or online manager, or an activist on a shoestring budget, Dear SoSi will give you some great pointers.
NetSquared — A community of nonprofits and groups who are using technology — especially social networks and social media — for social change. In addition to the blog, NetSquared sponsors gatherings in many cities called Net Tuesdays, as well as an annual NetSquared conference.
New Tactics in Human Rights — Resources organized around analysis of potential solutions rather than that of specific issues, geographic regions or target groups that allow activists to clearly recognize the unique elements of their situation, and to seek promising approaches that have worked elsewhere and apply them to new regions or issues. New Tactics hosts regular online discussions on effective human rights tactics, both online and on the ground.
MobileActive.org — Case studies and guides on using mobile (cellular) phones for social change around the world.
Community Organizer 2.0 — The blog of Debra Askanase, a veteran community organizer who focuses on the strategy of using technology.
Apophenia — Sociological research and commentary on the use of social networks like MySpace, Facebook, LiveJournal, Xanga and YouTube by teenagers in the United States. danah boyd is a PhD candidate at the University of California Berkeley and a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
Media Mobilizing Project — MMP believes media must be connected to economic and social realities of everyday life. The right to free speech means little without the right to be heard. By sharing our own stories for the purposes of education, outreach, and organizing, we can disrupt the fragmentation of our issues and the isolation of our communities, and build the networks necessary to address the root causes of the problems we face.
Progressive Exchange — An online discussion group of new media and communications directors at many large nonprofits and international NGOs.
Radical Techies Mailing List — A discussion group of many people involved on the technical side of both large-scale projects like the World Social Forum and local grassroots community groups.
More resources

Tools and services

TechSoup — TechSoup is a nonprofit that helps other nonprofits in the United States and Canada acquire deeply-discounted software and online services. Microsoft Office for $16? Adobe InDesign for $60? Flickr accounts for $3/year? It's all in TechSoup's stock. Additionally, TechSoup has a vibrant forum community and blog postings relating to the use of technology by nonprofits.
Idealware — Provides candid Consumer Reports–style reviews and articles about software of interest to nonprofits. Through product comparisons, recommendations, case studies, and software news, Idealware allows nonprofits to make the software decisions that will help them be more effective.
Human Rights Data Analysis Group — Designs database software, data collection strategies, and statistical techniques to measure human rights atrocities; and conducts statistical analysis on behalf of human rights projects.
Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) — A membership organization of nonprofit professionals who put technology to use for their causes. NTEN sponsors online "webinars" and the annual Nonprofit Technology Conference.
More tools

My background

I am the creative director of Rootwork.org, working with nonprofits and social change groups, developing websites and doing online strategy around advocacy, fundraising and member engagement. I helped found the Genocide Intervention Network and worked there for four years, first as the director of communications and later as Internet strategy coordinator.

In 2003, I was part of why-war.org, which launched a nationwide campaign of electronic civil disobedience against the voting machine manufacturer Diebold. Subsequently I've worked with several social change groups including Soulforce and Casino-Free Philadelphia.

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

Gurus Are Not Enough: A Call for Organizers and Organizing in Social Media

Ivan Boothe — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:42:15 +0000

Gurus, mavens and experts convey information — they tell you the way things are.

Organizers, conversely, cultivate leadership and facilitate a community's exploration of its vision — they offer a way to see how things could be.

Naturally, we need an accurate picture of how things are before we can strategize ways to improve them, and so it's important to continually listen to and learn from the experts, taking from them relevant information and measuring it against our own experience and knowledge. But folks involved in social change — online or offline — can't stay there. We have to be willing to step up and do the difficult organizing work that leverages our knowledge and experts' data into something larger: a movement.

Everybody Organizing Everybody

Community organizers are a natural fit for "web 2.0" — the movement from one-way broadcasting on the web to two-way coversation and connection. I want to expand the definition a little bit, however, and suggest that online organizing goes far beyond the professional, experienced organizers.

One of the defining aspects of web 2.0 is social organization. People are constantly presented with their social circles in visual media: Facebook news feeds, MySpace top friends, Twitter updates, etc. In short, more people can see their network, in a much more literal way. This is especially true for young adults (currently Millennials) who might have social networks scattered across wide geographic areas and are less firmly rooted to a specific place through vocational, familial or other commitments.

Communities at the margins of society have always had a more visceral understanding of their social networks, which are often the sites of social change planning and strategizing — consider the role of black churches in the US civil rights movement, or gay bars and bathhouses in the early Stonewall era of the gay rights movement. So I don't want to suggest that this phenomenon of a community visualized is necessarily new for everyone, but I think it is new for many folks in the mainstream of society.

The online "social web" — social networks and social media — allows people to organize their social connections, not simply to put them in order, but to connect and collaborate with others. Evite invitations and Facebook events are clear examples of this, as is Wikipedia.

Increasingly, the social web is teaching everyday folks how to be community organizers.

It's usually gurus, however, who get — or take — the credit for this transformation. On the contrary, I see it as a much more grassroots bubbling-up of organizing skills. Everyone has the ability to organize and inspire others; the current tools are simply making those skills more visible.

Fewer Leaders, More Leadership

"Organizations and societies," wrote Bruce Kokopeli and George Lakey, "do need leadership, but they do not need leaders."¹ They argued for a shared value of leadership, in which many individuals took responsibility for the direction of a group, but didn't invest the institutional power in a single person to call the shots. A critical part of this feminist approach relies on cultivating leadership among more and more individuals. Everyone has a stake, and everyone has a say.

While there are particular challenges putting that theory into practice in an organization, the good news is that movements, particularly those engaging in online social change, are particularly positioned to take advantage of this approach.

The fact that more people are organizers, and that everyone can exercise leadership, does not mean that there is no role for the full-time organizer. Indeed, the "professional" organizer becomes more important than ever, passing on stories and lived experience, and sharing a pedagogy for cultivating new leadership. What fades away is the positioning of some people within a movement as "experts" to whom everyone looks for direction.

Paulo Freire calls such an approach "co-intentional education," in which each person is both teacher and student. Those with more experience may seek to inspire or ask questions to further dialogue, but as a way to further develop strategy rather than dictate to or control the masses.

Attempting to liberate the oppressed without their reflective participation in the act of liberation is to treat them as objects which must be saved from a burning building; it is to lead them into the populist pitfall and transform them into masses which can be manipulated. ... [T]he oppressed must see themselves as women and men engaged in the ... vocation of becoming more fully human.²

This may seem like heavy or strident language in the context of online petition drives or peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns. But my goal is to push social change organizers to look toward the larger picture. What sort of movement do you want to build in the long-term? What role do people play in that movement — is it a passive one of letter-signing and donation-giving, or an active one of working from the ground up for lasting change?

Selling, Giving and Cultivating

Want to support online organizing? Help promote a panel at SXSW 2010: Vote for us by the end of Friday!

Ivan Boothe is part of a proposed panel for the South by Southwest Interactive conference, "Connecting Communities for the Common Good: Owning Online Organizing," along with Ben Rattray, founder of change.org; Peter Corbet with iStrategy Labs; Sally Kohn of the Center for Community Change; and moderated by Kari Dunn Saratovsky from the Case Foundation.

We need your help to get this panel on the schedule! Please consider voting for the panel at SXSW (quick registration required). Additionally, please leave a comment on the panel's page. Voting accounts for only about 30% of the decision to include a panel, so we want to demonstrate support for discussion around online organizing with your comments.

If you're not familiar with the process, here's a step-by-step guide to voting from the Case Foundation. There's no limit to the number of panels you can vote for, so check out Beth Kanter's list of nptech panel proposals and share the love!

Social marketing experts are adept at building brand loyalty, or encouraging the formation of an identity around an issue. They know how to sell the idea of "social good" to the public at large, using people's goodwill toward a cause as a way to market to them through a given company, and increase donations to a partner charity. Well-known examples of this are the RED campaign and Starbucks' Ethos Water.

Online organizers turn a skeptical eye toward "social good" and social marketing. It doesn't mean such projects aren't worth exploring or learning from, and it doesn't mean that everyone involved is a charlatan simply out to make a buck. But selling people an identity, even a "good" one, is fundamentally different from organizing for social change. Freire again: "Conviction cannot be packaged and sold; it is reached, rather, by means of a totality of reflection and action.³

Movement building also goes beyond electoral organizing. Folks working for social change often form common cause with those organizing around a political candidate, and there is of course much to be learned and shared between the two practices. But whereas elections are centered around a single charismatic leader, a fully-engaged, vibrant social change movement consists of both shared vision and shared leadership. Elections give people an answer, while movements ask people a question — and then encourage them to speak for themselves.

Instead of selling or giving supporters a solution, then, onine organizers are involved in cultivation. There are pieces of both social marketing and electoral organizing present in online organizing, of course, and experts in these fields can be a useful source of data, but we should be wary of replicating these other models when it comes to leadership.

Network Wisdom

There is a developing praxis being explored by numerous thinkers and strategists in online organizing. For sociological analyses — stories and experiences — danah boyd is indispensible. Clay Shirky, Allison Fine, Valdis Krebs and Howard Rheingold explore the power of networks of individuals, while Beth Kanter, DigiActive and Debra Askanase provide concrete case studies of online organizing in action.

What's your experience? Who are online organizers with whom you share successes and strategies? Please offer your wisdom in the comments!

Like the idea of discussing and strategizing about online organizing? Please vote for — and even more importantly, leave a positive comment on — the online organizing panel proposal for SXSW. The deadline is the end of the day this Friday, Sept. 4, so don't delay! (More information above.)

1. Kokopeli, Bruce and George Lakey. Leadership for Change: Toward a Feminist Model. New Society Publishers, Santa Cruz, Calif., 1985. Available from Training for Change.

2. Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Continuum International Publishing Group, New York, 2004, pp. 65–66.

3. Freire, p. 67.

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

Social change takes more than social media

Ivan Boothe — Tue, 26 May 2009 01:41:08 +0000

Over at the NetSquared blog, Joe Solomon provided a great roundup of reasons people might be "jaded about social media for change" and ways they overcome it.

I've been getting Twitter DMs from top players in the nonprofit tech and social media for change space -- sharing how they're unmotivated or jaded with using the web and social media for change. As if the phrase has lost its meaning somehow. Or a bubble had been burst. I know I've been feeling the same way. Perhaps you've been feeling it too -- or come across others with a similar vibe?

Joe runs through some great responses from a whole bevy of social-media-for-change folks, including me.

One of the comments on Joe's blog post was from Texans Against Hunger. Here's what the author said:

Funny, I clicked on this post from Twitter expecting a realistic conversation about the limitations of social media tools. Instead, it appears everyone took your question about being jaded to mean "How can I get un-jaded," and not, "Should I be jaded?"

The assumption of most twitters above seems to be that these tools work because they're cool OR they've built a career around them, so if you're feeling jaded due to lack of results or encouraging metrics, get over it and get back to your (disappointing) work.

IMO, social media tools are pretty poor at changing anything that takes more than one or two mouse-clicks. Sometimes that's all you need - making a donation, sending petitions, affecting website ratings, flooding online polls, etc.

Most change, unfortunately, doesn't happen at the end of a mouse-click. But in the long run, these tools also do a good job of hoovering up potential participants for offline actions that will make a difference.

Perhaps our jadedness comes from a disconnect between the revolutionary nature of the tool, and its less-than-mindblowing uses? If that's the case we'll be managing our own expectations, given enough time.

I thought the author made some good points, and ones "social change techies" would do well to keep in mind. I can see how the author might have gotten the impression that some or all of the folks in Joe's roundup are simply shiny-tech pushers. I won't try to speak for them, but I do think they aren't blindly following the latest tech hype and hoping it will change the world — many of them have clear social change strategies.

My own background is rooted in a) on-the-ground community organizing, including 100+ hours of training and many times that in actual organizing, and b) academic study of how nonviolent social change can be successful (my degree is in peace and conflict studies). I know "social change" can be kind of a squishy term (and even more so the strategy-free "social good," which Katrin Verclas has amply discussed), so I want to position myself as specifically interested in fundamental social change, at the political, social, economic and cultural levels. I don't see the challenges as being easily fixed, or short-term, or things that can be addressed with a few pieces of legislation or a few institutional reforms.

With that in mind, I think social media and social networking hasn't entirely matured as part of long-term social change. Where it has been getting integrated into social justice organizing, it's largely been outside the United States, in places like Colombia and Egypt. And even there, while we can see important strategic concessions, not enough time has really passed to see the extent to which social media helped advance social justice campaigns.

I entirely share the author's frustration with "tech for social change" discussions that fawn over the technology and don't engage on the level of strategic change. I saw this happening in particular during the Moldovan "Twitter revolution" discussion (which Joe linked to in his post). This "revolution" seemed to captivate a lot of armchair activists on Twitter, mostly because it involved Twitter. They seemed to miss the fact that a) Twitter wasn't actually a big part of the organizing strategy, and b) the campaign itself didn't end up seriously threatening the regime; at best it was a mild skirmish and it certainly wasn't a "revolution" of any kind. (Which is not to diminish the hard work of social justice organizers in Moldova. Mad props to them.)

The author's point about social media providing an outlet for people's activism that sucks away people's time for real social change is an excellent one. (A similar dynamic happens every two to four years in the US, when community organizers see their ranks cannibalized by electoral organizing.) Charles Lenchner has written brilliantly about this, using the principle "mission over membership."

Too many nonprofits orchestrate "petition drives" that aren't about advocating for anything other than larger membership rolls. Too many groups ask constituents to make calls to an elected official without even feigning an attempt at explaining how those calls will help achieve a goal or contribute to a longer-term campaign. The author is absolutely right that too many nonprofits have no social change theory at all; indeed they're more interested in self-perpetuation than winning (often referred to as the nonprofit industrial complex). And when those groups get their hands on social media, they do incredibly un-strategic things with them.

The fact that social media can be used unstrategically, however, doesn't mean it has to be. To pull a line from my earlier post on Twitter, political pamphlets, phone trees and jam-the-faxes must have seemed like strategies in and of themselves when each technology first came out. But smart social justice organizers recognized them as tactics, and such tactics were only effective when deployed as part of an overall strategy for social change.

Social media doesn't mean you do less organizing — it means you (can) do it better, or at least differently. You still have to use all the old skills of coalition-building, strategic planning, creative social action, managing relationships and preventing burnout. None of that goes away just because you're engaging with people on Facebook instead of in town halls.

So to get 'round to the original question — the reason I don't feel jaded when I look at all the unstrategic uses of social media is because I'm focused on the end goal, the social change. Social justice organizers are a pretty creative bunch. Throughout history, they've taken a wide variety of technologies and used them strategically to move their campaigns forward. I have no doubt social media has and will become one tool in many organizers' toolbelts.

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

The fire and the food: Why there's no such thing as a Twitter revolution

Ivan Boothe — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:35:09 +0000

In the past two days, posts began popping up on Twitter with the tag "#pman" — short for Piata Marii Adunari Nationale, the largest city square in the capital of Moldova. Students were organizing:

Ever since yesterday's announcement that Moldova's communists have won enough votes to form a government in Sunday's elections, Moldova's progressive youth took to the streets in angry protests. As behooves any political protest by young people today, they also turned to Facebook and Twitter to raise awareness about the planned protests and flashmobs.

Writers like Evgeny Morozov, above, initially characterized this as a "Twitter revolution," modeled in the real-time use of Twitter seen during the G20 protests, election monitoring and crowd-sourcing the location of a certain torch when it was passing through San Francisco. (Thus a little different than the traditional nonprofit use of Twitter.)

It's certainly exciting to see technology being used in ways that amplify and extend the impact of movement organizing. I think it's easy, however, to misread the technology as the cause of the movement rather than as simply a tool of it.

Fire, for instance, was a society-changing tool. Its revolutionary potential, however — cooking food and thus making it more digestible, nutritious, and lasting — was only realized through its strategic use.

Some people, awed by the fire, seem to confuse it with the food. This is represented most clearly by Jon Pincus, who writes:

Twitter is a strategy.

He cites a number of campaigns that have used Twitter in successful ways as evidence of this claim. To me, though, this simply shows that Twitter can be an effective tool for a given strategy — but that's not automatically the case.

Consider this: Why did organizers execute a given campaign on Twitter and not, say, Identi.ca, FriendFeed, Jaiku or Ping.fm (similar microblogging services) — or, for that matter, through Facebook statuses or MySpace bulletins?

There's a tendency to collapse the strategy and the tool — to attempt to feast on the fire itself. To say, "This is what we want to accomplish, and, hey! there's a tool that does that!" — and then equate the tool with the strategy. But they're still separate thought processes and separate stages in developing a campaign.

It appears that Twitter was a good tool to use in the cases Jon cited and I mentioned above. But if organizers limit themselves to seeing Twitter as a strategy in and of itself — without considering the strategy apart from the tool — they risk overlooking ways to run a more effective campaign on other platforms, or augmenting a campaign using multiple platforms.

Worse, organizers risk giving supporters feel-good activism that quenches their desire for social change without actually moving the movement closer to a concrete goal, or putting any pressure on powerholders.

The strategy always comes first, and then you figure out which tool fits. The alternative? A forest fire.

Political pamphlets, phone trees and jam-the-faxes must have seemed like strategies in and of themselves when each technology first came out. But a campaign that didn't begin with a strategy to deploy those tools in an effective way wouldn't have been successful.

The "real-time coverage" use of Twitter, in the style of TXTMob, can be effective, and can even form part of the organization of a protest, as it did in the case of the Olympic torch. But that's not a strategy or even a revolution — it's simply street-level news. And in the case of Moldova, the organizing was happening elsewhere:

In fact Twitter did not play that big role. The story is quite simple — young and active bloggers decided to have a flash-mob action, lighting candles and 'mourning Moldova' because of Communists victory, which nobody recognized due to the multiple violations before and during the campaign. They agreed on the time and place of the action through the network of Moldovan blogs (blogs aggregator blogosfera.md), and social networks like Facebook/Odnoklassniki, etc.

In other words, the most effective tools to execute the strategy in question — organizing opposition to the regime and making it visible to other Moldovans — didn't include Twitter.

In Evgeny Morozov's analysis of Twitter in Moldova, he says:

It’s really good that the Moldovan students didn’t organize this revolution via Friendster or LiveJournal (which is still a platform for choice for many users in Eastern Europe). If they did, they would never have gotten as much attention from the rest of the world.

This perspective is an example of collapsing the strategy and the tool. More specifically: Getting attention from the rest of the world is not automatically the objective of any given social change movement.

Most social change organizers know this. There are moments when you want to focus on building awareness and/or getting media attention, but that's often not the primary focus of the campaign. In the case of the Moldovan students, it could be that what was most needed was a way to get organizers to identify and strategize with one another — in which case Twitter would have been a very poor (or at least fantastically blunt) tool.

Such perspective is possible only if you think of Twitter as one possible tool, perfect for use in some strategies and rather ineffective in others. A near-religious belief in Twitter (or any technology) as a strategy leads to a narrowing of the actual strategy — getting the world to pay attention becomes the goal, because, hey, that's what Twitter can be effective at doing!

In this case, organizers might have gotten attention from beyond Moldova with a few dozen Twitterers, but failed at their primary goal of making opposition to the regime visible to other Moldovans.

As Alan Rosenblatt writes, different technologies have different ideologies, and tools that are more "inherently democratic" like Twitter can be used as tools within a strategy that empowers people to a much larger degree than one-way media like television. That doesn't negate the fact that the strategy — the reason for the campaign itself — must be laid out first.

Begin with your campaign's strategy — the food you want to eat. Then determine which technologies will best cultivate the fire within your supporters to achieve the social change you seek.

Update: I misattributed something to Jon Pincus that was actually written by Evgeny Morozov. It's fixed, above.

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

ChipIn

Ivan Boothe — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 04:17:52 +0000

ChipIn is a fundraising “widget” that allows you to easily collect money on your website, blog, or social networking profile (such as MySpace or Facebook). What ChipIn excels at isn’t in replacing your existing “donate now” button, but in small, concrete fundraising campaigns that have a clear goal and endpoint. The ChipIn widget provides a graph of how close you are to your goal, and automatic “thank you” emails can be customized. Money collected can be channeled to a PayPal account, direct deposit or a traditional paper check. Take a look at Beth Kanter’s case study below for ideas on how to create effective fundraising campaigns using this kind of widget. The second Social Actions article gives a good roundup of all of the fundraising widgets out there if you want to explore other options.

http://www.chipin.com/

Reviews:

ChipIn Version 2.0: A Guide to the New Features and Web Widget (Social Actions)

Reviews:

Using the ChipIn Widget for a Personal Fundraising Campaign (Beth Kanter)

Reviews:

How to Use the Internet for Group Fundraising (Social Actions)

Using Facebook for social change: The webinar

Ivan Boothe — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:20:49 +0000

Just a quick note to say I'll be speaking as part of Social Actions' free "Using Facebook for Social Change" webinar on Thursday, along with Susan Gordon, the nonprofit coordinator of Causes, and moderated by Beth Pickard and David Karp of Firstgiving.

You're invited to join in a live and open text chat to discuss how you can use Facebook for social change. This is your opportunity to share experiences and ask questions about how people and orgs can do outreach, inspire action, and fund raise on the Facebook network.

The webinar is part of Social Actions' Change the Web Conversation Series.

I'll be talking about some of the successes the Genocide Intervention Network has had in using Facebook and Causes to engage its member base, increase the impact of advocacy campaigns, and raise (a little) money.

RSVP for the event, happening Thursday, Feb. 26, at 11 AM PST/2 PM EST. (Note that if you're not already a member of Social Actions, you'll need to sign up before you can RSVP, but it's free.)

I invite you to ask questions in the comments below ahead of time and I'll do my best to answer them during the event!

Update: Dan Schultz, author of A DigiActive Guide to Facebook Activism, will also be speaking!

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

Dear SoSi

Ivan Boothe — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 05:09:49 +0000

Social Signal’s Alexandra Samuel and Rob Cottingham are leaders in social media integration and online community development for nonprofits and social change groups. They’ve collected some of their best advice and grouped it by audience — so whether you’re a nonprofit executive, a membership director or online manager, or an activist on a shoestring budget, Dear SoSi will give you some great pointers.

Link:

http://www.socialsignal.com/dearsosi

SurveyBob

Ivan Boothe — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 11:03:30 +0000

A lot of nonprofits use SurveyMonkey because it's the "market leader" in surveying. It's OK, though its nonstandard, inaccessible form elements can be an issue. More significantly, it caps the number of questions you can have in each survey (10) and the number of responses you can process (100/month) unless you get the paid version — and at $20/month, it's not cheap.

Enter SurveyBob, which allows you to create unlimited surveys, with unlimited questions, processing unlimited numbers of responses, for free. The statistics aren't as deep as SurveyMonkey, and at the end of a survey it dumps respondents onto the SurveyBob page, but still looks more professional than SurveyMonkey. Allows for embedding directly in websites, too.

http://www.surveybob.com

Community blogs run better on open-source software

Ivan Boothe — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:23:44 +0000

Earlier this month, Soapblox, a blogging platform used by many local progressive bloggers — especially community blogs — collapsed. In one fell swoop, hundreds of political activists' online communities were gone, despite the fact that they had been paying for the service.

Why did one system failure take down such a large network? Because the entire project was being run by one person, part-time. These were fairly high-traffic blogs, yet their content was hosted on Soapblox's own servers, and when it all went down, that data became unavailable. After first proclaiming the software "dead," developer Paul Preston responded to an outpouring of community support and donations by working to restore the service.

On many lists and other community blogs, discussions have centered on whether it makes sense for these blogs to stay on Soapblox. "The consensus that appears to have emerged after a fairly short but very wide-ranging discussion is: it may make sense to transition to another system eventually; for now there is no readily available alternative," wrote Shai Sachs at MyDD.

Most of those discussions then devolve into "Drupal! No, WordPress!" with proponents of each sparring over how to construct a community blog similar to Soapblox's core features. I want to refocus the discussion around the underlying issue: Community blogs simply run better on open-source software, regardless of the platform.

Of course, it's true that different systems have different features, and one of the attractions of Soapblox was that it offered just want community-blog sites needed out of the box. Setting up community blogs on Drupal or WordPress, both of which I have pretty extensive experience with, is definitely possible, but each requires customization — something many local activists don't have time or money to do.

There are many companies that offer "hosted" versions of open-source software, in the same way that Soapblox (the company) offered a hosted version of Soapblox (the software). So why would I recommend the open-source hosts?

The issue here — and the difference between these open-source hosts and Soapblox — is the gigantic community of open-source developers behind them. Soapblox, like these other companies, helps set up hosting and put a friendly face on a somewhat complicated piece of software. But there are hundreds of people working on Drupal that aren't in any way connected to Bryght, or Acquia, or May First — and that's something that all of their customers benefit from: new features, continually-upgraded plugins and security fixes.

With a proprietary system, you get only what the company chooses to put out, and only what they have time to put out. Paul has since suggested that "SoapBlox needs to be transformed from a proprietary model to one of open source to help get rid of me alone as the single-point of contact with so much stuff."

I think that's great, and if Soapblox becomes an open-source project then I'd definitely recommend it along with other open-source platforms. But the point isn't just to make Paul's life easier, or make him more responsive to customers. Open-sourcing Soapblox would make the software, and the blogs it hosts, better. Don't believe me? Information Week magazine wrote a cover story about how businesses are using Drupal and other open-source software, and why:

Drupal draws on a strength that’s common to other successful open source efforts: a vibrant community that drives innovation and lets companies tap the development efforts of thousands of people experimenting with the system.

Since reviving itself, Soapblox has hired some more people, and that's nice, I'm sure, for both Paul and his customers. But the model by which we pay more and more people to maintain our vitally-important software in locked cages just seems poor to me.

Even if Bryght/Acquia/May First went out of business tomorrow, virtually all of its customers could find another vendor to take their system completely intact and get them up and running in an hour or two. Soapblox dies, and their customers are stuck in the dark — if they're lucky they might be able to get a dump of the database and then painstakingly input it into another system.

Open-source communities as the scaffolding for community blogs just seems like a no-brainer to me. I certainly understand the limited time people have and the inertia around a system you already know, but I would hope this might serve as a wake-up call to explore more robust and sustainable systems, be it Drupal or WordPress, Joomla or Plone — or, if Soapblox takes that route, Soapblox itself.

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

Social Networks for Social Change on Beth Kanter's blog

Ivan Boothe — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 08:00:00 +0000

Beth Kanter was nice enough to feature my recent slideshow on using social networks for social change.

Beth's Blog, Beth Kanter

12 November 2008

Ivan Boothe helped start the Genocide Intervention Network in 2004, and was responsible for communications, web development and social networking strategy. He has since started doing freelance work on his own at rootwork.org. So he cautioned me that some of the information might not be entirely up to date that he shared on listserv including a pointer to his awesome slide show with audio.

Ivan is one of a small number of nonprofit early adopters in social media and social networks — he has a couple of years of experience under his belt — so his wisdom is priceless.

Ivan says their organization’s social networking initiatives have been successful in building the “brand” of an anti-genocide constituency. Ivan notes, “Social networking is a long-term approach and using traditional metrics of advocacy or fundraising it may not look like much. But over a long period of time social networking is actually critical in building an effective, educated political constituency.”

So, what is the right fit to use a social networking strategy? Ivan suggests:

Social networking is a natural fit for an organization that wants more than an ATM of donors or a list of petition-signers, but active and engaged political organizers.

Using Social Networks for Social Change: Facebook, MySpace and More

Ivan Boothe — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 23:58:29 +0000

In 2008, I spoke at the Democracy in Action Community Conference about the Genocide Intervention Network's use of social networking and social media to achieve our goals in advocacy, fundraising and membership development.

Using Social Networks for Social Change: Facebook, MySpace and More

I had planned to present a slideshow along with my talk, but in fact, technical difficulties prevented me from doing so. The presentation posted on Slideshare is thus a recreation of that talk, with the audio keyed to the slides. For those of you who prefer things in textual form, I'll write out most of it below, but I encourage you to at least page through the slides for the pictures.

Many of the points I make in the presentation draw on things I've written on this site; I've linked to some of these articles in the body of the presentation below.

Jump directly to the success stories:

Using Online Student Pressure to Pass Legislation
A Photo Petition Puts Students at the Heart of a Congressional Briefing
How Social Networks Can Coordinate a Fundraising Drive

A Mission to Empower

The Genocide Intervention Network is an organization that I helped form in college, and where I worked as director of communications and Internet strategy coordinator from 2004–2008. The mission of the organization is to empower members with tools to prevent and stop genocide.

The idea of "empowerment" is key to the organization's mission, and undergirds our approach to social networks and social media. GI-Net wants members who can think for themselves, and consequently social networking is a key method by which the organization helps train supporters to speak for themselves, for us, and for an anti-genocide movement.

Many groups use social networks for mobilizing — getting members out to an evnt, getting people to sign a petition, getting people to donate for a cause. GI-Net focuses on organizing — creating an educated constituency of people who can motivate others.

When we first arrived on Facebook in 2005, for example, there were already dozens of groups about the genocide in Darfur, Sudan. So it was much more about giving supporters tools to take effective action than it was about convincing people to join our cause. Social networks are an integral part of an organizing strategy, because communication and engagement are what they're all about.

Weaving Your Social Web

The dynamics and demographics of each social network are different — what may make sense on MySpace could be seen as annoying on Facebook. If you have a specific niche, you might try focused networks like BlackPlanet, Eons, GLEE, WiserEarth or The Hub.

For a sociological study of these different kinds of networks, check out the writings of danah boyd. Interestingly, many nonprofit professionals see Facebook as the "more interesting" or "more useful" social network as compared to MySpace, and that's largely because, indeed, Facebook is designed to appeal to the predominant class and educational backgrounds of these folks. Depending on an organization's constituency, however, MySpace might actually be a better way to reach your supporters. Don't decide where to organize online based on which site you or your executive director personally think is most appealing.

When you're determining which network(s) to organize on, the key thing to remember is that you don't have to be everywhere. In fact, it's often better if you start with just one — get your bearings, try out some different approaches, and become thoughtfully engaged with your community of supporters there. You need to make a commitment to each network you join; there's nothing worse (or more unprofessional looking) than a clearly-abandoned organizational profile, where messages go unanswered and spam comments go unmoderated.

Social Media and Social Networks

Social media (e.g. YouTube and Flickr) often integrate particularly well with social networks (e.g. Facebook and MySpace), as a way to help engage members and heighten interest. Why not simply upload your own images and host your own videos? The "social" in social media ensures that, if you post your media with useful titles, descriptions and keywords, other people may well discover you who wouldn't otherwise have encountered you — and you'll draw them further into your social web.

Using Videos on MySpace

When we first put our profile up on MySpace, we were getting one or two friend requests a day, and that's not too bad for just starting off. As soon as we put up a short video about the organization — posted via YouTube, in the hopes of drawing in people from that site as well — our friend requests went up to 10–15 per day. Supporters could embed the videos in their own profiles themselves. That's the advantage of social media in social networks: People are drawn to photos and video, and the nature of social networking allows them to easily share them with friends.

Keys to Success on Social Networks

It's about member engagement.

You might notice there's only one key: Facilitating conversations between and among your supporters. Ultimately, getting an excited base of supporters begins with having them talk to each other about what they're doing around an issue.

It's really not a billboard. You need to cultivate relationships with your supporters.

The Money Thing

Social networks are not going to replace your development director. Even when you do raise money, it's usually more about member engagement than it is about a significant revenue stream. GI-Net's experience with Causes, a platform on Facebook and MySpace, was that "fundraisers" were actually a great way to give supporters something concrete to work toward — but that it hasn't been a very significant source of donations. Nonetheless, the social aspect to it ensures that members who do participate become even more engaged and are often willing to help spearhead the next advocacy campaign.

The top Cause on Facebook had, as of June 2008, more than 3 million members but only raised about $50,000; the vast majority of nonprofits using Causes hadn't raised more than a few hundred dollars. Innovative fundraising campaigns using social networks may bear fruit financially, but member engagement is almost always going to be the primary goal in the end.

Let Your People Speak...

Causes is also a good illustration of another point: You need to let your supporters speak for you on social networks. GI-Net set up an "official" Cause on Facebook, but a member-created Cause benefiting us has more than twice the number of supporters. We could have tried to shut down the unofficial group in an effort to control our message, but instead we reached out to the creator — who was more than willing to send out alerts anyway — and found ways to engage our supporters while still recognizing their own creativity.

The whole point of the social experience is the coveted "recommendation from a friend." Forcing your members to send out only board-approved talking points won't inspire much loyalty, and probably won't be very persuasive to their friends. Nonprofits have to be willing to lose some of their message control in exchange for member loyalty. Trust me — it's worth the trade-off.

...And Then Listen to What They Say

On our MySpace profile, we have a prominent newsletter-signup form at the top of the screen. But we don't simply cut-and-paste our blast emails directly to the MySpace crowd. For one of our MySpace blogs, we said the following:

Are you active in your community on anti-genocide issues? Raising money for civilian protection in Darfur — educating your neighbors about the mass atrocities in Burma — working to pass divestment from Sudan in your state? Leave us a comment and describe what you're doing!

We want you in our top friends!

In the coming weeks, we'll be rotating in all of our MySpace friends who are active on anti-genocide issues into our top friends. You've been supporting us, now we want to support you!

On MySpace, putting someone in your "top friends" is a way of showing thanks and respect, and it was an easy thing to do. We heard from a dozen different local activists who were all featured, some of whom ended up being key leaders on future advocacy campaigns. Show your supporters that you're listening to them, and they'll reward you!

This approach — what's sometimes called "user-generated content" — is a fantastic way to converse with supporters on social networks. Ask people for their stories, photos, videos or other creative work, and then feature some or all of that content. You'll end up with more dedicated members who are willing to take the next step; after having been engaged on a small issue ("take a picture of your fundraiser for Darfur") they'll be willing to lead on a larger one ("help organize a local visit to your member of Congress").

Success Story 1: Using Online Student Pressure to Pass Legislation

In 2005, there was an anti-genocide bill that was being held up by a Senate committee chair. Using Facebook, GI-Net identified and reached out to students in that senator's home state.

Instead of having the students contact the senator directly, we guided the students in a process of using the website OpenSecrets.org to determine the senator's top campaign donors. The students called those donors and asked them to contact the senator and say that standing up against genocide is a moral imperative, and that the senator should move the bill.

The result: Two weeks later, the bill was passed by the committee, was approved by the full Senate, and eventually was signed into law.

Success Story 2: A Photo Petition Puts Students at the Heart of a Congressional Briefing

GI-Net's student division, STAND, initiated a campaign called "Picture a World Without Genocide," in which they encouraged high school students to submit photos via Facebook and MySpace of their activism on Darfur. Hundreds of pictures were collected and compiled into a large poster spelling out the word "Darfur."

We presented this poster at a Capitol Hill briefing, in conjunction with a report we were releasing about congressional action on Darfur. We had prepared the report, and originally we were going to do a traditional press conference in which we called out Congress for their inaction.

We decided to couple the release of this report with this visible manifestation of student activism, as a way to keep our members engaged. In the weeks following the event, the numbers of co-sponsors for key legislation increased substantially — and because students had been "part of the action," they were able to claim part of the victory.

In fact, even if no new co-sponsors had signed on, the action still would have been a great way to activate supporters, so it was really a no-lose campaign for us.

A Worldwide Photo Gallery in 24 Hours

When coordinated rallies focusing on Darfur were set up by the Save Darfur Coalition (of which GI-Net is a part), we encouraged our members to take part — and take pictures. Then we had them upload their images to the photosharing site Flickr, along with a special tag, or keyword, for that event. Using Flickr's own system, we could then pull images with that tag onto GI-Net's website in a constantly-updated, rotating gallery of Darfur activism the day after the event.

Total time on our part? About 15 minutes to write the email to our members, and 10 minutes to put the gallery on our website.

Success Story 3: How Social Networks Can Coordinate a Fundraising Drive

STAND's annual "DarfurFast" encourages students on one day to refrain from one luxury item, and donate the proceeds to GI-Net's Darfur protection program. We engage people around the campaign on several different channels, including Facebook, MySpace, LiveJournal and Twitter.

Social networks were a key way to keep supporters engaged — as well as inviting friends on campus to take part in the real-world upcoming events. The key is that the person-to-person networks already existed in the form of chapters and campus networks; online social networks simply facilitated an easier invitation to friends.

So, we raised more than $500,000 over the course of three years with this event; 2007 saw participation from 450 high schools and 300 colleges. But it's very unlikely we would have ever raised that kind of money via Facebook et al. alone — the online social networks simply supplemented the on-the-ground organizing we (and campus leaders) had already been doing. In fact, online social networks are probably most strategically useful when the event is offline, allowing supporters to quickly spread the word well ahead of time.

It's worth mentioning that many of these methods worked particularly well because they centered on students, who are most active on these networks, generally have easy access to computers and are more likely to have free time. While GI-Net has a constituency far beyond students alone (and sometimes reaches those constituencies directly through networks like Eons), you shouldn't necessarily expect these kinds of returns from everyone. As noted above, working-class communities, communities of color, folks with less formal education and various kinds of "marginalized" groups interact with online social networks very differently, often because of stronger real-world social networks. The best organizing strategy activates people through all their social connections, whether online or offline.

Final Thoughts

Engaging supporters on social networks is long-term. Don't expect immediate results.
It takes effort. You need to be willing to communicate, in both directions, with your supporters.
If you want your members to spread your message, you have to trust them.

Feedback in the comments below is welcome! And once again, let me encourage you to take a look at the Slideshare version for illustrations of what's been discussed. Thanks for reading!

Additional Resources

Check out these writers for great ideas on how nonprofits can use social networks to their greatest potential:

Heather Mansfield writes about best practices for nonprofit use of social networks
Beth Kanter writes about innovative ways nonprofits are using social media
Alexandra Samuel and Rob Cottingham write about ways to build online communities both within and beyond existing social networks

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

DreamHost

Ivan Boothe — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:04:09 +0000

There are lots of web hosts out there, and for particularly large or robust sites DreamHost might not be the best solution. But for smaller nonprofits it could be exactly what you’re looking for — because DreamHost offers free webhosting to 501(c)(3)-registered nonprofits in the United States.

http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/Non-profit_Dis...

Reviews:

Idealware: A Few Good Web Hosting Providers

Vertical Response

Ivan Boothe — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:13:02 +0000

Although there are many mass-email providers, including Emma, Electric Embers and Constant Contact (see the link to the Email Service Provider Comparison report, above), Vertical Response offers free email list management to nonprofits who send out up to 10,000 emails per month. If you’re just getting off the ground, this is a good way to professionalize your communication with supporters without spending a bundle of cash. Vertical Response also integrates reasonably well with Salesforce, a software tool frequently used by nonprofits (see the last review below for details).

http://www.verticalresponse.com/pricing/non-profit...

Reviews:

Email Marketing Software Comparison

Reviews:

ONE/Northwest: Comparison of Email Service Providers (Word document)

Reviews:

Idealware: A Few Good Email Newsletter Tools

Reviews:

nonprofitCRM.org: Understanding Vertical Response and Salesforce

Eventbrite

Ivan Boothe — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:01:25 +0000

Move beyond Evite! Set up professional event registration pages, complete with ticket sales, discount codes, post-event surveys and posting to Google Calendar. Payment is through PayPal or Google Checkout, which cost about 2.5% per transaction. Eventbrite charges an additional 2.5%, with a maximum of $10 — but is completely free for free events.

http://www.eventbrite.com/

Reviews:

CrunchBase

Reviews:

Idealware: A Few Good Event Registration Tools

Reviews:

Comparison chart from Eventsible

Social Networking ROI Calculator

Ivan Boothe — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:24:55 +0000

Is it worth it to integrate a comprehensive social networking strategy into your newest campaign? Should you devote staff time to creating FacebookFacebook is a social network encouraging real identity — each user has a single account under their full, real name. Facebook began among US college students but has quickly expanded to people of all ages around the world. pages or just rely on your email list? Care2’s “Return on Investment” calculator for social networking will help you make the case — or convince you to focus elsewhere.

http://www.frogloop.com/care2blog/2007/7/24/is-it-...

GIMP

Ivan Boothe — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:21:35 +0000

Can’t swing the cost of Photoshop, even with a TechSoup discount? The GIMP is a completely free, downloadable alternative to Photoshop that offers a surprising array of powerful image-editing abilities. Even better, it works on Windows, Macintosh and Linux platforms.

http://www.gimp.org/

Reviews:

PC Magazine

Reviews:

C|Net (Download.com)

Reviews:

Penguin Pete's Blog, with screenshots

Doodle

Ivan Boothe — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 12:34:59 +0000

Need to coordinate a phone conference or online meeting but don’t want to play the email scheduling game? Doodle allows you to easily set up a list of possible times and allow attendees to check off when they’re available — leaving you with a easily-visible chart of the ideal meeting times. For more complex user surveys, check out SurveyBob.

http://www.doodle.com

Reviews:

Lifehacker

Reviews:

MakeUseOf.com

TechSoup

Ivan Boothe — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 12:12:22 +0000

TechSoup is a nonprofit that helps other nonprofits in the United States and Canada acquire deeply-discounted software and online services. Microsoft Office for $16? Adobe InDesign for $60? FlickrFlickr is a social media site for photographs and digital images. Like a social network, it allows users to “friend” one another, join groups, and see a recent-updates feed of their own and their friends’ images. Flickr is owned by Yahoo!. accounts for $3/year? It’s all in TechSoup’s stock.

Additionally, TechSoup has a vibrant forum community and blog postings relating to the use of technology by nonprofits.

http://www.techsoup.org/

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

Ivan Boothe — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 04:43:30 +0000

Michelle Murrain’s perspectives on nonprofit technology, with a specific focus on open-source software.

Link:

http://www.zenofnptech.org/

Technology for the Nonprofit and Philanthropic Sector

Ivan Boothe — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 04:37:18 +0000

Nonprofit technology and software for techies, “accidental techies” and nonprofit executives alike, from Deborah Elizabeth Finn.

Link:

http://blog.deborah.elizabeth.finn.com/blog

Have Fun, Do Good

Ivan Boothe — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 03:53:00 +0000

Britt Bravo blogs about individuals and organizations pursuing social change through innovative online methods. She has particular expertise in advising nonprofits on creating podcasts, and oversees NetSquared’s podcast series. In addition to other NetSquared duties, she coordinates the “think tank” blog series.

Link:

http://havefundogood.blogspot.com/

The Salsa Scoop

Ivan Boothe — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 03:06:27 +0000

Salsa Labs’ Democracy in Action platform is a nonprofit that provides online advocacy and fundraising suites for nonprofits — if you’ve signed a petition or made a donation online, chances are likely you’ve encountered Salsa’s software. The Salsa blog highlights successful online advocacy and fundraising campaigns by their customers and other organizations. Great for inspiration!

Link:

http://www.salsalabs.com/blog

Apophenia

Ivan Boothe — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 02:55:33 +0000

Sociological research and commentary on the use of social networks like MySpaceMySpace is a social network that is not built around a single identity. Users can and do have multiple profiles, with no restrictions on the “names” they use. MySpace is used by many musical groups., FacebookFacebook is a social network encouraging real identity — each user has a single account under their full, real name. Facebook began among US college students but has quickly expanded to people of all ages around the world., LiveJournalLiveJournal is a social network built around blogging. Users can “friend” one another and restrict some or all blog entries to their friends. Users can also join blogging communities built around particular topics., Xanga and YouTubeYouTube is a social network built around video content: posting, sharing, rating and commenting. by teenagers in the United States. danah boyd is a PhD candidate at the University of California Berkeley and a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Link:

http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

Ivan Boothe — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 09:24:32 +0000

“A place to capture and share ideas, experiment with and exchange links and resources about the adoption challenges, strategy, and ROI of nonprofits and social media.” Beth Kanter explores the social use by nonprofits of images (e.g., FlickrFlickr is a social media site for photographs and digital images. Like a social network, it allows users to “friend” one another, join groups, and see a recent-updates feed of their own and their friends’ images. Flickr is owned by Yahoo!.), video (YouTubeYouTube is a social network built around video content: posting, sharing, rating and commenting.) and microblogs (TwitterTwitter is a social network built around short status updates — a combination of microblogging and instant messaging, with the ability to post from mobile phones through text messages.), among other technologies.

Link:

http://www.bethkanter.org/

e.politics

Ivan Boothe — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 09:08:15 +0000

“Online advocacy tools and tactics.” Colin Delany explores the intersection of politics and technology, with a specific focus on nonprofits and social change organizations using innovative methods and online technology to achieve their goals.

Link:

http://www.epolitics.com/

Getting Attention

Ivan Boothe — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 08:46:26 +0000

“The Getting Attention blog is a source of ideas, tactics, and tips for nonprofit communicators focused on helping their organizations succeed through effective marketing.” Nancy E. Schwartz

Link:

http://www.gettingattention.org/

Donor Power

Ivan Boothe — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 08:36:51 +0000

“If you’re serious about raising money from donors, you need to get
serious about donors. More than ever before, donors are insisting that
you share power with them, not treating them like passive ATMs. This
blog is about the ways you can do that — and the rewards that await
you and your donors when you do.” Jeff Brooks

Link:

http://www.donorpowerblog.com/

Frogloop

Ivan Boothe — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 08:29:55 +0000

Care2’s blog on nonprofit online communications, advocacy and social networking.

Link:

http://www.frogloop.com/

Idealware

Ivan Boothe — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 07:15:03 +0000

Idealware “provides candid Consumer Reports–style
reviews and articles about software of interest to nonprofits. Through
product comparisons, recommendations, case studies, and software news,
Idealware allows nonprofits to make the software decisions that will
help them be more effective.”

Link:

http://www.idealware.org/

NetSquared

Ivan Boothe — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:24:53 +0000

NetSquaredNetSquared is an organization “remixing the web for social change” by bringing together nonprofits, activists, techies, social entrepreneurs and funders. These articles deal with using social technology for social change. is a community of nonprofits and groups who are using technology — especially social networks and social media — for social change. In addition to the blog, NetSquared sponsors gatherings in many cities called Net Tuesdays.

Link:

http://www.netsquared.org/

Using social news sites to promote advocacy campaigns

Ivan Boothe — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:02:00 +0000

Beth is talking about the Genocide Intervention Network’s use of Collactive, a software plug-in that helps automate some types of social news and social media advocacy campaigns. Collactive features GI-NET as a case study for promoting buried news and mobilizing members. The key thing to remember is that this was an easy, tangible campaign for our supporters to participate in — “get this important news more attention!” — and that even if we hadn’t been successful it would have been an effective method for engaging our members.

When you’re aiming for a huge goal like stopping genocide, it’s important to give supporters those small victories!

Beth Kanter

8 July 2007

I’m also highlighting this because it is a terrific example of using social news sites like Digg and Reddit to promote a cause … I had (wrongly) assumed that getting to the top of social news sites was a matter of dumb luck or that if something went viral. But there’s strategy involved and a tool to help you execute it.

NetSquared Project Interviews and Session Notes

Ivan Boothe — Wed, 28 May 2008 22:28:58 +0000

Some really incredible presentations here at the NetSquared conference, both from featured projects and individual speakers. Seth Horwitz and I are busily collecting information for next Tuesday's Philly NetSquared event.

Interview with Abram Stern, Metavid community video archive project. "Metavid makes over a thousand hours of public domain US House and Senate floor footage available. Enables participants to search who said what when, blog clips, improve transcripts and edit sequences."

Interview with Erik Hermann, Ushadidi mapping reports of post-election violence in Kenya. "Ushahidi is a conflict mapping and visualization tool first used to report incidents of violence (and peace) happening in post-election Kenya via SMS, email and the web."

Interview with Janessa Goldbeck, Genocide Intervention Network anti-genocide action tracker developed by Rootwork. "The Anti-Genocide Action Tracker will empower activists with the tools to end genocide by alerting them to pending anti-genocide legislation their state governments or elected representatives can play key roles in passing."

Interview with Melinda Wittstock, Capitol News Connection ask your lawmaker. "Ask your lawmaker a question and CNC reporters get it answered: you listen and share via 'grabbable' widgets customizable by issue/location for Congress, state capitols and town halls with social networking and APIs."

Watch this video on Blip.tv.

Those working on building websites may be interested in the write up of Building a Community Network with Plone by Steve McMahon. "Steve is a Plone consultant and integrator specializing in non-profit organizations and is also the Web Team Chair at the Davis Community Network (a 501c3), an organization that promotes the use of Internet technologies for local and regional community building. He's going to share with us how Plone can be used for sites large and small, and about how Plone can be used to build and used to serve for a geographic community."

Meanwhile, Benji Burrell of iLoveMountains.org delivered a presentation about their online advocacy, including an innovative zip code lookup feature, a nice mashup of legislative data from Democracy in Action, a great action map implementation of the open-source ForwardTrack software, and embeddable widgets created through Sprout Builder.

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

Hundreds Gather for Social Change Tech at NetSquared Year Three

Ivan Boothe — Wed, 28 May 2008 01:06:13 +0000

The NetSquared Year Three conference has gotten off to a great start: nonprofit staffers, activists, techies and funders gathering to talk about — and award some money to — using technology for social change.

There have been a couple of blog entries focusing on two of the featured projects, KnowMore.org and the Genocide Intervention Network.

KnowMore.org's proposal is a Firefox extension that just launched, as described in the blog:

The extension itself acts as a simple lens through which to experience the web, a lens that brings into focus the business and political practices of corporations that you purchase from. How it works is fantastically simple: When you go to a website, Firefox displays a notification bar at the top of the page, for corporations that have business practices that you might be concerned about, as well as a link to read more. The extension also displays visual notifications in search engine results, marking links to corporations of concern.

The Genocide Intervention Network's proposal is an anti-genocide legislation tracker and widget system developed by Rootwork. In an interview with GI-NET's Ben Drexler, Aida McArthur asks:

AM: What is the main challenge your staff is experiencing?

BD: Finding an adequate means of transmitting the actions they are able to create based upon their analysis. Our traditional means of disseminating this information is via e-mail or phone contact, but desire a faster means of communicating to a wider audience to be able to mobilize phone calls from activists on a faster turnaround basis.

I'll be continuing to post articles focusing on some of the featured projects — the NetSquared blog is a great place to follow along as well. Some images from the NetSquared featured project carnival:

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

Just what kind of social change are you interested in?

Ivan Boothe — Thu, 22 May 2008 00:52:25 +0000

This month's "Net2ThinkTank" question: "Is Online Activism Good for Social Change?"

As someone who was quoted in the "Social Citizens" report and has written in the past about technology and social change, my answer to that question would certainly be "yes."

But I think the question is significantly complicated in the question from Allison Fine, author of "Social Citizens":

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?

Put another way I think it could be asked: Online activism is good for social change — but what kind of social change?

Many nonprofits use social networks and online activism as a way to boost their membership rolls and donation levels. As I've written before, that seems less useful to me than focusing on empowering an effective movement — whether or not people donate to your organization or sign up for your newsletter. This isn't to minimize the challenges everyone faces on how to support working for social change, both financially and emotionally. But it is to say that movements are bigger than any one nonprofit. Certainly, organizations can ignore that and focus on using MySpace to get new email addresses and Facebook to drum up donations — but frankly, I don't think that has a lot to do with social change.

Only when the operational concerns are placed secondary to social change concerns do I see social change really being possible. It's not a secondary outcome; it has to be the primary concern. And that's true, in my opinion, whether you're talking about online or offline social change.

More than thirty years ago, sociologists Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward wrote in the introduction to Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail (1977):

[D]uring those brief moments when lower-class groups exert some force against the state, those who call themselves leaders do not usually escalate the momentum of the people's protests. They do not because they are preoccupied with trying to build and sustain embryonic formal organizations in the sure conviction that these organizations will enlarge and become powerful.

More recently, members of the collective INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence published the scathing The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, which excoriated the nonprofit system — primarily foundations, but also the kind of institutionalized dissent Piven and Cloward explored above — for perpetuating the social inequity they say they want to end.

In the 1970s and '80s, rising social inequality helped hasten a breakdown of both communities and community struggles. (We "Millennials" of which Fine writes were, of course, originally termed "Reagan Babies.") Poor people's movements Piven and Cloward explore were co-opted and defused by top-down organizers from large nonprofits. And family foundations, rooted back in the (first) Gilded Age and gaining power in the tech booms of the 1990s, helped professionalize the practice of dissent. Or as Patrick Reinsborough writes in an oft-quoted essay, "De-Colonizing the Revolutionary Imagination":

Just as service oriented NGO's have been tapped to fill the voids left by the state or the market, so have social change NGO's arisen to streamline the chaotic business of dissent. Let's call this trend NGOism, that terrifyingly widespread conceit among professional "campaigners" that social change is a highly specialized profession best left to experienced strategists, negotiators and policy wonks. NGOism is the conceit that paid staff will be enough to save the world.

Some nonprofits, older and more institutionalized, are wary of giving their members "control" of their "message" in the realm of social networks and social media. Mostly, I think that's nothing more than a fear of losing power. When you think you know how to change the world, it can be hard for some people to want to involve others — or give anyone else the credit.

What's interesting is that this time around, there's a significantly higher ability for activists to self-organize. The message to nonprofits from the past few years seems pretty clear: Stand in our way, and we'll just go around you. The 2006 student walkouts for immigrant rights spread through MySpace without any "sponsoring" organization. As I explained in a presentation on Facebook, when the Genocide Intervention Network first arrived on the scene, we found dozens of existing groups and networks already active — our objective was simply to connect them and provide them with effective tools for action. A participant in the protests over the Jena Six said, "I am so disappointed with the media right now. I live in Connecticut and I never even heard of this. Honestly if it wasn't for Facebook, I still wouldn't know."

So the question really goes to the nonprofits and other groups using social networks and social media: What kind of social change do you want? And are you willing to help facilitate even if you don't get credit/coverage/donations?

That doesn't mean that "big" nonprofits can't work for social change through technology, or that only unsupported volunteers can really make things better — as Reinsborough puts it in the corollary to the comment above:

This is not to say that corporate campaigns and winning concessions is merely "reformist" and therefore not important. The simplistic dichotomy of reform versus revolution often hides the privilege of "radicals" who have the luxury of refusing concessions when it's not their community or ecosystem that is on the chopping block.

A more important distinction is which direction is the concession moving towards? Is it a concession that releases pressure on the system and thereby legitimizes illegitimate authority? Or is it a concession that teaches people a lesson about grassroots power building and therefore brings us closer to systemic social change?

I'm not as worried about whether, as Fine asks, the "tendency to connect only with like-minded people" puts limitations on what can be achieved. Most social change movements, including the US civil rights movement, are grounded in those sorts of communities, what's referred to as "affective ties."

But there is a larger question of the technology gap — social movements in general might not be as confined by co-optation like Piven and Cloward describe, but poor people's movements without access or usable knowledge of such technology are still vulnerable to having their goals and struggles appropriated by the more powerful.

Moreover, as danah boyd explores in her fascinating research, these issues are played out in social networks themselves. "The division around MySpace and Facebook is just another way in which technology is mirroring societal values," she writes in "Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace."

So I think there are gaps in access, in knowledge, and in audience — many nonprofits I've talked to seem to be more excited about organizing on Facebook for instance, because it seems more "natural" or "easy." But it may seem that way simply because it aligns with the class and social habits of people who staff nonprofits — and as boyd documents, many subaltern communities of people (for whom nonprofits are often trying to speak) tend to use MySpace to a greater extent.

Tomorrow is Bloggers Unite for Human Rights (Day). The organizers assert that bloggers can "use their space to make the world a better place." And clearly, given what I do, I think there is a potential for social networks and social media to highlight and organize and empower. But I don't think we can get too far ahead of ourselves, and I think we need to be clear about just what it is we're reaching for. Working for social change means being committed to examining inequality and injustice in our world, and it's simply naïve to think that those dynamics don't affect the very way our organizations — and our notions of social change — are structured.

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

Facebook: Still useful, still not a billboard

Ivan Boothe — Sun, 04 May 2008 22:20:00 +0000

Colin Delaney’s article, “Has FacebookFacebook is a social network encouraging real identity — each user has a single account under their full, real name. Facebook began among US college students but has quickly expanded to people of all ages around the world. Jumped the Shark as a Political Tool?,” references my article on organizing rather than mobilizing — that social networking is about communication, not finding another way to pump your supporters for donations or signatures on a petition. This might be particularly challenging for all but the largest and tech-savvy electoral campaigns (as Chris Hughes, now of my.BarackObama.com, would know). For extraparliamentary activism, though, it’s still a powerful tool for meeting your supporters where they are and organizing them into long-term social movements.

Colin Delaney, e.politics

4 May 2008

Those groups that have found advocacy success on FacebookFacebook is a social network encouraging real identity — each user has a single account under their full, real name. Facebook began among US college students but has quickly expanded to people of all ages around the world. tend to adopt
an approach that USES the one-on-one nature of the site. As one small
example, I spoke to a group of pro-choice activists a few weeks ago,
many of whom work with students on college campuses. When I asked how
Facebook fit into their work, the overwhelming response was that it was
essentially an email replacement — they employed Facebook messages to
reach individual supporters or small groups of supporters when they
were preparing for events or promoting a particular message. The
Genocide Intervention Network demonstrates a much more comprehensive
and strategic approach but the same basic idea: as Ivan Boothe wrote last year.

Note that Ivan is describing something very different than traditional
mass communications: heâ€™s talking about working closely (no doubt
frequently one-on-one) with people on Facebook and other networking
sites over a long period of time to help build a cadre of very
committed activists — something that most electoral campaigns (and even
most issue advocacy campaigns) simply canâ€™t do, whether because of lack
of time or lack of resources.

How Millennials are organizing for social change

Ivan Boothe — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:30:00 +0000

Allison Fine calls this kind of decentralized organizing “network leadership,” something I write more about in a follow-up post, “Just what kind of social change are you interested in?”

Social Citizens, by Allison Fine

24 April 2008

Ivan Boothe, for example, says his organization’s goal is to “involve people who are active and educated about the issue who become leaders as members. Our members are not just a mailing list. GI-Net is all about giving up control … Organizations need more than a membership card. We are creating a permanent anti-genocide constituency.”

Genocide Intervention Network nominated for NetSquared mashup award

Ivan Boothe — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:34:18 +0000

This week, the Genocide Intervention Network was honored to be nominated by the NetSquared community as a 2008 Featured Project for our proposal to upgrade and extend the DarfurScores.org website:

The Genocide Intervention Network seeks to create a new website, modeled on our successful Darfur congressional scorecard, DarfurScores.org, tentatively named GenocideScores.org.

Our current plan for the site — which could change as we explore different options and hear feedback from our members — has four main components:

Collecting together anti-genocide data, not only on Darfur but on each of our areas of concern. Instead of being limited to only legislative records, each state would list its status on other anti-genocide initiatives like Sudan divestment and genocide education.
Provide clear illustrations of legislative status. Instead of just hearing about a bill when a member of Congress does (or doesn't) vote for it, we'll be tracking bills as they move through each chamber.
Cross-index a bill's status with a member's location. When the latest bill on genocide prevention is up for a vote, anti-genocide activists whose members of Congress represent key votes on the legislation will be able to receive automatic alerts.
Provide embeddable badges or widgets for activists to place on their profiles, blogs or websites. At a glance, both you and visitors to your website, blog or social networking profile will be able to see how your state and legislators are doing on the question of genocide. And when urgent action is needed, these badges will be automatically updated with a special link to take action.

Now, we want your feedback. If you have a chance, read through our proposal for DarfurScores.org and leave a comment — tell us what you like, what you think could be changed, what we're overlooking. Remember that this is all about our core mission: empowering individuals and communities with the tools to prevent and stop genocide. We hope this project will result in a valuable new tool, and we'd love to have your input!

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

PBS: 'Social Networks and ... Genocide'

Ivan Boothe — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 18:45:00 +0000

PBS Engage

18 February 2008

The group … uses social networking to call its members to action. A
targeted campaign of FacebookFacebook is a social network encouraging real identity — each user has a single account under their full, real name. Facebook began among US college students but has quickly expanded to people of all ages around the world. messages in Indiana netted a large number
of students willing to call Sen. Richard Lugar’s top donors (a list of
which was uploaded from opensecrets.org) and ask them to pressure the
senator to approve a bill on Darfur he was holding in his committee.

Drupal for Nonprofits, or, How to Build Social Networks for Change

Ivan Boothe — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 00:30:24 +0000

(Cross-posted to NetSquared)

Earlier this month, NetSquared was generous enough to fund my attendance at the Lullabot Drupal Intensive workshop in Providence, Rhode Island. Drupal is a free, open-source content management system that allows non-technical users to update your site and is capable of powering blogs, community sites, action-oriented campaigns and social networks along the lines of MySpace and Facebook. Lullabot, a Drupal development firm that involved in much of the Drupal development, has a keen interest in Drupal for nonprofits.

In return for NetSquared's generosity, I wanted to post some tips for nonprofits thinking about using Drupal for their sites. I'm convinced that, under most circumstances, Drupal can be a powerful resource for online advocacy and social change.

Background

To date, I have built four full-fledged sites with Drupal for the Genocide Intervention Network: Ask the Candidates (Drupal version 5), the Darfur Congressional Scorecard (v4.7), Time to Protect (v4.7, no longer online) and Power to Protect (v4.6, no longer online). GI-Net's main site was also developed in Drupal (v4.7) by an outside firm, as was GI-Net's student site, STAND (v4.7). My personal site is in Drupal (v5) and I'm working on releasing an e-commerce site and a community events site in the near future.

Although I have a working knowledge of basic PHP, on which Drupal is based, my work primarily is in HTML and CSS — for the majority of things our sites need to do, it's mainly a matter of finding the right modules (plugins) and then themeing (designing) the site to look the way we want. By and large you don't need to have a lot of programming knowledge to create effective sites in Drupal.

When to Use Drupal — and When Not to Use it

Drupal has a number of strengths:

Once you understand the terminology and basic structure of Drupal, it's easy to set up sites relatively quickly, with advanced functionality simply "dropped in" by way of modules.
Drupal is relatively easy to theme, especially in version 5 and even more so in the upcoming version 6 (likely to be released in early 2008).
Drupal is extremely search-engine friendly, helping get your site to the top of search engine lists with minimal effort. With a few tweaks and additional modules, it can be even more effective.
Drupal is relatively scalable, able to power large sites as well as small. For very high-traffic sites, this will take some tweaking of the server settings, but this is true for pretty much any content management system (CMS).
It's free! More importantly, it has a large, robust community of developers regularly updating both its core features and plug-in modules — also for free! And when you can't swing the free-software cost — staff time — there are plenty of Drupal developers out there. For nonprofits looking to "act out" social change, Drupal is a welcome addition to for-profit corporations upon which you have to depend for any updates or bug fixes.
Because it's open-source, Drupal won't lock you in to a proprietary system that mangles your data or makes it difficult to switch to another CMS in the future. Additionally, it's open nature allows for more frequent integration with other software and web services — everything from Flickr to Salesforce, with rumors of Democracy in Action on the way.
Of special note, Drupal has tight integration with CiviCRM and equally free, open-source contact relationship manager (also available for the Joomla CMS). If you opt to use CiviCRM as your CRM for donors or members, you can aggregate useful data like donations through the website, membership dues, attendance at events, subscriptions to mailing lists and participation in local groups, as well as the usual searching, sorting and categorizing of contacts available in any CRM.
For you geeks out there, it uses standards compliant (at least in core) semantic code and is built on the MVC model.

Many prominent sites, both commercial and nonprofit, have been built on Drupal, including MTV.co.uk, Sen. Chris Dodd, The Onion and NetSquared itself (see a full list). One of my favorites, just recently released, is WITNESS's The Hub, built by the fine folks at CivicActions. (The Hub was also a proposal for the 2007 NetSquared Conference.) I think The Hub really shows the potential for social change that Drupal-powered sites can accomplish.

When might you not want to use Drupal?

For those completely new to Drupal, it can have a significant learning curve. We're not talking Photoshop here, but much of the terminology and structure of the site can be unfamiliar to new users, even those familiar with other CMSes. If you need a hot website tomorrow and can't spring for a paid developer, it might make more sense to go with a CMS you already know.
Drupal is an excellent platform for blogs, and allows you to build in a lot of community and social-networking features that can strengthen your blog's appeal. However, WordPress, another free open-source software, is specifically oriented toward blogs. The learning curve is significantly less, and it's somewhat easier to theme (design). If you're primarily a designer and you want a straightforward blog site without having to ever see a line of PHP code, WordPress may well be a better option. Like Drupal, it has an excellent community of developers and contributers, and many of its plugins can also stretch its capabilities to encompass social-networking-oriented functions.
If you absolutely need a website tomorrow — a simple blog or "brochureware" site giving the basics of a new campaign and a place to post updates and press releases, your best bet may be Joomla. Like Drupal and WordPress, it's free, open-source and has lots of developers, many of them involved in nonprofits and advocacy campaigns. It is somewhat harder to design to not look like "a Joomla site" but there's no question that it's faster to set up and publish a simple website.
Free software is great and all, but if you have no budget and no design or programming resources in-house, you may want to stick with that commercial CMS you know — or even Dreamweaver or FrontPage sites. The cost of free software is the development time, and that isn't an insignificant concern. If you're planning a big campaign and have a budget or in-house developers, I highly recommend one of the open-source CMSes because of all of the strengths mentioned above (and particularly that they won't lock you into some horrible proprietary code nightmare). But not every nonprofit will have that luxury, and you should carefully consider if you have the money or staff time to build a site from scratch.
Above, I mentioned that many Drupal modules offer integration with other software and web services. This is true, but not for every piece of software out there, and not always as robustly as you might like. In particular, if you have a lot of tight integration needs and already have another piece hosted with another service — a donor database or an online action suite, for instance — it may make sense to build your website using their own CMS to allow for the tightest possible integration. You'll give up some of the cool Drupal functionality and customization possibilities, but when it comes time to run those end-year reports, you just push a button.
Drupal is built by volunteers. Some of them are paid web developers who voluntarily contribute their work back to the Drupal community. But nothing is guaranteed — that module you depend on might have a bug that doesn't get fixed for six months. There are ways to help guard against this — for instance, by sticking to modules recommended by others, and checking to see how often past releases have come out, but it's definitely something to consider. In all of the sites I've built Drupal on, only one mission-critical item has ever had a serious bug that took a couple of months to get addressed. That said, if you do have developers on hand or can pay others, Drupal's open-source nature makes it easy to find and squash the bugs yourself as they occur — no waiting on Kintera or Convio to get around to fixing your pet peeve with the software.

Drupal Resources for Nonprofits

Drupal for Good is the primary Drupal-centered site for nonprofit and charitable discussions. (For the mischievous, there's also Drupal for Evil.) There are plenty of geographically-based Drupal groups — see if there's one near you!

There's lots of general Drupal support out there, including the handbook documentation, mailing lists, IRC, forums and blogs. (If you have questions about a specific module, the best practice is to go to that module's project page on Drupal and post an issue — among other things, it's far more likely your questions or concerns will be answered than if you post on the general forums!) There are also books on Drupal as well as fee-based training from groups like Lullabot.

Want even more? Try the weekly Lullabot Podcast or browse through the step-by-step Drupal Dojo screencasts. One of Drupal's strengths is its vibrant community!

I'll be posting more about how Drupal can be useful to nonprofits — including case studies — in the near future. If you have any comments or suggestions for resources, please add them in the comments!

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

NetSquared interview on the Genocide Intervention Network

Ivan Boothe — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 01:47:00 +0000

This interview chronicles the Genocide Intervention Network’s use of social networking and social media in the arena of anti-genocide advocacy. And it touches on a key point of mine — the usefulness of these kinds of tools in organizing rather than mobilizing, that is, developing long-term social movements rather than single-issue campaigns.

Britt Bravo, NetSquared

25 October 2007

Our experience, overall, has been that local people are really out in front on organizing [the anti-genocide] issue, and we’re just creating the tools, putting the tools in their hands, and giving them the resources to take action. For instance, the 1-800-GENOCIDE Hotline, the Darfur Scorecard, things like that are giving people the resources to take action.

In our experience, they’re already out there doing a lot of stuff. I know when we began a couple of years ago, and were just sort of starting our outreach on FacebookFacebook is a social network encouraging real identity — each user has a single account under their full, real name. Facebook began among US college students but has quickly expanded to people of all ages around the world., we found there were already dozens of Facebook groups around the issue and working on these issues. It was just about networking them, giving them resources, giving them support in the work they were doing. That’s what we’ve been trying to do since then.

Organizing Rather than Mobilizing: Using Social Networks for Constituency-Building

Ivan Boothe — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:40:52 +0000

Britt Bravo from NetSquared asks, "What is the return on investment of the social web for nonprofits?"

For the Genocide Intervention Network, which is the organization I'm involved with that has been most active in social networking, involvement in the "social web" is really an outgrowth of our entire mission: To form the first anti-genocide constituency, and to empower our members with the tools to prevent and stop genocide.

The words "constituency" and "empower" are key. We're not simply looking for a mailing list or an ATM — we want an educated, active movement of people interested in preventing and stopping genocide. Our members need to be able to think for themselves on the issue — to hold events in their communities, motivate others to take action, press their elected representatives to take stand — not to simply be another name on a list, but to be a hub in an ever-expanding network.

This is really the principle behind the social web: it's all about conversations. And for us, conversations are the perfect way to build a vibrant, effective movement.

When GI-Net began, we were primary student-oriented, and so organizing in places like Facebook was really a necessity. But as we grew, it became clear that focusing on these types of networks, in which we were able to supply members with knowledge but they were also empowered to speak for themselves, could be a powerful way to grow our impact exponentially.

In fact, effective social movements have always been based on affective social ties, and fears of postmodern atomization aside, twenty-first century movements won't be any different.

When I first started writing about this, however, I explained an important requirement for engagement in the social web to succeed — and this is still true for us today:

There's a mentality shift required to fully engage with social networking and community content sites: sometimes, you have to let go. It's true that someone could start posting pictures on Flickr of irrelevant things and tag them "antigenocide," or that some of our biggest fans hosting the YouTube video on MySpace might have profiles that would make some of our donors cringe. Perhaps even more significantly, it's possible that some of the people who encounter us on these sites never make it to our main website, never sign up for a newsletter, never complete an action, and never make a donation.
For us, it goes back to our mission: to empower our members to prevent and stop genocide, and in so doing, to create an educated anti-genocide constituency. While we do, of course, want to increase our membership rolls and make ever-larger donations to civilian protection, in some respects it's not always necessary for people to perform every anti-genocide action through our organization. If our videos or emails or profiles get people talking more substantially about genocide — and the concrete ways in which they can actually prevent and stop genocide — then in some sense whether they end up on our mailing list is somewhat beside the point. Through their knowledge they will engage others, and ultimately enhance the anti-genocide movement we're helping to build.

In his profile of GI-Net and Catalyst Campaigns, Joshua Levy describes this approach as "similar to bottom-up, open-source collaborative projects," and I think that's exactly right. Our organization is engaged in a collaborative project with our members, and while we may have particular resources or acquired expertise, it's really their activism and passion that will build and drive the movement.

What it all comes down to is that we're focusing on organizing people into a permanent anti-genocide movement (and much of that happens in a decentralized, self-organized sort of way) rather than simply mobilizing people for a particular event or campaign and then sending them home. If you just need bodies at a rally, names on a petition or donations in your coffers, mobilizing through traditional means will work great. But if you need an active, educated and effective movement, organizing through social webs has the potential to create much more lasting change.

The Genocide Intervention Network on the Social Web

Using Social Networking to Stop Genocide (Idealware), on the origins of GI-Net's approach
Bottom-up social networking interview, on why MySpace isn't like banner ads (see the second half).
Leveraging Social Networks for Progressive Organizing (New Organizing Institute), a video of a panel discussion I was on talking about the possibilities for nonprofits using social networks
Notes from NTC: Leveraging the Power of Participatory Media AND The Future of Online Outreach, on the related topic of user-generated media campaigns

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

Notes from NTC: Participatory Media and the Future of Online Outreach

Ivan Boothe — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 10:38:35 +0000

Although these two panels were held separately at the Nonprofit Technology Conference 2007, I thought that they related so well that I'd present them together.

Leveraging the Power of Participatory Media

Colin Delany, e.politics (presentation slides and resources available online)
Michael Silberman, EchoDitto

The Future of Online Outreach

Marty Kearns (and Ruby Sinreich), Green Media Toolshed (closely-related essay available on Netcentric Campaigns)

Participatory media is a campaign that utilizes content created by the users/members/visitors of the campaign — and in may cases, this creation of content is the campaign itself. Colin began by offering an example of a participatory-media approach that had backfired for a corporation, the anti-Chevy Chevy Tahoe ad. (This ad campaign would also show up in Marty's presentation.) Colin pointed out that Chevy had decided to leave the ads online because they had the effect of driving lots of traffic to the website — thus turning a negative backlash into a positive result. In his presentation, however, Marty said there had been a significant drop in sales of the Tahoe the next quarter — possibly due to the rise in gas prices, but possibly also due to this negative publicity.

After recommending that campaigns engage in participatory media for the simple reason that your users are doing it anyway (giving the example of the "vote different" video), Colin outlined the basic motivations:

engagement
leveraging collective intelligence (Marty might call this being network-centric)
publicity
because they're there

Colin pointed out that email discussion lists and fora were a basic form of user-generated content. Beyond that lay blogs, then video and photographs, altered images, stories, social networking projects and "ideas" themselves.

There are several levels of engagement possible with participatory media:

observation (one-way, receiving information)
interaction (responding with information, as in a blog comment)
contribution (creating information, as in posting a blog)
solicitation (asking others to create information in response to yours, as in a video response or a contest)

A prime example of participatory media that Colin gave was Late Night with Conan O'Brien's HornyManatee.com. The site solicits hot manatee action from its users, to great effect.

Michael then took the helm, demonstrating two participatory media campaigns EchoDitto had worked on (which coincidentally both won awards): Since Sliced Bread and the Pearl Harbor Survivors Project.

For the Survivors Project, Michael talked about the strategizing they had done in order to collect the stories of the several-hundred remaining survivors of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. They had set up a toll-free number so that technologically-challenged seniors wouldn't have to interface with the website, but to their surprise that was the primary mode of submission. In another twist, they established a MySpace profile not expecting much response from a youthful crowd, but soon went on to find 20,000 friend requests.

Michael pointed out that the nature of participatory media was still new enough that it is able to earn media for the organization — the Survivors Project really took off after a feature in Parade. The very existence of the campaign was a news story, in a way a traditional museum-style exhibit on Pearl Harbor would not be.

As for Since Sliced Bread, Michael explained that it was an attempt by SEIU president Andy Stern to solicit ideas directly from workers, because he felt like DC lobbyists and consultants working on labor issues weren't concerned with the real issues facing his union members.

Users were thus invited to submit their best ideas Since Sliced Bread, with the winner receiving a prize of $100,000 and runners-up receiving money as well. The project had what Michael called "a panel of sort-of celebrities" which narrowed the tens-of-thousands of entries to a slate of 21 finalists. The community then voted on the winners from those 21.

Michael talked about the issues confronted by the team when losers in the contest turned against the site — a much higher volume of nasty blog comments, to the point that the blog became de-emphasized on the site to try to remove the flashpoint. The site also generated some serious victories as well, including the winning project going on to being approved by voters in a Washington state ballot initiative.

In the question-and-answer period, numerous participatory media campaigns were offered, including the March of Dimes' Share Your Story and the Picture the Cure (cached copy, site seems down) initiative for the Canadian Cancer Society. Alan Rosenblatt said Care2 had done a study demonstrating that people who participated in discussion fora were 74% more likely to take action.

On to the second session!

Marty began by making the argument that the differences in social networks (connections) today — aptly covered by David Weinberger earlier in the day — should necessarily change the way we go about social organizing. It is not as much about building individual leadership or organizational capacity, he said, but about making strong and effective connections.

In other words, what would your organization do with 10,000 people for ten minutes?

Most people today are under a barrage of information. When the FCC's "Do Not Call" list was launched, 50 million people signed up in just a few weeks — without any advertising whatsoever. These people have "walked away from the current models of civic engagement." They don't sign up for email lists because they're afraid of ever getting off — a barrier to exit becomes a barrier to entry.

Network-centric advocacy focuses not only on the individual or organization, but more importantly on the network "as a mechanism for exerting influence." Recent political examples of this include the Gray Davis recall campaign, the Howard Dean presidential campaign, and the Network for Justice Against the Death Penalty campaign, which used an innovative evite.com-style model for encouraging people to encourage their friends to sign up (and publicly display the results). A more visual example is ForwardTrack, recently deployed by the Oxygen network in Oh! Speakup!.

A strong network depends on five key components, according to Marty:

strong social ties that become a "tangible, measured and carefully cultivated strategic asset" for organizers
a common story that allows the core actors to understand each other
a communications grid that allows for one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many conversations, including self-segmentation
shared resources for coordinated tasks
clarity of purpose and given the context to refine this purpose

What networks are particularly good at are:

connecting (eBay)
sequencing (SETI@Home)
synchronizing (flash mobs)
distributing (viral news)

Additional examples given were MoveOn.org's Bush in 30 Seconds and the unaffiliated Congress in 30 Seconds — both participatory media campaigns!

The session closed with time for people to meet in small groups and discuss network-centric advocacy in the context of their own organizaitons.

With that, I'll leave you with a quote from Marty: "Networks are leaderful and bossless."

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

Interview on 'bottom-up' social networking from Personal Democracy Forum

Ivan Boothe — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 23:00:00 +0000

Joshua Levy’s article at PDF articulates the “rules for using MySpaceMySpace is a social network that is not built around a single identity. Users can and do have multiple profiles, with no restrictions on the “names” they use. MySpace is used by many musical groups.” derived from his interviews with me and with Scott Goodstein, another online organizer who has done some amazing work. I wrote more extensively about the issues raised in this interview in my blog posting, “The theory of bottom-up social networking.”

Joshua Levy, Personal Democracy Forum

4 December 2006

Offering concrete ideas for how to solve a seemingly insurmountable problem can give people a sense that they, as individuals, have a stake in an issue. The Genocide Intervention Network links to a list of “ten things you can do to stop genocide.” Ivan Boothe argues that these steps, broken down into easily digestible chunks, give people an easy way to participate. Although they also link to the Genocide Intervention Network’s main web site, that isn’t always the point. “A number of these steps aren’t even within our organization,” Boothe says. This sort of advocacy is similar to bottom-up, open-source collaborative projects like Wikipedia, in which no one group has proprietary ownership over an idea or a product; instead, the goal is a constant generation of awareness and ideas. A MySpaceMySpace is a social network that is not built around a single identity. Users can and do have multiple profiles, with no restrictions on the “names” they use. MySpace is used by many musical groups. page, says Boothe, isn’t simply an advertisement for an organization, “it’s a tool for mobilizing people for different kinds of action.”

The theory of bottom-up social networking

Ivan Boothe — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 20:15:55 +0000

Recently, the Genocide Intervention Network's efforts in "social networking" — things like MySpace, Facebook, Flickr and del.icio.us — have been attracting a fair amount of attention. I was invited to write guest posts for the Democracy in Action blog and Idealware (a fleshed-out and updated version of the DiA post) and was asked to present at the DC NetSquared MeetUp and the Internet Advocacy Roundtable. That all follows some more general ideas on blogging that I wrote as an introduction to the NetSquared national conference last May (see also a PDF of the brochure distributed to attendees).

Today, Joshua Levy at Personal Democracy Forum posts the "rules for using MySpace" derived from interviews with me and with Scott Goodstein, another online organizer who has done some amazing work with Save the Internet, Save1800Suicide and the Military Free Zone. (Scott was also the person who originally contacted GI-Net about collaborating with the band Anti-Flag on a Darfur essay included in their newest album.)

One thing I have been emphasizing in all of these presentations and interviews has been the idea of using social networking as a "bottom-up" way of online mobilization — in the words of GI-Net's mission, "empowering individuals and communities with the tools" to effect change.

Salient quote from Joshua's article:

Offering concrete ideas for how to solve a seemingly insurmountable problem can give people a sense that they, as individuals, have a stake in an issue. The Genocide Intervention Network links to a list of "ten things you can do to stop genocide." Ivan Boothe argues that these steps, broken down into easily digestible chunks, give people an easy way to participate. Although they also link to the Genocide Intervention Network's main web site, that isn't always the point. "A number of these steps aren't even within our organization," Boothe says. This sort of advocacy is similar to bottom-up, open-source collaborative projects like Wikipedia, in which no one group has proprietary ownership over an idea or a product; instead, the goal is a constant generation of awareness and ideas. A MySpace page, says Boothe, isn't simply an advertisement for an organization, "it's a tool for mobilizing people for different kinds of action."

I don't by any means consider myself an expert (personally I find myself less interested in MySpace than you might expect — but then again I'm a techie who hates cell phones, so maybe that's not a surprise) but I do think there's a lot to be accomplished in this space. I think organizations just have to stay focused on empowering their members rather than simply advertising to them, and really being willing engaging them in a constructive way.

Many of the approaches to social networking seem to involve nothing more than acquiring banner space:

If anyone out in the world needs help, all they have to do is look to MySpace. You just have to get up on the wall at MySpace, and represent. Good things will happen.

Yes, you can reach a large audience with MySpace, and statistically, with a large enough audience you will have talented people volunteer their services. But that's not "social networking," it's just advertising — if nonprofits could easily and cheaply fly banner advertisements behind airplanes in the world's major cities, they would probably get a lot of volunteers, too. The only difference in this case is that it's electronic and (relatively) free.

And — as our organization has certainly found out — getting a lot of volunteers often means getting a lot of people wanting to do things you don't do or can't do (like volunteering to go to Darfur, or raising money for guns for rebels, or adopting orphaned Darfurian children). Getting a lot of exposure all of a sudden can overwhelm a nonprofit, and if there isn't a clear understanding already in place about how to effectively mobilize people toward actions that will make a positive difference, then I would be worried about getting distracted by chasing benefit concerts and bake sales all over the world. Enthusiastic supporters are great, but sometimes you have to channel them in the right direction.

Finally, even if online organizing dovetails well with community organizing, the mobilizing of third-party advocates only effects change if that mobilization is directed in a useful direction.* You might get a lot of people to sign a petition, but does that actually aid the community you supposedly help? You might attract a lot of donations, but does that actually support the people you say you represent? These are classic nonprofit challenges that don't go away simply through electronic networking.

Online organizing doesn't replace real on-the-ground community organizing or empowerment. (This is actually one of my concerns with the Second Life nonprofit fad, but that's for another post.) Action online only matters if it can be translated into the real world, or if it can develop social bonds that provide the framework for real-world action.

Social Networking to Stop Genocide

Some of GI-Net's social networking campaigns online:

* Interestingly, there have been very few effective online campaigns (using SNS or otherwise) with organizations that directly represent the communities they organize (e.g. homeless rights movements as opposed to advocates from the Global North raising money for Africa). The big one that comes to mind is the immigrants rights marches in the United States. Yet in that case, most of the mobilization came from radio DJs and existing labor ties, not the Internet. And when social networking did come into play, such as the student walkouts in Virginia and Maryland, they were largely decentralized, with no organization pointing the way or setting up MySpace profiles to encourage the movement.

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

Different kinds of elites (and different kinds of elitism)

Ivan Boothe — Tue, 30 May 2006 19:03:24 +0000

In his NetSquared presentation with Howard Rheingold , Paul Saffo said that social movements, online and otherwise, "need elites" in order to effect change.

At first, this struck me as a popular myth — that social movements never accomplish things through activism alone — when in fact that's been pretty spectacularly disproven.

But then Paul continued, and said that what he meant was "thought leaders" like Dr. King — an instructive example, since his oratories and marches were supported by a network of churches and supporters and specific strategic planning that made his leadership possible.

Earlier, Angela Glover-Blackwell noted that traditionally, social change organizations had acted as the representatives for the vulnerable. Now, those voices are breaking through without the need for these nonprofits — a potentially threatening prospect.

That made me think about the different kinds of "elites" that social movements and social networks engender. In my mind, there are four:

Power elites are the traditional decisionmakers, who might also be termed Weberian elites because of their support by the state. They have a strong hold on direct power, though has been shown through nonviolent conflict and the "paradox of repression" (think of the dictators overthrown by popular movements) they nonetheless depend on a limited sort of consent from those over whom they rule.
Resource elites are those who have the infrastructure (or the capacity to develop it) to make things possible — be that change or stasis. Traditionally this has been people with the most money or natural resources; a relevant aspect of this today would be people (or communities) with the most access to technology.
Idea elites are the ideological leaders who emerge, either hierarchically or communally, from a given social movement. These are the people who develop policy and drive debates — but much of their power comes from the movement itself; while they can lead to a limited extent, they are always in danger of losing their power to the next big thinker.
Literacy elites are those who can "read" the situation. They might be the ones most familiar with the technology (be that movable type or Movable Type) or the ones most adept at community organizing. Today, they might be the teenager who can navigate among the SNSes (and, as Howard Rheingold pointed out, may even be unaware of their political power).

It seems important to me to keep these different types of elites in mind as we think about the intersections of technology and social change. One way of achieving change is by appealing to the state's powerholders — traditional power, that is. But throughout history, coalitions of people without this power have banded together to effect change. It may be that among the three other types of elites, a social movement can emerge that represents true democratic change.

One final thought: Daniel Ben-Horin made an off-hand comment about how many people had been trained in a kind of vanguard activism — acting in the "best interests" of people. I think focusing on these different kinds of elites allows for something closer to Paolo Freire's "cointentional education" in which everyone is a student and liberation is bound up together.

Update: Ethan Zuckerman makes a related point in his presentation when he says the new mantra for advocacy organizations should be: "Don't speak. Point."

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

Can blogging stop genocide?

Ivan Boothe — Mon, 29 May 2006 00:07:00 +0000

Posted to the NetSquared blog.

First, I want to thank NetSquared for offering me and the Genocide Intervention Network the opportunity to attend this critical event. I had written out my introduction earlier this week, but due to a browser mishap lost nearly all of it and haven't had time to re-write it until now.

GI-Net is a nonprofit based in DC that is a little more than two years old. We began as a student group at Swarthmore College with an idea: to change the way the world responds to genocide. In her groundbreaking and Pulitzer Prize–winning book, 'A Problem From Hell': America and the Age of Genocide, Samantha Power surveys the U.S. response to genocides in the twentieth century and discovers that, above all, the reason the United States so often failed to act, or to act too late or ineffectively, was simply because there was no political will. In essence, it was easier for presidents and members of Congress to do nothing while genocide was being perpetrated and apologize for it later, than risk political capital taking action.

As a result of our origins as a student group, we have a strong history in using online social networking and viral campaigns, and this continues even as we branch out into other constituencies. In our first year of existence, we raised a quarter-million dollars for peacekeepers in Darfur — the only NGO to raise money for protection rather than humanitarian aid — primarily through student networks, both actual and virtual. In my work for GI-Net, I am heavily influenced by Howard Rheingold, Christian Crumlish's The Power of Many, Marty Kearns and Network-Centric Advocacy and similar movements.

How can online activism build a movement that prevents and stops genocide? Read on...

This might get a bit long, so:

First, a little background...

I am a self-taught web developer and artist (digitally and otherwise) with a strong interest in peacebuilding, community organizing and empowerment. My major at Swarthmore was not computer-related but rather peace and conflict studies, for which I wrote a thesis on third-party nonviolent intervention organizations.

While at Swarthmore I was involved with a number of campaigns, most notably Why War?. Why War? was a prominent site for news and analysis against the war (first Afghanistan, and then Iraq). Its database from 2001–2004 is the most comprehensive accounting of articles and opinions on the war, resistance to it and the movements that arose on each side. We are most well-known, however, for a campaign that had little to do with the war.

In 2003, internal emails from the electronic voting machine manufacturer Diebold emerged that suggested the company had misled voting officials in numerous states about the security of its machines, had violated contracts with states by installing new software that had not been certified, and had knowingly implemented voting systems with severe security vulnerabilities. Investigative journalist Bev Harris and the UK Independent had documented some of the serious problems, but few had taken notice, and Harris had been repeatedly threatened by her ISP, fearful of repercussions from Diebold's lawyers.

A member of Why War? decided to post an archive of the internal files on his website. After Swarthmore threatened to shut off our Internet access in the face of baseless copyright infringement claims from Diebold, we initiated a global campaign of electronic civil disobedience, in which students at universities would post mirrors of the files on their own servers, staying ahead of each specious take-down request. Simultaneously, our friends in what would become FreeCulture.org sued Diebold through the Electronic Frontier Foundation for abusive copyright threats.

The combination of civil disobedience and civil action paid off handsomely. Within two months, Diebold backed down from their legal threats and resigned themselves to the damaging information about them now in the public domain. Suspicion of Diebold and other electronic voting machine manufacturers — and, thus, consistent investigation into their practices — remains high.

Back to genocide

So how does the Genocide Intervention Network use the Internet to effect social change? There are three primary ways.

First, we raise money online directly for peacekeepers in Darfur. This is unprecedented — never before has the average person been able to directly affect human security in the midst of a genocide. We raise money through a variety of techniques such as virtual house parties (a favorite among Facebook and MySpace users), dinners for Darfur and old-fashioned member volunteering. (A piano teacher in Utah giving two weeks' proceeds; a "battle of the bands" fundraiser in California; a bat mitzvah in New Jersey; a frat party in Massachusetts.)

Our second component is education. People can't act against genocide unless they know about it, which is why we partnered with the American Progress Action Fund in 2005 to launch the Be A Witness campaign, urging the news media to adequately cover the crisis in Darfur. Our analysis showed that in June 2005, the major networks ran 50 times as many stories about Michael Jackson and 12 times as many stories about Tom Cruise as about the genocide in Darfur. In fact, in all of 2005 CBS ran just two minutes — total — on the issue, a fact that motivated more than 30,000 viewers to take action through the viral video and website. Because of the paltry news coverage, we also issue weekly news reports from the ground in Darfur.

Finally, we give our members the tools to advocate for protection in the face of genocide. We use Democracy in Action to direct our national campaigns, and work closely with the Sudan divestment task force at the state level. In April, we brought more than 850 students to Washington, D.C. as part of the Power to Protect: D.C. to Darfur weekend. The P2P website, which uses the Drupal open-source community platform, is key to sustaining these activists through the summer, when they will act as the catalysts for local anti-genocide groups in their hometowns.

Coming up next

We are in the planning stages of a number of exciting online campaigns to further support the emerging anti-genocide movement. Our main website will be moved to Drupal to allow our members to connect with local leaders and organizations, and concretely affect the direction of the national campaigns.

A photo petition, using ForwardTrack and our Flickr account, will put a human face on the victims in Darfur. Viewers will be asked to upload images of themselves holding a sign with — not a comment or a pledge — but the name of one of the hundreds of thousands of victims in Darfur. These photos will be delivered to members of Congress to show the depth of human involvement — and human crisis — around Darfur.

More than one of our members has asked us to be their designated charity for a marathon, and so our next fundraising tool will be a website to enable them to do just that. Members will be able to distribute information about the race and GI-Net, collect pledges online, and then follow-up with donors after the race.

I would be happy to talk further with any of you about GI-Net or our ideas, but this post is already mighty long, so I'll stop here. Thanks again for allowing me to come, and I'm looking forward to seeing everyone!

Join Rootwork on Twitter, Facebook and SlideShare.

Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

EchoRadio: Have a hand in stopping genocide

Ivan Boothe — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 20:12:00 +0000

EchoRadio, with host Michael Silberman

26 April 2006

This weekend, tens of thousands of Americans will rally in front of
the U.S. Capitol — and in dozens of other cities across the country — to
send the message to Congress that it’s time for America to step up and
help end the systematic slaughter of more than 400,000 civilians in
Darfur.

Yesterday, we caught up with two dynamic leaders at the forefront of this movement — Mark Hanis and Ivan Boothe of the Genocide Intervention Network
(GI-Net). Hear how GI-Net is using technology to rapidly mobilize
hundreds of campus leaders and thousands of college and university
students across the country.

And find out why celebs like Nick Kristof, Angelina Jolie, and Oprah are all asking their their audiences to head over to GI-Net to take action.