[p2p-research] How charities harness social media for a social impact | csmonitor.com

[Paul D. Fernhout]

This week's CSMonitor had a set of articles on social entrepreneurs and 
social media like the one I previously linked to. Here is another:

"How charities harness social media for a social impact: Networkers shift 
from sharing info to linking up to effect change."
http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/09/08/how-charities-harness-social-media-for-a-social-impact/
"""
... Harrison’s nonprofit is one of many using social media in surprising new 
ways. As the Internet comes of age, social media has changed the way 
nonprofits do business. They’ve advanced beyond getting the word out on 
Facebook and raising money with Twitter to find a unique overlap between the 
mission of nonprofits and the methods of new media.
   “People talk about Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 – older and newer. The key 
difference is that Web 1.0 was automating transactions. You buy a book 
online, or you send an e-mail. Web 2.0 explicitly creates new ways to 
collaborate and participate,” says Sean Stannard-Stockton, a social-media 
blogger and founder of Tactical Philanthropy Advisers. “In nonprofits in 
particular, collaboration and participation is the mission of the 
organization…. Web 2.0 tools are custom-made for social change, as opposed 
to just being a new way to do old stuff.”
   Across a spectrum of issues, nonprofits have taken to those tools. 
Kiva.org, a microlending organization that matches up lenders and recipients 
through the Web, sends fellows to villages around the world to blog about 
loan recipients and about poverty-related issues. The ENOUGH project, an 
antigenocide organization, started its own YouTube online video channel for 
users to post videos about the links between ubiquitous electronic devices 
and mineral-fueled conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The 
Extraordinaires, a new-media nonprofit, uses mobile-phone applications to 
create microvolunteering opportunities in the United States.
   Even retrofitting new-media tools to old-media practices bears fruit for 
some groups. The Echoing Green Foundation, which gives seed money to 
entrepreneurs that tackle social, environmental, or economic problems, 
turned its press release about its newest crop of fellows into a video this 
year.
   “We really wanted to make the fellows and their words come alive, and the 
best way to do that is to hear them and see them,” says Lara Galinsky, 
senior vice president of Echoing Green.
   It also found a way around a major mainstream-media stumbling block: A 
press release, Galinsky concedes, “isn’t an evergreen story for the media.” 
A video, on the other hand, has staying power for other audiences. The video 
announcement was passed along through Twitter several hundred times.
   That breakdown is one strength of the tandem revolutions in social media 
and social change.
   “There was once a clear information arbiter, [and] nonprofits broadcast 
their message to a whole bunch of people and hoped it got to enough that 
they could do what they needed, whether that was raising money or getting 
volunteers,” says Nathaniel Whittemore, founder of the Center for Global 
Engagement at Northwestern University. “What you have now is a much more 
symmetrical relationship in which people who are recipients of the message 
can also become part of the conversation.”
   But the best blend of Web 2.0 and social activism may come from 
innovators who set out to exploit the collaborative potential of media 
tools. ...
"""

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/