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

[dan mcquillan]

there's some nice examples in the article.

but ime most ngos find that the p2p potentials opened up by social
media are too much of a challenge.

that's why we started social innovation camp, which has peer-to-peer
at the heart of its process (and a slogan of 'organising the moment of
self-organisation').

we're doing our first international camp next week (Social Innovation
Camp Central & Eastern Europe: http://sicamp-cee.net/).

i've just blogged about why i think that's significant; the themes may
be of interest to some on this list:
"The Berlin Wall between civil society and social change "
http://www.internetartizans.co.uk/Berlin_Wall

cheers
dan

2009/9/12 Paul D. Fernhout <pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com>:
> 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/
>
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-- 
[dr. dan  mcquillan | www.internetartizans.co.uk |
http://twitter.com/danmcquillan ]