To promote a new gorilla habitat, the London Zoo came up with a virtual gorilla. You download it to your desktop, then make sure all its needs are taken care of: food, water, etc. In time, the baby gorilla will grow into a mighty silverback. (I’m waiting for a virtual Jane Goodall to [...]
Are you a hacker who’s socially minded? A few weeks ago we wrote about how Estonian hackers were assisting Georgia with online defenses against ‘cyber attacks’ by the Russians.
The latest twist is that Wired (who cracked this story in the first place) has put a link to an open-source defense project on their blog ‘Danger [...]
A remote funding developer. They work from home, they take up less support costs and they don’t involve supervisory time – what’s not to love? I worked as a remote funding researcher recently, and while I’m not willing to flat out say it doesn’t work (comments welcome from people doing just fine at this job) [...]
Here’s an recent example of the “long tail” effect working for a non-profit.
Backstage Technologies is a small, “secretly Canadian” software company. They specialize in developing applications for Facebook – specifically, they’ve invented a way to simulate playing “scratch and win” lottery tickets. Careful, I said “simulate” – there isn’t actually money changing hands, you can’t [...]
I will give you some actual nuts and bolts, but let me first say this: all good online fundraisers have two basic directions they work in – in and out. ‘In’ is a webpage, where people visit you. ‘Out’ is as in reaching out, through emails, smsing, MySpace, Twitter, Facebook etc etc etc. [...]
When violence exploded in Georgia this week, the Estonians helped out the Georgians in an unusual way – by keeping the Georgian news website ‘Civil.ge‘ up and running despite attempts from the Russians to hack it. Wired broke this weird story of the Estonians and Google getting political – you can read it here.
What [...]
Why should you read “Here Comes Everybody”, the latest book by Clay Shirky? It’s not about non-profits. It’s not about fundraising or marketing. It is probably the best explanation of why the internet is changing how everybody connects – and is essential reading for anyone interested in social change in the internet [...]
If you’re on Facebook, look up my friend Kristin Roe. Last Saturday she swam across the Northumberland Strait – twice – as part of a group effort to raise money for two foundations working in Africa. Her fundraising goal is $100,000 and she’ll make it too – she’s got nearly 400 friends, and she’s only [...]
What do you get when you squeeze hackers and social activists into a small space for a weekend, add competition and a large helping of idealism? The Social Innovation Camp!The SIC is based on a style of gathering popular among hackers, coders and other geek-culture types: it’s related to Foo Camps and BarCamps, annual [...]
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