How to start a nonprofit…

In these economic times (imagine the ponderous voice intoning), people often dream about starting something new. A nonprofit seems like a good choice because you can also do some good in the world and it seems like you may not need a lot of money to get going. This got me thinking about what it would take to get a nonprofit off the ground and whether it would be worth it. Here are some of the resources I found to answer those questions.

First, it is useful to know what a nonprofit is exactly and how they work.

The next question is whether to start a nonprofit at all. Is there something more productive you could be doing instead?

If you decide to go ahead, here are some steps to get started. Here are some instructions for getting on the web at very little cost. And the most important thing, what you need to know about raising money.

The Resources:
About.Com: Nonprofit Charitable Organizations
Don Griesmann’s Nonprofit Blog

Foundation Center
Free Management Library

Non-profit Tech Blog

How can we bring a Web 2.0 sensibility to international development work?

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the Global Health Council 2009 Conference, where the theme was global health and technology. While I heard many things that excited me (you can read my thoughts here and here), I couldn’t help but notice that the traditional approach to international development still prevailed. As someone who has become immersed in social networking and the tools of Web 2.0, I had to wonder how we could bring that kind of sensibility to our development work.

As I see it, this would mean:

  • Build from the ground up rather than the top down.
  • Start by sharing and making connections.
  • Then let a community emerge that can collaborate to solve the problems they identify as important.
  • Large institutions (donors, big NGOs, government) need to facilitate this process or get out of the way.
  • Above all, we have to let go of our need to control.

Working this way would certainly require a fundamental shift in mindset. No longer could we design every step of a project in our comfy offices, take them to the field and work the plan, measure and report our results, then leave when the funding cycle is over. But there are already successful models for working in a different way — Kiva and OpenMRS come to mind.

Web 2.0 has exploded because it fills a human need and fits in with natural human behaviors. That makes it less like work and more like fun, and people who are having fun can accomplish a lot. I think we could too, if we don’t let fear of change or of trying something new stand in our way.

How to use tagging to make connections in the nonprofit web

A tag cloud with terms related to Web 2.

Image via Wikipedia

Probably one of the best innovations of the whole Web 2.0 phenomenon is tagging. A tag is “a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information” (source). Tags can be used to identify blog posts, bookmarks, photos, videos, presentations, events, etc., and are supported by pretty much every Web 2.0 tool. Tags are generally assigned informally and without regard to a structure of categories; they are more like annotations and are often assigned in addition to categories, such as on blog posts.

The genius of tagging is that it organically builds connections over time between seemingly unconnected content. If my blog post and your video and his bookmark and her photograph all have the same tag, then we can start to see how they are related in some way. This leads to a bottoms-up classification system for web content that is often called a folksonomy.

The problem is that tags are arbitrarily decided on by the content creator, and with language being what it is, one tag can mean many different things to many different people. Take the word development, for instance. In my own little industry, it can refer to the process of creating software or giving aid to low-resource countries. In other contexts, it might refer to child development or personal development or a large and ugly subdivision.

The nonprofit field has bypassed this limitation by coming up with some unique tags to identify our content. If we use these tags consistently, we can easily locate a wealth of content in our particular niches. Here are some of the most useful tags I’ve come across:

nptech: Short for “nonprofit technology,” this tag refers to nonprofits’ use of technology, mostly internally rather than as part of the program offerings.

Examples:

ict4d: Stands for “Information and Communication Technologies for Development.” Refers to groups that are using technology in their development programs, usually international development.

Examples:

web4dev: Using Web technologies, mostly Web 2.0, for supporting international aid and development.

Examples:

km4dev: Stands for “Knowledge Management for Development.” Using knowledge management tools and techniques to support international development.

Examples:

m4dev or m4d: Using mobile technology to support internatonal development.

Examples:

I’m sure I haven’t discovered all of the tags being used by nonprofits using technology, especially in international development. If you know of any other good ones, please leave a comment.

The social media bandwagon…

With blogs and online communities sweeping the web, every organization wants to jump on the social media bandwagon. While I think social media tools can provide easy ways for organizations to get their message out and connect with people, they shouldn’t be too quick to dive in–not before they know what they’re getting into.

Here is a brief definition of social media from Wikipedia (a social media tool):

Social media use the “wisdom of crowds” to connect information in a collaborative manner. Social media can take many different forms, including Internet forums, message boards, weblogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures and video.

The popularity of “Web 2.0″ destinations like Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter, plus the explosion of blogs, has taken off for a few simple reasons:

  • People find them fun and are willing to spend a lot of free time on these sites.
  • People are using them to connect with others like them, fulfilling a basic human need (and putting the “social” into social media).
  • These tools are relatively easy to start using, with very little help and training, even for non-techies.

Once organizations–whether companies, nonprofits or other self promoters–start getting into the act, it’s too easy for the fun and social parts to be taken out of the equation. Organizations like to control their message and their content, whereas social media tools thrive on openness. And organizations have a vested interest in promoting themselves rather than having fun with the tools. Once commercialization or PR efforts are suspected, it’s probably a big turnoff for many participants.

I would advise any organization wanting to take advantage of the popularity, ease of use and low cost of social media tools to tread carefully. It’s important that the employees assigned to this are already using these tools personally and are very familiar with the communities and their (often) unwritten rules of interaction. The organization needs to provide something of value to the community, something that the intended audience will naturally respond to and want to participate in; blatant commercialism or self promotion must be avoided. Finally, these efforts take time. It’s best to lurk, listen and learn before diving in.

Here are some good resources for organizations that are looking to capitalize on the social media phenomenon:

Nonprofits using Twitter?

NetSquared posted this intriguing question: How can nonprofits use Twitter? Since I’ve been getting into Twitter lately, I’ve been thinking about its work-related applications. Unfortunately, Twitter already has a bad reputation as a time-waster overcome by noise about what people had for breakfast and similar daily minutiae. I’ve already found it to be a good place to get news and links of interest to me, though, just by following people who are luminaries in the nptech and social media worlds. And I think it has a lot of potential for geographically dispersed teams to report on their work without the annoyances of IM interruptions. I want more ideas on this, so I’m going to be looking for NetSquared’s follow-up to their question.

Here is a nice list from the blog The Big PictureHow Associations Can Use Twitter. There are a lot of practical ideas in this list.

How can nonprofits effectively use social networks?

I was asked to put together a list of resources about nonprofits using social networks like Facebook and MySpace, because some forward-thinking folks here are thinking of tapping into these resources. It seemed like a valuable list, one worth sharing, so here it is.

General Resources for Nonprofits Using Web 2.0

Resources for Nonprofits Using Facebook/MySpace

Examples of Nonprofit MySpace Sites

Essential Blogs to Read

The conversation on this subject is hot and heavy, and more are joining in everyday. It’s a good idea to keep up on what others are thinking and doing, and to join in the conversation. I’ve found the following blogs to be great resources for that.

Open Source information for nonprofits

I work at a nonprofit that develops Open Source software. We do this to provide low-cost human resource information systems to Ministries of Health in low-resource countries that they can then take ownership of and customize for their own needs. All the costs are for infrastructure, training and maintenance — none for software. In the world of human resource information systems, that’s a big savings.

But our nonprofit, I have to confess, doesn’t always use Open Source software internally. This is has been a subject of much debate. There are cultural issues — how do you take away Microsoft Office from employees who have been using it productively for most of their careers and ask them to learn something new? There are also support, administration and compatibility issues. We take the same attitude internally that we do when we begin a software implementation project in one of our client countries — we choose what is most appropriate for the context in which we are working, even if that means choosing proprietary software in some cases.

I confess, though, that I wish that we adopted more Open Source programs internally. We do use them where it makes sense, such as for web servers and applications (blogs, CMS, online databases) where there are lots of choices and support is well-established. And I am proud to say that we are using our own Open Source HRIS internally, with plenty of customizations, of course.

I’ve dug up a few links that can help a nonprofit move to Open Source, if it so inclined:

  • Choosing and Using Free and Open Source Software is a primer for nonprofits from the Nonprofit Open Source Initiative. The updated version was just released in October. It includes case studies, a suggested evaluation process, tips for finding support and some software toolkits.
  • NGO in a Box is a collection of Open Source tools, already culled and evaluated, that a nonprofit can begin using right away. It includes everything you need to set up a small or medium-sized office, plus tools for publishing, producing multimedia and using mobile phones for advocacy. If you use this resource, a lot of the hard work has been done for you.
  • Open Source Software for Public Health – If your nonprofit operates in the public health arena, this wiki is a great resource to identify tools and resources specific to public health work.

Open Source software makes sense for nonprofits. It’s low cost, getting involved connects you to communities of volunteer support and development, and using it promotes values of openness, collaboration and giving back.

From the NTEN Conference: We need Portal 2.0

It’s the first full day of the NTEN Conference, and so far my favorite part has actually been the keynote, which was given by David Weinberger. His talk gave me some new ways of thinking about and communicating why “Web 2.0″ is so powerful and different. In the olden days (ha!), we had to organize information in one way because a piece of information was represented by a physical item, such as a book on a shelf or a card in a card catalog. Because the item could only be in one place, we had to develop taxonomies such as the Dewey Decimal System for figuring out where to put that item.

But electronic information on the web is no longer limited by physical constraints. Information can be organized in countless ways. Of course, we all already know this. We tag our bookmarks, our blog posts, all our web stuff in ways that make sense to each of us individually for our current context. We don’t worry about fitting everything into one standard way of organizing all content anybody anywhere might produce. For instance, on this blog, I tag my posts so that when I come back later to compile all my thoughts and ideas on a particular topic that’s interesting me or related to a work project, I can find them quickly. The tag may have absolutely no meaning to you, but that doesn’t matter, because if you want to reference a post again later, you can bookmark it with your own tags.

This is what is wrong with the whole idea of portals in general and SharePoint in particular, and this is what has frustrated me about SharePoint ever since we deployed it. (To be fair, it has frustrated me about previous versions of our intranet, as well.) Unlike how the web is evolving, SharePoint is really not intended for all of the users to generate and organize the content. SharePoint still assumes there are editors or middlemen setting up taxonomies and posting things in the appropriate place.

The problem is that I don’t think about our Portal organization in the same way that any of my co-workers do. While I might look for a piece of information under the name of the country where that work was done, someone else would look under the name of the project, or the subject area, or the donor, or the name of the author, or any number of other criteria. Sure, we can set up cross-referenced listings to one item on SharePoint, but that quickly becomes difficult to maintain and there is still a limit to how many ways we can cross-reference something. Someone is always going to be dissatisfied and complain that they can’t find what they need on the Portal.

We need to look to Web 2.0 models for building better portals/intranets, and I’m not just talking about throwing in support for blogs or wikis. I’m talking about turning over the power of generating content and organizing that content to the people who are actually using that content everyday. The old way of having one or a few people deciding how everything should be organized just doesn’t work, especially when so much information is being produced and updated. Owners of the information can no longer own the organization of the information if it is really going to be useful. (Are you listening, Microsoft?)

We also need to give up control of the display of the information. Everyone should be able to open the Portal home page and see only what is most important and relevant to them. Maybe that’s news headlines or items that they’ve tagged for home page display or lists of all their tags or all of these things.

You can somewhat engineer all of this in SharePoint, I know, using My Site, and custom columns and views on libraries, and opening up editing permissions to everyone. The problem is that it’s not easy. It’s not one-click simplicity, like saving a bookmark on del.icio.us is. It’s tough for people to learn, and they make mistakes and get frustrated. The user controls are hidden from them. I don’t really blame them for not wanting to fully use the technology or for sticking to familiar ways of organizing things, such as with folders.

Weinberger’s address was about the power of the new web, which enables us to take back control of our world from broadcast media, restore its complexities and externalize meaning. Instead of being passive consumers, we are now active participants shaping the web into what we want it to be, and look at how knowledge sharing is exploding. If we want the same thing to happen inside our organizations, we have to give our people the right tools, make those tools easy for them to use and then get out of their way. But as long as we’re imposing a one-size-fits-all organizational scheme on them and giving them tools that make it very difficult to manipulate that information, they’ll continue to keep all their knowledge in their heads and on their desktops.

There are parts of SharePoint I really love, and I am sure 2007 will improve on them even more, such as (when used) the document collaboration tools. But if I had to do it all over again — even just a year later — I would probably fight for going a different way. The problem is that we are all beholden to Microsoft and their products, so we’re stuck with whatever Microsoft imposes on us, and Microsoft does not have the tendency to make things simple or easy. If I ever get out of the corporate environment, I am definitely banning Microsoft from my life.

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