NetSquared: Web 2.0 Collaboration in Nonprofit Technology

Love Compumentor, their people and the whole basic idea behind NetSquared (http://www.netsquared.org). Netsquared is basically a Web 2.0 nonprofit technology community process that leads up to a conference/ gala event that will happen 196 days from now.

I would like to pose a challenge: conferences and "Gala events" are to often about thinking rather than doing. I challenge the folks in this community to spend the next 196 days doing. And spend the conference and gala celebrating what has been done.

I wrote a paper a bit ago talking about Web 2.0 Collaboration for Nonprofits. The basic thesis is that Web 2.0 Collaboration is about "Moving to a culture where the first question is “how can others leverage what I’m doing” rather than “how can I protect myself from other leveraging what I am doing.”

At the Social Source Foundation, we built the CiviCRM software to provide nonprofit-specific constitutent relationship management functionality. We answered the question "how can others leverage what we're doing", by integrating it with Drupal/CivicSpace, the software that runs the NetSquared website. We also published an open API that allows people to develop new software using the core CRM functionality of CiviCRM.

We would like to spend the next 196 days working with folks to deliver some "doing." What might be good doing? We might work with volunteer match to use APIs to integrate their wonderful volunteer recruitment system with CiviCRM, allowing a nonprofit to "automagically" store CRM information about VolunteerMatch volunteers.

We're already working with LINC (Low Income Networking and Communications Project of the Welfare Law Center) to build a robust, free and open source CRM solution specifically designed for grassroots organizing groups.

We'd like to work with you on radically improving constitutent relationship mangement in the nonprofit sector. We've taken the first step by publishing our documentation, specifications, APIs and code under an open source license. Now we'd like to actively help others leverage what we're doing. Visit http://www.openngo.org/ for more information and drop me a line if you'd like to join us in celebrating Web 2.0 achievements in 196 days.