Andrew Sears Executive Director Social Networking and Web 2.0: Open Source National Service

The Opportunity: Open Source National Service Web 2.0 – Social Networking & User Contributed Content – Wikis, Blogs, Photo Sharing, Video Sharing, etc. Mass Collaboration Open Source/Creative Commons

Imagine a world where… …there are hundreds of millions of training articles, videos, podcast and resources freely available on every nonprofit and social change topic …90% of media is user created and directly reflects the diversity of the world …there are thousands of free college courses available online on every topic of nonprofit management …every person is able to find the area of greatest need in the world where they can serve that matches their skills and interests

The Current World 5 companies control 80% of television People of color make up 34% of the US population, but own 3.15% of television and 7.7% of radio Women make up 51% of the population, but own 5.9% of television Source:

What Nonprofits are Doing Today: Online Volunteer Recruitment Posting Volunteer Opportunities Online – (~60%) – (~10%) – (~20%) – (~10%) – (~5%) Background Checks on Volunteers – and many others

What Nonprofits are Doing Today: Social Networking LinkedIn.com (the office) – Can be used for Member recruitment and to get introductions to foundations and funders Facebook.com (the suburbs) – Can be used to keep in touch with teens and former clients and staff and for online fundraising MySpace.com (the hood) – A more high risk environment, but can be used to keep in touch with teens

How Do We Realize the Vision?

What We Need to Do: Creative Commons Provides copyright license to share content as open source – Common Sharing Agreements – Must Attribute, Can Share and Re-edit – Noncommercial, Must Attribute, Can Share Recommendation: All CNCS organizations should creative-commons-license content

Broadcast Era Communication Organization Member One to Many Communication We Train You

Telephone Era Communication Organization Member Two Way, One-to-One Communication We Train You and You Give Us Feedback

Internet Era Communication Member AmeriCorps Organization 1 Million+ Other Nonprofits 64 Million+ Volunteers Many to Many Communication Everyone Trains Everyone 1 Billion Internet Users

Best Practices Example: TechMission Online Collection of websites to complement our TechMission Corps program – UrbanResource.net – iVolunteering.org Also use separate faith-based brands funded by private donations – ChristianVolunteering.org – UrbanMinistry.org

Strengths of TechMission Innovation – Founder previously co-founded MITs Internet and Telecoms Research Consortium Close to community: – Grew out of Black church movement with high percentage of Black/Latino led organizations that we support – 65% of our Members have been people of color (45% Black, 13% Latino, 7% Asian) & over half come from low-income backgrounds – Two thirds of Black and Latino nonprofit leaders in the USA are in faith-based organizations and 46.5% of Black volunteers are religious volunteers – Strong ties with FBOs: religious volunteers are the largest pool of volunteers (35.1%)

Diversity Profile at TechMission

TechMission Online Websites Counterpart to Idealist.org & VolunteerMatch with brands that focus on: – Black and Latino Communities – Faith-based communities Most visited web portal in the faith-based social services sector Most visited web portal among Black and Latino nonprofit leaders and community organizers

Exponential Growth Unique Web Visitors (500% growth) – 2007: 260,740 – 2008: 1.3 million – 2009: 2-3 million Volunteers Matched (330% growth) – 2007: 1,295 – 2008: 5,981 – 2009: 7,500+ Volunteers Matched per Volunteer Coordinator – 2004: 100 – 2008: 929 – 2009: 1,250

Site Content Site Stats – Registered Users: 29,056 – Total Pages in English: 62,723 – Languages Supported: 42 (computer translated) – Pages in Other Languages: 320,000+ Nonprofit Training Resources & Multimedia – Videos: 605 – Audio Workshops: 1,148 – Documents/Wiki Articles: 2,749 – Photos: 2,007 – Blog Articles: 639 – Book Summaries: 2,856

Site Content Nonprofit Resources – Volunteer Opportunities: 5,007 – Volunteer Resumes: 16,733 – Organizations: 4,785 – Grants: 604 – Nonprofit Jobs: 57 – Nonprofit Consultants: 58 – Nonprofit Events: 106

Future Direction Facebook Connect & Facebook Application Large directory of volunteers – Nonprofits search volunteer resumes/skills – Reverse of current volunteer matching sites Promote open standards

How to Get Started Invest in content management system – Drupal, Joomla, or WordPress (blogs) – Research others at: – Alternative for small organizations is a hosted solution like ning.com using your own brand Hire Many More Tech Staff – Have Members with a specialized focus on online volunteer recruitment

Sample Organizational Performance Measures Generate 10,000 pages of new content each year – Have 50% of members blogging Serve 2 million unique users with 10,000 new registered users Match 5,000 volunteers through online sources Track using analytics software – Google Analytics is free

Business Model Give 90% of content away without registration – Each page of content you create generates on average 4 clicks per month – Online recruitment ads cost about $.50/click, so each page of content worth $2.00 per month Require free registration for 10% of content – Build list for recruiting members – 3% of users register (value = $5 per contact) 10,000 items of content per year generates an additional $240,000 of free web traffic and list worth $72,000 for recruitment

Need for Open Standards CNCS and Serve.gov should promote the development of open standards for – Volunteer Opportunity Feeds – Organizational Listing Feeds Refine existing standard by NetworkforGood – Create working group that Includes VolunteerMatch, Idealist, TechMission, HandsOnNetwork, UnitedWay, etc. – Provide standard to enable these groups to share listings with each other

Summary of Best Practices Use Open Source Content Management System Have all staff and Members using FaceBook and LinkedIn for your organizational mission Creative Commons License at least 90% of content Put almost all training materials online Post thousands of volunteer opportunities online Promote blogging for all members Collect contacts for lists Use analytics for tracking (Google or other)

Recommended Reading Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything – By Don Tapscott & Anthony Williams – Written for non-techies

For More Information This Presentation – Visit: – – Contact – Andrew Sears, x101 or

Appendix

Why Target Christian Volunteers & Social Service Organizations Religious volunteers are the largest pool of volunteers (35.1%) – 46.5% of Black volunteers are religious volunteers – Existing sites like VolunteerMatch are not reaching this sector: only 1.8% of listings are faith-based Unique Characteristics of Christian Social Services – Common values create increased trust and efficiency – If you gain trust, you can mobilize the social capital of resourced Christians to serve low-income communities – High volunteer rate of Christians makes volunteering a major asset – 80-90% of Christian organizations will focus on national partnerships with Christian organizations Conclusion: Either have targeted marketing or lose most of this sector (1)Who Really Cares, Arthur C. Brooks (2)Volunteering in America, 2008, DoL

TechMission, Faith and Non-Discrimination Our focus is on social services, and we do not discriminate in who we serve – Anyone can post on our site – We are one of the best channels for secular organization to recruit volunteers from churches Maintain separate brands to target different groups to ensure non-discrimination – ChristianVolunteering.org, UrbanMinistry.org (Christian volunteers and orgs) – iVolunteering.org, UrbanResource.net (others) By targeting faith-based groups we are able to show higher support of Black and Latino communities in the USA than our secular counterparts

TechMission Partners

TechMission Outcomes: Connecting People to the Poor $7.3 Million to Organizations TechMission Online: 1.3 Million Unique Web Visitors iVolunteering.org: 5,981Volunteers TechMission Corps: 40 FTE Interns City Vision College: 137 Student Enrollments

Segregation in People Resources Source: Corporation for National and Community Service & Department of Labor Value of Faith-Based Volunteers In USA = $51.8 billion

Funding Bias: Non-Whites Make up 52.4% of Poverty but Non-White Led Nonprofits only Receive 3% of Funding and