CauseWired

Via Gifthub: Jed Emerson of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation and Joshua Spitzer of the Sun Ranch Institute note that consumer-driven e-commerce innovations may offer the next advances in the sector…

My friend Deb Schultz, who is working with P&G on its social media lab, gets it right in a key post: “This stuff is so new and complex — no one knows all the answers or even exactly all the questions.”

Using the new pilot program from a company called Involver, Kiva has launched a video campaign on Facebook to draw users to their site to lend directly to these developing nations.

The biggest software provider to nonprofits acquires a struggling online competitor.

Garth Moore: Why did Microsoft launch this now? Their press release says the website provides “a convenient and easy one-stop shop for technology resources, knowledge sharing, community building and real-life examples for nonprofit organizations.”

Join NTEN and nonprofit technology community and “help us build a toolkit and instructional guides about how social media strategies and tools can enable nonprofit organizations to create, compile, and distribute their stories and change the world.” Cool.

Sean Stannard-Stockton: “Since individuals give seven time more money each year than all the foundations in the country combined, it stands to reason that foundations who share their knowledge with the public might influence … vast flows of funding.”

When I started working with JustMeans, I had heard the buzz words “CSR, social entrepreneurship, sustainability (etc etc)”. My first reaction (and arguably one of many Indians about Western concepts) was “here comes more hype from the West”.

Robert Tolmach talks to NetSquared about how Changing the Present hopes to give non-profits a chunk of the $250 billion US gift market, and why giving charitable gifts on Facebook is much more rewarding than throwing sheep.

“Facebook may be free, but it has not been designed to suit your needs as an activist organizer. This means you will find that the site’s functionality does not always match what you need. You will have to stretch what’s there in order to be effective.”

For nearly all organizations, the Internet accounts for less than 5 percent of all gift dollars received and about one-eighth (12.6 percent) of gift dollars received from individuals.

Fascinating account of online organizing in New Orleans, well after the national media spotlight left Nola’s neighborhoods.

I’m not a big text-to-give fan - it’s all about who owns the donor record - but perhaps Beth Kanter and little pro baseball can change my mind.

Did you know you can “learn more about someone’s Agreeableness from their online profile than from a first date?” Me either.

The prolific Peter Deitz profiles OneAim, a “global participation feed” of civil society actionable opportunities.

Great run-down on the recent evolution of “the cause” from Max Gladwell, including a couple of startups I’ll have to add to my list…

Summer reading list from the always readable Britt Bravo.

A great blog by Karen Gadbois on organizing for real, on-the-ground change in a post-Katrina New Orleans. I’ll be moderating a panel on New Orleans that includes Karen at Netroots Nation, so I was checking out her excellent blog. You should too.

Patrick Ruffini’s terrific synthesis about online organizing and content creation in small orgazations on the left - from his own Republican viewpoint.

Derwin Dubose: “…conventional wisdom often leads organizations to completely ignore young donors, but they are making big mistakes if they don’t build donor relationships with millennials.” Word.

Hmmm. The fish looks good. But is it really “good” fish? Let me whip out my phone and text the people who know at Blue Ocean. Via Dana Variano.

On so many karma-tracking social action platforms, environmental messages often reign supreme. But how much is too much, and why are we often confused? Susan Herr calls it “green noise.”

Why do people invest their time on online social activism? Marnie Webb: “I think mainly people engage in a behavior because it has a value for them. Because they think they are “buying” something with their time, attention, actions and dollars”

I completely agree with Lucy Bernholz re: online social platforms: “I continue to think that these sites - and the industry as a whole - need to be RSS feeding, mashingup, or otherwise aggregating and compiling their data in a (somewhat) real-time way…”

Get thee to the Generation Y Give blog, where millennials are the big-time donors of tomorrow (and where orange is the new black). Insights from Miriam Kagan.

I was asked recently, “what should a board of directors do to really understand social media and the current trends?” Allison Fine has the answer.

Some insight into Brita’s “Filter for Good” campaign on Facebook - seems to me that consumer companies have been slow to embrace the CauseWired movement…

Interesting Peter Deitz post on the feel-good aspects of Kiva vs. the pure investment quotient of eBay’s nascent MicroPlace service. I prefer Kiva, myself - investing small dollars in microfinance “feels” more like shared philanthropy to me.

Insightful post by Republican Patrick Ruffini on what works and what doesn’t about the much-hyped My.Barack.Obama.com - it’s small groups more than pumped up social networking features.

The Globe’s regional website introduces social giving and volunteering powered by good2gether.

Great post by Lucy Bernholz on what is a clear need for what I like to call the CauseWired sector - “I think we’ve reached the point where we need a one-stop directory of these sites.”

According to a Rapleaf study, while both sexes still use social networking sites in huge numbers, women are the ones holding down the fort.

Terrific green-oriented adivce on social media -”…tools to change the world and make it a better place.”

Paul Light has some advice for graduation speakers making calls to public service for young people of the Facebook generation.

Is FriendFeed worth the fuss that digerati is making over its all-in-one aggregation of friends and contacts? Beth Kanter weighs in from the nonprofit perspective.