Today Lauren Cochrane has a great post with ideas for lists that organizations could create with Twitter’s new List function. Lists just rolled out to all of Twitter today! You can read more about Lists on the Twitter Blog here.

Lauren outlines 7 Lists that organizations may find useful, including:

• Your organization’s chapters and campaigns.
• Related international organizations and campaigns.
• Organizations that are somewhat related to your organisation.
• Celebrities, politicians and others with a high profile.
• Media.
• Volunteers.
• Retweeters and people who have contacted you.

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Grassroots media, as in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections, are once again coming to the fore in the health care reform debate. You may have seen the Heather Graham video produced with the financial backing of MoveOn.org supporters.

Now comes the Health Reform Video Challenge being organized by my.barackobama. As the site says, watch the top videos made by supporters like you, rate your favorites, and help choose the winning ad that will air on national television. (For your vote to count, you need to rate all 20 videos.)

My favorite video by far is the 30-second spot embedded above — I literally laughed out loud.

Voting ends Tuesday, Nov. 3, with the winner announced Nov. 9 — so hurry up and vote!

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Giving international bloggers a global voice from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

International bloggers network offers alternative perspectives on events around the world

Since 2005, the international bloggers network Global Voices has been one of the shining success stories in citizen media: a community of more than 200 bloggers around the world who offer perspectives frequently not heard in the traditional media.

Founded by former CNN Beijing and Tokyo Bureau Chief Rebecca MacKinnon and technologist and Africa expert Ethan Zuckerman while they were both fellows at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University (both are friends), the nonprofit organization with no physical offices offers reports and translations from blogs and citizen media everywhere.

I caught up with Rebecca several months ago to get an overview of the organization’s efforts. Global Voices’ importance and reach have grown even more pronounced during 2009 with the street demonstrations in Iran. Regular followers of Global Voices have been able to get a first-hand glimpse of events in all corners of the globe, from Africa and Southeast Asia to Oceana and South America. See their Special Coverage section and Top 10 video posts of 2009.

Rebecca, who also teaches journalism at the University of Hong Kong, describes Global Voices as a site where the editors curate the best of what bloggers are saying outside the Western blogosphere. “Where are the most interesting Middle Eastern and African bloggers and what are they talking about? What are Chinese bloggers saying?” The site’s bottom-line goal is to curate the most interesting conversations that will give you a different perspective on what’s happening around the world.

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Amy Sample Ward on nonprofit technology from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Just before we launched Socialbrite.org, I met Amy Sample Ward in person for the first time. Amy’s a whirlwind of energy and passion about all things np tech (nonprofit technology), and I was so impressed that I immediately asked her to join the Socialbrite team.

But not before I got her to sit still for a few minutes to talk about nonprofit tech, Net Tuesdays — Amy is the global community builder for NetSquared — and being a catalyst for social change.

NP tech is social change work, whether you’re a nonprofit or an individual who wants to change her community or you’re a corporation that’s working on social benefit through a corporate social responsibility campaign, she says.

More than 36 cities around the world now hold monthly events as part of Net Tuesday, the offline component of NetSquared, and if you’re within driving distance, you should stop by and meet other change agents in your community. (Sarah Kennon does an outstanding job of organizing the Net Tuesdays in San Francisco.)

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Dia de Los Muertos dancers, photo by Kwan Booth

Today, after months of planning and programming, a new community news site went live: Oakland Local. And while there are now thousands of hyperlocal, city- or region-focused citizen media sites around the world, Oakland Local is one of the few that offers a blend of nonprofit underpinnings with a staff of independent, professionally trained journalists.

My friend Susan Mernit — we’re two of the founders of the Public Media Collaborative — is the founder of the community news and information hub, which she describes as “a site for Oakland focusing on social justice issues, including climate change, air quality, food access, arts as activism, and identity, race and ethnicity.”

Susan adds: “Oakland Local is launching in partnership with 35 local nonprofit, neighborhood and community organizations. We combine postings of their news and information with blogging and with reported stories from a top quality news team (Susan Mernit, Amy Gahran, Kamika Dunlap, Kwan Booth, Ryan Van Lenning and others). We are media partners and collaborators with Spot.us, Newsdesk.org, The Center for Investigative Reporting, New America Media, Endless Canvas, Youth Rising, Youth Radio and Youth Outlook. Our site offers forums, a directory of 320 local nonprofits and a blog directory of 180 active local bloggers.”

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At BlogWorld Expo, tools and strategies for nonprofits

The first Causes/Activism track at the just-ended Blogworld Expo in Las Vegas drew some 1,500 participants — a promising showing by the nonprofit community. I moderated the Tools for Nonprofit Organizations panel, with panelists Judy Chang of Paypal, Justin Perkins of Care2, David Levy of SocialVibe, James Sutandyo of Causecast and consultant Scott Henderson.

Here’s my Flickr photo set of BlogWorld Expo, about 60 photos in all. I also put together this Delicious tag — delicious.com/bwe09 — to aggregate many of the the services, tools and platforms that nonprofits and social change organizations can use to raise funds to advance their missions online.

About 100 people, chiefly from nonprofits small and large, attended our panel and you can follow what they tweeted about the session at #tools4npo

The panelists collectively came up with these recommendations:

8 tips for raising funds online

1. Make it a specific project, not for the overarching nonprofit or a general fund

2. Tell a compelling story with a strong human-interest angle

3. Create a feedback loop from the recipients to the donors to form an emotional bond

4. Have a hard stop — set a date to donate by

5. Pool your efforts by collaborating with reputable like-minded partners (including trading space in partners’ email newsletters)

6. Don’t pussyfoot around — have a clear and specific “ask” or call to action

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As I announced recently, Advocacy Online and Fairsay have jointly produced a benchmark report to examine key e-campaigning performance measures. The benchmark data is derived from the activity of over 2 million supporters from 50 campaigning organizations in the UK, Canada, and several other countries. In addition to the benchmark data, the project also includes an e-campaigning survey that has been carried by Jess Day, an independent e-campaigning consultant. (I also referenced the report in my latest presentation slides about social media use by individuals in nonprofit organizations.)

The report, titled “2009 eCampaigning Review Insights & Benchmarks,” was released this past week at an event in London (and via webcast). I want to share some of the highlights from the launch presentations of Duane Raymond and Jess Day, but if you want to skip ahead to the download, you can scroll to the bottom.

Report highlights

65% of actions reviewed in the report asked people to add their own message (whether this was a petition, or post, etc.). This is great because letting your supporters personalize or otherwise get more involved in your actions will only help build a commitment to the outcome of your campaign or action as well as encourage your supporters to ask their friends or colleagues to participate as well.

Only 43% of actions linked to background information. People may worry that if someone clicks on an action button, say, on your home page, and then you provide them links to more information about the topic of the action, that they will click away and never actually complete the action. Nope. People may want more background information but that’s because they are interested! Most all of the actions reviewed in the report that even those that did link to background information, those pages didn’t link back to the action. That’s why people aren’t completing the action. Remember to link to actions from everywhere on your site that is related to the action!

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“Together we are … LOUDER!” It’s true! And that’s the leading tag for a new campaigning platform called  Louder. 

The platform just hit open beta, so create an account and start playing. You can create your own campaigns with unique URLs, add all kinds of media, and then start campaigning for change!

Here are some initial impressions.

What’s Louder?

LOUDER will be the new online home for campaigners. The free and accessible site draws together a range of social media tools for people who want to change the world.

Through Louder you will be able to create a microsite for your campaign with the most used ‘change-tools’ the web has to offer. You will be able to connect to and manage profiles on other social media sites helping you coordinate supporter action.

To help make your campaign louder you will be able to connect up with other campaigns and those running them. Providing a much needed online space for campaigners, from international NGOs to grass roots activists, to link up collaborate and share experiences.

Why I like Louder

I’ve been playing around with the new platform a bit and am quite excited about it.  I think it has a lot of potential to join with campaigning tools like Fairsay’s tool for Plone and collaborative tools like Zanby.

I like that Louder …

1. lets you create and distribute content all over the web
2. brings in content you create elsewhere
3. lets you work on a campaign without everything being “live”
4. uses a straightforward process to set up modules and then drag/drop to design your page
5. is being developed by folks IN the nonprofit and campaigning for change sector, so they “get it” already

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Twitter just announced its first corporate social responsibility effort on its blog.

See the video above — featuring Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, Room to Read founder John Wood and Crushpad founder Michael Brill — to get the lowdown on how this campaign will help 50,000 kids abroad learn to read.

From Twitter’s announcement:

We’re just getting started as a company, but we believe thinking long term about making a positive impact will allow us to grow in the right direction to make a difference as both a technology and a business.

For Twitter to be at its peak in utility, people who would have never had access to the world’s information need to be able to not only receive it but engage with it, too. Room to Read, a San Francisco based non-profit, will help us make that happen by bringing libraries and literacy to the world’s poorest regions.

Together we’ll be making some awesome wine over the course of a year to benefit @roomtoread, and with each case sold they’ll be able to supply about 60 local language children’s books to educate the 300 million kids around the world who can’t read.

You can follow us throughout this initiative and even participate in barrel tastings and other activities along the way thanks to the folks at Crushpad. If you want to get a bottle of our limited Pinot Noir or Chardonnay, visit the Fledgling Initiative and contribute. Good wine has never been better!

Based on my experience with the Sharing Foundation in Cambodia, I know how important it is for children in developing countries to have books to read in their own language.

And, with a donation, you get a bottle of wine, too!

Republished from Beth’s Blog.