By Brandy Scoggan
Socialbrite staff

Folks in the nonprofit and social good space just starting out on Twitter don’t want to begin with a blank slate. So we poked around and came up with this list of 12 can’t-miss nonprofits & causes to follow on Twitter.

This roundup should get you going, but don’t stop here — you can use Twitter Lists to explore scores or hundreds of other worthy organizations and individuals on Twitter. You’ll want to take note of which their campaigns or causes to follow — say, environmental issues, human rights or education — and then decide if you like the content of their tweets.

A good starting place is Jason Pollock’s list of nonprofit organizations on Listorious or Socialbrite’s list of change-makers, which focuses more on individuals than nonprofits.

Here are 12 social good organizations that caught our eye:

Water.org: Bringing clean water to those who lack it (@water)
Water.org (image above) is a nonprofit concerned with empowering and working with communities to meet their own water and sanitation needs. Their efforts are focused in Asia, Africa and Central America. A lot of big celebrity names are involved in this one — it’s a fantastic campaign and worth following. # of Twitter followers: 339,558

Twestival: One cause at a time (@twestival)

Twestival had its third event Thursday night in about 175 cities, raising more than $310,000 to benefit Concern Worldwide. Amazing event, great cause, fabulous concept and campaign. Click on the link Twestival campaign to see a really cool Twestival video. # of Twitter followers: 247,068

Donors Choose: Supporting public education (@Donorschoose)

DonorsChoose is a nonprofit that connects donors to public classrooms in need. Teachers post materials they need, donors help them out on an individualized basis, and then teachers and students often circle back with notes of thanks. It’s the model for future philanthropy. # of Twitter followers: 4,514.

Kiva: Providing loans to entrepreneurs worldwide (@kiva)

Kiva‘s mission is to connect people, through lending, for the sake of alleviating poverty. They act as a liaison between a global marketplace of philanthropic individuals, lending $25 at a time, and entrepreneurs looking to fund a small business. Their program helps lift people in developing countries out of poverty. # of Twitter followers: 343,216.

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ido30 treads line between grassroots movement & corporate campaign

By Julie Katz
Socialbrite staff

Finding a balance between creating a movement and actively, successfully campaigning without coming off as a brand ambassador is very hard to come by for many nonprofits, especially when the campaign is backed by corporate interests. ido30 is a Denmark-based nonprofit promoting low-temperature laundry as a way to help combat climate change.

If every household in Europe goes from 60 to 30 degrees Celsius (140 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit) when washing laundry, we can save the same amount of carbon dioxide that’s produced by 3 million cars in one year, the organization says. That applies to Americans as well: Choosing a “cold” setting instead of warm or hot would accomplish the same.

With growing followings on their Facebook page (over 12,000 fans from 25 countries) and Twitter account , it is hard not to see the group as a grassroots movement. On the other hand, ido30 is sponsored by bio-industrial company Novozymes, which creates the enzyme that makes low-temperature laundry possible. 

What, then, differentiates a movement — spreading the word and gaining a following — from a campaign that takes action to achieve a goal?

Sebastian Overgaard, creative director at Mindjumpers, a progressive and social media focused advertising group working with Novozymes, explains their strategy for creating a grassroots approach using social media.

“First, it’s important that we ourselves and the employees at Novozymes really believe in the cause – that spreading the word about low-temperature can actually make a difference,” Overgaard says. “This way we’ve been able to act almost like a grassroots organization, with a very human and spontaneous approach, but always with a transparent honesty about Novozymes’ underlying interests in focusing on ‘climate friendly choices’ as a bio-innovation company.”

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I‘ll be attending the third Twestival on Thursday evening in San Francisco, one of 175 cities holding fundraising events — see the TwestivalSF page. As with the original Twestival 13 months ago, which raised $250,000 for charity:water (here’s our interview with Twestival founder Amanda Rose and my photo of Amanda below right), and Twestival Local (which raised money for hundreds of local charities last fall), Twestivals in cities around the world will raise money for an incredibly good cause: Concern Worldwide.

See the video at top for a well-done short explanation of how Concern is helping children in poverty around the world. As the Twestival website puts it:

“Concern Worldwide was founded in 1968 to meet the needs of people living in extreme poverty, for whom every day is a fight for survival. Concern is a non-governmental, international, humanitarian organization dedicated to the reduction of suffering and working towards the ultimate elimination of poverty. … [Concern’s] education programs target the poorest people in the poorest countries in the world, with particular emphasis on reaching out-of-school children such as girls, orphans, street children, working children, children affected by conflict, children affected by HIV and AIDS, and children with disabilities. Concern’s education programs currently reach over 700,000 people in 25 countries across the regions of Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. Please follow @concern on Twitter to get a glimpse of their staff tweeting from around the world; including their efforts on the ground in Haiti.”

“The power of Twestival is not just in the amount of money it raises for inspiring nonprofits like Concern, an organization whose mission it is to end extreme poverty,” said Allyson Kapin, editor of the Care2 FrogLoop blog. “It’s in Twestival’s incredible reach across communications channels, and how they help to raise awareness about nonprofits and social justice issues through earned media and word of mouth.”

Hope to see you at the Horizon Lounge in San Francisco — register here to attend for just $15 — or, head to the Twestival nearest to you. You can also donate directly or participate in the online auction.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Amanda Rose: Twestival and how to prevent cause fatigue (Socialbrite)
• Twestival Twitterers Unite for Charity (lauralovesart.com)
• Twestival Global 2010 Raises Funds for Social Good Tomorrow (mashable.com)
• Twestival 2010: LIVE Updates From Twitter Charity Drive (huffingtonpost.com)
• Shira Lazar: Twestival 2010: Be Creative, Inspired and Join a Global Movement (huffingtonpost.com)

21 pros and 9 cons — consider what’s best for your organization

Starting a blog for your nonprofit is not something you should take lightly.

Based on my conversations with nonprofits, I’ve found a number of pros and cons.

The pros of starting a blog for your nonprofit

1. Blogs are much less expensive to host and manage than traditional websites – and most hosting companies feature one-click installation of WordPress.
2. WordPress is so incredibly flexible that you can build an entire website on WordPress – especially if you add on a premium theme like Headway.
3. Updating content and functionality with WordPress requires almost no knowledge of code, so you’ll save money on IT.
4. This ease of maintenance adds to the sustainability of your organization.
5. Having a WordPress blog includes access to thousands of free software tools (plug-ins and widgets).

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The Extraordinaries lets your organization create a crowdsourced ‘mission’

By Kim Bale
Socialbrite staff

Recruiting friends and supporters to get real work done virtually on behalf of social-good projects is easy and fun with the help of The Extraordinaries. Based in San Francisco, the company has created a platform allowing anyone to create a micro-task and blast it to their community of friends and supporters to generate real, usable output when they spend a few minutes of their spare time on an iPhone or computer.

You can download the iPhone app at BeExtra.org and check out a wide array of simple tasks you can help with. Missions featured today on the Beextra home page include:

• Build a collection of cute dog photos for GoodDogz.org.
• Help build a searchable photo archive for the Smithsonian Institution (yes, that Smithsonian).
• Create a list of job resources for youths on behalf of Goodwill.
• Rate tweets from the SXSW conference.

The tools The Extraordinaries have created are available to nonprofits, for-profits, politicos, evangelists and passionate people alike. For example, Citizens Market, a company tracking corporate behavior, is using The Extraordinaries to research and rate company behavior. To map children’s recreational spaces, KaBOOM! is asking people to mark the GPS location of a playground, rate it up or down and snap a photo, such as the one at top.

Anyone can create a mission and harness the power of the crowd to achieve results while engaging and interacting with the broader community — the Extraordinaries has 29,000 registered users, more than 250 missions and 240,000 micro-tasks completed. The team vetts all apps submitted to the site.

Ways for nonprofits to use The Extraordinaries

How can you use The Extraordinaries?

1. Identify your needs. Many tasks, particularly administrative duties, are ripe for crowdsourcing. The Extraordinaries breaks these tasks into small bits of work with the potential for a big impact. Where could you use a few hundred extra hands? First identify your needs, then see how The Extraordinaries community can help meet them.

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During the TechSoup webinar on Facebook last week, one question that came up was about creating a custom url for your Facebook Page.

There are three reasons to create a custom url for your Facebook Page:

1. It’s easy for supporters to remember.

2. Creating the custom url prevents someone else from registering it. And if someone else does register your brand, it may be costly to claim it as yours.

3. Improved SEO – especially if you use keywords in the URL name. For example, facebook.com/greatburgers will result in more hits than facebook.com/bobsgrill.

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CauseLab, Good Guide, Ushahidi lead impressive array of social change efforts

I‘ve learned long ago the challenge of covering South by Southwest Interactive, which hums along at its own idiosyncratic pace compared to more linear conferences. Thus, I spent last year and this year doing less blogging, conducting more interviews (which I’ll roll out in the coming weeks), taking more photos and doing much more networking.

I returned home from my fourth SXSW last night — here are 54 photos from the event I just uploaded to Flickr. Here are a few takeaways that may be of interest to nonprofits and social change organizations — but I didn’t cover this as a nonprofit correspondent, so be sure to check out other coverage and look at SXSW’sarray of Greater Good panels and follow the hashtags.

• Loved Friday’s TechSoup-led display of “world-changing mobile apps,” including:

• The Good Guide, with info about 70,000-plus health, food, toy and beauty products — including an API that lets you create a custom product directory that pulls from its database.

• Ushahidi — the Swahili word for witness — allows anyone with a mobile device to tell stories in an organized way that enables action. Major relief organizations and agencies, including the Red Cross, US State Department and US AID — relied on Ushahidi to assess the situation on the ground in Haiti and deploy resources in a more strategic way.

• Check out ushahidi.com/work for an amazing backstory.

• I popped into the third-floor Cause Lab a few times and was thrilled to see all the energy devoted to bringing real-life solutions to combat hunger. See the #endhunger hashtag on Twitter for inspiration and see WeCanEndThis.com/sxsw for “three ways you can help us innovate”:

No matter where you are, you can be a part of the CauseLab thanks to the Secret Beta Test. Even better, the best idea created will win $1,000 and the person who collaborates the best will win $500, when the CauseLab ends on April 15.

• I was too busy taking photos to take any notes during the Crowdsourcing Innovative Social Change panel featuring Socialbrite’s own Amy Sample Ward, Beth Kanter, Holly Ross, Kari Dunn Saratovsky and David Neff. But WiserEarth has a great summary, you can see the re #crowdx and #sourcinginnovativechange hashtag streams or read Beth’s take on it.

• Also got to meet Pete Cashmore, founder/editor of Mashable, who’s even classier and more personable than his online persona. (Pete said he was a longtime fan of my writings, and the feeling is mutual.)

• At Saturday night’s Digg party, I made my first contribution using Square, the Jack Dorsey startup and app that attaches to an iPhone so you can swipe a credit card. Charity:water got my $25.

• “Every time a talented young producer goes off to work for Google, another startup dies,” said Matt Ewing of Democracy Alliance quoting a Silicon Valley aphorism and making an allusion to how social change innovators should consider launching their own projects rather than getting absorbed into nonprofits or socially responsible outfits. “A lot of little ideas that can change the world aren’t being funded right now.” Democracy Alliance is looking to help change that.

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Moving movie audiences to take action from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

I‘ll confess: I was excited to see The Cove take home the Academy Award for best feature documentary last night. While all the entrants were worthy, “The Cove” is among the handful of movies pushing the idea of Hollywood productions as the fulcrum for social change.

A few weeks ago I caught up with Christopher Gebhardt, general manager and executive vice president of TakePart, the Beverly Hills-based digital arm of Participant Media, which marketed and helped bring “The Cove” to theaters nationwide. Participant Media (formerly Participant Productions) — Jeff Skoll’s social entrepreneurial film production company — has an incredible track record in bringing socially relevant films to screens nationwide, including “An Inconvenient Truth,” “Charlie Wilson’s War,” “The Kite Runner,” “The Soloist,” “Syriana,” “Good Night, and Good Luck,” “The Visitor,” “Food, Inc.,” “North Country” and now “The Cove.”

A breath-taking string of success.

“The Cove” is remarkable for its guerrilla filmmaking tactics in chronicling the grisly business of dolphin hunting in rural fishing villages in Japan, where as many as 20,000 dolphins are slaughtered annually. It won the Audience Award at Sundance last year. Participant didn’t fund the film but funded its marketing.

“We’ve spent the last five years at Participant figuring out how to take the film and really use it to … really get people involved with an issue,” said Gebhardt, speaking after a conversation on stage at Social Capital Markets 2009.

You may have noticed one fellow on stage at the Oscars — film subject and animal activist Ric O’Barry — holding up a sign that said, “Text DOLPHIN to 44144.” (The camera cut away after only one second — the academy has a long tradition of not acknowledging or encouraging overly activist sentiments.)

What’s cool about “The Cove” is that, just as the movie ends, theatergoers are met with the same message: Text DOLPHIN to 44144. When you text the short code, Gebhardt explains, you’re given ways to connect, including the option to sign online petitions to protest the brutal practice, send letters to President Obama, the US ambassador to Japan or Japan’s ambassador to the United States, or you can take other actions.

Watch, download or embed the video on Vimeo. (I’ve started producing these in a higher resolution 3800 kbps bitrate at 720 pixels wide.)

I should mention that I was in the first group of bloggers in 2005 who signed on to guest-post on Participant’s first such effort: the “Good Night and Good Luck” site to discuss press reform and how changes in corporate ownership of the media have affected our democracy since the days of Edward R. Murrow.

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I’ve been following Ash Shepherd on Twitter for some time now because he always seems to have something important to share. Following is an email interview I conducted with Ash about a service he offers called Social Media Planning and Analysis.

What is social media planning and analysis?

Shepherd: Social media planning and analysis is really about two things:

1. Creating frameworks that keep social media activities mission focused in a sustainable manner.

2. Taking the time look at if what you are doing is working.

After all, none of us has the time or resources to do anything that is not helping us achieve our mission as an organization or company.

Can you explain what this looks like in practice?

There is obviously a lot that can go into explaining this but the simple breakdown is this: Goals, Strategies, Tactics, Tools and Metrics. The biggest point to make here is that picking your tool comes as one of the final steps, not as the first and only one.

This practice of keeping things tied to larger communication goals with specific actions and ways to measure successes as well as shortcomings is the key to sustainability for groups.

If you chase the tools, what are you going to do when they change? (And they will.) You have to start over. With a solid plan and framework the worst case scenario is that you have to adjust that last two steps of the process but everything else can remain consistent.

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