And download these 3 flyers on tools & platforms for social change

Last night I gave another in the series of Mobilize Your Cause mini-camps at the Hub SoMa in San Francisco. It went well, with representatives from Women’s Film Institute, CBS Interactive, Small Act and a number of startups and consultancies coming by to do a deep dive into how to use social media to move the needle for your cause or organization.

My partner and colleague Sloane Berrent wasn’t in town for the joint presentation, but Pamela Hawley, founder and CEO of UniversalGiving, came by and offered some great thoughts about the importance of stepping back and identifying your organization’s story — its core value proposition — before diving into the toolsets. Her recent trip to the White House with 50 other social entrepreneurs drew a number of questions from people eager to connect with the social enterprise community.

Handouts on social action hubs, mobile apps & more

For the event, Socialbrite produced three new or modified flyers — download them for free and repost on your site!:

• 12 Social Action Hubs — Online communities and crowdsource platforms (shortener: bit.ly/12socialhubs — PDF)

• 10 Mobile Apps for Social Good (shortener: bit.ly/10mobileapps — PDF)

• 12 Steps to Mobilize Your Cause (shortener: bit.ly/12steps-flyer — PDF)

A presentation to get the ball rolling

The presentation was intended not as a comprehensive survey of social media tools or strategies, but as a way to introduce concepts that can be plumbed more deeply in the weeks ahead. In the main, it consisted of three main parts:

• Case studies — successful cause campaigns by Equality California, Tweet for a Cure, Grassroots Mapping, charity:water, Greenpeace, Egypt’s Women & Memory Forum and Nawaa, a group of political activists in Tunisia. (What they did with Google Earth blew me away!)

• 12 steps to activate your supporters, starting with listening and ending with real-world events.

• Tools and action hubs for social change, including Google Earth, Creative Commons, Google Sidewiki, widgets, word cloud visualizations and more.

A technical glitch: Any theories?

We spent a half hour before the session began tackling a technical glitch I had never seen in 10 years of presentations: My videos were playing fine in Keynote on my MacBook Pro, but when the image was projected onto the wall, only the QuickTime still image was visible — nothing that “moved” was displayed through the projector during the entire evening. Which threw me for a loop, since my presentations are intensely media-rich. Have you ever seen that before? What do you think could have caused that?

Despite that, it was a great gathering and I hope to be back at the Hub soon! If you’d like a Mobilize Your Cause workshop held at your organization, drop us a line.

Related

• 12 steps to a successful cause campaign (Socialbrite)

Probably the most intriguing addition to the conference landscape is the upcoming inaugural CrowdConf, the first conference that focuses on the emerging field of crowdsourcing and the future of distributed work. Researchers, technologists, outsourcing experts, legal scholars and artists will gather Oct. 4 in San Francisco to discuss how crowdsourcing is beginning to transform the democratizing and flattening of the global labor market.

I hope to make it there, though a planned Air Force blogging expedition to Hawaii may prevent it.

Lukas Biewald, CEO of CrowdFlower, is spearheading the creation of the conference, which includes a call for papers with a deadline nine days from today. Here are the details:

When: Monday, Oct. 4, 2010, 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m.

Where: The St. Regis Hotel, 123 3rd St., San Francisco

Tickets: $350 before Sept. 13, with discounts for students and researchers. Register here.

Speakers include: Tim Ferriss, Author, “The 4-Hour Work Week”; Sharon Chirella, VP, Amazon Mechanical Turk; Maynard Webb, CEO, LiveOps; Jonathan Zittrain, author and Professor of Law and Computer Science, Harvard.

Call for papers and posters: Submission deadline Sept. 1, acceptance decision Sept. 15. More info: http://crowdconf.com/papers.html

Related

• Crowdflower: Toward a world of crowdsourced labor

• Helping Haitians via mobile, crowdsourcing & social media

• An app to support refugees working in Africa

• Harnessing the crowd for social good

• Calendar of 2010 social change conferences

You may have heard of deal-of-the-day site Groupon — Get 50 to 90 percent off the best stuff your city has to offer! Hot deals in Chicago, New York, Boston! — and the breed of “offertising” sites that aim to make people break their habits and check out a new place. What if this model were applied toward getting people to buy more sustainable products?

That is the mission of San Francisco-based blissmo (tagline: buy good, feel great), which offers one-time discounts to certified sustainable and/or organic businesses. They recently launched their service and are currently featuring 50-percent-off promotions on Kaia Foods, a national organic food company, and wines at J Vineyards and Winery (see above), a certified sustainable vineyard in Sonoma, Calif.

From the perspective of businesses, offertising sites are a good way to gain new customers without requiring any upfront cash, as with traditional advertising. While we don’t yet know how effective these deals will be in retaining repeat customers over the long term, blissmo — run by entrepreneur Sundeep Ahuja, a friend — is positioned to be a better ally for green businesses, as they’re delivering customers who are already predisposed to buying sustainable goods and products.

We’ll be keeping a watch to see where all this goes. Meantime, I’m trying to shake the word “offertising” out of my head.

You have an amazing new start-up, social enterprise or nonprofit campaign, and you need to get the word out. What strategies, tactics and tools are available to activists, business executives, consultants and marketing managers?

I’m happy to announce that I’ll be giving a Mobilize Your Cause mini-bootcamp at the Hub SF a week from today to answer that question.

We just lined up a great guest speaker: Pamela Hawley, founder and CEO of UniversalGiving, who’ll be talking about What’s driving your organization?

The two-hour presentation and conversation will cover strategies, tactics and tools for activists and change agents looking to mobilize supporters on behalf of a cause. Details:

What: Mobilize Your Cause!

When: Tuesday, Aug. 24, 6:30-8:30 pm followed by a mixer from 8:30-9:30 pm

Where: Hub SoMa, 901 Mission St., Suite 105, in the Chronicle Building

Program: The session will focus on the following:

• 12 steps to mobilize your cause: The components of highly successful campaigns that have taken advantage of social media’s ability to enlist and activate evangelists, with several real-world examples.
• New technologies: An overview of the best “social good” tools and resources available for advocates looking to make a difference.
• How to build an activist community: We’ll explore how different organizations have successfully used social tools to mobilize their members, spread awareness, engage members and raise funds.
• Mixer: Following the 2-hour session we’ll hold a one-hour Social Good Schmooze-Up mixer.
• How much:

  • Members: $10 (with Socialbrite discount code: HubMobilize)
  • General admission for this event: $15
  • Door: $20

Register on Eventbrite.

Who should come

• Social media/community managers at nonprofit organizations
• Social entrepreneurs
• Communications, marketing and PR professionals
• Techies, geeks, nerds and social media fanboys & fangirls
• Hub members
• Activists, advocates and those who want to make the world a better place

Backgrounds

• JD Lasica is founder of Socialbrite.org – social tools for social change – and a pioneer in social media. JD also runs the consultancy Socialmedia.biz and was co-founder of Ourmedia.org, the world’s first free video hosting and sharing site. He has presented at social media bootcamps, SXSW, Macworld, Digital Hollywood, Blogworld, Harvard’s Berkman Center, Stanford, MIT, NYU, UC Berkeley, universities in Sweden, the Citizen Reporters’ Forum in Seoul, the Cannes Film Festival, Personal Democracy Forum and elsewhere.

• Pamela Hawley is founder and CEO of UniversalGiving, a Web-based marketplace for volunteers, donors and companies. Winner of the Jefferson Award for Public Service, Pamela assists companies with their social responsibility programs all over the world. She’s been nominated for the 2010 Women Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

The debut of The Hoop Fund from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Social enterprise offers virtuous circle around loans, production, connections in a ‘fair trade ecosystem’

Last night I got a first-hand look at the debut of The Hoop Fund, a new social enterprise (tagline: Lend. Produce. Enjoy.) with a terrific pedigree and promising future.

In short, The Hoop Fund enables participants to meet the makers of products we buy, invest in their businesses and become part of the prosperity of their communities.

More than 150 people packed into The Hub San Francisco last night for the “friends and family” debut of The Hoop Fund, founded by entrepreneur (and former journalist) Kevin Doyle Jones, the impresario behind the Social Capital Markets conference coming up Oct. 4-6 in San Francisco. Lots of familiar faces there — Gary Bolles, Sarah Kennon, Shannon Clark, Arabella Santiago — and I got to meet two of the principals behind The Hoop Fund: CEO Patrick Donohue and operations chief Maia Hirschbein.

The Hoop Fund is one of those ideas that you have to see in action to really appreciate. A slide presentation showing how it’s already making a difference in villages in Peru really drove home its message of entrepreneurial opportunities in the developing world. With the Hoop, you can support producers through a loan (I just made a $50 loan to Indigenous Designs), purchasing their fair trade products through a partnering brand, and then spreading the word to your own networks and community. Jones calls it a “fair trade ecosystem.”

Here’s a quick 2-minute video with Maia taken at the event — incidentally, my first-ever video taken with my new iPhone 4:

Watch, download, embed or share the video on Vimeo
Follow JoinTheHoop on Twitter (44 followers so far); hashtag is #thehoop
Like The Hoop on Facebook (91 fans so far)

The Hoop goes beyond what Kiva does

The idea is: Pick a project on www.jointhehoop.com and make your first loan. (“We want to prove that the Hoop will change the world through meaningful and powerful connections. Help us do that!” Maia says.) Next, share your action with your friends and help build the Hoop community.

Among the projects now open for investment:

Alter Eco
Medicinal plants garden project
Amount: $2,500
Length: 2 years
Location: Alto Huayabama, San Martin, Peru

Indigenous Designs
Purchase of handloom knitting machine
Amount: $1,400
Length: 18 months
Location: Arequipa, Peru

You can contribute in small amounts if you’d like — say, $25.

Yes, it’s similar in some ways to the brilliantly successful Kiva.org. Co-founder Donohue told me the Hoop seeks to fill the virtuous circle by answering the question, After you make your loan, then what? The Hoop connects you with the very cool brands that the funded small business people and farmers create or work with, and then it provides the social tools to help you spread the word to your friends and colleagues.

Really, it’s an exciting idea, and I’m jazzed to do whatever small part I can to help it along.

Last year Socialbrite contributed an open source plug-in to the WordPress community called WP-License Plugin Reloaded — a way for bloggers to assign different Creative Commons licenses to each of their blog posts.

David Davis & his wife Paulyn

Today we’re proud to announce that our developer David R. Davis has released the first Tweet Button for WordPress. It’s an option for Web publishers to count retweets and let their readers easily share content. WordPress.org approved it early today and granted subversion access (if you’re a coder, you know that’s pretty cool).

For years, you’ve probably seen those green Tweet This buttons (see left) accompanying blog posts, including on Socialbrite. That’s the Tweetmeme button, with some 750 million daily retweet button impressions. As Mashable reports, Twitter itself has now released its own Official Twitter Tweet Button (see the video above). Twitter decided this one of the functions that it can provide better than a third-party developer.

What the video above doesn’t say is that if you want easy integration for WordPress blogs, you don’t need to mess with code, you can just add our new Tweet Button Plug-in. Click here:

Features

The plug-in provides a live count of how many times your post/page has been retweeted throughout Twitter.

• Live count of tweets from Twitter
• Allows you to change the source which you retweet, E.g. “RT @yourname “
• Easily installation and customisation
• Quicker loading times for the buttons
• Better integration, allowing custom titles, hashtags
• Integrates with WordPress MU

One wrinkle

If you’ve been using the Tweetmeme button on your blog up until now and are thinking of switching over to the official Twitter Tweet Button, there’s only one wrinkle: Any posts before July 2010 — when Twitter implemented this — will not show any retweets. You’ll notice that on all Socialbrite posts from June and before. Like Mashable, we decided to take the plunge today and switch over — see the bottom of this post.

Nice, work, David!

How nonprofits should deal with technological change from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Universal Giving founder/CEO offers strategies for engagement in social responsibility

Tonight Pamela Hawley, founder and CEO of UniversalGiving, is headlining an event at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco titled The Leading Edge for Corporate Social Responsibility. (I’m a member but won’t be able to attend.) It’s been a busy few weeks from Pamela, who recently attended a Next Generation Leaders Conference at the White House.

I caught up with Pamela — who’s a fellow member of the NetTuesday San Francisco Advisory Board — at UniversalGiving’s offices in San Francisco to discuss her her recent talks at Cisco and at TEDx about key strategies for corporate engagement in social responsibility. Here’s my 14-minute interview with Pamela:

Watch, embed or download the video on Vimeo

It’s a high-level conversation: Pamela talks about international volunteer trips, the flow of life, and discovering who you are as an individual and organization. Those central questions — “what plugs you in, what drives you” — are critical to probe before you get to the social media tools you should be using.

At the White House summit last month, sponsored by the White House Office of Public Engagement and Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation, Pamela and 50 other leaders explored ways of empowering communities, developing sustainable solutions and sharing lessons learned in collaboration between sectors.

Accolades continue to roll in for Pamela. Winner of the Jefferson Award for Public Service, Hawley assists companies, including Cisco, with their social responsibility programs all over the world. She’s been nominated for the 2010 Women Entrepreneur of the Year Award. UniversalGiving, her Web-based marketplace for volunteers, donors and companies, has been profiled on CBS, in BusinessWeek and on Oprah.com.

The talk she’s been giving in recent weeks is called “What’s Your Socket?” In other words, what’s driving you and your organization? The bottom line, she says, is this: “What’s going on in our world is not acceptable. We’ve got to find a way to address that in a way that’s strategic and heartfelt.” Call it smart compassion — a mix of empathy and strategic action that’s an unbeatable combination.

It’s easy to create something like a blog or Twitter account, she says. “What’s really tough is to maintain it.” It might make most sense to take up a few social networks and do them really well. “A lot of nonprofits are getting overwhelmed by all the technology,” she says, when you’ve got to keep your eye on the big picture.

One strategy, she says, is to marry customized communications with personal stories on your blog and company Twitter accounts to communicate with high-target donors and socially responsible companies.

She trots out an interesting stat: Fully half of all Twitter users don’t speak English, an important consideration for nonprofits seeking to expand into international markets.

Related

• The power of giving & corporations doing social good: My interview with Pamela on CSR (Socialbrite)

• Transcript of podcast on corporate social responsibility (Socialbrite)

• 4 examples of corporate social responsibility done right (Socialbrite)

Web 2.0-fueled resources to help each other as citizens

Target audience: Political activists, change agents, NGOs, nonprofits, social change organizations, educators, librarians, citizens.

It’s become a cliché to be skeptical of what government can do for society. But there’s a burgeoning movement called Government 2.0, the term for attempts to apply the social networking and integration advantages of Web 2.0 to the practice of government.

Part of our mission at Socialbrite is to break down silos between sectors. We think activists, NGOs, nonprofits, cause organizations and others can benefit by taking advantage of the panoply of Gov 2.0 sites and resources that have sprung up in the past few years.

I’ve put together the following directory of Gov 2.0 resources — I’m guessing some of these will be new to you. Know of others? Please share your own favorites in the comments below.

See Socialbrite’s Sharing Center for the full directory of Gov 2.0 resources.

Government entities

Data.gov: Helping the public share useful information

Data is at the heart of Internet applications. Data.gov, which launched in May 2009, seeks to not just provide greater access to government data but to establish a framework that makes it possible for the public to create and share useful data. From the site: “As a priority Open Government Initiative for President Obama’s administration, Data.gov increases the ability of the public to easily find, download, and use datasets that are generated and held by the Federal Government. Data.gov provides descriptions of the Federal datasets (metadata), information about how to access the datasets, and tools that leverage government datasets. The data catalogs will continue to grow as datasets are added. Federal, Executive Branch data are included in the first version of Data.gov.” Start by browsing the Tool Catalog. See also: Open Government blog, Open Government Initiative, Open Government Working Group

Apps.DC.gov: The app store for Washington, DC

We think Apps.DC.gov rocks — it provides apps and Web 2.0 solutions created or funded by the city of Washington, DC’s technology team as well as third-party apps created by independent developers. In some ways superior to the federal gov’s Data.gov, Apps.DC.gov provides a model for city governments everywhere to follow. Included are apps on where to find parking in DC, historic tours, crime info, wi-fi locations and a DC atlas. Related: Data.DC.gov, DataSF.org.

GovLoop: Keeping gov employees in the loop

Asocial network for government begun in 2008 by a single federal employee in his spare time on the social platform Ning, GovLoop now has more than 30,000 members at all members of government. Its goal is simple: to foster communication and share ideas among government staffers.

Apps.gov: Taking your agency to the cloud

Aproject of the U.S. General Services Administration, Apps.gov is a resource for cloud computing applications designed to make federal agencies harness Web 2.0 technologies such as cloud computing. The site says: “Whether it’s business or productivity applications, cloud IT services or social media solutions, Apps.gov is the place to get your government agency in the cloud.”

Recovery.gov: Track Recovery Act spending

Slow to get off the ground, Recovery.gov is the U.S. government’s official website that provides easy access to data
related to Recovery Act spending and allows for the reporting of potential fraud, waste, and abuse.

Nonprofit & public-spirited organizations & projects

Code for America: Connecting city governments and Web 2.0 talent

Anonpartisan, non-political organization, Code for America helps city governments become more transparent, connected and efficient by connecting the talents of Web developers with people who deliver city services and want to embrace the transformative power of the web to achieve more impact while spending less. CFA works with city officials and coders to identify and develop Web solutions that can then be shared and rolled out more broadly to cities across America.

Do Tank: Ideas for democratic action

New York Law School’s The Do Tank: Democracy Design Workshop strives to strengthen the ability of groups to solve problems, make decisions, resolve conflict and govern themselves by designing software and legal code to promote collaboration. Tools alone cannot create a culture of strong groups. Hence Do Tank projects address the role of legal and political institutions, social and business practices and the visual and graphical technologies — what they term the “social code” — that may allow groups not only to foster community but to take action. Beth Simone Noveck, U.S. deputy chief technology officer for open government, founded it.

Expert Labs: Helping the government to listen

Anonprofit organization, Expert Labs is an independent initiative created in late 2009 to help policy makers in the U.S. government take advantage of the expertise of their fellow citizens. Its first major goal is to help the White House answer the question: What are the big scientific and technological challenges that America should tackle? Run by former SixApart executive Anil Dash, who was recruited by the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, Expert Labs may evolve into an incubator of Gov 2.0 projects.

FixCongressFirst: Fighting the influence of money in politics

Founded by author and Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig, FixCongressFirst is a project of Change Congress, a nonpartisan advocacy organization whose sole purpose is to protect the independence of Congress by fighting the influence of money in politics. Its goal is to restore public trust in our government by passing a hybrid of small-dollar donations and public financing of elections.

GovTrack.us: Tracking the U.S. Congress

Afree Congress-tracking site begun in 2004, GovTrack.us gathers the status of legislation, voting records and other congressional info from official government sites and then applies the latest technology to make the data more accessible and useful. The site reaches about 1 million people a month. Almost half the entries in Sunlight’s 2009 Apps for America contest drew on data from GovTrack.

MAPLight: Shining a light on politics & money

Anonpartisan, nonprofit based in Berkeley, Calif., MAPLight.org offers search tools that illuminate the connection between Money And Politics (MAP) via a database of campaign contributions and legislative outcomes. Its Committees Tool provides a window into special interest influence, revealing campaign contributions received by each committee member from special interest groups for key bills placed before every Congressional committee. Interview at Socialbrite.

Open Congress: Track congressional bills & votes

At OpenCongress, everyone can be an insider by tracking congressional bills and votes by members of the Senate and House. OpenCongress is a free and open-source joint project of two nonprofits, the Participatory Politics Foundation and the Sunlight Foundation.

OpenSecrets: Investigating money in politics

Aproject of the Center for Responsive Politics, OpenSecrets shows the connection between money and influence, offering tools, datasets and a blog. For example, its OpenData release lists the top 100 organizations across industries and makes the data downloadable in various formats. The center is continually enhancing the site to help us see who’s giving and who’s getting.

Public.Resource.org: Making public information public

Anonprofit organization, Public.Resource.org has been instrumental in placing government information on the Internet, such as these reports detailing codes passed by California state agencies. Its founder and president is Carl Malamud, author of eight books and former CTO of the Center for American Progress.

Sunlight Foundation: Making government transparent & accountable

Aa nonpartisan nonprofit based in Washington, DC, the Sunlight Foundation uses cutting-edge technology and ideas to make government transparent and accountable. The organization focuses on the digitization of government data and the creation of tools and websites to make that data easily accessible for all citizens. It’s a think tank, campaign, investigative organization, grant-giving institution and open source technology community rolled into one. See especially its Sunlight Labs project. Socialmedia.biz interview with co-founder Ellen Miller.

Transparency Data: Search campaign contribution data

Founded by The Sunlight Foundation and with data supplied by OpenSecrets.org, Transparency Data is a new resource that lets you explore the connection between federal and state contributions and their impact on public policy. Conduct a search on federal lobbyist registrations, federal grants and federal and state campaign contributions, download records, chart how much a company has spent on lobbying and make many other queries.

Tweet Congress: Trying to get Congress to open up

The mission of Tweet Congress is to promote transparency on Capitol Hill. The site provides a directory of all congressional Twitter users and aggregates their tweets. (Republican congressmen outnumber their Democratic counterparts on Twitter.) The organization urges members of Congress to engage directly with their constituents in a dialogue via social media.

Standards & tools

Open 311: An open standard for local gov services

Born in the mid-1990s, 311 is a dialing designation set up for use by municipal governments in both the U.S. and Canada. Dialing 311 in communities where it’s supported will typically direct a caller to a call center where an operator will provide information in response to a question, or open a service ticket in response to report of an issue, like a pothole or a broken street light. 311 operates in most large cities in the U.S. and several smaller jurisdictions.

The Open 311 drive is a push to develop a standardized, interoperable platform for municipal 311 services through the creation of a common API. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced support for Open 311 in March 2010. More info: techPresident, govfresh.

Major Gov 2.0 events

• Gov 2.0 Expo
• Gov 2.0 Summit
• Personal Democracy Forum
• Government 2.0 Camp
• Transparency Camp

Others?

Resources & lists

• The O’Reilly Radar blog has provided some of the best coverage of Gov 2.0-related issues. Look for anything by Alex Howard.

• GovFresh also provides great coverage of Gov 2.0 and open government news.

• Gov 2.0 articles on The Huffington Post

• 100+ women in gov & tech: Government staffers, officials, open government advocates and more

• Socialbrite’s Gov 2.0 Twitter List

• Full list of Gov 2.0 resources (Socialbrite)

• City, county and state government mobile websites (KristyFifelski.com)

• Gov 2.0 articles on Mashable

• ‘Open Government’: Big & beautiful ideas (Socialbrite)

Help enterprising Colombia youths running an Internet cafe

Today is my birthday, and in the tradition of other social media strategists working in the nonprofit space like Beth Kanter (I wrote about her last birthday campaign in January) and Geoff Livingston, I’d like to ask your help in making the day special for some enterprising young people in Colombia.

But first a quick word of explanation. This post comes in two parts: this introductory fund-raising appeal, followed by an interview with the founder and CEO of Jolkona Foundation, which is running the campaign and scores of others like it.

Empower young entrepreneurs in Colombia’s slums

This is the first time I’ve ever directly asked my blog readers and followers on Twitter and Facebook to donate to a campaign of mine, though I’ve spotlighted dozens of worthy causes over the years. So, please donate here — looking for nine people to donate an average of $25. Details:

What: Support young people in the slums of Bogotá, Colombia, as they develop their own community internet cafe business, called MegaRed (pictured above). The cafe provides opportunities for young entrepreneurs to create a better future for their families while providing a safe and positive environment for young people at risk of being recruited or attacked by armed groups.

What’s cool & different: Jolkona.org showcases scores of great causes to help out — and you get individualized feedback and progress reports on how your donation made a difference in people’s lives.

How much: We’re asking for $25, or whatever you can afford.

How: Click the Give button on this page. You’ll be able to track their progress in the months ahead.

Thank you! Please retweet or Facebook it if you can.

Jolkona: One-to-one philanthropy

Imet Adnan Mahmud, co-founder and CEO of Jolkona, during Beth Kanter’s book signing party for “The Networked Nonprofit” at TechSoup Global last month — and was immediately impressed by his seriousness and dedication to helping great causes through one-to-one philanthropy.

Jolkona is at the bleeding edge of this phenomenon, which will become an increasingly important part of charitable giving in the years ahead, as young people in particular want transparency, interaction and accountability when supporting a cause.

Adnan says Jolkona is the first nonprofit “to give tangible feedback on your donation.” Kiva, which pioneered the technique, provides entrepreneurs with loans. And while nonprofits like charity:water and Global Giving often give updates on projects, Jolkona is positioning itself as a technology platform that enables one-to-one philanthropy for nonprofits of any size.

Watch, download or embed our interview on Vimeo

The year-old Jolkona — which means “drop of water” in Bengali (Adnan is a native of Bangladesh) — currently showcases 75 projects in 35 countries, including the United States.

Jolkona’s premise is simple but powerful: Support a library in Tibet that needs $50 to buy books, and you’ll get the list of the books purchased through your donation. Help people in Bangladesh and Myanmar get an artificial limb for $200 — $200! — and you’ll receive a before and after photo. In Iraq, you can save a girl from an honor killing for $120: You get the story of the girl you saved, though for security reasons they can’t supply a name or photo. And in the U.S., you can provide field trips to a classroom of disadvantaged children in Seattle.

Says Adnan: “If you ask any nonprofit, Do you want to tell your supporters how their money was used, they’ll all tell you, Yes I do. But they don’t because they’re strapped for resources. Jolkona decided to come in and provide that technical infrastructure.

“Our focus is on youth philanthropy,” he adds. “We’re focused on galvanizing this next generation of givers. We’ve seen the frustration of this generation — that they don’t know where their money is going to. … We want people to feel that their [donation] can make a difference.”

It does, and the Jolkona team has gone out of its way to provide transparency and dispel worries that surfaced after last year’s revelation that Kiva wasn’t being forthright about its donations process.

Jolkona is now accepting nonprofit partners, though there’s a waiting queue. “If you are doing great work and are committed to showing impact, we are your best partners” as a platform solution, Adnan says.

Crowdflower: Toward a crowdsourced world from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

One of the most interesting start-ups that keeps popping up on my radar screen is Crowdflower, which connects nonprofits and companies with people around the globe looking to work on crowdsourced tasks.

It’s a fascinating glimpse at future contract labor models and at how work relationships are becoming more distributed, global, ephemeral and efficient.

Crowdflower takes simple tasks and breaks them down, using a global network of workers to determine, say, if a tweet about a brand is negative or positive, or if a piece of content violates a site’s community guidelines.

The person might spend 2 minutes on a task, an hour, or more. “The advantage is that the person doesn’t have to drive to work, they don’t even have to sign up for a website. They can just come to a job post, accomplish a task and get paid — in minutes,” says Crowdflower CEO and founder Lukas Biewald.

I spent three minutes chatting with Lukas at an extremely noisy rooftop party at South by Southwest Interactive. The video won’t win any awards for aesthetics — I was being jostled while holding a Kodak Zi8 hi-def camcorder — but it’s evidence that when you meet interesting people, it’s good to have a handheld recorder in your pocket.

Watch, embed or download the video on Vimeo

One mind-blowing angle: You’d be surprised at the number of people willing to perform tasks, such as in a Facebook game, in exchange for virtual currency that can buy them more trees in Zynga’s Farmville or more weapons in Mafia Wars. “People don’t realize how much this virtual money means to people,” he says.

Its website says Crowdflower provides access to an “elastic workforce” of more than a half million workers in over 70 countries — including refugee camps and developing nations where a few dollars go a long way.

As I understand this, CrowdFlower workers (they call them “customers”) complete large-scale jobs on a piecemeal basis in a quick, efficient and inexpensive manner. Similar in some respects to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, the arrangement is task-based and avoids the need for lead time and overhead associated with traditional hiring and outsourcing.

Samasource, which we’ve written about in here and here, has a similar but somewhat different model that’s focused on ongoing work relationships with specific groups in developing countries.

Both Lukas and Samasource CEO Leila Chirayath were on a panel at the Commonwealth Club this spring that I caught. Crowdlower, Samasource, Ushahidi and FrontlineSMS were also involved in Haiti relief efforts using crowdsourcing and mobile phones, which we wrote about in February.

Related

• Samasource enables socially responsible outsourcing

• Helping Haitians via mobile, crowdsourcing & social media

• An app to support refugees working in Africa

• Harnessing the crowd for social good