Target audience: Nonprofits, social enterprises, NGOs, foundations, businesses, educators. This is part one of a two-part series on crowdsourcing.

By Lindsay Oberst
Socialbrite staff

High-quality work at a low cost. That’s what crowdsourcing can achieve for nonprofts that wish to save money while pursuing their mission.

Crowdsourcing refers to harnessing the skills and enthusiasm of those outside an organization who are prepared to volunteer their time contributing content or skills and solving problems, sometimes for free, sometimes for a fee. An offshoot, crowd funding, describes the collective efforts to pool their money together on behalf of a cause, project or business. Kiva (loans to entrepreneurs), Crowdrise and Kickstarter (raise funds for creative projects) and Greenfunder, which launched in May as a site to raise funds for socially responsible projects and businesses, are among the burgeoning number of crowd funding sites. (See a few others in our roundup of 24 tools for fundraising with social media.)

Crowdsourcing, a bit of a catch-all term, can be used to gather information, solicit advice, save money or get stuff done. It can also help to inform decisions, demonstrate inclusiveness and bring a whole new meaning to collaboration.

We’ve seen the rise of community crowdsourcing with the advent of social media, but it’s always been part of the way society works. And nonprofits have always been at the forefront of crowdsourcing long before the term was coined in 2006. The idea simply fits in with the way small organizations work.

Here are a few quick, low-key ways crowdsourcing works

Say you’re a nonprofit looking to improve your services. You ask your Facebook fans and Twitter followers — people who have chosen to connect with you — how they think you can become better. They feel included in the process and want to answer, and then your organization has a solution to its problem. That’s what crowdsourcing can do — it can get a job done.

Or take blog posts. Studies show that people respond better to posts with images, so your organization seeks to include a photo along with the information you provide on your website. Where can you find images? Two good starts are Socialbrite’s Free Photos Directory and Flickr’s directory of Creative Commons photos, with 160 million photos available under various licenses. Both can be used to find free photos that you can use for your website, blog posts, reports, presentations and more — just give the photographers proper attribution.

Or maybe you’re wondering if your idea has been tried before — say, if someone has already learned lessons from running a fundraising campaign using Twitter? (Yes.)

Organizations are already using crowdfunding, crowd voting and crowdsourcing to gather information and improve the way they work. You’ll find that there are a handful of companies and services that offer crowdsourcing as their core business, such as CrowdFlower and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, while other companies use crowdsourcing to deliver other services, such as Elance (a marketplace for freelance services), All Our Ideas (a platform for crowdsourced suggestions) and GeniusRocket (a logo and Web design service).

3 examples of nonprofits using crowdsourcing

Samasource

A number of nonprofits have taken the plunge and begun taking advantage of the new landscape. One of our favorites is Samasource, a nonprofit whose entire model is based on crowdsourcing dignified work to a workforce based in developing nations. Here are three other examples of nonprofits using crowdsourcing.

1All Our Ideas (“a suggestion box for the digital age”). This open source software is free to use and allows viewers to vote on ideas and add their own. Matthew Salganik, who created the project and works in the department of sociology at Princeton University, says it “allows the best ideas to bubble to the top.”

Catholic Relief Services, a nonprofit, is the official international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. They wanted to evaluate all the workers in each of their offices around the world. All Our Ideas gave them an internal platform to source ideas from their workers, the people who know best about how everything works.

This idea platform is not limited to nonprofits or work evaluation. Others using it include the New York City Mayor’s Office and The Washington Post, which used it to increase reader participation.

2GeniusRocket (“the first curated crowdsourcing company”). According to GeniusRocket president Peter LaMotte, two forms of popular creative crowdsourcing exist. The first is what 99Designs offers. They outsource logo and Web design services to the public.

The second is what he calls “curated crowdsourcing.” His company creates solutions using vetted professionals and everything is kept private. They began using the first method and then realized some nonprofits didn’t want their messages blasted across the Internet, nor did they want to sort through hundreds of submissions.

“We make it a lot more affordable for nonprofits to source creative marketing content, yet we have a professional community,” LaMotte said.

Nonprofits use GeniusRocket primarily for the creation of videos and customizable content.

3Spot.us. “Community-funded reporting” is the tagline of this crowdsourcing service. United Roots, an Oakland-based nonprofit that uses music to help kids heal and learn entrepreneurial skills, is one example of how crowdsourced reporting can be used to create community-based coverage. Five of their stories were funded through Stories for Good and Spot.us.

For other similar services, see this answer on Quora. The Techsoup.org blog also has some good examples of nonprofits using crowdsourcing services.

As you can see, the possibilities of crowdsourcing are extensive. It still has limits, and it may not be the best solution for every nonprofit or organization, but it’s worth considering in the right circumstances.

Want more crowdsourcing?

• We recently showed our readers on way to crowdsource web design on the cheap.
• Our earlier article about 15 ways to crowdfund a project.

Coming Thursday: Look for our interview with Mollie Allick of CrowdFlower.

Related

• Samasource enables socially responsible outsourcing (Socialbrite)

• Tap into the collective power of your community (Socialbrite)

• Crowdsourcing a presentation at SXSW (Wiser Earth Blog)

• Social good crowdsourcing (Mashable)

• An app to support refugees working in Africa (Socialbrite)

• 10 kickass crowdsourcing sites for your business (Econsultancy)

• 6 Great Crowdsourcing Sites For Freelancers (Sitepoint)

• Crowdfunding: Investment for Good (Care2)

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SocialVest, MicroPlace, Vittana can help you make a difference

Target audience: Social change organizations, nonprofits, NGOs, students, educators, individuals.

Guest post by Shira Lazar

While there might be more noise in the social good space, there are also more tools to make giving easier and more accessible than ever. Many are also calling this a trend toward “democratizing social good.” The fact is, you don’t have to be a billionaire philanthropist to contribute to positive change in the world.

Whether you want to start a movement, do something to give back or just share your story, here are some great platforms that are enabling different ways for people to participate and make a difference.

SocialVest: Support causes through shopping

1Founded by Adam Ross, Socialvest marries shopping and giving together to make it easy for people to support their favorite causes by creating a fundraising channel out of everyday shopping. Then you can choose to donate the money you’ve accumulated to the charities or causes you care about and give the money you’ve earned through your SocialVest “Giving Account.” SocialVest also allows users to promote your cause via social networking and set up give groups and fundraising projects through social tools.

Causes: Mobilize your Facebook friends

2Co-founded by Joe Green and Facebook’s Sean Parker, Causes is the app inside Facebook that lets people choose specific causes to mobilize their friends for collective action, spread the word and/or raise money. Since 2007, the app has been used by a community of 125 million people and has had more than $22 million donated through the application.

DonorsChoose: Help students in public schools

3DonorsChoose is a platform that connects donors with classrooms in need. Go on the site, choose the project that interests you and donate to a worthy project. The site delivers the materials to the class and in turn the students will send you thank you notes and photos of the impact made.

MicroPlace: Invest wisely to alleviate poverty

4With MicroPlace, for as little as $20, you can open an investment account, use their search tools to find an investment on their site, pay with PayPal or your bank account and then receive interest payments to make your money back. These socially responsible investments in microfinance can help alleviate global poverty, helping the billion people who live on less than $1 per day.

Kiva: Micro-loans to entrepreneurs

5Kiva has been a prime of example of online microfinancing, enabling people to give “loans that change lives.” As of Sept. 19, Kiva has distributed $160,822,200 in loans from 757,183 lenders. A total of 220,977 loans have been funded. Make a loan for as little as $25 to one of their deserving entrepreneurs, follow their progress and get your money back over time.

Vittana: Send someone to college for $25

6Vittana co-founder Vishal Cakrabarti was named one of The Huffington Post’s 2009 Gamechangers. With its motto “Students in school, one loan at a time,” Vittana uses person-to-person micro-lending of $1,000 or less to enable students to pay for their college education, highlighting “high-achieving, deserving” students in developing countries on its website in the hope that visitors might be inspired to help out.

Kickstarter: Fund creative ideas

7Description KickStarter is a platform for funding creative ideas and ambitious endeavors, ranging from musical artists to indie films to expeditions. Powered by a unique all-or-nothing funding method, people can kickstart their project and goal by raising money through donations on the site. Projects must be fully funded or no money changes hands.

CrowdRise: Using social networks to raise funds

8Co-founded by actor Ed Norton, CrowdRise lets you raise money online for more than 1.5 million charities with its personal fundraising pages, charity fundraisers and Internet tools.

Splashlife: Rack up deals by taking action

9Launched just last month, Splashlife calls itself as an AARP for millenninals. Members can accumulate Splashlife points for doing social good — online and offline in-person volunteerism — which can then be used to get discounts off all sorts of things.

Related

• 12 awesome platforms for good (Socialbrite)

• 24 tools for fundraising with social media (Socialbrite)

• Kiva: micro-loans to entrepreneurs abroad (Socialbrite)

• Interview with DonorsChoose founder Charles Best (Socialbrite)

• 12 Social Action Hubs (PDF, Socialbrite)

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A cause campaign to fight malaria from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Causeitsmybirthday.com raises $16,000, effort continues through Saturday

Socialbrite’s own Sloane Berrent has been a bit busy of late. Fresh off a three-month stay in the rural Philippines doing field work as a Kiva fellow, she and her friend Doug Campbell of Mindshare launched Causeitsmybirthday, a cause campaign with a wild premise: parties in seven major cities on seven consecutive nights to raise money for malaria nets for orphanages and refugee camps in northern Ghana.

Malaria kills 3,000 children a day. It has killed more people than all the wars in human history combined, causing 1 to 3 million deaths per year. And the tragedy is that the majority of those deaths could be prevented with simple actions such as putting up mosquito nets to ward off the malaria-carrying mosquitoes. (This YouTube video explains why nets are so effective in the battle against malaria.)

I’ve never seen an effort quite like this, but Sloane, who blogs at TheCausemopolitan, and Doug pulled it off, working with the small nonprofit Netting Nations to make sure that 100 percent of the charitable donations go toward malaria nets. As of today, they’ve raised more than $16,000 and, even though the seven-city tour is over, you can donate to the cause online through Saturday. (Use the PayPal widget at the left.)

Watch, embed or download the video on Vimeo
Watch the video in QuickTime H.264 on Ourmedia

“People want to be inspired, and they want to be engaged, and they want to be involved,” says Sloane, a force of nature (like our other Socialbrite colleagues). She came up with the idea because she wanted her 30th birthday (last week) to be about giving instead of getting and she “wanted to use birthday as a platform for social change.” It’s a great idea, one that we’ve seen Beth Kanter use to good advantage in recent years, but now the social tools are mature enough to tie together online and offline activities.

Increasingly, sites are helping to connect people so that they meet up in person, and Causeitsmybirthday worked because it gave people a portal to get information about the cause but it also a way to meet offline. (Disclosure: I’m an advisor to the project.) Sloane talks about how social media can be used for grassroots efforts on behalf of any kind of cause.

We conducted the interview at night, outside the Eve Lounge and Kate O’Brien’s in San Francisco, on the sixth night of the seven-city swing through New York, Miami, New Orleans, Chicago, Seattle and finally Los Angeles.

Sloane also talks about her recent experience as a Kiva fellow. Kiva now operates in 55 countries with more than 120 partners.

“We hope that by doing this 7-city tour, people will be inspired to do something like this on their own,” she says. Perhaps an event that’s not quite so ambitious, but something that makes a difference.

So do we at Socialbrite.

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The Bay Area-based Extraordinaires are among the social causes highlighted in the current issue of Time magazine in an article titled New Ways to Make a Difference.

Time identified three new trends in doing good:

Put your time to work

1The Extraordinaries: The organization is helping to pioneer “micro-volunteering.” As co-founder Jacob Colker told us last week at Net Tuesday, only 26 percent of Americans volunteer — at all — in a given year. That’s partly because we lead super-busy lives. Beextra.org gives us a way to contribute bits and pieces of our spare time to do something worthy, from helping to add tags to museum archives to snapping water going to waste in San Diego. Got an iPhone? Look for an app called The Extraordinaries.

2IfWeRantheWorld.com, due to launch this fall, “encourages you to dream big — end poverty! cure cancer! — and then helps come up with small, specific ways you can help achieve progress in those areas.”

3Kinded.com promotes random acts of kindness. First, print a card at the Kindred site, then “do something nice for a stranger, like sharing an umbrella or helping carry luggage, and hand that person the card. The recipient can go online and note where the act of kindness took place and then pass the card along. It’s like Pay It Forward, with mapping features,” Time writes.

4AllforGood.org, a new aggregation site of volunteer opportunities that we wrote about three months ago, draws listings not only from traditional volunteer sites but also from Craigslist and Meetup. It also lets you share those opportunities with friends on social networks.

Put your money to work

5eBay’s WorldofGood.com is one of our favorite sites. Buy a fair-trade scarf or the work of an African artisan on the site, which vets every product to ensure that it’s eco-friendly and was produced in a worker-friendly environment.

6Kiva.org has been one of the breakout success stories of the Web 2.0 social good space, and not just because our own Sloane Berrent is winding up a three-month stint as a Kiva fellow in the Philippines. (Here’s her wrapup piece.) Kiva lets you provide a micro-loan (typically $25) to an entrepreneur in the developing world, and then lets you track the recipient’s progress online. Now there are specialized sites like Wokai.org, which provides micro-loans in rural China. (Wokai is Mandarin for “I start.”)

7SocialInvest.org is advancing socially and environmentally responsible investing. Find out how to shift your dollars to match your values. More than 1 in 9 dollars in the U.S. stock market is now invested in socially responsible funds.

Put your friends to work

8Carrotmob, from Virgance, is an ad hoc organization that organizes “reverse boycotts” to reward businesses that are making socially responsible decisions. A massive shop-in, held every month or two (including one on Thursday night in San Francisco), entices the owners to use a portion of the revenues to get greener.

9DonorsChoose.org, which we’ll be profiling here soon, lets you earmark an online contribution to fund public-school teachers’ requests for classroom materials.

10TimeBanks.org is spreading a form of reciprocal community service, including everything from day care to tutoring. Time Banking is a social change movement in 22 countries and six continents that weaves community one hour at a time.

And Time adds: “Join a neighborhood volunteer group like Brooklyn’s In Our Backyard and Washington’s CarbonfreeDC, which help groups of friends partner on projects — like planting gardens and teaching people how to green their homes — and have some fun along the way.”

Related

• 25 responsibility pioneers (Time)

The post 10 new ways to take social actions appeared first on Socialbrite.

White House push for social innovation from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

By JD Lasica

At the Social Capital Markets conference this week, one highlight came in the opening keynote and panel discussion with Sonal Shah, Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation, who spoke about the federal government’s support for innovative, bottom-up social and community programs. Above is a 2 1/2-minute snippet. Some highlights of her talk:

• She talked about allocating resources toward high-impact models through the Social Innovation Fund that was part of the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act. The Foundation Center has the details.

• She underscored the need for working across sectors, with the federal government playing a role to bring together nonprofits, the private sector and government agencies.

• Shah also pointed to the need to identify tools to help foster a culture of social innovation. (Perhaps Socialbrite can play a role here.)

I had my hand raised throughout the Q&A session but wasn’t called on. I would have said: Many people in the audience no doubt have some ideas on how to move this agenda of social innovation forward. Aside from the handful of foundations and nonprofits in contact with your office, how can we do so? What’s the best public forum? Where should these conversations be taking place?

By Beth Kanter

I was fortunate to have a press pass to SoCap09 this week, which got me a front row seat for the keynote address by Sonal Shah and panel discussion with Andrew Wolk, Root Cause; Vanessa Kirsch, New Profit; and Carla Javits, REDF, moderated by Jeff Bradach, Bridgespan Group.

Sonal Shah gave an overview of the goals and strategies for the Office of Social Innovation. Nathaniel Whittemore of Change.org, who was sitting next to me, has a great write up of the keynote. Marco Puccia has notes here as well.

I live tweeted the key points.  The main themes that resonated for me:

• Don’t get distracted: Sonal Shah warned, “Don’t think about us as the ‘office that does cool stuff.’  She was warning against shiny object syndrome and used a different “s” word.
• Government and feedback loops – how can they take the field’s learnings and incorporate in theirs?
• Measurement is the major theme as the sector grows up. There was an emphasis on finding consistent or standardized quantitative benchmarks.
• However, there was also a plea not to make evaluation painful, collecting huges amount of data and not using it to improve a program.
• A different spin on the concept of mistakes and failure: “Mistakes should be considered failures if they fail to correct the problem. And if the correction creates new problems.”
• The need for some experimentation before a program or project rolls out or scales.  There is something beneath the language of “what works” that can kill innovation.
• That it is about effectiveness and quality, not growth

I learned a new term, “Hockey Stick Returns,” that colleague Nedra defined for me. The context is that many projects don’t offer this.

I attended a panel called “The Future of Social Innovation on the Web” This all-guy panel was facilitated by Dennis Whittle, Global Giving and featured Premal Shah, Kiva.org; Jonathan Greenblatt, Our Good Works;
Steve Newcomb, Virgance; and Ben Rattray, Change.org. I tweeted some of the key points.

After the session,  after waiting an hour for Premal Shah to be available for a quick interview, he graciously shared his thoughts on what Web 3.0 looks like as did Dennis Whittle. I also interviewed Shara Karasic , who was in the audience. Premal talked about the need for creating magic for the users and building in workflow software that was facilitated relationship building through the ladder of engagement.

Dennis introduced each panelist with a personal story of how they met. I loved what he said about  Premal Shah — that he wanted to apply for a job at Kiva after hearing him speak.   He set up the panel with a definition of Web 3.0 — it wasn’t about the real-time web or semantic web. He defined it this way: “If Web 1.0 is about one-way communication, and web 2.0 is about two-way communication, Web 3.0 is about building a bridge between two-way online communication and offline actions and impact.”

He asked each of the panelists to describe where they think the field is now.  Ben Rattray said: “The vast majority of social good platforms have failed because they have modeled social good platforms on commercial applications.  We assumed that if we  created a generic platform that  people would start their own actions. They don’t. It isn’t as easy to throw up an action on the web as it is to throw up a video. We faced challenges. The vision is to provide a platform for collective social action. It is so easy for people who care about an issue — it is easy to connect.   There must be catalytic organizations. If you build the platform, will spontaneous organizing happen?”  No! Synthesis of grassroots organization to channel social change.

He asked each of the panelists to discuss what they were most proud of in their project’s achievements. Jonathan Greenblatt of All for Good talked about the work they were doing to bring volunteer opportunities to Americans who want to serve. He also spoke about his accomplishments with Ethos Water.

Premal Shah talked about the importance of the user experience to create a compelling reason to give:

“Kiva is at the intersection of money and meaning. There is going to be a socially responsible investment. There is a third axis — it is not about ROI or social impact. It’s the user experience that drives adoption. Never underestimate something that is fun and has short feedback loops. If we want people to engage, it has to be easy, fun, and addictive. Return on experience versus investment.

Dennis also asked panelists to share some of the criticisms they’ve received along the way.

Several themes that came out in the discussion:

• The line between for-profit and nonprofit
• Balance between cooperation and competition
• Are there too many social entrepreneurs? If your idea isn’t high quality, why not work with someone else instead?
• Don’t give up!

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The cause-filled life from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Sloane Berrent, who publishes TheCausemopolitan and blogs at LAist and GirlsinTech.net, talks about causes and building community in this 3 1/2-minute video interview. I caught up with her a few minutes after the LA tech scene session she co-moderated at South by Southwest 2009 in Austin; the session drew about 120 people.

Sloane, who practices what she preaches, is heading to the Philippines as a @kiva fellow for 12 weeks. She’ll be at the Kiva fellows social Wednesday at 6:30 pm in San Francisco. She’s already a good way toward raising the $7,500 she needs for air fare, vaccinations, work vise, lodging, transportation and daily living costs — you can support her here.

In the video, she talks about the cause-filled life and the powerful combination of social media tools and face-to-face interaction in raising funds for worthy causes.

Watch or embed the video on Vimeo
Download the .mp4 video from Archive.org

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Here’s a 4 1/2-minute interview with Premal Shah, president of the nonprofit microfinance lender Kiva.org, conducted at the Craigslist Nonprofit Bootcamp in San Mateo, Calif.

The next Bay Area Craigslist Nonprofit Bootcamp will be held June 20 in Berkeley. Register now — it’s always an inspiring gathering.

In our conversation, Premal discusses not just Kiva but other online services that are of great help to nonprofits, including myc4, microplace, prosper.com, Google Checkout, techsoup and Salesforce’s program for nonprofits.

Kiva has become one of my favorite sites, performing a spectacularly valuable service on a global scale. Check them out and consider supporting a small business or entrepreneur in the developing world with a $25 loan. (Remarkably, on two occasions recently I logged into the site to make a micro-loan and was told that all the applicants had been fully funded.)

Watch or embed video on Vimeo
Watch or download video in H.264 QuickTime on Ourmedia
Download original video from Archive.org

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And so it was earlier this evening when Sundeep Ahuja — a born connector and former marketing chief for Kiva who’s now on the executive team at RichRelevance.com — organized the second  awareness2action event at the Dragonbar in San Francisco’s North Beach. The event, attended by about 60 people involved with various social causes, featured an hour of socializing and an hour of panelists discussing social enterprises.

On the panel:

• Premal Shah, President of Kiva.org (here’s the video interview with Premal I published last week)

• Kevin Jones, Principal at Good Capital

• Steve Newcomb, serial entrepreneur & founder of Virgance.

No one videotaped the event, but here are a few snippets:

Kevin Jones mentioned the-hub.net, a co-working space for social entrepreneurs that began in London and has spread to about 8 locations in all. Good Capital is looking into opening a co-location space in San Francisco.

Steve Newcomb: "I’m on a hiring spree — I’m not paying anything, but I’m on a hiring spree." … "I don’t know how to replicate what the Barack Obama campaign did and apply it to business."

Premal Shah announced the first downturn in lending in Kiva’s history: a 10 percent drop from a year ago because of the economic downturn. The nonprofit has reduced its 2009 budget from $6 million to $4.4 million.

Premal said Kiva planned to release a developer platform with an open API in 2009 so that the community could create additional features and unlock more growth. Great news!

Premal also said Kiva should empower the 17-year-old in Boise, give him the Kiva Powerpoint presentation decks and publish it out on SlideShare. Even if volunteer evangelists got some of the facts wrong, just spreading the word is an enormous win.

Newcomb echoed the approach I’m taking with the upcoming launches of Social Media Camps and Socialbrite.org [this blog] by citing the "train the trainers" model. While many people thought the Obama campaign was a decentralized, democratically run effort, in truth the campaign used a hybrid model of command and control at the top facilitating grassroots efforts at the bottom — "managed empowerment," in Newcomb’s words.

Cool webite: Carrotmob. Carrotmob organizes consumers to make purchases that give financial rewards to those businesses that agree to make socially beneficial choices.

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