SuperGuide to events for nonprofits & social good organizations

Here’s our roundup of conferences in the nonprofit and social change sectors coming up in 2013. This has become an annual tradition here at Socialbrite, and we hope you’ll bookmark this page and return to it throughout the year — we’ll be updating it throughout 2013 as more conference details firm up.

We’ll be reporting on many of these events and invite you to share your coverage or observations on Socialbrite, or let us know and we’ll tweet it or Facebook it. Throughout the year we’ll publish monthly calendars on the first of the month.

If you know of other must-attend events, please add them by posting in the comments below. Note that on Monday we’ll be publishing a calendar of 2013 conferences in social media, tech, mobile and marketing on our sister site, Socialmedia.biz.

Update: Here’s Socialmedia.biz’s 2013 conferences: Social media, tech, mobile & marketing.

Conference	Date	Place
January
NMX: New Media Expo	Jan. 6-8	Las Vegas
New Media Expo, often called Blogworld, is the first and only tradeshow, conference and media event dedicated to promoting the dynamic industry of blogging and new media. If you are currently blogging, vlogging, podcasting, producing some other form of new media content, thinking about joining the exciting industry of new media or just want to know what this whole blogging phenomena is all about then you need to be at New Media Expo.
TransportationCamp	Jan. 12	Washington, DC
TransportationCamp is an unconference series about transportation and technology. Meet the thinkers and doers, and get ready to talk and learn about improving mobility, information design methods, bike share systems and more.
WordCamp	Various	Worldwide
WordCamps are informal, community-organized events that are put together by WordPress users like you (note: They’re generally not free). Everyone from casual users to core developers participate, share ideas and get to know each other. The year’s first WordCamp takes place in Victoria, British Columbia, on Jan. 12. See the main Word Camp site for a full schedule of events.
Food + Justice = Democracy	Jan. 18	Chicago
This national meeting is a call to action for activists, urban farmers, food system workers, immigrant rights advocates and anyone seeking to explore community-driven solutions to promote food equity through the lens of race, class and gender.
Intersection Event	Jan. 19	Mtn. View, Calif.
What would happen if you put some of the most innovative, ground-breaking thought leaders from the business world in a room with some of the most creative and influential social change agents of our time for one day? The Intersection Event will forge an “intersection” of ideas and commentary between leading innovators from academia, entrepreneurship, technology and entertainment.
PodCamp Halifax	Jan. 20	Halifax, Nova Scotia
A PodCamp is a free BarCamp-style community unconference for new media enthusiasts and professionals including bloggers, podcasters, YouTube producers, social networkers and anyone curious about new media. See the main PodCamp site for a full schedule of events, including Toronto and Cincinnati.
World Economic Forum	Jan. 23-27	Davos-Klosters, Switzerland
For more than 40 years, Davos has provided an unrivalled platform for leaders from all walks of life to shape the global, regional, industry and business agendas at the beginning of the year. The 2013 program includes The Global Agenda: How to get the global economy back on to a path of stable growth and higher employment, How to address persistent vulnerabilities within the international financial system, How to increase global, national and industry resilience to major systemic and catastrophic risks, and more.
She’s Geeky	Jan. 25-27	Mountain View, Calif.
She’s Geeky convenes to inspire women for the future, creating a space to connect women from diverse STEM (sci-tech) communities. They promote activities and organizations in regions around the country, inviting participants to meet in an unconference setting where the agenda is created live at the event.
EmMeCon: Emerging Media	Jan. 28-31	San Francisco
The Emerging Media Conference welcomes attendees with an opportunity to view and experience the latest in technology advances and upcoming product roll-outs. Included in this unique program are demonstrations, presentations and discussions led by some of the most connected and recognized experts in the industry.
February
Washington Nonprofit Conference	Feb. 7-8	Washington, DC
The Washington Nonprofit Conference is an annual two-day event where more than 800 fundraising and marketing professional in the nonprofit and commercial sectors gather to exchange innovative marketing and fundraising ideas, generate insightful solutions and think creatively. The conference hopes to offer a platform for improving public awareness and receptivity to direct and interactive market-driven philanthropy.
Social Enterprise	Feb. 9-10	Boston
This year’s theme at the Social Enterprise conference at Harvard is Create. Connect. Commit. The gathering’s organizers hope to catalyze a forum to create, to enable individuals and organizations to connect and to inspire one another to commit.
Marin Nonprofit Forum	Feb. 14	San Rafael, Calif.
The Center for Volunteer and Nonprofit Leadership in Marin brings together experts and practitioners for learning and reflection by convening the bi-annual Marin Nonprofit Conference and issue-based Forums. This year’s Nonprofit Forum will identify what we have in common and how we can tell that story in a way that builds partnerships with donors and clients.
Media That Matters	Feb. 15	Washington, DC
Media That Matters (not to be confused with the long-running Media That Matters in B.C.) is an annual conference presented by the Center for Social Media at American University. It’s designed for established and aspiring filmmakers, nonprofit communications leaders, funders and students who want to learn and share cutting-edge practices to make their media matter.
Strategic Co-Funding: A Grantmaker Convening	Feb. 21	Washington, DC
Grantmakers for Effective Organizations brings together a group of 150 grantmakers to explore different approaches to strategic co-funding. This daylong convening will offer participants opportunities to deepen their knowledge and advance their practice around key areas such as building trust; developing joint strategies, goals and common processes and more.
Wisdom 2.0	Feb. 21-24	San Francisco
Join Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone, Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, author Marianne Williamson and others at Wisdom 2.0, and explore the great challenge of our age: to not only live connected to one another through technology, but to do so in ways that are beneficial to our own well-being, effective in our work and useful to the world. This conference brings together people from the worlds of tech, business, spirituality, wellness and more.
ACM: Computer Supported Cooperative Work	Feb. 23-27	San Antonio, Texas
CSCW is the premier venue for presenting research in the design and use of technologies that affect groups, organizations, communities and networks. Bringing together top researchers and practitioners from academia and industry in the area of social computing, CSCW 2013 will build on this strong history with venues including papers, workshops, panels, a Doctoral Colloquium and more.
TED	Feb. 25-Mar 1	Long Beach, Calif.
The best moments at TED have often come from unexpected places. But this year, the organizers are pushing that to a new level, staging a global talent search to bring together the most remarkable lineup in TED’s history. This year’s theme: The Young. The Wise. The Undiscovered.
TEDActive	Feb.25-Mar 1	Palm Springs, Calif.
TEDActive is a curated community of 700 curious and energetic leaders who share an immersive week of TEDTalks (mainly through video links) and surprising experiences designed to inspire conversation, exchange and immediate action around ideas worth spreading. TEDActive provides a journey through critical conversation, joyful exchange and deep thought.
Nonprofit Communication Workshop	Feb. 28	Bentonville, Ark.
The Center for Nonprofit Communication at Drury University presents a one-day conference for nonprofit organizations, The Nonprofit Communication Workshop, that will provide nonprofit professionals with strategies for improving communication and creating stronger connections with donors, volunteers, businesses and the community.
March
Front End of Innovation EMEA	March 4-6	Copenhagen
This is the first and only event to solve industry challenges in real time. Front End of Innovation EMEA provides new ways to deliver value through innovation by connecting through content. This is the one event for best-in-class presentations from multi-national leaders.
Mission-Driven Management Summit	March 5-6	Washington, DC
The Mission-Driven Management Summit is the only event of its kind in North America that features case studies from Hall of Fame social and public sector organizations that successfully use the Balanced Scorecard method to achieve results. This event is designed for managers and executives of all levels interested in building and sustaining a high-performance organization.
DANSIC13	March 7	Copenhagen
DANSIC13 is the biggest conference focused on social innovation. The conference will bring together over 300 dedicated and motivated students, social entrepreneurs and managers for a day focusing on how social innovation can create a sustainable society where business and the common good go hand in hand. page translation
Social Media for Nonprofits	March 7	New York
Join 5,000 peers at the world’s premier series dedicated to social media for social good. All sessions are designed to provide attendees with concrete insights and takeaways, showcasing best practices, pitfalls to avoid and free, helpful resources for nonprofits and causes.
SXSW	March 8-17	Austin, Texas
South by Southwest offer the unique convergence of original music, independent films and emerging technologies. Fostering creative and professional growth alike, SXSW is the premier destination for discovery. Join cool geeks and techies, indie filmmakers or up-and-coming musical acts.
SOCAP Soul	March 9	Boston
Social Capital Markets plants a flag at MIT for a one-day gathering of social entrepreneurs and change agents.
Corporate Contributions	March 10-13	New Orleans
The Annual Conference on Corporate Contributions is the premier conference in the U.S. for professionals in corporate citizenship, corporate social responsibility, community relations and volunteerism, assembling well-known speakers, authors, practitioners and educators.
eCampaigning Forum	March 13-14	Oxford, UK
The eCampaigning Forum is a groundbreaking event and community for campaigning and digital campaigning leaders and to connect, share experience and learn together.
Grants Managers Network	March 18-20	St. Petersburg, Fla.
At the Grants Managers Network Annual Conference gain valuable new ideas, tools and resources at interactive, hands-on learning sessions designed to support those new to the field as well as seasoned professionals. This conference will equip you to solve the most pressing challenges facing our industry today. Don’t miss this opportunity to explore bold ideas that can position you and your organization for success.
Left Forum	March 18-20	New York
Left Forum convenes the largest annual conference of a broad spectrum of left and progressive intellectuals, activists, academics, organizations and the public. Participants come together to engage a wide range of critical perspectives on the world, to discuss differences, commonalities, and alternatives to current challenges and to share ideas for understanding and transforming the world.
Cause Conference	March 19-20	San Diego
The Cause Conference brings together both for-profit and nonprofit professionals at the largest cause partnership event on the West Coast. This year’s conference focuses on the intersection of purpose and profit and how creating meaningful partnerships leads to sustainable value.
Social Enterprise Exchange	March 21	Glasgow, UK
Social Enterprise is a dynamic way of doing business that can transform communities and drive lasting social change. This conference will give you the opportunity to network, interact and learn from high-caliber speakers in a topical and thought-provoking program as well as meet, trade and do business with 150 exhibitors.
BlissDom	March 21-23	Dallas
BlissDom is for women who find and express their bliss by publishing online. Speakers and panels will feature the best blogging, public relations and social media pros who’ll be on hand to mentor new and old friends. At this ninth conference, speakers and panels featuring the best blogging, public relations and social media pros will be gathering to mentor new and old friends alike.
April
Innogive: Innovative Giving Conference	April 2	San Francisco
The path to successful mobile fundraising starts with successful donor cultivation of mobile engagement, resulting in successful fundraising campaigns. Innogive will be holding its fourth annual conference for innovative use of mobile tech by nonprofits.
National Conference for Media Reform	April 5-7	Denver
Organized by FreePress.net, the National Conference for Media Reform is dedicated to changing the media and building a better democracy.
Clinton Global Initiative University	April 5-7	St. Louis
This fifth annual gathering will bring together students and national youth organizations to create and implement Commitments to Action across five focus areas: Education, Environment & Climate Change, Peace & Human Rights, Poverty Alleviation and Public Health. The CGI U meeting will include plenary sessions, working sessions and other special events that provide participants (who must apply by Jan. 30) with a wide variety of knowledge-sharing and networking opportunities.
AFP International Conference on Fundraising	April 7-9	San Diego
For the past half-century, the AFP International Conference on Fundraising has helped fundraising professionals around the world face a variety of challenges. This year, the goal is to engage and re-energize the fundraising industry, create balance, focus on critical priorities and simplify complexities.
Investing In Women	April 10–12	Detroit
This conference brings together hundreds of leaders in women’s philanthropy, including grantmakers, donors, industry experts and activists. Investing in Women will explore the latest models in collaboration, in giving and in making an impact. Hear from organizations who are making lasting systems change in the U.S. and around the world, and learn how to measure the impact of your work and tell the story to increase engagement.
Skoll World Forum	April 10-12	Oxford, UK
Since 2004, the Skoll Foundation and its partners at the Skoll Centre at Oxford University have convened this invitational event, which hosts more than 800 delegates from over 65 countries for three remarkable days of sharing, learning and inspiration. Delegates represent the best and brightest thinkers and practitioners from the social, academic, finance, private and policy sectors.
NTC: Nonprofit Technology Conference	April 11-13	Minneapolis, Minn.
This three-day gathering brings together nonprofit professionals from around the world to collaborate, innovate and maximize effectiveness. With a wide mix of social events, seminars, trainings and resources, NTEN’s Nonprofit Technology Conference will help you put technology to work to further your cause.
Global Health and Innovation	April 13-14	New Haven, Conn.
Last year Unite for Sight’s Global Health and Innovation Conference devoted a full session of speakers to Social Change and Impact and addressed issues regarding changing the world for the better. Here is the speakers’ lineup for this spring, including speakers at the forefront of philanthropy and social entrepreneurshp.
Global Philanthropy Forum	April 15-17	Redwood City, Calif.
A project of the World Affairs Council of Northern California, the Global Philanthropy Forum aims to build a community of donors and social investors committed to international causes and to inform, enable and enhance the strategic nature of their work. The gathering is intended for individuals who have made a significant commitment to international philanthropy, donors who have established family foundations and executives of corporate, private or public foundations based in the U.S. and overseas.
Sustainatopia	April 16-22	Miami
With 60 individual events in film, art, music, eco-fashion, food, design, parties and two major impact investing conferences, Sustainatopia is one of the biggest sustainability and impact investing events in the hemisphere.
Sankalp Unconvention Summit	April 17-18	Mumbai, India
The Sankalp Forum is a holistic ecosystem designed to catalyze impact investments into sustainable and scalable social enterprises globally. The annual Sankalp Unconvention Summit is one of Asia’s largest collaborative platforms to bring together social enterprises, impact investors, policy makers, academicians and other market makers. The summit will bring the entire network together to discuss emerging trends and to recognize the best social enterprise models through the Sankalp Awards.
Global Engagement Summit	April 17-21	Evanston, Ill.
The Global Engagement Summit builds the capacity of the next generation of change-makers. By identifying talented, young individuals, providing skills training and connecting driven students with innovative thought leaders, GES empowers them to produce responsible and sustainable solutions to shared global problems. In addition to tangible outcomes, resources and opportunities, GES also strives to provide a forum for discussing critical issues and evaluating why we want to “do good well.”
Global CSR Summit	April 19-20	Philippines
The Global CSR Summit & Awards 2013 celebrates its 5th successive year at the beautiful city of Davao on Boracay Island in the Philippines. Organized by the Pinnacle Group International, the summit on corporate social responsibility has been at the forefront of the sustainability debate, introducing cutting-edge ideas and issues to the Asian business community.
Corporate Citizenship	April 21-23	Boston
Successful corporate citizenship is all about managing many interests – the community, workplace, marketplace, investors and others – in a way that contributes to the bottom line. How to make this work for your company is the focus of this year’s Corporate Citizenship Conference.
Social Venture Network Spring	April 25-28	San Diego
Social Venture Network connects, supports and inspires business leaders and social entrepreneurs in expanding practices that build a just and sustainable economy.
Ignite Phoenix	April 26	Scottsdale, Ariz.
Ignite Phoenix is an information exchange, fostering and inspiring Phoenix and global communities to share, experience and enjoy different topics from the creative and subjective, to inspirational, technical and philosophical. Presentations will educate, exhilarate, motivate and move you, and you’ll look at your world in a whole new light.
Connections	April 29-30	Calgary, Canada
Calgary Chamber of Voluntary Organization’s conference will bring together leaders from the nonprofit sector, the corporate community, government and other funders and community leaders to dialogue about the significant changes that will impact the sector and its ability to meet community needs in the future.
May
Business4Better (B4B)	May 1-2	Anaheim, Calif.
Business4Better (B4B) will bring together midsize business, large corporations and nonprofits to define mutually beneficial partnerships. The B4B conference, expo and movement encourages a level of engagement that will inspire businesses to action, connect them with like-minded nonprofit organizations and create better-than-ever partnerships that are redefining social purpose and transforming business impact on societal causes.
Digital Leap	May 2	Toronto
At the Digital Leap 2013 conference, learn digital marketing strategy and techniques from the experts, find out about incredible digital marketing opportunities for your charity, give your digital presence a boost for better results and many more.
99U	May 2–3	New York
The goal of the 99U Conference is to shift the focus from idea generation to idea execution. To accomplish this, we bring together some of the world’s most productive creative visionaries and leading researchers to share pragmatic insights on how ideas are brought to life.
Front End of Innovation	May 6-8	Boston
Front End of Innovation brings together the best of the best in innovation, R&D, product development, commercialization, marketing and strategy from leading Fortune 1000 companies to be enlightened and inspired.
501(c)onference	May 10	New York
The second annual 501(c)onference is a full-day conference for professionals and leaders in the nonprofit sector. This conference is designed to bring nonprofit professionals together to connect people, resources and good ideas so we can imagine, design and build a stronger future together.
Connecting Up Australia	May 15-17	Sydney
With the theme of navigating not-for-profits in the new world, Connecting Up Australia will guide not-for-profits through new tools and ideas in the world of technology, social media and digital marketing to help them continue to innovate. The conference is an opportunity for not-for-profits to learn from inspiring international and local speakers, to engage and share with other delegates and walk away with new insights to prepare their organization for the new world and take their not-for-profit to the next level.
Social Enterprise Alliance	May 19-22	Minneapolis, Minn.
Social Enterprise Alliance aims for social enterprise to reach its full potential as a force for positive social change, in service to the common good. To achieve this purpose, they provide social enterprises with the tools and resources they need to succeed and work on building an optimal environment.
Social Media for Nonprofits	May 20	Boston
In this conference series, these sessions are designed to provide attendees with concrete insights and takeaways, showcasing best practices, pitfalls to avoid and free, helpful resources for nonprofits and causes.
Impact Investing in Action	May 20-23	Washington, DC
Impact Investing in Action is a new kind of conference designed to support the flow of capital to early-stage companies creating change in the world. IIA’13 was launched to connect entrepreneurs with impact investors. Come meet outstanding, investment-ready companies using the market the solve social problems, learn about new investment vehicles to make it easier than ever to invest, and build relationships with some of the most inspiring and dynamic change makers you will ever meet.
Center for Effective Philanthropy	May 21-22	Detroit
The Center for Effective Philanthropy’s national conference, with the theme Pursuing Results: Effective Foundation Practice, will provide philanthropic leaders with resources to maximize their effectiveness. Leaders of foundations working in Detroit will share their views on what has and hasn’t worked in their efforts to help one of the most challenged cities in America and will explore critical issues ranging from impact investing to nonprofit performance measurement and the unique challenges of being a foundation CEO.
Alliance for Community Media	May 29	San Francisco
The Alliance for Community Media is where progressive media makers come together to learn and collaborate. This year’s theme is “Collaborate.” The conference focus will support the growth of business opportunities for community media centers.
Cause Marketing Forum	May 29-30	Chicago
Cause Marketing Forum was founded in 2002 with the goal of increasing the number of successful company/cause alliances by providing business and nonprofit executives with the practical information and connections they need to succeed.
Global Action Forum	TBD	Los Angeles
The Global Action Forum was conceived to redirect the traditional fundraising approach to philanthropy toward fearlessly building bottom-up campaigns emotionally connecting and creating communities that over time morph into movements for generations to come.
June
The Learning Conference	June 3-4	Miami
The Learning Conference will bring together more than 200 leaders in philanthropy for cutting-edge conversations that will showcase diverse perspectives, strategies and solutions to help navigate the challenges and opportunities associated with making learning a priority.
EmMeCon: Emerging Media Conference	June 3-6	Seattle
The Emerging Media Conference welcomes attendees with an opportunity to view and experience the latest in technology advances and upcoming product roll-outs. Included in this program are demonstrations, presentations and discussions led by some of the most connected and recognized experts in the industry.
Sustainable Brands	June 3-6	San Diego
Sustainable Brands is an international community of learning and action focused on understanding and leveraging the role of brands in shaping a flourishing future. The gathering is ground zero for sustainability, brand and innovation professionals who come together from around the world to be inspired, engaged and equipped to succeed by building the better brands of tomorrow, while building a network of like-minded colleagues who can help.
NMC Summer Conference	June 4-7	South Carolina
The NMC Summer Conference is a one-of-a-kind event, attracting an audience of hundreds of highly skilled professionals interested in the integration of emerging technologies into teaching, learning and creative inquiry.
Fundraising Day	June 5	Toronto
The Association of Fundraising Professionals is the professional association for individuals responsible for generating philanthropic support for a wide variety of charitable organizations. In thie annual event, the association advances philanthropy in society by enabling people and organizations to practice effective and ethical fundraising.
NCTech4Good	June 6-7	Chapel Hill, N.C.
This conference is designed to serve nonprofit professionals, volunteers and consultants, as well as small business owners. The conference focuses on technologies in areas such as fundraising, social media and communication and advocacy tools, offering both pre-selected presentations and workshops and spontaneous sessions.
Personal Democracy Forum	June 6-7	New York
Personal Democracy Forum is the world’s leading conference exploring and analyzing technology’s impact on politics and government. Join hundreds of individuals interested in how technology is changing politics, governance and society.
Social Change Institute	June 6-10	Hollyhock, B.C
At the Social Change Institute, you’ll gain insight into the latest movement and organizing strategies, online tools, campaigns and leadership practices while immersed in the stunning natural setting of Canada’s leading educational retreat center: Hollyhock. This is your chance to break away from the daily pressures of work and life. To think big, focus your intensions, sharpen your skills and make life-long connections.
North by Northeast	June 10-16	Toronto
Now in its 19th year, North by Northeast has become the Canadian festival destination for emerging artists and major-label headliners, for music filmmakers and for digital interactive innovators bridging the gap between technology and the arts. Seen as the most anticipated summer music event in Canada, NXNE Music, NXNE Film and NXNE Interactive are an essential gathering for artists, industry and fans.
Social Media for Nonprofits	June 13	Mountain View, Calif.
In this conference series, these sessions are designed to provide attendees with concrete insights and takeaways, showcasing best practices, pitfalls to avoid and free, helpful resources for nonprofits and causes.
Tällberg Forum	June 13-15	Stockholm
The Tällberg Forum is an arena for reflection, conversations and the search for creative solutions, integrating both nature and the arts, where people feel free to step outside of their professional identity, to share doubts and new ideas and to search for ways forward outside of established frameworks. It acts to stimulate the conversation on, and design solutions to, the problems of our times in order to foster new thinking and solutions.
Symposium on Scaling Social Impact	June 17	New York
Social Impact Exchange’s Symposium on Scaling Social Impact will bring together nonprofit leaders, funders, professional service providers and academics to explore the state of scaling in the nonprofit sector. The symposium is a wonderful opportunity for those interested in advancing the field of social impact to network with other like-minded professionals and build knowledge and increase skills for this important work.
National Conference on Volunteering and Service	June 19-22	Washington, DC
This National Conference on Volunteering and Service provides attendees an opportunity to learn, connect and be inspired through a wide range of exciting and informative plenary sessions, workshops, immersion learnings, special events, service projects, exhibits, specialized tracks and more.
Allied Media	June 20-23	Detroit
The Allied Media Conference cultivates strategies for a more just and creative world. We come together to share tools and tactics for transforming our communities through media-based organizing.
Netroots Nation	June 20-23	San Jose
Netroots Nation amplifies progressive voices by providing an online and in-person campus for exchanging ideas and learning how to be more effective in using technology to influence the public debate. At the annual convention, participants strengthen the community, inspire action and serve as an incubator for ideas that challenge the status quo and ultimately affect change in the public sphere.
Indie Web Camp	June 22-23	Portland, Ore.
Indie Web Camp is a regular gathering of web creators building and sharing open Web technologies to advance the state of the independent Web and empower users to own their own identities and content on the Web. Participants get together for a weekend to talk about what has been done in the field, what still needs to be done and then spend a day hacking and creating.
Aspen Ideas Festival	June 26-July 2	Aspen, Colo.
The Aspen Ideas Festival will gather some of the most interesting thinkers and leaders from around the U.S. and abroad to discuss their work, the issues that inspire them and their ideas. Presented by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic, the festival is dedicated to dialogue and exchange and in its commitment to bringing ideas to the public at large.
July
International Development Design Summit	July 1-31	Zambia
The International Development Design Summit is an intense, hands-on design experience that brings together people from all over the world and all walks of life to create technologies and enterprises that improve the lives of people living in poverty.
Partnering for Global Impact	Lugano, Switzerland
The annual Partnering for Global Impact (PGI) conference encourages participants to share knowledge, engage with issues, explore investment opportunities and partner with one another. The event is designed to enable participants to learn about and pursue investment opportunities with both a social and a financial return.
Project SEARCH	July 15-19	Austin, Texas
Project SEARCH is dedicated to providing education and training to young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities through an innovative workforce and career development model that benefits the individual,workplace and community.
Community Leadership Summit	July 20-21	Portland, Ore.
The Community Leadership Summit is the meeting place for community managers and leaders from all around the world. The event pulls together the leading minds in community management, relations and online collaboration to discuss, debate and continue to refine the art of building an effective and capable community.
OSCON	July 22-26	Portland, Ore.
OSCON is the gathering place for the entire open source community. It’s where all the pieces of the open platform come together. Unlike other conferences that focus entirely on one language or part of the stack, OSCON deals with the open source ecosystem in its entirety, exactly as you approach it in your work.
Bridge to Integrated Marketing & Fundraising	July 31-Aug. 2	Washington, DC
The Bridge conference brings together some of the biggest buyers, sellers and users of fundraising and direct marketing products and services. The three-day event features nationally and internationally renowned speakers and cutting-edge educational programming.
August
ASAE Annual Meeting & Exposition	Aug. 3-6	Atlanta
Learn and grow. Challenge and inspire. Lead and succeed. The possibilities are endless. At ASAE, you’ll engage with thought-provoking speakers, experience innovative session formats, enjoy world-class networking events and much more.
International Democratic Education	Aug. 4-8	Boulder, Colo.
IDEC is a conference that brings together practitioners, organizers, academics, youths and educators for an international exchange on the transformation of communities, schools and learning to ensure that all young people can engage meaningfully in their education and gain the tools to build a just, sustainable, democratic world.
SXSW V2V	Aug. 11-14	Las Vegas
SXSW V2V is the newest addition to the SXSW series of events. It’s an extension and reimagining of the SXSW experience with an emphasis on the creative spark that drives entrepreneurial innovation. This four-day event brings the startup and venture capital communities together with the creative industries that have helped to make SXSW so special. V2V serves innovators and entrepreneurs from across all the industries at the core of SXSW as they learn the skills, make the connections and find the inspiration to take their ideas and talents to the next level.
September
SOCAP	Sept. 3-6	San Francisco
The venerable Social Capital Markets gathering for social entrepreneurs and change agents will return to SF’s Fort Mason Center.
Nonprofit Management Institute	Sept. 10-11	Stanford, Calif.
The Nonprofit Management Institute is conducted by leaders in the field of social change: academics known for their work at Stanford and at other renowned universities and well-known practitioners who will share their insights and experiences from successes in the field.
Web of Change	Sept. 18-22	San Antonio, Texas
Web of Change is a series of conferences that connects the foremost thinkers and doers in the growing community of social change and technology from across North America.
Social Venture Institute	Sept. 18-22	Cortes Island, BC
Join business leaders and social entrepreneurs at the Social Venture Institute for an intensive, interactive inquiry into how to face the day-to-day challenges of running a socially conscious enterprise. Take advantage of this opportunity to fine tune business strategies, learn best practices for solving problems and build long lasting relationships with business peers and mentors.
IdeaFestival	Sept. 24-27	Louisville, Ky.
IdeaFestival is a celebration for the intellectually curious. It’s an eclectic network of global thinkers and one-of-a-kind innovators bound together by an intense curiosity about what is impacting and shaping the future of the arts, business, technology, design, science, philosophy and education.
ArtezInterAction	Sept. 26	Toronto
Whether you’re a seasoned fundraising veteran or new to fundraising, ArtezInterAction has something for everyone. This one-day conference is designed for fundraisers looking to accelerate their online activities.
Blackbaud Conference for Nonprofits	Sept. 29-Oct. 2	National Harbor, Md.
Join this conference to experience everything you love about the Blackbaud Conference — three days of educational content dedicated to your specific needs and opportunities to network and interact with your peers and industry experts.
Retail Sustainability Conference	Sept. 30-Oct. 3	Orlando, Fla.
This event brings together executives from all major retail and consumer product segments along with relevant solution providers to address the key issues of sustainability and environmental compliance for retail.
October
CONNECT	Oct. 1-3	Albuquerque, N.M.
At CONNECT, go deep into topics relevant to your philanthropy. Connect with peers and learn collaboratively in daylong seminars suited to your needs.
Social Enterprise World Forum	Oct. 2-4	Calgary, Canada
Social Enterprise World Forum will be a gathering of over 1,000 Canadian and international participants involved in the social enterprise movement. Participants will share experiences, stories and learn from an international body of knowledge and experience. This event is a unique opportunity to catalyze the social enterprise sector by furthering the creation of a supportive environment for success.
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing	Oct. 2-5	Minneapolis, Minn.
At the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, the theme will be “Thing Big, Drive Forward.” The conference provides rich professional development sessions wherever you are in your career: from students just starting out to mid-career technologist to senior technical women.
Salsa Community	Oct. 9-10	Washington, DC
At Salsa, expect new activities like networking – you’ll have more opportunities to network with Salsa staff, Salsa partners and your fellow do-gooders in the community. They’ll offer “Birds of a Pepper” roundtables and add more opportunities to share your stories with one another in sessions and dedicated networking time and on-site certification testing and tutoring.
Social Media for Nonprofits	Oct. 13	Austin, Texas
In this conference series, these sessions are designed to provide attendees with concrete insights and takeaways, showcasing best practices, pitfalls to avoid and free, helpful resources for nonprofits and causes.
Poverty Alleviation Un-Conference	Oct. 13-18	Ixtapa, Mexico
The Poverty Alleviation Un-Conference by Opportunity Collaboration is a four-day problem-solving, strategic retreat for nonprofit leaders, for-profit social entrepreneurs, grant-makers and social investors engaged in economic justice enterprises. This gathering leverages resources, shares innovations, enlists allies, builds coalitions and creates force multipliers.
GigaOM Mobilize	Oct. 16-17	San Francisco
GigaOM’s Mobilize conference will explore the next frontier for connected devices. The world’s leading mobile thinkers and doers will be on hand to examine the wealth of opportunities spurred by the skyrocketing expansion of devices and apps.
Bioneers Conference	Oct. 18-20	San Rafael, Calif.
Explore the forefront of positive change in deeply inspiring keynote talks, panels, workshops and intensives. Network with dynamic change-makers, experience Moving Image Festival screenings and networking receptions and discover powerful opportunities and strategies for creating positive change in your work, life and community. No details have been announced for the 2013 conference.
TechNow	Oct. 24	Pittsburgh
TechNow is the Pittsburgh region’s premier one-day conference devoted to new and important trends and opportunities in technology for nonprofits.
PopTech	Oct. 24-26	Camden, Maine
An eclectic mix of thought leaders and visionaries will convene in Maine for its 17th annual gathering. A celebration for the intellectually engaged, PopTech is a chance to meet the people who are inventing our future and an opportunity to partake in stimulating presentations, exhilarating performances and life-changing conversations.
November
BSR	Nov. 5-8	San Francisco
BSR works with its global network of more than 250 member companies to develop sustainable business strategies and solutions through consulting, research and cross-sector collaboration.
BoardSource Leadership Forum	Nov. 7-8	Los Angeles
BoardSource Leadership Forum is the only national conference focused on the impact of nonprofit boards and the role they play in advancing the public good. Develop your governance skills and practices, discover solutions to your leadership challenges and increase your understanding of the key trends and issues impacting nonprofits.
Global Social Business Summit	Nov. 7-9	Vienna
The Global Social Business Summit provides a platform to establish connections with like-minded individuals through a range of opportunities for networking. This annual summit gathers worldwide social business pioneers from all kind of backgrounds — corporate, political, academic, civil societal — to share their expertise and to exchange groundbreaking ideas.
National Arts Marketing Project Conference	Nov. 8-11	Portland, Ore.
At the National Arts Marketing Project (NAMP) Conference , you’ll learn the marketing strategies that your organization needs to revolutionize the way communities engage with your organization, and explore the interactive tools and forward-thinking strategies needed to create a sense of community around your work.
December
Big Ideas Fest	Dec. 4-7	Half Moon Bay, Calif.
Big Ideas Fest is a unique three-day immersion into collaboration and design with a focus on modeling cutting-edge thinking in K-20 education.Rapid-fire speakers provide the inspiration to think differently, and Action Collabs lead the charge to create and act differently. No date set yet for the 2013 event.

Other conferences and events

We can’t possibly list every conference in the world, but if you know of other nonprofit or social good gatherings that should be included here (or if you see anything amiss), please share in the comments below.

Here are some conferences that we couldn’t find any information for in the new year:

• RootsCamp, an unconference devoted to organizers and volunteers

• Innovate / Activate at UC Berkeley, an event about intellectual property and activism

• Transparency Camp: An unconference that convenes a tribe of open government advocates in Washington, DC.

• Government Web and New Media Conference

• Games for Change Festival

• AFP TechKnow Conference

• International Green Awards in Dubai

• National Educational Telecommunications Association Conference

• Cause Placement

• SXSW Eco provided solutions for a sustainable world in October 2012 in Austin, Texas.

• The Feast

• RECHARGE! Power Up Your Capacity

• ARNOVA: Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action

• Nonprofit Software Development Summit

• Doing Good Better by Dallas Social Venture Partners

Here’s our calendar of 2012 nonprofit and social change conferences.

The post Calendar of 2013 nonprofit & social change conferences appeared first on Socialbrite.

Matanya’s Hope tells stories of Kenyan schoolchildren through photos & video

Multimedia storytelling can be an incredibly powerful tool for your organization to attract funders, motivate volunteers and demonstrate the power of your message.

Our friends at Matanya’s Hope asked us to create a visual story for their nonprofit by seamlessly blending photos and video footage that they have captured over the past several years with original interviews, music and graphics we developed.

Founded in 2005 by Illinois native Michelle Stark, Matanya’s Hope is a nonprofit dedicated to educating children in Kenya. Last summer I accompanied Michelle to Matanya Primary School and saw the destitution these children and their families face: severe poverty, hunger, lack of clothing. And I realized why Michelle is dedicating her life to this cause.

For nonprofits and other organizations looking to capture their stories through powerful imagery, here are some simple tips for creating professional-looking video:

• Use “b-roll” (stills & video)
• Incorporate stock music
• Use narration or background sounds

How to incorporate b-roll

By using B-roll – still photographs and short video clips referencing what the interviewees are talking about – you can make the video much more interesting than by solely using “talking heads” (straight interviews of people talking without any additional footage). As we are hearing Michelle talking about the children with “no shoes and torn and tattered clothing,” the still photographs visually reinforce what the interviewee is saying. B-roll also allows us to edit the interviews without a noticeable cut (“jump-cut”) in the action or picture on screen.

Use background music to add texture

Background music was also selected to set the mood of the video. Royalty-free music can be purchased online from a number of stock music websites for a modest charge. One of my favorites is Triple Scoop Music. There are also a slew of free sites offering rights-cleared music, generally using Creative Commons — see Socialbrite’s Free Music Directory.

For the Matanya’s Hope video, we licensed a song from a local Kenyan composer we discovered while we were there filming the video.

Narration and background sound round out the piece

Using natural, or ambient, sound captured while videotaping b-roll is another effective way to make the storytelling more compelling. Background sounds of children talking in a classroom help create a more natural, captivating video. Natural sounds can also be useful in making transitions or in reinforcing a point the speaker is making.

Next up: We’ll share our learnings on professional interviewing techniques.

And please make a donation to support Matanya’s Hope’s efforts to educate children in this region of Kenya. All net proceeds from the sale or leasing of photographs from the Matanya’s Hope gallery will go directly to the children of Kenya this charity supports.

Related on Socialbrite

• Online advocacy video best practices
• How to find amazing, powerful stories for your nonprofit video
• How nonprofits should be using visual storytelling
• 10 secrets to video storytelling success

The post Techniques to add dazzle to your advocacy video appeared first on Socialbrite.

Guest post by Allyson Kapin
Partner, Rad Campaign

The tools for taking action and effecting social change are getting more robust all the time. Here are five of my current favorites:

Frogloop

1I think Care2’s Frogloop is one of the most trusted sources among nonprofit campaigners for having the latest resources and best practices to engage activists and donors using multiple channels including email, texting and social media. Full disclosure: I’m the Blogger-In-Chief but I don’t think that clouds my judgment. :~)

OpenStreetMap

2OpenStreetMap is a free editable map of the nation and the world created by regular people, Wikipedia-style. It’s a fantastic tool that nonprofits should be using more. It contains a lot more open data than Google Maps.

Threadsy

3If you’re the type of nonprofit campaigner who thrives off of multitasking, Threadsy could be a life saver. In a nutshell, it’s a dashboard that allows you to manage email, Twitter, Facebook, instant messaging – all in one place! It was in beta but now it has just been released to the public.

Idealware

4Idealware provides some of the best research and data to help nonprofits make smart software decisions – anything from choosing open source content management systems and the differences between them to low-cost data visualization tools.

The Petition Site

5Care2’s The Petition Site enables anyone — not just nonprofits — to start a petition around social action issues, from stopping the Sable Island seal slaughter to protecting against new drilling.

In this series

• Change-makers share 10 of their favorite tools

• An educator’s 5 top tools for social change

• 12 open source tools you should be using

• 6 productivity tools for social change

• A developer’s 5 favorite social tools

• Top 5 tools for the entrepreneurial journalist

• Top cause organizations

The post A change agent’s top 5 tools for social change appeared first on Socialbrite.

Launching our summer series on making media for social good

Target audience: Nonprofits, social change organizations, educators, NGOs, citizen journalists, media makers

We’re kicking off a summer series on making media for nonprofits and social change organizations. And, to highlight the wealth of tools on Socialbrite as we just marked our first birthday, we’ve rolled out a complete redesign of our Sharing Center.

Regular readers know that Socialbrite is all about showcasing social tools for social change. Every week we bring you a new batch of articles from our team to help you take advantage of the astonishing new ways to connect, collaborate and communicate and mobilize your cause online.

We’ve been saying for some time that every organization, every nonprofit, is turning into a media outlet, at least in part. It’s the same meme my Traveling Geeks colleague, journalist Tom Foremski, has been using with his new site, Every Company Is a Media Company.

So we decided to tap our friends’ expertise to highlight the tools and platforms that have been making the biggest difference in their own efforts — people like Allyson Kapin of Rad Campaign and Frogloop, Claire Sale of NetSquared, Andrew Rasiej of Personal Democracy Forum, Peter Deitz of SocialActions, Beth Kanter of Zoetica, Julie Crabill of Inner Circle Labs, Katrina Heppler of envisionGood.tv, Nathan Freitas, the mobile developer for the New York State Senate, and others.

Our original idea was to do one big roundup of indispensable tools — with the caveat, as always, that you should begin your efforts with a social media strategy, conversation strategy and social media strategy, and not just a set of tools. It turned out, though, that our colleagues provided so many suggestions that such an approach proved unwieldy. So instead we’ve decided to run a series of “top tools” lists by these experts in the field, kicking things off with this initial roundup of tools and resources for social good.

We suspect some tools and sites in the list below will be familiar while others may be new to you. Please add your own tips and suggestions in the comments below! And if you’d like to contribute your own short article, let us know.

Social action tools & platforms

Mobilize.org: Empowering & energizing the millennial generation

1Mobilize.org promotes greater civic participation and political engagement among young people. The site’s organizers believe the millennial generation offers hope for social justice regardless of race, class, religion or partisan identification. Mobilize.org has hosted eight Democracy 2.0 Summits on financial literacy, money and politics, millennial veterans, the environment and unemployment — with an eye toward developing sustainable solutions to these challenges. Follow mob_org on Twitter.

Amazee: Powering social collaboration

2Amazee is a global, Zurich-based platform that enables social collaboration for individuals, nonprofits, organizations and businesses. You can start a group to promote a cause or idea, to find like-minded people and to raise funds. Follow Amazee on Twitter.

Wiser Earth: Connecting you to communities of action

3WiserEarth is a free online community space connecting people, nonprofits and businesses working toward a just and sustainable world. Communities include the Culture of Peace Initiaitve, the Story of Stuff Project and the Radical Inclusion group. Now that Ning will be charging for hosted communities, Wiser Earth is a good choice for nonprofits and cause organizations looking to create an instant social network. Follow Wiser Earth on Twitter. Also see: Zanby: Roll your own community.

Charity How To: Step-by-step tutorials

4Next to Socialbrite, we think Charity How To does one of the best jobs of teaching nonprofits how to take advantage of digital tools. It offers step by step video tutorials, webinars and lots more. Follow CharityHowTo on Twitter.

WeAreMedia: A wiki of resources for social good

5WeAreMedia, spearheaded by Beth Kanter, is a wiki that came out of a hands-on workshop sponsored by the Nonprofit Technology Network. The site provides pointers to slideshows, resources and how-tos, like these tips and tutorials about Twitter.

Also, don’t forget Social Actions, which connects you to the issues and causes you care about.

Media creation tools

WordPress: Enabling citizen publishing

6WordPress.org, a self-hosted open source blogging platform, has become the software of choice for hundreds of thousands of blog publishers like Socialbrite or Syracuse’s University Lectures, while sites like Social Media Social Good use WordPress.com. You’ll want to take advantage of some of the thousands of free plug-ins that its global community of developers have created. Here’s our list of 10 WordPress plug-ins that rock, and here’s why we think WordPress is slicker than TypePad. Follow WordPress on Twitter.

OpenStreetMap: An open alternative to Google Maps

7OpenStreetMap is a free editable map of the nation and the world created by people like you. The service provides an open alternative to Google Maps by letting organizations embed maps and use geographical data in a collaborative way. Follow openstreetmap on Twitter.

BlogTalkRadio: Extend the reach of your nonprofit

8Want a keyturn solution for your nonprofit’s podcasting needs? BlogTalkRadio, the world’s largest social radio network, enables anyone to host an interactive audio broadcast and syndicate it with one click to Facebook, Twitter, iTunes and across the Web. See our full writeup. Follow BlogTalkRadio on Twitter.

Kodak Zi8: Capture life on the fly

9We do like Cisco System’s Flip hand recorders, but think the Kodak Zi8 is a bit better: Hi-def 1080i video recordings in a slick, easy-to-use gadget, now on sale for $130. So amazing it’s sick. Carry these around, interview interesting people you meet, capture authentic moments or newsworthy events, then upload the MPEG-4 or .MOV files to your favorite video hosting site. Follow Kodak on Twitter.

Spot.us & DocumentCloud: Collaborative journalism

10You want a powerful media creation tool? Head over to Spot.us, suggests Julie Crabill, founder of Inner Circle Labs. It’s an open source project designed to pioneer “community-powered reporting,” starting in the SF Bay Area and Los Angeles. Through Spot.us, nonprofits, NGOs and individuals can commission stories on important, often overlooked topics. Couple that with DocumentCloud, a site that will enhance investigative reporting by making source documents easy to find, share and read. DocumentCloud provides an online database of documents contributed by a consortium of news organizations, watchdog groups and bloggers, and shared with the public at large. Users will soon be able to search by topic, agency or location. Follow Spot.us or documentcloud on Twitter.

In this series

Here are the initial articles we’ll be adding to this series in the coming days and weeks:

• 12 awesome platforms for social good (Katrina Heppler)
• An educator’s 5 top tools for social change (Barbara K. Iverson)
• A quick guide to multimedia software (Idealware)
• Top 5 tools for the entrepreneurial journalist (Dan Pacheco)
• Facebook 101 for Nonprofits: Getting Started in Five Easy Steps (Azin Mehrnoosh)
• A change agent’s top 5 tools for social change (Allyson Kapin)
• 12 open source tools you should be using (Kim Bale)
• A developer’s 5 favorite social tools (Nathan Freitas)
• 6 productivity tools for social change (Katrina Heppler)
• Complete guide to creating a video project (Tim Davies)

Related

• Making media: Tools & resources for nonprofits and social change organizations (Socialbrite)

• The Socialbrite Sharing Center

The post Change-makers share 10 of their favorite tools appeared first on Socialbrite.

From volunteer openings to monitoring your member of Congress

By Vivian Ramirez
Socialbrite staff

We often think of social media tools and apps as a way to connect the global village. But they’re also a great way to interact with supporters, volunteers and donors at the community level.

Social media tools are particularly useful for nonprofits looking to create easy access and sharing among peers and local networks. This roundup is intended to showcase tools and apps that can help spread awareness at the local level, including volunteer opportunities (ultimately, all volunteering is local), civic engagement and collaborating with neighborhood tweeps.

All for Good Gadget: Find local volunteer activities

1All for Good Gadget is an application that allows you to browse and share volunteer activities in your local area as well as across the globe through your iGoogle page, webpage, Gmail, Blogger, TypePad blog, WordPress blog or Google site. Socialbrite uses All for Good as a widget in the right sidebar — just type in your zip code to find local places where you can volunteer.

CitySourced: Empowering citizens to report civic issues

2CitySourced (image at top) is a free, simple, intuitive real-time mobile tool for civic engagement that empowers citizens to take action on local civic issues (graffiti, trash, potholes, etc.) by reporting them to the city government. Through CitySourced, we can help our local government save money, improve accountability to their constituents and take timely action on local issues. (Note: Not all local governments take part!)

SeeClickFix: More than just a place to vent

3The SeeClickFix Widget and Mobile are tools that help communities and residents become better citizens by taking care of and improving their neighborhoods by providing information that will allow local government to track local issues. All issues are published on the front page of the site. For those interested in gathering statistics on issues, SeeClickFix has an advanced search feature that provides this info.

SnapImpact: Making doing good easy

4SnapImpact is an iPhone app, a Facebook app and a WordPress plug-in that allows you to discover places to volunteer within or nearby your location. It makes it easy for nonprofits to recruit volunteers and discover other opportunities for improvement within the local community.

CivicEvolution: Solving problems methodologically

5CivicEvolution is an online public utility that goes beyond the typical inform-and-listen model of consultation. It helps citizens influence their communities by collaboratively developing proposals to solve problems. Through a structured dialogue process, CivicEvolution leads participants through the problem-solving process of defining, brainstorming, deliberating, analyzing and creating defined recommendations.

Social Friends: Find neighbors interested in the same local issues

6Social Friends is a Twitter mashup that enables you to find people from your local area on Twitter who have referred to social actions and have actively participated in certain causes in your given area.

Community Tool Box: Taking action together to change conditions

7Community Tool Box – Workstations are customized, user-friendly online platforms that support the work of local, national and global initiatives by providing quick access to the latest announcements, online tools, shared documents, success stories, discussion forums, chat rooms and more. They enable groups to do effective collaborative work by providing a shared space for online discussions and posting relevant documents and resources.

BeyondtheBite: Act on your Congressman’s record

8Ever wonder if your member of Congress is acting on your behalf? BeyondtheBite is a political mashup that provides briefings about what your Congressman is doing and saying. It gives you and your organization up-to-date information backed by evidence, context and analysis, making it easier for you to act on it responsibly.

ConnectNetwork: Connecting people to ideas, information & each other

9ConnectNetwork is a community knowledge network where citizens, nonprofits, governments and businesses converge. It targets change at the local level by building stronger, healthier and more civic-engaged communities that foster region-wide, issue-specific social networks. At ConnectNetwork every citizen has a voice and a say in shaping their communities.

Meetup: Do, learn, share, change something

10Meetup is one of the largest online social networking portal that facilitates offline group meetings in cities around the world. It was built with the objective of revitalizing local communities and helping people self-organize to encourage change through community work. Meetup allows members to find and join groups through common interests. Each day more than 2,000 groups get together in local communities with the goal of taking action and improving themselves or their communities.

Nation of Neighbors: Online neighborhood watch

11Nation of Neighbors is an online network that facilitates real-time collaboration within communities and between community members and law enforcement. Its mission is to enable citizens and law enforcement to work together to fight and deter crime and improve local communities. It allows neighborhood members to alert other members within the same alert criteria of crime alerts through online reporting or through text messaging.

GovTrack: Tracking bills & laws

12GovTrack gathers the status of legislation, voting records and other congressional information from official government sites and then uses new technologies to make the information more accessible to the public. It lets users follow the status of legislation through feeds, maps and other technologies and it powers the legislation database of sites such as OpenCongress.org and MAPLight.org.

Related Classroom Projects: Helping our teachers make better students

13Related Classroom Projects is a WordPress plug-in that allows you to share relevant classroom projects from DonorsChoose.org on the bottom of your blog posts. It makes it possible for you to help teachers in your local area fund classroom projects that will help their students learn and succeed.

Volunteer Connect: Making volunteering easy

14Volunteer Connect is social network application in Facebook that allows you to find volunteer opportunities in your area. With its extensive calendar of activities, this app lets you choose when, where and how you want to volunteer, saving you time that you can spend to really make a difference!

FixMyStreet: Report, view & discuss local problems

15FixMyStreet is a site that lets people living in Great Britain to report, view or discuss local problems to their local council by locating them on a map. Just enter a postcode or location to see problems already reported in the area or report new ones. There is also a FixMyStreet iPhone app available for download in the iTunes App Store as well as an Android app.

The post 15 social tools for local impact appeared first on Socialbrite.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, I attended a dinner on the “Future of Philanthropy,” which was a really great talk about the role of philanthropy across nonprofits, family foundations, corporate partnerships and how individuals can get involved.

The dinner sessions at Davos I heard were a must. They’re expensive add-ons to the experience, but provide you an opportunity to sit at tables with a facilitator and go through topics related to the issue at hand.

Nancy Lublin is the CEO and “Chief Old Person” of Do Something, a nonprofit organization that gets young people excited and involved with voluntarism and getting involved in cause. Nancy is one of the Young Global Leaders, a subgroup of the World Economic Forum. Some 200-300 people each year are chosen from around the world who are making a difference and contributing to their communities.

Nancy identified three trends important to teens right now:

1. Mobile – the ability to give online
2. Slacktivisim – the ability to click a button and have something delivered to a person in need. Examples include Free Rice.
3. Crowd-sourced giving like the Chase Community Program through Facebook that recently ended and the Pepsi Refresh Project (which by the way started this past weekend — if you have any idea on how to change the world, you really should check out this program and see what Pepsi is doing instead of placing a Super Bowl ad on TV this year).

If you’re interested in getting more involved in your community, consider attending one of DoSomething’s Bootcamps coming to a city near you this spring.

This post originally appeared on the MySpace Journal.

The post DoSomething.org: How young people can take action appeared first on Socialbrite.

Our colleague Beth Kanter, author of Beth’s Blog, turns 53 years young today. The past year has been a momentous one for Beth, who pulled up roots and moved with her family from Boston to the Bay Area, rented a house, co-authored a book, became a visiting scholar at the Packard Foundation — I don’t know, probably won a Nobel Prize when I wasn’t looking.

Beth is Exhibit A for those who believe that individuals can make a real difference. As perhaps the best-known name in nonprofit technology, Beth has been pioneering the use of social media for social good long before many people even knew what social media was.

Today, Stacey Monk, Amy Sample Ward, Christine Egger and several others have organized an online surprise birthday party for Beth — a fun and spot-on idea. Writes Amy:

In her birthday wish post, Beth announces that she’s trying to send 53 Cambodian children to school by raising $530.  Last week, Stacy Monk and I were chatting and thought that our community could help smash that goal by raising much more funds as well as awareness for the work the Sharing Foundation does in Cambodia.

I’ve already contributed to the cause (as I have the past two years). Not only has the effort blown past $530, at this hour it’s up to $2,019, which means 201 Cambodian children will benefit. (Beth’s two children, Harry and Sara, were adopted from Cambodia and are now happily ensconced in Silicon Valley.)

Please contribute at Beth’s Birthday Wish Page on Causes. (If you’d like to join the birthday brigade, sign up on this Google doc.)

Or, just stay informed by reading her blog and her dispatches here. Beth was one of the main inspirations for Socialbrite.org — I always pick up a trick or two by following her writings or seeing her in person — and she continues to amaze with her frenetic pace and deeply felt zeal.

The world’s a much better place as a result.

The post How individuals make a real difference appeared first on Socialbrite.

Causes, of course, is the application that lets individuals, groups and organizations support and raise funds for a particular cause.

Now, I blogged earlier this year about research that indicates very strongly we mirror our offline social barriers and segmentation in our online social networking platforms.  (Visit danah boyd’s website for more information and research on this topic.) Different communities have aligned and adopted different social networks, social media tools, communications platforms, etc. The tools we use often reflect the communities we are in, whether those communities are geographic, ethnic, or otherwise.

I consistently advocate that organizations go where their community is — because that community is already connected and people are already talking about you, your services or your sector.  Why? Because individuals network together online and the biggest influencers are our closest friends in our network.  When a friend starts a campaign, supports or fund-raises for an organization or cause publicly on a social networking platform, they broadcast that action and encourage their friends to do the same.

Causes leaving MySpace means that no users there (though, there certainly seem to be A LOT of users) will be able to continue promoting the causes, organizations or sectors that they care about via a process that’s already been established, adopted and networked.  I’ve talked before about how I believe millennials are using alignment and promotion of social impact areas (whether it’s a sector, like human rights, or a nonprofit, like Planned Parenthood, etc.) as a form of self-expression and identification. Applications like Causes also enable individuals to give voices to your work that you don’t have to control or manage — campaigns that benefit you because your supporters believe and appreciate the work you are doing.  (Check out a great post from Ivan Boothe of Rootwork on this topic.)

In a big way, removing the Causes application from MySpace will mean many people don’t have the “space” to bare their badges of support, to leverage a networked dashboard of lapel pins that align them and define them.

What it means to communities

Causes’ About statement says, “The goal of all this is what we call ‘equal opportunity activism.’ We’re trying to level the playing field by empowering individuals to change the world.”

The debate around social media and the Internet in general as a leveling force is still heated from all sides.  Yes, you can claim that anyone has the power to blog, but that’s really only the people who have access to the tools and the time and the empowerment. The access debate aside, the removal of Causes from MySpace — where there are active communities of supporters — means “equal opportunity activism” is defined by only certain communities (as we know that social networking platforms have very different demographic user groups).

It also skews the idea that organizations can focus energy where their communities already are. Although, with MySpace, organizations have different opportunities for creating profiles and interacting with supporters than on Facebook.

Looking ahead

Causes has yet to post anything about this on its blog and the MySpace option is still prominently displayed next to Facebook at the top of the site. Obviously, there are many questions users, administrators and communities would like answered. What will happen to the content, the communications, the information?  Will organizations or administrators still be able to connect with or communicate with their list of supporters? And so on.

But there are many other, larger, questions this raises:

• Is this an indication that communities will have to take the lead of technologies (and the people behind them)?
• How can communities communicate and demand technologies take the lead from them?
• How are organizations building community online in a way that safe guards them from third parties (maintaining the connections to supporters on MySpace that were gained via Causes by inviting users to register directly with the organization as well, etc.)?
• What will be the requirement in an open data or open web for applications serving communities?
• How do we, as public thinkers about this stuff, help guide organizations in navigating these questions and others?

What do you think?

I can’t wait to hear what you think! Are you using Causes on MySpace, are you using it on Facebook? Do you have ideas or feelings about the questions above? What other questions do you want answered?

Share your thoughts in a blog post of your own, in the comments below, or on the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog.

It definitely needs to be noted that Ivan Boothe and Joe Solomon were integral collaborators on this breaking news, conversation starter, idea sparking post. Thank you both!

To see the original entry, go to Amy Sample Ward’s Version of NPTech.

The post MySpace abandons Causes — what does it mean? appeared first on Socialbrite.

What are our ethical responsibilities when recording video of people under oppression?

Guest post by Sam Gregory
Witness.org

In June, my colleague Sameer Padania and I were part of a panel at the Open Video Conference in New York City on Human Rights, Indigenous Media and Open Video. We used the opportunity to launch what will be a continuing effort by WITNESS to engage with the human rights issues around dignity, re-victimization, consent and security raised by contemporary online video.

Above is the video we used for the WITNESS presentation at the conference.  Watch and tell us what you think — what should WITNESS (and others) be doing in this area?

My colleague Priscila Néri’s post on the footage of Neda Agha-Soltan in Iran is a thought-provoking place to start: Iran Protests: A Woman Dies on Camera — to post or not to post?

WITNESS was created over 15 years ago coming out of the Rodney King incident asking this question: What if every human rights worker had a camera in their hand? Now, nearly every citizen does have a camera — and it is participants, witnesses and perpetrators who are filming.

Use of video, particularly mobile video, has publicized and documented many emerging human rights struggle from Rangoon to Tehran. Online there is an abundance of peer-produced content for the social good.

A respect for each individual’s well-being

However, despite the growing online circulation of images of human rights violations, victims and survivors, there is limited discussion of related safety, consent and ethical concerns. At the heart of human rights is the idea of respect for the dignity, worth and integrity of every person. We have an ethical responsibility as witnesses to violations to share the suffering of others in a manner that empathizes with — rather than re-violates — the victim.

From a human rights perspective, new issues around consent, representation and direct re-victimization and retaliation emerge in an open and networked online environment of reworking, remixing and re-circulating video and other imagery.

So how do we go about “incorporating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” into the “terms of service” of online video — an idea first suggested by Dan McQuillan? How do we introduce ideas around consent and human dignity into the broader culture?

This discussion needs to happen at a technological level (how do we build these concepts into platforms and technology, as we have tried to do with the Hub), and it is also a conversation about skills, media literacy and cultural norms.

We need your help to consider how to move this conversation forward — please contribute your thoughts, questions, and ideas in the comments field below.

This post originally appeared on the Witness.org Hub blog.

Related articles

• Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• Top authors donate stories for human rights anthology (guardian.co.uk)

The post Ethics, human rights and social activism appeared first on Socialbrite.

“First, we’re strictly nonprofit.” That’s how UniversalGiving begins when describing its work. What it should really say is, “We may be nonprofit, but we are not non-impact.”

Why? UniversalGiving is making great impact on communities around the world, both in the work, funds and volunteer efforts contributed to individuals and groups via their platform, but also in effectively and passionately empowering donors and volunteers to contribute. Additionally, UniversalGiving is a member of Social Actions, ensuring that their opportunities to make a difference are heard and seen in even more places around the Web.

What is UniversalGiving?

UniversalGiving is “an award-winning marketplace which allows people to volunteer and donate to top performing projects in more than 70 countries around the world.”

It’s a marketplace, really, of opportunities to take actions for social benefit in various topics you may be after. Want to donate money and leave it at that? Would you rather connect with a group or individual in need halfway around the world? Maybe you want to join forces for a longer-term project for real impact. People simply choose a country of interest (such as China or Thailand) and an area of interest (such as education or the environment) and find a list of vetted opportunities to which they can donate money or give their time.

I’ve been watching volunteer opportunities related to technology and am so excited to jump in!

What is the Impact?

For those of you who like metrics, here are a few numbers to consider:

• More than $1.5 million has been channeled through www.universalgiving.org
• Nearly 10,000 people have volunteered
• More than 70 countries served

UniversalGiving + Social Actions

I’m really excited about the work Social Actions is doing to help connect the sources of actions and opportunities across the web to push them further. Social Actions is “an open source database of actions people can take on any issue. The actions in our database are aggregated from across the social web and include everything from volunteer opportunities to micro credit loans.”

UniversalGiving has partnered with Social Actions to ensure that the volunteer and giving opportunities they vet and promote on their platform can be found by even more people, in more places online. These partnerships are so exciting because I know how many people are willing, interested, and ready to contribute to social impact projects, whether big or small, near or far — but they just don’t know how to find the ones that match their interestes or skills. This partnership increases the chance that interested people can find opportunities from UniversalGiving without having to know them.

By collaborating with Social Actions, UniversalGiving also gets to benefit from things like the Change the Web Challenge that saw many new applications for the Social Actions feeds – meaning new applications that could put Social Actions data (whether a general feed of information, or specific search criteria, or one specific action) in public places online like Facebook, blogs, and more. Again, more people can now find UniversalGiving opportunities without even trying.

With the impact of that partnership in mind, I want to share two of the responses UniversalGiving has received from participants:

“Universal Giving is an instrumental partner to Sports Gift and our mission to provide sports to impoverished children.  Universal Giving helps us reach people across the country to tell them about volunteer opportunities, our community service programs and other charitable giving opportunities. Universal Giving has made a direct and significant impact on our ability to provide the gift of sports to thousands of children living in poverty around the world!” — Kevin Baxter of Sports Gift

“Because we’re a relatively small NGO with a fairly specialized focus, it’s been great to be a part of UniversalGiving and gain the additional exposure to potential donors that we may have never otherwise reached. Also, UniversalGiving’s ability to process a high volume of contributions from an intensive online donation drive, something beyond the capacity of my organization, allowed us to benefit from an MTV Networks employee giving campaign, even though it came about on very short notice. UniversalGiving also provided MTV with the donation data they requested, quickly and efficiently, which secured a substantial corporate match for us.  UniversalGiving proved to be a great advocate for my organization.” — Michael Hayes of Solar Cookers International

Clearly, UniversalGiving is doing a good job making positive impact around the world. I’m very excited to see them partner with Social Actions to make this impact reach even further and involve more people. What I’m most excited about, though, is watching UniversalGiving’s work grow!

Connect & learn more

You can follow UniversalGiving or Social Actions on Twitter, follow stories on their blogs (UG blog or SA blog) or visit their websites to learn more.

Cross-posted from Amy Sample Ward’s Version of NP Tech.

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