Target audience: Cause organizations, NGOs, nonprofits, foundations, social enterprises, political reformers, educators, journalists, general public.

Over the past three years, as regular readers know, Socialbrite has put together dozens of guides and compilations of resources and tools for social change advocates. See the bottom of this article for a few, and our Sharing Center is all about social tools for social change.

To celebrate Internet at Liberty, a conference on protecting protecting freedom of expression on the Internet that Google is organizing in Washington, D.C., this week — and where Socialbrite is running the social media workshops — we’re launching a new section today:

The Social Advocacy Toolkit features new and updated informational guides, tool roundups and resources for global activists, social good advocates, political reformers, NGOs and anyone looking to use online tools for social change. It includes tactics for effective campaigns, guides to the best monitoring and metrics tools (many of them free), lists of enabling platforms and organizations and other resources to help galvanize your campaign.

Below is a new guide that we’ve put together to help social change activists with their advocacy efforts, which we’re adding to the toolkit. Check out the Social Advocacy Toolkit for much more.

10 tools for activists & social change advocates

Asana: A leap ahead for productive teamwork

1Asana is a work-collaboration software suite that came out of beta in April 2012. “We built this company to change the world,” said founder Dustin Moskovitz, one of the co-founders of Facebook. Asana offers a simple, word processor-like interface to give people working together on a task a central place to discuss the project, share files and keep track of to-dos in real time. It’s free for teams of fewer than 30 users.

Alternatives: Yammer, Microsoft Sharepoint (for larger enterprises) and see our Collaboration roundup

PopVox: Advocate your cause in Congress

2You might remember our recent article on PopVox, an online service that individuals and grassroots organizations can use to lobby members of Congress on behalf of a cause. CEO Marci Harris founded the nonpartisan service based on her knowledge of how Congressional staffers interact with the public. For a cause to be effective, it has to be made concrete on behalf of or against a specific bill. PopVox helps you do that.

Geo-bombing with Google Earth

3I was blown away when I saw Tunisian activists from the collective blog Nawaat.org (The Core) link video testimonies of Tunisian political prisoners and human rights defenders to the Tunisian presidential palace’s location on Google Earth. Now, as you fly over the Tunisian presidential palace using a Google Earth KML file, you will see it covered with videos about human rights abuses that strongman Ben Ali tried to prevent Tunisian citizens from watching by blocking YouTube and DailyMotion. Visit earth.google.com/outreach for more examples. We’d like to see more organizations to take up “geo-bombing.”

Mapping tools: Show, don’t tell

4Any campaign or cause organizations with tech talent should consider following the steps of charity: water, which does a remarkable job of documenting their clean-water projects for individual donors through the use of Google Maps. Paull Young, their director of digital engagement, told me: “We’ve been marking all our water projects with GPS since we were founded in 2006. We had a developer crank for a few weeks late last year to create this new mapping solution. It’s not incredibly technically difficult, the hardest part is getting data from the field. You might also want to check out our Dollars to Projects reporting for even more in-depth personalized mapping.” Also doing a good job with Google Maps: A Child’s Right.

Note: Google began charging for its previously free Google Maps API last year, leading to an exodus to the open source OpenStreetMap, which we expect will continue to get better and better.

Tableau Public: Infographics made simple

5You may have noticed the Infographics Everywhere trend that’s sweeping the Web, probably spurred by the fact that infographics has been democratized — you no longer need to be a graphics guru to make a swift-looking graphic. Why not boil down your cause or campaign to a couple of key infographics? The tool we like best is Tableau Public, because it’s good and it’s free. For visualizations, Wordle and Many Eyes create great-looking word clouds. But before you plunge in, see this fantastic set of Data Visualization and Infographics Resources from Smashing Magazine — and make sure what you create isn’t info porn.

Statf.ly: Create a metrics dashboard

6What’s a campaign without a metrics dashboard, to tell you with data-driven evidence what’s resonating with your community — and what’s falling flat? There are a few newcomers to consider: Statf.ly (we like the 30-day free trial and $19/month pricetag), Sparkwi.se and Metricly. It’s worth the investment. See which one works for you and gives your campaign traction and tweak your campaign on the fly.

Dropbox: Life in the cloud is sweet

7I’ll be straight up: My hands-down favorite productivity and collaboration tool of the decade so far has been Dropbox. What was life like before the cloud? Oh, yeah, it was a pain to get stuff done. Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring your photos, docs and videos anywhere with an Internet connection — and share them easily. Any file you save to your Dropbox will automatically save to all your computers, phones and even the Dropbox website. Never email yourself a file again! Dropbox gives you 2GB of storage space for free, plus 500MB more if you refer a friend who signs up. It can get pricey when moving up to Dropbox for Teams, so see what your budget allows.

CitizenTube: Get visibility for your cause videos

8CitizenTube is YouTube’s News and Politics Blog. You’ll find important breaking news videos from citizens and other newsworthy videos from news organizations, activists and politicians. You are creating your own media, right? Why not get it seen by YouTube’s legion of viewers? See a different version of it here, and follow @CitizenTube on Twitter.

Buffer: Cross-posting nirvana

9If you’re running a cause campaign, there aren’t enough hours in the day, right? So think productivity. Shonali Burke, who recently left Socialbrite, told me: “Buffer is killer. It lets you send updates to Facebook, Twitter, etc. straight from your Google Reader or a browser. You can also post them directly from Buffer. Spread them out over the day. I’m just loving it and using HootSuite less. I tend to do most of my reading via Reader, and it’s super easy to star the posts that interest me, then sort by starred items, and then add to Buffer.” The basic version is free, for up to 10 posts at a time; for heavy users, you can get the paid version.

GroupMe: Keep in touch with your team members

10If you’re at an event — a conference, a street protest, a peaceful march — with other team members, you know how difficult it it to stay in touch and to coordinate plans. Socialbrite recently gave GroupMe a test run and came away impressed. GroupMe is a free group messaging app. I like it because it’s both instant and asyncronous — that is, your teammates will see your updates instantly or when they next check their mobile devices. Call up GroupMe and invite others in your posse to join your private group. Type your update and send it to the group, as you would an SMS message, and they’ll see it in a chat thread. One of GroupMe’s key features is that it’s cross-platform: You don’t miss a beat whether you have an iPhone, Android, Blackberry or another kind of smartphone. In addition to the ability to share messages, photos and locations like the other apps, GroupMe also allows old-fashioned conference calls between group members.

Alternative: Facebook Messenger

Other tools worth a shoutout

The tools above aren’t the only ones that should be in your advocacy arsenal. Consider some of these as well:

• See our writeup on Digital Democracy and its Handheld Human Rights mobile platform for human rights in Burma/Myanmar.

• GeoChat, from InSTEDD (Innovative Support to Emergencies Diseases and Disasters), is a collaboration tool that allows anyone to chat, report and get alerts on their cellphone and to map data on Google Earth, Google Maps or Virtual Earth. It uses SMS, email, and Twitter.

• Ushahidi and Frontline SMS are must-have mobile tools for anyone working with remote communities or in disaster relief areas. And they have broader uses as well.

• Join.me is a cross-platform screen sharing app that lets you give control of your computer screen to someone else.

• Shortstack, says my partner John Haydon, “is my number one choice for creating amazing Facebook Page custom tabs. You can create photo contents, reveal tabs, photo galleries and more. Check out this example of what you can create with Shortstack.” It costs $15 a month to start.

• NodeXL is a tool for finding connections between people or organizations. Mostly for geeks as it’s a bit daunting.

• If This, Then That is another interesting tool I just discovered. It helps you create certain actions when a task is triggered, like “send me a text message when my organization is mentioned on Facebook.”

• Jing from TechSmith, Screenr and Screenflow for Mac are three of the best tools for creating screencasts.

Guides for social change advocates

Here are some of Socialbrite’s other guides for social change:

• Change-makers share 10 of their favorite tools (JD Lasica)
• 12 open source tools you should be using (Kim Bale)
• 12 awesome platforms for social good (Katrina Heppler)
• An educator’s 5 top tools for social change (Barbara K. Iverson)
• Top 5 tools for the entrepreneurial journalist (Dan Pacheco)
• A change agent’s top 5 tools for social change (Allyson Kapin)
• 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)
• 10 top collaboration tools for your organization
• The Socialbrite Sharing Center
• Directory of cause organizations (Socialbrite)

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GoodGuide, Find Green, Give Work make Socialbrite’s Top 10 list

By Kim Bale
Socialbrite staff

Mobile applications are flooding the market at a dizzying rate — more than 150,000 now for the iPhone and tens of thousands for Android and Blackberry. And it’s important to keep in mind that only 18 percent of the phones in the United States are smart phones, as reported at yesterday’s Where 2.0 conference, so text-only SMS plays an important part in many of the campaigns run by nonprofits, NGOs and anyone interested in doing good.

In the past few months, though, a host of very cool smart phone apps have been released, making it easier for people and volunteers to carry their top-of-mind social causes in their pockets. And, take note, all of the iPhone apps listed here also work on the iPod Touch and the new iPad.

Here are 10 of our favorite mobile apps, from nonprofits and social change organizations, that are contributing to a sustainable economy of social good. This is by no means a definitive list, so please add your own favorites in the comments below.

Download the handout here (also at bit.ly/10mobileapps)

GoodGuide: Scan products for social responsibility

1Available in the iTunes App Store, the GoodGuide iPhone app allows you to scan the barcode of a product while you’re shopping and immediately receive ratings regarding health, environment and social responsibility. How cool is that? Other mobile users can text product information to 41411 to access ratings for more than 70,000 companies and toys, foods, health and beauty products — including an API that lets any website operator create a custom product directory that pulls from its database. GoodGuide on iTunes

Find Green: Locate nearby green businesses

2Locate green and sustainable businesses via the Find Green app for iPhone and Android from 3rd Whale. Looking for a farmer’s market within walking distance? Find Green will note your location and search their database of more than 60,000 businesses to help you find one. Submit your favorite locations, rate existing businesses and reap the benefits of sustainability living tips in the palm of your hand. Find Green on iTunes

The Extraordinaries: A way to ‘micro-volunteer’

3The Extraordinaries app for the iPhone allows anyone to spend just a few minutes of spare time completing missions for causes they’re passionate about. They even coined a term for it: micro-volunteering. On your commute to work, or waiting in line at the DMV, rate tweets from SXSW or tag photos for the Brooklyn Museum instead of racking up points in Solitaire. (Disclosure: I recently worked for The Extraordinaries as community outreach specialist.) The Extraordinaries on iTunes

Give Work: Crowdsourcing for good

4Created by CrowdFlower and Samasource, the Give Work iPhone app asks users to complete simple tasks that check the work done by Samasource’s refugee workforce. It provides a sort of quality assurance while increasing the quality of life for Kenyan refugee workers. To date, Give Work has been downloaded in more than 76 countries. Give Work on iTunes

Causeworld: Rack up donations through shopping

5Check in at your favorite stores via your iPhone or Android and rack up Karma points to spend on causes you’re passionate about. CauseWorld lets you offset carbon and donate to Chile earthquake relief without spending a dime, all while earning badges to represent your good deeds. Corporate sponsors provide the necessary funding that you give in the form of virtual Karma points to causes and organizations that matter to you. CauseWorld on iTunes

mGive: Donate to causes via SMS

6mGive puts the power to donate in the hands of anyone with an SMS plan. For a fee, nonprofits can register with mGive and then ask supporters to text donations in increments of $5 or $10 to a designated number. The donation is charged to the user’s cell phone bill and distributed to the organization. In just three weeks, mGive processed more than $37 million for Haiti, proving the costs associated with starting a campaign may be well worth it. mGive on iTunes

Frontline SMS: Help & engagement through text

7Another text messaging option, FrontlineSMS makes it easy for nonprofits and NGOs to keep in touch and engage with their community. Available to anyone with a cell phone, the service helps organizations share information with their community via text message. Uses can include sending daily notes of encouragement to disseminating calls to action to anyone with a mobile signal.

SnapImpact: Connecting volunteers with local opportunities

8SnapImpact is an app for the iPhone designed to connect potential volunteers with opportunities in their area. The app searches All For Good’s database of volunteer opportunities by location, providing users with a variety of options to give back to their local community. Applications for Android and Windows Mobile are in the works. SnapImpact on iTunes

Ushahidi: A platform for collective action

9This platform for crowdsourced crisis information can now be accessed via Ushahidi’s Apps for Android, Java Phones and Windows Mobile. Users can view real-time maps for crisis areas around the world and contribute crucial information regarding disaster relief. An iPhone App is still in development, and other mobile users can send SMS reports with crisis information.

MobileRice: Donate grains of rice to hungry

10The MobileRice app for the iPhone, powered by Free Rice, tests your vocabulary skills while donating grains of rice through the World Hunger Programme. Match words with their definitions or synonyms and help diminish hunger worldwide. The app is connected to the website, which has collected 77 billion grains in 2 1/2 years — enough rice to feed millions. MobileRice on iTunes

What are some of your favorite mobile apps for social good?

Related

• Net2 Think Tank: Apps for Good (NetSquared)

• Helping Haitians via mobile, crowdsourcing & social media (Socialbrite)

• The Extraordinaries: Building the ‘micro-volunteering’ movement (Socialbrite)

• All for Good: A Craigslist for Service (Socialbrite)

The post 10 mobile apps for social good appeared first on Socialbrite.

New platform revolutionizes the way emergency response takes place

Guest post by Katrina Heppler
envisionGood.tv

Bravo to the thousands of volunteers worldwide who are assisting with translating Creole mobile text messages to help people in Haiti following the devastating 7.0M earthquake that struck the nation Jan. 12.

You may not have heard of Mission 4636, but this is where a lot of the most remarkable relief work is taking place. Mission 4636 is a short code emergency response communication system that enables earthquake victims in Haiti to get life-saving aid by sending a free mobile text message. It’s a joint-project of Ushahidi, FrontlineSMS, CrowdFlower and Samasource.

Mission 4636 — named for one of the SMS short codes for Haiti relief efforts — is an outstanding example of global collaboration and the power of human ingenuity to help people and save lives through technology. A huge “hats off” to them as well as to the many organizations that have also come together to make Mission 4636 successful: inSTEDD, DigiCel, local radio networks, local NGOs and the many emergency responders.

In the video interview above, Brian Herbert of Ushahidi, Robert Munro of FrontlineSMS, Lukas Biewald of CrowdFlower and Leila Janah of Samasource share background on how they came together with the support of other organizations on the ground in Haiti to deploy a critical emergency communications system to help save lives and provide emergency resources to people following the earthquake. This is a massive effort across multiple non-profit and for-profit companies and individual volunteers from around the country and globe (more than 14 countries have been involved in translation).

In the weeks after the tragedy, text messages to the dedicated Haiti emergency short code 4636 increased about 10 percent each day – with about one text a second coming through. Technology and people power are playing a critical role in getting information to military and aid workers on the ground. Beyond the immediate help for people in need in Haiti, the program will build computer centers so Haitian refugees can do valuable digital work, get paid, and bolster the economy around them.

Transcript of our interviews

Here’s a transcript of my talk with each of the participants:

Interview with Brian Herbert: Web developer | Ushahidi

Katrina: What is your role and what is Ushahidi?

Brian: Ushahidi is a platform that allows anyone to crowdsource crisis information, or crowdsource anything really, using a mobile phone.

Katrina: How does Mission 4636 work?

Brian: What happens is that someone on the ground in Haiti will send in a text message of their location and their needs to “4636″ that populates a queue that is mostly all Creole messages that we can’t read because we speak English. The volunteers will take the messages, they’ll translate them, add any additional notes and categorize them. And when it goes to Ushahidi, we have some volunteers at Tufts University and they do a little bit more in-depth research into each message and we pass it on to the Coast Guard or Southern Command, and they’ll do emergency response.

Katrina: How did the collaboration come together so quickly between FrontlineSMS, Ushahidi, Samasource and CrowdFlower?

Brian: After the earthquake hit, Josh Nesbit of FrontlineSMS came to us with the opportunity to use a short code to collect this information to be put into Ushahidi. But the only problem was that everything was in Creole so we had to get everything translated.

So from that point we had to develop some software which is before CrowdFlower and Samasource came along. We started translating the messages that we’re coming in and sending them to Ushahidi and inSTEDD with the Thomson Reuters Foundation using the Emergency Information Service.

Katrina: I understand that a lot of the cell networks were down, right? Originally. So how did you get the word out that this service existed? How did you let people know to call or text message “4636″?

Brian: In the very beginning, Nicoletti Tata with inSTEDD was actually on the ground at Port au Prince airport. And he was able to go out to various radio stations and have them broadcast the number to have people text in their location and needs. And that’s how we’ve been doing it so far: through the radio channels. And also through the diaspora here in the United States and Canada they’re letting their friends and family know.

FrontlineSMS

Interview #2 with Robert Munro: Translation Volunteer Coordinator | FrontlineSMS

Robert: So my role right now is coordinating all the translators who are reading every single messsage as they come in, translating them, geo-coding them, and then passing them on to the teams that coordinate the emergency response.

Katrina: Why did you look to crowdsourcing as a way to translate messages?

Robert: So with FrontlineSMS, we’re looking at ways to automate the processing of messages but this is not easy when you get a lot of variation as you do in Creole between spellings. So we had to make the decision very early on to crowdsource rather than automate the process.

Katrina: How did you partner with Samasource to assist with this crowdsourcing effort?

Robert: Samasource wasn’t onboard early on. We just managed to find all our volunteers through connections with different social networks. It was very viral – the volunteers themselves took it upon themselves to make known that this effort was going on and spread the word.

Katrina: How are you partnering with Samasource and CrowdFlower?

Robert: CrowdFlower and Samasource have been partnering for some time. Samasource had already been training a team of about 100 people in Haiti for micro-tasking. So, the opportunity to move away from volunteers to relying on paid workers in country, creating jobs and adding local knowledge to the further evolution of this project has been a wonderful process.

Katrina: What has been the biggest success of Mission 4636?

Robert: I think the biggest success has been the way that people from all around the world have been able to come together and make a very real-time difference at a very remote location in the world, saving people’s lives.

Katrina: So, in addition to the technology of the platform you’re using to power Mission 4636, you’re also taking advantage of social media and social networking, and perhaps other tools where people are able to find out about volunteer opportunities through Mission 4636. Are people using Twitter, Facebook, things like that?

Robert: They’re using both and Facebook has been great. Certainly, the ability to connect to people remotely and put out messages like this has been instrumental in getting many volunteers involved.

CrowdFlower and Samasource

Interview #3 with: Lukas Biewald: Founder | CrowdFlower Leila Janah: Founder | Samasource

Katrina: What’s next for Mission 4636?

Leila: The project started off with volunteer translators from around the world. And Samasource specializes in providing digital work opportunities for the people who need them most. So we thought it would be amazing if we could get Haitians who are on the ground and affected by the earthquake and who have lost their livelihoods to earn money by doing these translations.

And so we had actually accepted a partner organization called “1000 Jobs Haiti,” which is affiliated with Paul Farmer’s group, Partners in Health, about 20 minutes before the earthquake happened. And right afterwards they told us that people in Haiti need jobs now more than ever. And there have been people fleeing Port au Prince and arriving in neighboring towns like Mirabelle where our partner is based with no livelihood and no future job prospects.

Jobs are really at the core of rebuilding Haiti. And as tragic as the earthquake was, it’s really exciting that we can use this as an opportunity to create jobs. So we’re shipping netbooks – 20 netbooks I think are scheduled to arrive in Port au Prince next week and we’ll have Internet access running in Mirabelle the following week and between 15 and 20 paid Haitian translators working on “Mission 4636″ text messages as their first contract before the month is over. And we hope to be able to transition them to other kinds of digital work after that.

Katrina: What is the business model for this? Is the State Department or who is supporting this initiative?

Leila: Well a number of aid organizations actually need this information and it’s really costly for them to send their people out on the ground looking for disaster victims, so I think this system makes relief much more efficient. And so perhaps some of the money that would have been allocated to having extra people in the field to deal with this can now be allocated to paying for this translation. And in the future this might be a model that governments can fund for 911 or similar emergency response services.

Katrina: That’s amazing. So this platform is completely revolutionizing the way that emergency response takes place, first of all, and with rebuilding efforts. I can’t imagine with previous natural disasters it didn’t seem like there was a really quick way, a communications systems in place to respond as quickly. And you’ve demonstrated with your partnerships that that’s possible. How do you see future emergency response delivery?

Lukas: You know, I had never thought of this application of our technology, and it feels really good. It feels like a natural use of our routing and our quality control and our task-doing software. It’s a great application, and we’d love to see it used for something that saves lives.

Leila: And likewise, this is a really exciting application of paid crowdsourcing. You know, having the crowd be Samasource workers is really exciting for us. And the workers needn’t be in the same location as the disaster. In this case it happens to be really useful because Haitian Creole is not really spoken outside of the Haitian community. But one can imagine other situations where the disaster response is crowdsourced, and maybe the crowd is some combination of people in-country and out-of-country in order to get the fastest results.

Lukas: Yeah, there’s something really powerful about imagining that a disadvantaged person in the Congo, for example, could help someone in Haiti. I mean we obviously haven’t gotten to the point where that’s something that’s set up yet, but there’s something that feels really amazing about that.

Katrina: Is there anything else you’d like to add? Any parting thoughts that you’d like to share?

Leila: I really think this whole project is not just an example of the power of crowdsourcing to be manifested in new ways like in disaster response, but also the power of social media and the new technology we have. I mean, between Skype and Twitter and Google Documents, we’ve been able to collaborate with people that I’ve never met in person, and I think Lukas has just met a tiny fraction of them in person. And that would never have been possible even just a couple of years ago.

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