Andrew Sears

Executive Director

Social Networking and Web 2.0: “Open Source” National Service

The Opportunity:“Open Source” National Service

Web 2.0– Social Networking & User Contributed Content– Wikis, Blogs, Photo Sharing, Video Sharing, etc.

Mass Collaboration Open Source/Creative Commons

Imagine a world where…

…there are hundreds of millions of training articles, videos, podcast and resources freely available on every nonprofit and social change topic

…90% of media is user created and directly reflects the diversity of the world

…there are thousands of free college courses available online on every topic of nonprofit management

…every person is able to find the area of greatest need in the world where they can serve that matches their skills and interests

The Current World

5 companies control 80% of television People of color make up 34% of the US

population, but own 3.15% of television and 7.7% of radio

Women make up 51% of the population, but own 5.9% of television

Source: http://www.stopbigmedia.com/=minorityvoices

What Nonprofits are Doing Today:Online Volunteer Recruitment

Posting Volunteer Opportunities Online– www.volunteermatch.org (~60%)– www.idealist.org (~10%)– www.craigslist.org (~20%)– www.volunteersolutions.org (~10%)– www.ivolunteering.org (~5%)

Background Checks on Volunteers– www.volunteerselectplus.com and many others

What Nonprofits are Doing Today: Social Networking

LinkedIn.com (the office)– Can be used for Member recruitment and to get

introductions to foundations and funders

Facebook.com (the suburbs)– Can be used to keep in touch with teens and former

clients and staff and for online fundraising

MySpace.com (the ‘hood)– A more high risk environment, but can be used to

keep in touch with teens

How Do We Realize the Vision?

What We Need to Do:Creative Commons

Provides copyright license to share content as “open source”– http://creativecommons.org

Common Sharing Agreements– Must Attribute, Can Share and Re-edit– Noncommercial, Must Attribute, Can Share

Recommendation: All CNCS organizations should creative-commons-license content

Broadcast Era Communication

One to Many Communication

We Train You

Telephone Era Communication

Two Way, One-to-One Communication

We Train You and You Give Us Feedback

Internet Era Communication

Member

Member

Member

AmeriCorps Organization

1 Million+ Other

Nonprofits

64 Million+Volunteers

Many to Many Communication

Everyone Trains Everyone

1 BillionInternetUsers

Best Practices Example: TechMission Online

Collection of websites to complement our TechMission Corps program– UrbanResource.net– iVolunteering.org

Also use separate faith-based brands funded by private donations– ChristianVolunteering.org– UrbanMinistry.org

Strengths of TechMission

Innovation– Founder previously co-founded MIT’s Internet and Telecoms Research

Consortium

Close to community: – Grew out of Black church movement with high percentage of

Black/Latino led organizations that we support– 65% of our Members have been people of color (45% Black, 13%

Latino, 7% Asian) & over half come from low-income backgrounds– Two thirds of Black and Latino nonprofit leaders in the USA are in

faith-based organizations and 46.5% of Black volunteers are religious volunteers

– Strong ties with FBO’s: religious volunteers are the largest pool of volunteers (35.1%)

Diversity Profile at TechMission

TechMission Online Websites

Counterpart to Idealist.org & VolunteerMatch with brands that focus on:– Black and Latino Communities– Faith-based communities

Most visited web portal in the faith-based social services sector

Most visited web portal among Black and Latino nonprofit leaders and community organizers

Exponential Growth

Unique Web Visitors (500% growth)– 2007: 260,740– 2008: 1.3 million– 2009: 2-3 million

Volunteers Matched (330% growth)– 2007: 1,295– 2008: 5,981– 2009: 7,500+

Volunteers Matched per Volunteer Coordinator– 2004: 100– 2008: 929– 2009: 1,250

Site Content

Site Stats– Registered Users: 29,056– Total Pages in English: 62,723– Languages Supported: 42 (computer translated)– Pages in Other Languages: 320,000+

Nonprofit Training Resources & Multimedia– Videos: 605– Audio Workshops: 1,148– Documents/Wiki Articles: 2,749– Photos: 2,007– Blog Articles: 639– Book Summaries: 2,856

Site Content

Nonprofit Resources– Volunteer Opportunities: 5,007– Volunteer Resumes: 16,733– Organizations: 4,785– Grants: 604– Nonprofit Jobs: 57– Nonprofit Consultants: 58– Nonprofit Events: 106

Future Direction

Facebook Connect & Facebook Application Large directory of volunteers

– Nonprofits search volunteer resumes/skills– Reverse of current volunteer matching sites

Promote open standards

How to Get Started

Invest in content management system– Drupal, Joomla, or WordPress (blogs)– Research others at: www.cmsmatrix.org– Alternative for small organizations is a hosted

solution like ning.com using your own brand

Hire Many More Tech Staff– Have Members with a specialized focus on online

volunteer recruitment

Sample Organizational Performance Measures

Generate 10,000 pages of new content each year– Have 50% of members blogging

Serve 2 million unique users with 10,000 new registered users

Match 5,000 volunteers through online sources Track using analytics software

– Google Analytics is free

Business Model

Give 90% of content away without registration– Each page of content you create generates on average 4 clicks

per month– Online recruitment ads cost about $.50/click, so each page of

content worth $2.00 per month

Require free registration for 10% of content– Build E-mail list for recruiting members – 3% of users register (value = $5 per contact)

10,000 items of content per year generates an additional $240,000 of free web traffic and E-mail list worth $72,000 for recruitment

Need for Open Standards

CNCS and Serve.gov should promote the development of open standards for – Volunteer Opportunity Feeds– Organizational Listing Feeds

Refine existing standard by NetworkforGood– Create working group that Includes VolunteerMatch,

Idealist, TechMission, HandsOnNetwork, UnitedWay, etc.

– Provide standard to enable these groups to share listings with each other

Summary of Best Practices

Use Open Source Content Management System Have all staff and Members using FaceBook and LinkedIn

for your organizational mission Creative Commons License at least 90% of content Put almost all training materials online Post thousands of volunteer opportunities online Promote blogging for all members Collect contacts for E-mail lists Use analytics for tracking (Google or other)

Recommended Reading

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything – By Don Tapscott & Anthony Williams– Written for non-techies

For More Information

This Presentation– http://www.urbanministry.org/nationalserviceweb

Visit:– www.urbanresource.org, www.ivolunteering.org– www.techmission.org

Contact– Andrew Sears, 617-282-9798 x101 or

andrew@techmission.org

Appendix

Why Target Christian Volunteers & Social Service Organizations

Religious volunteers are the largest pool of volunteers (35.1%)– 46.5% of Black volunteers are religious volunteers– Existing sites like VolunteerMatch are not reaching this sector: only

1.8% of listings are faith-based Unique Characteristics of Christian Social Services

– Common values create increased trust and efficiency– If you gain trust, you can mobilize the social capital of resourced

Christians to serve low-income communities– High volunteer rate of Christians makes volunteering a major asset– 80-90% of Christian organizations will focus on national partnerships

with Christian organizations Conclusion: Either have targeted marketing or lose most of this sector

(1) Who Really Cares, Arthur C. Brooks(2) Volunteering in America, 2008, DoL

TechMission, Faith and Non-Discrimination

Our focus is on social services, and we do not discriminate in who we serve

– Anyone can post on our site – We are one of the best channels for secular organization to recruit

volunteers from churches Maintain separate brands to target different groups to ensure non-

discrimination– ChristianVolunteering.org, UrbanMinistry.org (Christian volunteers and

orgs)– iVolunteering.org, UrbanResource.net (others)

By targeting faith-based groups we are able to show higher support of Black and Latino communities in the USA than our secular counterparts

TechMission Partners

TechMission Outcomes: Connecting People to the Poor

$7.3 Million to Organizations

TechMission Online:1.3 Million Unique Web Visitors

iVolunteering.org:5,981Volunteers

TechMission Corps: 40 FTE Interns

City Vision College:137 Student Enrollments

Segregation in People Resources

Source: Corporation for National and Community Service & Department of Labor

Value of Faith-Based VolunteersIn USA = $51.8 billion

Funding Bias: Non-Whites Make up 52.4% of Poverty but Non-White Led Nonprofits only Receive 3% of Funding

http://www.slideshare.net/rosettathurman/race-matters-in-nonprofits-promoting-diversity-in-our-profession andhttp://www.aecf.org/upload/publicationfiles/executive_transition_survey_report2004.pdf