Making the site

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/200

Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, asks why we aren’t more compassionate more of the time. Sharing the results of psychological experiments (and the story of the Santa Cruz Strangler), he explains how we are all born with the capacity for empathy — but we sometimes choose to ignore it.

A nice video, that has a section in it that relates to the new website I’m thinking of that has not yet have a name (a product social context website).

Netsquared asked feedback on the topic of how nonprofits can use the social web during the “Giving Season”. I wrote a comment that was also included in the Net2ThinkTank article on Netsquared that summarizes the discussion on the topic.

Here’s the comment I left on Netsquared:

Reading back on what I just wrote, I’m wondering if I’m having a negative vibe or a very clear honest moment. Either way; here it goes:

The word Giving Season makes me feel awkward. While I see the motivation is positive, and I don’t mean to offend fund raisers, for me it feels like people are seen as something to harvest when words like Giving Season arise.I understand the logic and I’m perhaps sort of ‘out of the group’ on this one. I’m not from a nonprofit background, the reason I’m getting involved is because I’m rather cynical about charities, and I don’t want to be. I’d like there to be a way to help that works. Something that benefits the positive wellbeing of others, the world. etc. I’d rather search for ways to stimulate transparency for nonprofits than ways to get more money for nonprofits.As I feel it, the social engineering of communication to get the most money out of a ‘giving season’ is part of the problem that makes people cynical. Let’s try to see what people care about and facilitate these wishes to come true.

Perhaps I’m too sensitive about the words here.. Being more positive; In general I think that if you’re helping and you can communicate what you are doing, it doesn’t really matter what season you’re in, you can convince people to join your efforts.

Seasons aside, I do think nonprofits can make use of social networks for the benefit of their goals. It is a way to show who is personally responsible for the actions and who is personally helped by (those) actions. I guess we have a soft spot for personal stories and it can help to bring a broader story of (in)justice in the spotlight.

We all know a lot of sad things are going on, but it’s about what we can do about it. Cynicism about what happens to good intentions should be tackled with examples of good intentions having good consequences. A social network (site) can show this, it can show these examples on a personal level and be shared as such.

My reasoning would be that it doesn’t matter so much about who can get money out of the giving season, but more; how can we all make sure the giving actually gets stuff done. If we solve that problem, there would be little problem raising funds.

Social network sites can help to make transparent who gets stuff done, it can help (smaller) charities to work together on projects, it can help volunteers find projects they care about, it can help people with good or bad experiences to share those experiences to help guide others to spend their money in a more effective way, it can help by making it easier for people to make clear what is needed (perhaps money is not the answer, but political pressure of some sort, social networks can be used to mobilize such groups).

To summarize; the social web can be a very good thing for people who like positive change. And thereby a good thing for nonprofits who are there to facilitate people in realizing those changes.

A great speech, really inspirational:

Cameron Sinclair on TED Talks (Google Videos)

TEDPrize winner Cameron Sinclair is founder of Architecture for Humanity, and author of Design Like You Give A Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises In this presentation, he demonstrates the need for a design response to humanitarian crises, and unveils his TEDPrize wish: to create a community that actively embraces open-source design to generate innovative and sustainable living standards for all.

More TEDtalks: http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/

Slightly off-topic, but still relevant when it comes to helping others. When you are doing nothing with your computer you can let a screensaver run, or you can use your computer power to help global projects. These project make use of your computer power (only when you are not using your computer power yourself) for some goal.

You can simply download a screensaver that does the work, like this BBC climate change program.

Or you can get a program where you have more control over what project you support. To get the program to run, this is the download link.

Here you find a list of the projects you can sign your computer on for. So I picked http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta (in the BOINC program, when they ask for an URL of the project), a project that might help cure diseases.

Helpalot is about making charities findable, but who’s going to provide the content? In my view, dedicated supporters of charities will provide the content and the quality checks. But that’s the theory, Selma Busing was so nice to answer some questions in relation to this matter.

1. Can you give a quick introduction of yourself?

My name is Selma Busing and I am a student Interaction Design. I am 25 years old and fond of animals.

2. What charities do you donate to?

There is one charity I donate to regularly, the Sepilok Orangutan Appeal in the UK. This organization is working to rescue, rehabilitate and eventually release orang-utans back into the rainforest. This helps the dwindling numbers and widens the gene pool in the wild orang-utan population. This is of extreme importance because the orang-utans become extinct.

3. How did you find these charities?

I came across this charity is a Dutch magazine where I could read nice stories from the organization, their goals and from people who where already donating money.

4. Why did you choose these charities?

The reason why I chose this charity was because I have read about it. And because I could donate money by adopting a baby orangutan, Naru. By doing this I know exactly what this organization is doing with my money. They keep me posted about the progress Naru makes and send me pictures every once in a while.

5. Was it difficult to find a charity that you supported and that you felt you could trust?

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