And last week, they launched a somewhat old school new media tool to help inform that conversation and carry it forward: the new Fiscal Future Daily is a straightforward and well-informed blog posting that appears Monday-Thursday, brimming with interesting links, commentary and analysis about the Federal budget. “Relentlessly nonpartisan,” the Daily covers political ground left, right and center with links to bloggers, op-ed pieces, charts and graphics, and special reports on the deficit. You can read the press release here. The project also include a popular Facebook page and Twitter stream.

[Note: working with my colleagues at Marketechnique, a boutique online marketing firm in New York, CauseWired was part of the development of the Fiscal Future Daily.]

The idea is to encourage a discussion that occasionally crosses partisan lines and gets people – from public officials to the media and general public – thinking critically about the budget. The blog allows for constant sharing and linking, providing that “permalinked” home base for great data and resources.

In many ways, it’s a microcosm of the overall goal of the Choosing the Nation’s Fiscal Future project. The initial website was developed by the National Academy of Public Administration with funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.  The site and the fiscal future social media communities launched by Public Agenda are online supplements to a special report developed earlier in the year by a joint committee of the National Academy of Public Administration and the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, which was also supported by the MacArthur Foundation. That report – Choosing the Nation’s Fiscal Future – is the culmination of two years of effort by the NAPA/NRC Committee on the Fiscal Future of the United States.

Photo by MyJon

This week’s roundup draws attention to two contests that illustrate the impact social media technologies are having on not just private and nonprofit initiatives, but public spending as well.

USAID’s first-ever open source challenge – the 2008 USAID Development 2.0 Challenge hosted by Netsquared – is ready for your vote. Today through December 12, vote for up to five of your favorite projects from over 100 entries, all of which use mobile technologies for social good.

The recently-completed Apps for Democracy challenge resulted in 47 apps that made use of Washington DC’s government data catalog. As we covered in Roundup #16, this contest delivered a 4,000% ROI for its organizers. This week, Peter Corbett of iStrategyLabs reports on lessons learned and the buzz this contest has generated for creating more open source challenges for government agencies.

And speaking of government, President-elect Obama’s transition team announced this week that the Change.gov website now falls under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Social Actions News and Updates

• Social Actions launches a campaign to raise $20,009 by 02/02/2009. Read personal appeals from Peter Deitz and Christine Egger, and check out who’s giving and why they’ve chosen to support Social Actions.
• Social Action’s upcoming ChangetheWeb Challenge hosted its first open conversation to discuss recent updates and share ideas. Check out the notes here.
• November’s top cause-related search terms for the Social Actions search engine are listed here.

Analysis and Commentary

• Lucy Bernholz posts her 2009 predictions for online philanthropy
• Beth Kanter lists her top 10 nonprofit technology and social media for social change blogs
  
• Peter Deitz hosts a lively discussion on Social Edge about how to scale online support for social entrepreneurs (perhaps something along the lines of Pop!Tech’s Accelerator?)
• Gaurav Mishra counsels NPR and several other media outlets on the role of citizen journalism in the Mumbai terrorist attacks
  
• Curtis Chang critiques the costs, benefits, and appropriateness of FORGE’s following the KIVA model
• David Wilcox interviews Clay Shirky on social media, social change, and where to find people who are really making a difference.
• Stacey Monk and Avi Kaplan of Epic Change offer analysis and “lessons learned” on their incredibly successful Tweetsgiving campaign, and Lucy Bernholz offers her own observations about this and other microgiving campaigns
• Allison Fine discusses the effective use of social media for spreading the message and raising money

Launches and Announcements

• Razoo relaunches as a full-service, donor-driven online platform for charitable giving (press release on MarketWatch.com)
• Facebook launches Facebook Connect, a platform that allows users to integrate their Facebook activity with partner websites (descriptions and responses from ChannelWeb, Beth Kanter, and Michelle Murrain)
• RangDe.Org, India’s first peer to peer microlending site, has recently launched (press release on PRLog.org)
• DonorsChoose.org announces a challenge grant that will match donations to all projects posted by Oklahoma teachers
• Lend4Health partners with Joseph Dee to openly design and launch a new website, a process that will unfold on their wiki and on the Social Actions forum
  
• Spot.Us is looking to hire a Community Organizer (HT Susan Mernit)
• New website for Democracy 2.0
  
• New Facebook application for Dreambank
  
• Blackbaud posts The Baudcast, Episode 20 covering Conference for Nonprofits, NetCommunity Developer Challenge, Google map mashups, social media sessions, and more.
• The Alliance of Youth Movements summit will create a permanent nonprofit from the 17 online activist groups that have sprung up independently over the past year, all dedicated to using social media to work for peace around the world (HT Cause Global)
• Third Sector New England is launching a web-based video reference tool for new nonprofit managers: sneak peeks here and here
  
• Sierra Bravo announces the Overnight Website Challenge: a 24-hour February 2009 marathon where 10 volunteer web pros will create free websites for 10 nonprofits
• Katya Andresen and her colleagues at Network for Good offer a free “downturn survival guide for online fundraising eBook

What are Social Actions Round Ups?

Each week, Social Actions community members post links and news about online social activism – This round-up is a summary of the links that surfaced in the last 7 days. You can share links and news for future Social Actions rounds ups in the Peer-to-Peer Social Change FriendFeed Room. You can also check out past roundups here.

Social Actions roundups are syndicated on CauseGlobal, CauseWired, ContributeMedia, NetSquared, and TakePart.

Amy Sample Ward’s Version of NPTech
Have Fun Do Good
Katya Andresen: Nonprofit Marketing Blog
Laura’s Notebook
Qui Diaz – Evange.list
Social Actions
Social Citizens Blog
SocialButterfly
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Despite the holiday schedule, we witnessed an explosion of reports, articles and presentations over the last seven days on how the online philanthropic landscape is shifting. In this round up, you’ll find links to material from The Hewlett Foundation, The MacAurther Foundation, The Mozilla Foundation, MSNBC, Cone Inc, Beth Kanter, Tom Watson, TechCrunch, and more.

We start the round-up with links to two break-through online fundraising campaigns: EpicChange’s TweetsGiving initiative (which raised over $10,000 in 48 hours from 336 contributors) and the British Humanist Association’s fundraising page on JustGiving (which raised over £100,000 in 7 days from 6,680 contributors).

News Roundup for Week of Nov 24-30, 2008

EpicChange launches TweetsGiving and raises $10,000 in 48 hours on Twitter.

JustGiving reports on the lessons learnt from the highly succesful Atheist Bus fundraiser.

DonorsChoose.org starts tweeting classroom projects that are nearly funded.

Tom Watson writes about DonorsChoose.org’s experiment with affiliate marketing.

About.com’s Nonprofit portal reflects on how and why people donors give online.

Beth Kanter reports about Change.org’s Ideas for Change in America project and teaching your kids to be philanthropic.

TechCrunch posts SEC letter that explains the government’s reason for shutting down peer-to-peer lending site Prosper.

Better x Design reminds people to apply for a $1,500 grant from their Seed Fund.

Mark Surman of The Mozilla Foundation posts slides from his upcoming presentation, “A city that thinks like the web.”

Joe Solomon posts slides from his presentation, “Firefox Extensions for Social Change.”

The Hewlett Foundation released its report, “The Nonprofit Marketplace: Bridging the Information Gap in Philanth….” (read Christine Egger’s response)

The MacArthur Foundation released its findings from the Digial Youth Project.

MSNBC posted (yet another) report on what nonprofits can learn from Obama’s use of social media.

Vodophone Americas Foundation announced a $600,000 Wireless Innovation Challenge.

Cone, Inc released a report celebrating 25 years of cause marketing.

Recent Discoveries

The Atlantic’s think again blog

Urbantastic city guides to nonprofits in Vancouver and Victoria

Nonprofit 2.0 vlog

Video: Mark Kingwell and Malcolm Gladwell debate social change, and…

American Express 2007 Charitable Gift Survey

Frerieke van Bree’s reflections on implementing technology programs…

The Robin Hood Foundation’s approach to measuring impact

AGoodCause — shopping for a better world

The Fair Deal blog

CGAP — advancing financial access for the world’s poor

The MicroFinance Gateway

10Beyond — email stamps for nonprofits

Creating a Semantic Web for Philanthropy, by Tom Munnecke (2001)

eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit

Social Actions News

We announced 9 Goals for 2009.

Joe Solomon is hosting a conference call on 12/3 about Change the Web 2009.

Peter Deitz posted the Open Actions Update #2: Towards a Voting API.

The Social Actions team is developing a p2p fundraising campaign (launching 12/1/08)

What is the Social Actions Round Up?

Each week, Social Actions community members post links and news about online social activism – This round-up is a summary of the links that surfaced in the last 7 days. You can share links and news for future Social Actions rounds ups in the Peer-to-Peer Social Change FriendFeed Room. Check out past roundups here. You can also tag your delicious bookmarks with “p2pchange” or include “#p2pchange” in your tweets – we’ll scoop them up and review them for future Social Actions Roundups.

Social Actions roundups are syndicated on CauseWired, TakePart, and NetSquared.