Open Source National Service
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Transcript of Open Source National Service
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 that 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 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
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