Posts Tagged ‘google’
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Resources For All: SocialBrite
Looks like there are a number of people and organisations realising the value that social media can bring to the work of charities and non-profits. The latest is Social Brite, a ‘non-commercial learning and sharing hub that brings together top experts in social media, social causes and online philanthropy’. Their aim is share and learn from mutual experiences and improve the causes that each individual organisation is working for.
Their Sharing Center is literally like a treasure chest of information for non-profits - tips range from sources for free photos and videos, a directory of social media reports, a social media toolset (much like the one provided by We Are Media), and a list of cause organizations (a more general version of the list of UK-focussed youth volunteering organisations we have on our blog - and it seems to updated regularly because it includes Google’s All for Good that we blogged about recently).
Here at vLabs blog we’re really glad to see initiatives like these, and look forward to seeing the resources available to non-profits and charities grow quickly. It was just a few years ago when finding data of value would be like looking for a needle in a haystack for those in this industry. Those days are over by the looks of it!
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All For Good
In a move that is likely to give a considerable boost to volunteering, a bunch of different individuals and groups from the technology, marketing and public sectors - including industry behemoths Google and Craigslist, have set up an open-source platform to list volunteering opportunities, called All for Good. The project was launched in response to President Obama’s call to action and is managed by Google. Quoting from their ‘About‘ page,
Our core team is made up of volunteering enthusiasts from places like Google, Craigslist Foundation, UCLA, YouTube, FanFeedr and Aha! Ink. As a contributor to the All for Good project, Google is hosting the All for Good website and products. Several Google engineers worked on All for Good as a 20-percent project (Google lets engineers spend a day a week on projects that interest them), collaborating with a broader team to build the product.
Users can log in with their Facebook, Google, AIM, OpenID, Yahoo! or Netlog accounts. Though it is initially supposed to be US-centric, as per the FAQ, the site automatically identified me as being from London and listed a few London-based volunteering opportunities, which, given its US-focus are very limited in number.
The site seems fairly easy to use, and maps out the locations of different opportunities apart from listing them. That’s not a particularly new feature though, because VolunteerMatch in the US launched a Google Earth plug-in earlier this year that performs pretty much the same function. All for Good’s single most distinguishing feature is is the fact that it is open-source: any group that wishes to provide a volunteering opportunity can easily do this via the Volunteer Feed Listings form. Do-It does provide a similar offering in the UK, but it requires the use of the YouthNet-supported bespoke software V-Base.
It will be interesting to see how All for Good develops - they have already put out a call to developers who may be interesting in building All For Good apps, and to improve the beta.
[Via Ars Technica]
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Nice piece, yourself.
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