Today I read a new post by blogger Amy Gahran on the News Leadership 3.0 blog of the Knight Digital Media Center (a project of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism). Her article reminded me of how easy it is for changemakers to embed third party widgets and gadgets into their blogs and Web pages to promote civic engagement through volunteering.

In addition to the widgets the author describes in the article – SearchLite by VolunteerMatch, Dosomething.org and Volunteering in America by widgetbox – another widget I recently discovered is made by All for Good, a project of Our Good Works. All for Good makes an open source application that allows you to find and share volunteer activities. I initially discovered the All for Good tool on Serve.gov, a site set up in response to President Obama’s call for Americans to get out and serve in their communities. The volunteer database is driven by All for Good.

According to the All for Good Web site, the project is driven by volunteers from Google, Craigslist Foundation, UCLA, YouTube, FanFeedr and Aha! Ink. As a contributor, Google is hosting the All for Good website and products.

After making a few selections for place, colors and time frame – voila! – here is a dynamic listing of volunteer opportunities available for this week in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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Recently the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project released a new report on how adults use sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace. One of the report’s main findings was that the share of adult Internet users who have a profile on an online social network site has more than quadrupled in the past four years – from 8% in 2005 to 35% now, according to a December 2008 survey.

Overall they found that social networking is more popular for personal use than professional use, and most adults are using online social networks, like Facebook, to connect with people they already know.

Last week Facebook passed its five-year mark and now has over 150 million users (70% joined in 2008 alone). The company suggests that their rapid growth can be attributed to a safe and trusted environment where everyone can have a “voice to express ideas and initiate change.”

Several nonprofits in the U.S. are using social networking as a way to engage and inform constituents. Green For All, a nonprofit that promotes green-collar jobs and opportunities for the disadvantaged is on many social media channels, including Facebook, where it has over 3,500 “fans.” The Chronicle of Philanthropy, a nonprofit newspaper, is using the social networking site Twitter, a platform for sharing quick and short updates. Compared to Facebook’s 150 million users, Twitter, the younger of the two, has about 5 million members, and 5,000 to 10,000 new accounts open daily.

Resources for Nonprofits:

• Philanthropy Front and Center blog: A map is worth a thousand words: Guest post by nonprofit technology strategist John Kenyon after a presentation at the Foundation Center in San Francisco on February 26, 2009.
• Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media – Creating Your Organization’s Social Media Strategy Map
• Twestival – Feb. 12 Twitter event in over 100 cities worldwide to raise funds for charity: water, a non-profit whose mission is to bring clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. Read the New York Times article.
• The Pew Internet Project Data Memo: Twitter and Status Updating (6 pages, PDF)
• Netsquared shares blogs, a Facebook group page and other social media to further its mission “to spur responsible adoption of social web tools by social benefit organizations.”
• Nonprofits on Facebook
• Facebook Group vs Facebook Fan Page: What’s Better?
• The Chronicle of Philanthropy – How Nonprofits can Build Awareness and Raise Money with Facebook, Twitter and Other Social-Networking Tools (Transcripts of Live Expert Interviews) – Nov. 2008 and Feb. 2009.
• Why every nonprofit needs a social media strategy | SPURspectives
• We Are Media Project: The Social Media Starter Kit for Nonprofits
• The Essential Guide to Social Media

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From blogs and podcasts to social networking, if you are having a hard time sorting out which of the emerging social media tools would be beneficial to your organization, an article published by Idealware might help. The December 2006 article reviews the numerous social media tools nonprofits and social ventures are using to build visibility and raise revenue. And a Philanthropy News Digest article I wrote called the ABCs of Podcasting highlights ways Bay Area organizations such as KQED, Cal Academy of Sciences, Monterey Bay Aquarium, and the San Francisco Bay Joint Venture are using new web-based technologies, particularly podcasts, to tell stories and broadcast their messages to wider audiences.

Every month it seems that a new free web tool emerges. While most are free, it is a good idea to be selective since the free version might include unwanted advertisements and it will take an investment of time to learn how to use the tools effectively and build content and connections. In the San Francisco Bay Area, you can also learn about these new tools at the annual NetSquared conference, which is taking place in San Jose, California this year. Or you can hear presentations by social entrepreneurs at monthly NetSquared events in San Francisco.

I recently learned about an innovative and growing online community called New Routes to Community Health, which is a project funded by the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation. With social media, one of their goals is to promote the exploration of cultures, achievements, and challenges of immigrants.

And to listen to a collection of audio recordings about Bay Area changemakers, check out Britt Bravo’s Big Vision Podcast. Britt is also one of the organizer’s of Net Tuesday.

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