Back from vacation! I’ve been itching to discuss an article by Paul Lamb that appeared on News.com recently. (I’m the guy responsible for its current position in the nptech tag stream mainly because I got tired of seeing Techsoup in the stream an umpteen number of times…) Paul makes a valid point that social networking is not for the typical nonprofit audience, i.e. young and digitally savvy. But how can social networking work for social service nonprofits? More after the jump…
He actually discusses some possible uses for social networking in the social services arena:
Social services networking. Using a cheap wireless device, an abused spouse or a person recently released from prison can be linked immediately to a variety of services in their area, including temporary housing, counseling and employment support. Before they even show up at a social service agency, they could access information about the best person to talk to (based on reviews from other clients) and know what services are available in real time without having to wait or be told to go somewhere else.
Street-smart social networking. Rather than handing over a quarter, a passerby can assist a homeless person using a one-click system that identifies local services or electronically transfers money to an account at a local grocery store or restaurant.
I’m not sure that those uses are even feasible (“cheap wireless device”?) for any nonprofit to roll out. (Does anyone even want to add yet another device to their pocket or purse? That’s what convergence is for, isn’t it?) Also, many social services clients may not be able to write reviews simply because they have issues such as access to a computer or mental illness. However, I think Paul is on the right track here and it would be interesting to see how social networking can be incorporated into social services not ten years from now but now. At the non-profit where I work, our clients are getting more computer-savvy over time. My suspicion is that this is the future of social services.
Those of you interested in developing a social networking service for nonprofits may be interested in Barnraiser, which is a group dedicated to creating open-source social networking platforms. I haven’t taken a look at the code but it would be neat to see this group grow. I don’t know how scalable this software is but it IS free.
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A great site to check out for nonprofit social networking is http://www.GroupMembersOnly.com . They are somewhat of a MySpace for nonprofits. The site is free and comes with a lot of features like Blog, IM, Chat, Forums, document sharing, video sharing, private groups & group linking, jobs database, event calendar, funds collections (event fees, donation, membership fees), and some other stuff.
They also license and private brand for organizations that want to have their own private copy of the site.
Barnraisers software is fantastic! It lets you (or your members) create their own web sites. In them they get social tools like blogs and forums that they can lay out in their own multi-page web site. Oxfam use it and i’m sure others will follow soon.
Barnraiser was updated fairly recently but I haven’t checked it out. It could be used as a way to quickly add feature sets to your core set of web-based communications tools. On the other hand, Ning is around too. http://www.ning.com is also a good way of doing the same thing.
Funny you should mention Ning because we were about to use it when I stumbled upon Barnraiser.net; a service for social entrepreneurs – http://www.barnraiser.net/ … We’re going with that because we are an NGO as well.
I work at a Non-profit that provides treatment services for Substance Abuse. Recently one of our directors attended a seminar where they discussed using social network sites to increase awarness to the public of your services. We put together something on Facebook, but I was wondering if anyone else had any experience or results from using Facebook. I do plan on checking out the Barnraiser.net and Ning.