Ramifications of Web 2.0 for Nonprofits with Participatory Applications

Although Web 2.0 may be a dying buzzword in technorati circles, its paradigms are still new within most nonprofits. At N-TEN's 2006 Nonprofit Technology Conference, traditional issues of community, advocacy, and participation were explored within the context of individual ownership and content remixing:

The first intriguing question that came up: Do people's social needs drive the emergence of new technology, or does the emergence of these new technologies drive what people want to do?

What Web 2.0 makes possible

Rob Cottingham of Social Signal sees people just beginning to realize that the Web is more than a browser - the Web is actually both device- and site-independent. (Come to think of it, I don't know that I had this perspective consciously either. Great point.) Marshall Kirkpatrick of NetSquared notes that new cultures are developing around current online tools, and so the unique concerns of social change organizations need to be taken into consideration as these cultures form.

Marnie Webb, also of NetSquared (and CompuMentor) is looking at how people need to connect to one another. Although it's somewhat strange to use the Web to discover and meet your neighbors at the coffee shop, she sees people doing so - and by doing so, becoming more satisfied socially. In fact, most people do this without realizing it; people may deny using RSS, but they're using My Yahoo!.

Facing security and control concerns

Web 2.0 tools allow organizations to extend their work by putting it out where other individuals can find it. As Webb has discovered, organizations worry about what other people are doing with their information. There are many emotional, security, and control issues at play,which is very different from the  network security issues that these technologies typically bring up. (This topic was also central to the engagement frameworks discussion.)

To this point, Webb posits that change in the community means that some nonprofits will disappear. And increasingly, as people build on top of each other in scalable ways, nonprofits that don't participate will shrink. Each organization needs to share information and make it easy for others to use whatever pieces are meaningful to their own work. At the same time, organizations must actively choose what to share and what to protect. Planned Parenthood is a good example - their site makes it easy to find health information, but they'll never use MeetUp to make it easy to find a meeting. (Disclosure note: Omidyar Network is an investor in MeetUp.) I personally think that this works best when people fix a strategy for information sharing, then make that policy loud and clear in the community.

Matt Blair (the session organizer) from HumaniNet reminds us that everything you put onto the Internet is being stored somewhere. When you decide what information to share, think about what you want people to see five years from now. Whether using the Wayback Machine or plain aggregation tools, histories are very easy to access. Sometimes you need to worry about what happens when the technology works. What happens when people take advantage of information that's been made freely available? People share very personal information - birthdays, events they're planning on attending, etc. - which is great for community building, but possibly dangerous for personal security. Cottingham cited an example of an international resident friend that had vacationed in Canada, but was not allowed to reenter the US. Apparently, the border guards Googled him and saw overly controversial content in his blog.

People who run IT tend to be conservative on security. Webb's good advice is to be very focused about what core set of things needs to be protected, and what really doesn't need to be. From a technical perspective, what do you really need to have behind the firewall? Maybe your home addresses and your donors' credit card numbers, but not too much else. There are many hard conversations to have. Per Webb, "it's like shooting a staple gun into your head." Organizational change is required to find a middle ground, and to define what will be kept inside the box, and what can go outside the box.

Once you've decided what information to share, you must still come to grips with the attending loss of control. Many organizations fear that they won't be able to maintain their brands or organizational identities. Some also worry that they won't be able to measure impact (or claim credit) if their efforts become distributed. Frankly, this is a problem that people struggle with offline as well; it's incredibly difficult to earn credit with funders when you have lent your name to a coalition.

Actively managing content reuse
 

There's a difference between allowing people to use your content, and investing in them using your content. Which is closer to your goal? And could you really prevent content reuse anyway? (As Cottingham quips: "Sue your donors!") Folks were interested in ways to track who's taking your content, but others were worried about the potential for spyware. Given that only illegitimate applications for these technologies have had real traction, Webb says that part of our 'not-there-yet' is a set of agreed-upon uses for these technologies. A first step is Creative Commons tagging and attribution, which is vastly different from spyware. Kirkpatrick and Webb suggested protections including these:

• Set up RSS feeds using your key search terms.
• Use FeedBurner to track unusual uses of your content. (Say, someone scraping your site for content and reusing it elsewhere.)
• Put a Creative Commons license onto your Web site content. You may diffuse your message, but you will at least know where your content is showing up, since people will stop hiding their use of it. (Disclosure note: Omidyar Network is a funder of Creative Commons.)
• Check BlogSafer.org for information about safe, anonymous blogging.
• Download a tool called Tor from the EFF. (Disclosure note: Omidyar Network is a funder of the EFF.) Tor serves as a browser proxy, so your browsing is anonymous; browser requests are hopped around the Internet before coming to you, and requests take a different path each time.  

What happens if you follow this advice, and build up a bunch of systems that rely on third-party tools...and then the third party goes away? Kirkpatrick thinks that these systems have become too integrated for them to disappear from the market, but Blair cautions that these services may change direction or change their terms of use. He recommends that nonprofits only use services like Flickr for short-term projects, not five-year strategies. Cottingham takes the pragmatic path: Use all of these services, but keep a backup somewhere else.

Maximizing the benefits

Webb's more positive management approach advises nonprofits to think about the advantages for their constituencies. If using Flickr is the only way for a four-person staff to share photos, then they should go ahead and use it. In this case the risk is worth taking, since otherwise you have nothing at all.

The same thing that makes these tools attractive is what can protect you. If you put your events into Eventful, you can also have Eventful post those events to other event sites, so you'll have a number of archives protecting the information. (Disclosure note: Omidyar Network is an investor in Eventful.) OnlyWire is another good example that Webb cited. OnlyWire is a social bookmarking service that allows you to save into fifteen marking services with one account. This enables you to particpate in multiple communities. You will lose some functionality, but at least you won't have all of your eggs in one basket.

This lively, interactive dialogue raised a number of excellent issues for nonprofits to consider in sharing information, and increasing community participation in their efforts. My general sense upon closing was that the nonprofits in the room were more excited by the opportunities than they were dissuaded by the challenges. There is a crying need for best practices and guidelines that these organizations can use to drive change.

Tags: christine herron christine.net space jockeys 06ntc nten nptech nonprofit community advocacy best practices social signal compumentor netsquared humaninet

Comments

[Darren]

Christine, great post. Found it kind of late :-) but it has great thoughts that are worth considering. One of the things that I have been "hot" on lately is the whole concept of web strategy. Going beyond the knee-jerk reaction to using new technologies and thinking about long-term strategies for the web. I tend to think many non-profits are still stuck in brochure-ware mentalities and just add new pieces to their websites rather than think through a plan for what they want to accomplish in and through cyberspace development.

Thanks again. - D

[Franziska]

More on this and related topics at the upcoming NetTuesday on 4/11 in SF with 3 speakers on community engagement:
-Zack Rosen, CivicSpace Labs
-Tara Hunt, HorsePigCow
-Adam Frey, WikiSpaces

http://www.netsquared.org/participate/net-tuesday

[Christine]

Yes, this was one of the better panels - I really enjoyed that there was such high audience participation, and that the speakers kept it fresh. I'm glad that the wireless was down. ;)

[Rob Cottingham]

Superb summary, Christine. Ideas were flying fast and furious - from the audience as well as the panelists - and it was a terrific event.

[yq zhang]

like what you said....i know a friend who actually applied exactly what you put up here for the non-profit organizations and we are looking into some similar ideas here in China....

[Curt]

Thanks for mentioning BlogSafer. Also, check out the 'anonymous blogging' links at Committee to Protect Bloggers (via link above).