The Web and The Warm Group

Here are some ways that The Warm Group can use the web to our benefit.

Social Networking Sites

The Facebook

Facebook allows you to create pages, groups and events. Pages are like mini web pages to promote your business or cause. Groups are like pages but with more interactivity. Groups have basic message board functionality and can be used to organize volunteers. The Most Amazing Yard Sale In The History of Earth, will be attended by a famous Vermont artist and his dealer because I posted the event on Facebook.

Update: Partially thanks to facebook, the yard sale made over $1,000.

Myspace

Myspace is like facebook but less professional and slightly younger. Myspace lets you create a profile for your cause and then promote events and bulletins.

I think of facebook as where we find donors and myspace as where we find clients.

Youtube

Youtube Is Great Because

  • It is free.
  • Our amazing PSAs are already on it.
  • We could easily have a youtube contest to make user submitted videos and give the best a "prize".
  • Everyone loves to report on youtube.
  • Facebook and Myspace play very nicely with youtube.
  • Youtube has a "hook."

Filed Under "If We Had Time"

Ebay

Ebay is a great way to supplement income and develop new revenue streams. Under ebay's giving works program non-profits do not pay ebay's seller fees. At Tri-Cap I developed the Thrift Store To Go Mystery Box concept which allowed us to turn unwanted items into revenue with ono cost to us.

Constituent Management Systems

The purpose of constituent management software is to maintain a database of potential "voters" from which a political campaign or grassroots organization can draw from to contact or take an action. I have personal experience with two constituent management systems Advokit and CiviCRM. I believe that either piece of software would be beneficial to the The Warm Group's community building efforts.

CiviCRM

CiviCRM originated as the constituent management software of the Howard Dean presidential campaign.

CiviCRM is an open source and freely downloadable constituent relationship management solution. CiviCRM is web-based, open source, internationalized, and designed specifically to meet the needs of advocacy, non-profit and non-governmental groups.

A version of CiviCRM called CiviVoter is used by the Canadian Green Party to organize distributed call banks and foot canvasses. We could very easily adapt the system to allow us to develop and implement a social service based foot canvas system.

CiviCRM being related to Vermont gives it a local hook.

Advokit

Advokit is a free web-based voter contact management system created by and for the grassroots. Using Advokit, you can combine the power of voter files and social networking to build your grassroots into an organization, and use that organization to identify and mobilize supporters. Advokit is an online hub for a campaign’s activist recruitment, voter registration, supporter identification, get-out-the-vote, door-to-door canvassing and phone bank work.

Out of the box Advokit is very suited to our needs but is not very flexible.

Buzzwords, Caveats and Other Issues

Pros

  • Social software is very hot right now and using it is newsworthy by itself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_software
  • Crowdsourcing is a hot word right now. Crowdsourcing is using the knowledge of the community or crowd to find a solution to a problem. We could crowdsource a lot of our data. See cons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing
  • I am willing to do the initial install of either software package.
  • The software behind what I call WarmCheck is free to use and install.
  • It is an election year and there are many trained canvassers in the area who are interested in our efforts.
  • Either piece of software can be scaled up to cover more than just the Upper Valley. It would not take much effort to gradually expand the system to include most of Vermont and New Hampshire.
  • blank intern is a cost effective method of getting things done and increasing our social network.

Cons

  • I cannot commit to maintaining any system after initial installation.
  • We have to get our data from somewhere and most of the freely available data excludes large populations of people we would want to provide service.
  • Either piece of software can be scaled up to cover more than just the Upper Valley. It would not take much effort to gradually expand the system to include most of Vermont and New Hampshire.