The CitizenGulf project was just unfolded last week. A national event on August 25 with would-be meet-ups throughout the country designed to create awareness for the Citizen Effect project, seeks to raise funds and awareness for fishing families. The effort also fits the nonprofit's citizen empowering philanthropy philosophy, which is identifying actionable problems and solutions amongst major problems, such as this one -- the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill. How does one go from an oil spill to a national meet-up event? What strategies and tools will be deployed? Here's an inside look on how we scaled from a nonexistent program to a national effort in just three months.

Strategy Begins with Research

We began our effort with a very visible citizen…

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Facebook has just added 3 new features to the ‘Like’ button that hold a promise of greater connectivity and better analytics. Not unusual for Facebook, the release came on a weekend, so no real chance yet to thoroughly explore the bells and whistles – and the implications. And there’s a lot to take in! ‘Like’ acts more like ‘Share’; Facebook analytics are beefed up; and Facebook Pages get to pipe their content right into the newsfeeds of all who ‘Like’ them. Here’s a quick first look at two of those...(read more) More...

Moving from a 1.0 world to a 2.0 world can be very scary for nonprofits. Senior leadership, in particular, isn’t comfortable giving up power and fear that they will lose control of their core messaging. It’s critical that nonprofits face their fears and take control. Why? Because conversations about the issues you work on are consistently happening all over the web. Your nonprofit can either choose to join those conversations and help steer them or face the consequences. Being left out of online conversations not only gives your competitors the advantage of dominating discussions, it can often frame competitors as “the” leader around your issues in the online space. That’s not good!

If your nonprofit wants to start engaging in online conversations, first you need to start by listening to what people are saying…

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“If 2009 was the year of the "tweet", 2010 is the year of the "check-in", said Joe Waters, Director of Cause and Event Marketing at Boston Medical Center on this weeks Live Discussion over at the Chronicle of Philanthropy. After all, location apps like Foursquare and Gowalla were the breakout technology at SXSWi just a few months ago. Following SXSWi though, Frogloop questioned if apps like Foursquare are a novelty or buzz worthy, particularly for nonprofits.

Estrella Rosenberg, who founded Big Love Little Hearts, which works to provide life-saving surgery to children

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Google Wave's steep learning curve and "invitation only" policy made the collaboration tool less than useful for most nonprofits, when it first launched. But take another look: Wave is now faster and more stable, with quick-start templates and tutorials - and it's finally open for everyone to use....(read more) More...

The following post is excerpted from "Share This! How You Will Change the World with Social Networking," a new book from Berrett-Koehler by technologist and nonprofit consultant Deanna Zandt.

When fear of technology makes us hesitate, or holds us back altogether, the conversations about social change continue on without us--without the benefit of our experiences, values, and knowledge.

Those who are reluctant to use social networks to effect change also frequently express fear over lost privacy. The challenges we face in maintaining some semblance of privacy while participating in the larger social movement can certainly seem overwhelming. We're communicating more frequently and more openly with…

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Nonprofits are constantly trying to connect with passionate people who care about their issues. We want our advocates and our volunteers to not only take action on our issues, but we want them to donate money and time to our organizations, recruit their friends, family and colleagues to our causes. In other words we want them to help us build a movement.

Beth Kanter and Allison Fine, who recently published the book The Networked Nonprofit: Connecting with Social Media to Drive Change, offer nonprofits some sound advice and strategies on becoming a better "networked nonprofit" to help further engage people. They will be sharing even more insight on the Care2…

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