Here is this week’s installment of the Social Action Roundup from Social Actions.

This week’s roundup draws attention to two contests that illustrate the impact social media technologies are having on not just private and nonprofit initiatives, but public spending as well.

USAID’s first-ever open source challenge – the 2008 USAID Development 2.0 Challenge hosted by Netsquared – is ready for your vote. Today through December 12, vote for up to five of your favorite projects from over 100 entries, all of which use mobile technologies for social good.

The recently-completed Apps for Democracy challenge resulted in 47 apps that made use of Washington DC’s government data catalog. As we covered in Roundup #16, this contest delivered a 4,000% ROI for its organizers. This week, Peter Corbett of iStrategyLabs reports on lessons learned and the buzz this contest has generated for creating more open source challenges for government agencies.

And speaking of government, President-elect Obama’s transition team announced this week that the Change.gov website now falls under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Social Actions News and Updates

Social Actions launches a campaign to raise $20,009 by 02/02/2009. Read personal appeals from Peter Deitz and Christine Egger, and check out who’s giving and why they’ve chosen to support Social Actions.

Social Action’s upcoming ChangetheWeb Challenge hosted its first open conversation to discuss recent updates and share ideas. Check out the notes here.

November’s top cause-related search terms for the Social Actions search engine are listed here

Analysis and Commentary

Lucy Bernholz posts her 2009 predictions for online philanthropy

Beth Kanter lists her top 10 nonprofit technology and social media for social change blogs

Peter Deitz hosts a lively discussion on Social Edge about how to scale online support for social entrepreneurs (perhaps something along the lines of Pop!Tech’s Accelerator?)

Gaurav Mishra counsels NPR and several other media outlets on the role of citizen journalism in the Mumbai terrorist attacks

Curtis Chang critiques the costs, benefits, and appropriateness of FORGE’s following the KIVA model

David Wilcox interviews Clay Shirky on social media, social change, and where to find people who are really making a difference.

Stacey Monk and Avi Kaplan of Epic Change offer analysis and “lessons learned” on their incredibly successful Tweetsgiving campaign, and Lucy Bernholz offers her own observations about this and other microgiving campaigns

Allison Fine discusses the effective use of social media for spreading the message and raising money

Launches and Announcements

Razoo relaunches as a full-service, donor-driven online platform for charitable giving (press release on MarketWatch.com)

Facebook launches Facebook Connect, a platform that allows users to integrate their Facebook activity with partner websites (descriptions and responses from ChannelWeb, Beth Kanter, and Michelle Murrain)

RangDe.Org, India’s first peer to peer microlending site, has recently launched (press release on PRLog.org)

DonorsChoose.org announces a challenge grant that will match donations to all projects posted by Oklahoma teachers

Lend4Health partners with Joseph Dee to openly design and launch a new website, a process that will unfold on their wiki and on the Social Actions forum

Spot.Us is looking to hire a Community Organizer (HT Susan Mernit)

New website for Democracy 2.0

New Facebook application for Dreambank

Blackbaud posts The Baudcast, Episode 20 covering Conference for Nonprofits, NetCommunity Developer Challenge, Google map mashups, social media sessions, and more.

The Alliance of Youth Movements summit will create a permanent nonprofit from the 17 online activist groups that have sprung up independently over the past year, all dedicated to using social media to work for peace around the world (HT Cause Global)

Third Sector New England is launching a web-based video reference tool for new nonprofit managers: sneak peeks here and here

Sierra Bravo announces the Overnight Website Challenge: a 24-hour February 2009 marathon where 10 volunteer web pros will create free websites for 10 nonprofits

Katya Andresen and her colleagues at Network for Good offer a free “downturn survival guide for online fundraising eBook

What are Social Actions Round Ups?

Each week, Social Actions community members post links and news about online social activism - This round-up is a summary of the links that surfaced in the last 7 days. You can share links and news for future Social Actions rounds ups in the Peer-to-Peer Social Change FriendFeed Room. You can also check out past roundups here.

Social Actions roundups are syndicated on CauseGlobal, CauseWired, ContributeMedia, NetSquared, and TakePart.