As a child of the 80’s (okay, very late 70’s), I am used to government having very little (if any) involvement in technology driven initiatives (outside of the military), and certainly not technology for a purpose.

Enter the Obama Administration. Suddenly, there’s a Director of Citizen Participation and a Department of Social Innovation. Woah! This round-up just touches the surface: mentioning the appointment of a former Google executive to the Obama administration, highlighting the Utah senate’s use of social media, and drawing attention to the Republican party’s efforts to leverage crowd sourcing (Obama-style).

The effects of government ‘getting it’ are going to be huge. At Social Actions, we’ll be keeping an eye on how these stories develop.

Below is the Social Actions round-up covering the period January 21, 2009 to February 2, 2009.

News Roundup

Kiva.org launches its developer API and a new website, build.kiva.org.

Google Exec Katie Jacobs Stanton joins Obama administration as Director of Citizen Participation.

CauseGlobal introduces Katie Jacobs Stanton and her vision.

UC Berkeley Human Rights Center launches a Mobile Challenge on NetSquared.

Civic Ventures is accepting nominations for The Purpose Prize.

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Below is a special MLK day / Obama inauguration version of the Social Actions round-up. We have added a section with links to MLK and Obama-related initiatives. Feel free to add resources by posting a comment.

Above is 7 year-old Gerra Gistand, winner of Houston’s MLK Oratory Competition

MLK / Day of Service / Obama Inauguration

CauseGlobal posts a guide to participating in the Obama inaurguration using social media.

Seth Godin reflects on the National Day of Service.

Winners of Houston’s MLK Oratory Competition (hugely inspiring).

Britt Bravo shares Five ways to participate on the MLK Day of Service.

Social Actions branded its search engine with the MLK silhouette.

Social Actions launched the MLKActions on Twitter.

Zazengo launched its MLK Impact Challenge on Facebook.

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Over the holidays, online changemakers did not cease to churn out news. Below you will find the latest Social Actions round-up, bringing us up to date with the movers and shakers of online social activism. We’d like to start the New Year by featuring three breaking stories.

Over the holidays, The Case Foundation launched a campaign called, Change Begins With Me. The foundation is inviting people to write brief testimonies about how they plan to make change in 2009. One lucky winner will receive a ticket to President Elect Obama’s inauguration at the end of January.

Also on the change front, Change.org launched 7 new blogs on the second day of 2009. The new blogs include Autism, Education, Global Health, Health Care, Human Trafficking, Poverty in America, and Sustainable Food.

We’d also like to congratulate Tom Watson, author of CauseWired, on the formal launch of his new company, CauseWired Communications.

News Roundup

The Case Foundation launches the Change Begins With Me campaign.

Change.org launches 7 new blogs and makes predictions for 2009.

Tom Watson formally launches CauseWired Communications.

Beth Kanter writes about the Facebook Causes birthday application.

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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. Check out past roundups here. You can also tag your delicious bookmarks with “p2pchange” or include “#p2pchange” in your tweets - we’ll scoop them up and review them for future Social Actions Roundups.

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

Upcoming Events

Tom Watson will host an online chat at Philanthropy.com (Tues, Dec 16) on the subject of, “Using Online Tools for Activism.”

TakingItGlobal will host a launch party in Toronto (Tues, Dec 16) for the launch of its version 6.

George McCully will speak at the Ethos Roundtable in Harvard Square (Tues, Dec 16) on the subject of, “Philanthropy Reconsidered in the Internet Age.”

ChristmasFuture will launch (Tues, Dec 16) its first TweetsmasFuture campaign.

Kiva will host (Wed, Dec 17) its first community conference call for lenders.

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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.

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Despite the holiday schedule, we witnessed an explosion of reports, articles and presentations over the last 10 days on how the online philanthropic landscape is shifting. In this round up, you’ll find links to material from The Hewlett Foundation, The MacAurther Foundation, The Mozilla Foundation, MSNBC, Cone Inc, Beth Kanter, Tom Watson, TechCrunch, and more.

We start the round-up with links to two break-through online fundraising campaigns: EpicChange’s TweetsGiving initiative (which raised over $10,000 in 48 hours from 336 contributors) and the British Humanist Association’s fundraising page on JustGiving (which raised over £100,000 in 7 days from 6,680 contributors).

News Roundup for Week of Nov 24-30, 2008

EpicChange launches TweetsGiving and raises $10,000 in 48 hours on Twitter.

JustGiving reports on the lessons learnt from the highly succesful Atheist Bus fundraiser.

DonorsChoose.org starts tweeting classroom projects that are nearly funded.

Tom Watson writes about DonorsChoose.org’s experiment with affiliate marketing.

About.com’s Nonprofit portal reflects on how and why people donors give online.

Beth Kanter reports about Change.org’s Ideas for Change in America project and teaching your kids to be philanthropic.

TechCrunch posts SEC letter that explains the government’s reason for shutting down peer-to-peer lending site Prosper.

Better x Design reminds people to apply for a $1,500 grant from their Seed Fund.

Mark Surman of The Mozilla Foundation posts slides from his upcoming presentation, “A city that thinks like the web.”

Joe Solomon posts slides from his presentation, “Firefox Extensions for Social Change.”

The Hewlett Foundation released its report, “The Nonprofit Marketplace: Bridging the Information Gap in Philanthropy.” (read Christine Egger’s response)

The MacArthur Foundation released its findings from the Digial Youth Project.

MSNBC posted (yet another) report on what nonprofits can learn from Obama’s use of social media.

Vodophone Americas Foundation announced a $600,000 Wireless Innovation Challenge.

Cone, Inc released a report celebrating 25 years of cause marketing.

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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 now share links and news for future Social Actions rounds ups in the Peer-to-Peer Social Change FriendFeed Room.

From the Social Actions Blog:

• How Will Your Nonprofit Raise Money in 2012? - Peter Deitz shares awesome insights into the future of fund raising for nonprofits. Also, check out Beth Kanter’s response (w/demographic analysis) here.
• The Future is Here: How to Take Action on Any Web Site - Imagine being able to highlight a phrase on any website and instantly find related ways to make a difference. Now you can, thanks to Marnie Webb !
• What if, for $25, you could help fund the next electric car? - Joe Solomon explores the possibility of mashing a Kiva.org model of peer-to-peer micro-lending for funding green and social entrepreneurs.
• Social Actions Welcomes Three New Action Sources: Celsias, DreamBank and BetterPlace.

From the Web-O-Sphere:

• New e-book: Occupation: Change the World - Attempts to answer the question, How do you make money and change the world? “We spent a year looking for the answers and have put all the stories, results and resources into this e-book.” And it’s free! (Hat-tip: Nathaniel Whittemore)
• New Report: e-campaigning Ideas 2008. Case studies of organizations using Advocacy Online’s platform - including GreenPeace, PETA, and WorldVision. (Hat tip: Solidariti)
• Salvation Army flips the funnel and enables anyone to fund raise using a virtual red kennel. (Hat tip to Jeff Brooks of the DonorPowerBlog)

• JGooders.com launches - a new Jewish site that mashes donating, volunteering, and networking (More in Jerusalem Post) (Hat tip: Lucy Bernholz)

• Green startups merge: 3rdWhale acquires Happyfrog - HappyFrog will go forward as 3rd Whale with the aim of combining the happyfrog green business directory with 3rd Whale’s “green on the go” mobile application (aka Luna)
• Social Innovation Camp announces the 6 winners for their December Camp. Very interesting projects were selected - like Vegsty or “Etsy for vegetables - This idea uses an online market place eto bring together people who grow food in their home, allotment, small holding or farm with people who want to buy locally produced, natural, wholesome foods - just like Etsy has done with handmade craft goods.”
• Are you following The Extraordinaries blog? Recent and awesome posts by Ben Rigby and Britt Bravo about mobile volunteering, virtual volunteering, and mobile for social change.

• Also worth checking out are the KnightPulse video interviews. Kristen Taylor, Knight Pulse’s Community Manager, interviews Nicholas Reville of Miro, Sean Bonner, founder of Metblogs, and most recently, Ben Rigby of MobileVoter/The Extraordinaries.
• Didn’t make it to the Social Entrepreneurship Summit in Toronto this week? Get a super comprehensive re-cap here. (Hat-tip: Nathaniel Whittemore) Also - Beth Kanter has excellent coverage of the ONG Web 2.0 Conference in Romania and Amy Sample Ward likewise offers a number of great posts on the Chain Reaction Conference in London.
• And last but not least - Echoing Green Fellowship applications are due December 1st, 2008 - Get started submitting your project here.

Here is the weekly roundup! Thanks Social Actions! (psst! Check out their new awesome design)

Related:

Social Actions Roundup

Photo by David Reece

Here is the latest roundup from Social Actions:

The desire for “change” was one of the biggest themes for this past US election — captivating millions to get involved, break fund raising records, and vote for a new president. Now that the election is over - “Change” has been given a much bigger place in our culture and I predict that this will re-energize (and possibly transform) the work of activists, nonprofit leaders, and social entrepeneurs.

In the meantime, “Change” marches on - and this roundup is a testament to those inspiring individuals, projects, and platforms who continue to work together to make the world a better place…

Related:

Social Actions’ Weekly Roundup

Here is the Social Actions roundup from last week:

1 - Philanthropy 2173: Mobile texting moves to Mobile Volunteering

Lucy Bernholz introduces and shares the potential of TheExtraordinaires - a tool that’s under development and will enable you to volunteer via you cell phone.

Note: TheExtraordinaires is also seeking an iPhone coder (and launched a cool video to boot)

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