Social Actions Round-Up, July 22, 2008

Each week, Social Actions community members post links and news about online social activism to the Social Action Platforms group. The following round-up is a summary of the links that surfaced in the last 7 days.

Lloyd Nimetz of HelpArgentina on the future of philanthropy.

Tom Munnecke on the status of technologies for a better world.

Tom Watson spread the word about the Social Actions’ wiki.

Nathaniel Whittemore’s take on this week’s Wall Street Journal article about online giving.

Qui Diaz on lessons learned from the inactivity of social action platforms.

Amy Sample Ward on all things Social Actions *and* 501c3cast interview.

Nick Burcher on social searching + Google's algorithm

This week, we discovered ForwardTrack, an open source software for tracking advocacy campaigns across distributed networks; DreamBank launched; and using ThePoint, Spot.us funded their first community funded journalism proposal.

Joe Solomon discoverd these two things he loves about DonorsChoose: (1) The double your impact option. You can search for projects for which a foundation has promised to double your donation! (2) The ability to make a "quick" donation -- you can donate money to DonorsChoose and leave it up to their staff to decide where the money is allocated. "My gift will be allocated by volunteers and staff members to the projects they feel will most improve learning."

Joe Solomon found this new video from ThePoint very interesting.

Alex Steed of MakeSomethingHappen wrote up this report about Netroots Nation 2008.

DonorsChoose reported that a car dealership in Virginia is giving DonorsChoose Giving Certificate to everyone who buys a new car.

Peter Deitz of Social Actions explained why he is so excited about citizen philanthropy in a blog post called, This is What Philanthropy Looks Like.

Katya Andresen of NetworkforGood wrote about the importance of good tag lines.

Joe Solomon of Social Actions told the world what three applications we plan to build in the coming months.

Corey Pudhorodsky published an interview with Peter Deitz of Social Actions (transcript here).

Care2's Frogloop Blog posted three tips on how nonprofits can harness the power of video and a Insider's Guide to Video on YouTube for Nonprofits.

Mapufacture posted a Global Charities map that features Kiva loans and GlobalGiving projects.

DemocracyinAction posted a slideshow called The Joy of Finding Supporters and Turning Them Into Donors.