Profiles of change agents, social enterpreneurs & nonprofit influencers
Following is a listing of interviews we’ve done related to social media and the nonprofit/cause worlds. Looking for video tutorials? They’re now on their own page.
Profiles in Social Change (interviews)
Slap Cancer: 5 lessons from a successful cause campaign
Producer: JD Lasica
6:39, July 2012
One of the most impressive fundraising campaigns has to be the campaign put on by Brianna Haag and her team of volunteers for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. In this 6-minute video interview, Brianna shares her thoughts on how other organizations can use social media and event planning to hit their fundraising goals.
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PlayTell: Video chat and storytelling that connects loved ones
Producer: JD Lasica
05:29, June 2012
Semira Rahemtulla is the CEO and co-founder of a cool new tablet app called PlayTell. The San Francisco-based startup has launched the private beta of its new app, currently available for the iPad, which lets loved ones share a reading experience over the Internet. Check out my 5-minute interview with Semira, who had some wonderful insights about how children as young as 2 interact with the iPad and how children as young as 3 and 4 come to expect to reach out to their parents or loved ones at any time through our always-on connections.
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Jolkona: One-to-one philanthropy
Producer: JD Lasica
09:42, January 2012
Adnan Azfar Mahmud, co-founder and CEO, discusses his year-old Jolkona Foundation, where you can find scores of great causes to help out and get individualized feedback and progress reports on how your donation made a difference in people’s lives.
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Rally: Raise money for your favorite cause
Producer: JD Lasica
4:45, September 2011
If you’re a nonprofit looking to raise funds online or an individual looking to support a favorite cause, there’s a new kid on the block you should know about: Rally. Rally is an online fundraising platform that helps causes raise money faster, easier and in a more social way. Kaitlyn Trigger explains how it works in this 4-minute interview conducted at their headquarters in San Francisco.
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Helping nonprofits master the art of grant writing
Producer: JD Lasica
6:11, September 2011
The Foundation Center, which has been around for more than 50 years, is a nonprofit library and learning center that provides information about U.S. philanthropy and helps organizations and individuals learn how to apply for grants through a rich foundation database. Sarah Jo Neubauer, assistant librarian at the center’s San Francisco Library, provides a brief overview of the center’s offerings.
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How DoSomething engages young people
Producer: JD Lasica
7:04, July 2011
One of the great success stories of online advocacy has been DoSomething.org, a not-for-profit that encourages young people to use the power of online to “do good stuff offline.” George Weiner, CTO of DoSomething.org, tells how the organization spurs 1.2 million young people a year to take action on behalf of a social cause they care about.
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How CrowdFlower powers crowdsourced labor
Producer: JD Lasica
5:06, June 2011
Mollie Allick of CrowdFlower talks about what crowdsourcing is and how nonprofits and other organizations can use the power of the crowd to advance their mission in this 4 1/2-minute interview at their offices.
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Unleash your nonprofit’s fundraising potential
Producer: Shonali Burke
3:33, June 2011
CauseVox is a platform that was designed to make it easier for small and medium-size nonprofits to create dynamic fundraising campaigns without having to develop all the technical know-how. CauseVox’s mission is to take the difficulty and strain out of the fundraising process for nonprofits. Rob Wu, founder of Causevox, advises nonprofits on creating social media and fundraising campaigns.
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Empowering homeless people to tell their own stories
Producer: JD Lasica
6:40, May 2011
Mark Horvath, the force behind invisiblepeople.tv and Wearevisible.com, discusses his efforts on behalf of the homeless at the 2011 Nonprofit Technology Conference. invisiblepeople.tv does a great job telling the stories of homeless people through classic man-on-the-street interviews, updated for the new era through Mark’s use of hand-held camcorders, such as the Flip cam.
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6 ways YouTube is helping out nonprofits
Producer: JD Lasica
6:15, April 2011
Ramya Raghavan, News and Politics Manager, discusses YouTube’s programs and services for nonprofits, such as YouTube Direct, YouTube Insight, YouTube GoodWorks, YouTube Moderator and other programs specifically geared to nonprofits. YouTube gives nonprofits branded channels, which means you can upload an image map banner and link back to your website, you can choose custom thumbnails for your videos, you can upload videos longer than 15 minutes and put call-to-action overlays, or external annotations, on any video to drive action to your donation page.
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• Watch or embed the 6-minute video on YouTube
Help enhance sustainability in the world
Producer: JD Lasica
3:58, April 2011
Alejandra Torres, founder and director of the ePack, talks about the web portal’s mission to raise the visibility of sustainability initiatives. The e Pack is a Web portal that promotes organizations and individuals who are helping to improve our world from the inside out.
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Sustainability starts at the local level
Producer: JD Lasica
3:00, April 2011
Angela Sager of the Office of Sustainability at Miami-Dade County describes how it works with companies devoted to energy efficiency, renewable energy and community energy campaigns as well as private-public partnerships to develop relationships to grow the market in south Florida for renewable energy or renewable fuels..
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Fighting poverty by enhancing social entrepreneurship
Producer: JD Lasica
9:37, April 2011
Daniela Hammeken, director of strategic partnerships for Agora Partnerships, a nonprofit that works with small companies in Central America to provide access to knowledge, capital and networks, discusses the organization at the Sustainatopia conference in Miami.
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How to activate your organization’s supporters
Producer: JD Lasica
6:38, April 2011
Socialbrite’s Sloane Berrent offers some of the tips discussed with participants at the Socialbrite bootcamp at Sustainatopia, including how to find the influencers in your sector and her suggestion to create real-world meet-ups from your organization’s online connections.
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The networked activist: How ‘The Story of Stuff’ went viral
Producer: JD Lasica
7:52, February 2011
Annie Leonard, the independent filmmaker, talks about producing “The Story of Stuff,” a documentary short on how things are produced and discarded. The film in all its versions has attracted more than 13 million views.
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Finding the right chemistry for nonprofits & business
Producer: JD Lasica
7:42, January 2011
Bruce W. Burtch, a cause marketing expert in the Bay Area, discusses opportunities for bringing together nonprofits and companies in a mutually beneficial partnership to advance the social good.
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Vivanista: Live well and do good
Producer: JD Lasica
11:03, January 2011
Here’s an 11-minute interview with Annie Vranizan, co-founder of Vivanista, a San Francisco start-up that offers resources around fundraisers and helps women in particular become more adept at organizing philanthropic events.
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VolunteerSpot: Tips to spur offline actions
Producer: JD Lasica
4:09, December 2010
Founder Karen Bantuveris talks about VolunteerSpot, a tool that makes it easy for anyone to coordinate and organize volunteers.
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Newmediarights.org: Know your digital rights
Producer: JD Lasica
5:15, November 2010
Mera Szendro Bok, communications and information officer for NewMediaRights.org, describes the 3-year-old nonprofit and its efforts to protect the rights of online publishers, particularly on intellectual property disputes. The site offers a rich set of resources as well as investigative journalism videos and other citizen media efforts.
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Twitter as a force for social good
Producer: JD Lasica
3:22, November 2010
Most nonprofits and cause organizations look at Twitter as a key ingredient of their social media strategy. But Twitter offers a number of other opportunities for collaboration to advance the social good — many of which you may not know about. Claire Williams Diaz-Ortiz, who heads up Corporate Social Innovation & Philanthropy at Twitter, discusses how Twitter helps nonprofits with initiatives such as Hope140.org.
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Invest in entrepreneurs for social good
Producer: JD Lasica
6:50, November 2010
Here’s a short interview with Shivani Siroya, the founder and CEO of InVenture (“Invest in good”), an online platform that allows everyday individuals to invest directly in business owners of their choosing in Ghana, Mali, India and Mexico, thus helping lift their communities out of poverty.
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How nonprofits can get started with mobile
Producer: JD Lasica
12:20, September 2010
Nicola Wells, organizer for the Fair Immigration Reform Movement, offers nonprofits tips about how to get started with mobile and how to create an effective mobile campaign. This 11-minute interview was conducted just after we presented the Mobilize Your Cause bootcamp at CUNY as part of Personal Democracy Forum.
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Witness: Putting a face on human rights
Producer: JD Lasica
15:07, September 2010
Matisse Bustos Hawkes, blog editor of Witness.org, talks about the nonprofit and its mission to provide video storytelling training to human rights organizations around the world.
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Catchafire: Connecting nonprofits & professionals
Producer: JD Lasica
5:45, September 2010
Catchafire is a new online marketplace that connects professionals who want to volunteer their skills with nonprofits and social enterprises that need their help. Nonprofits and social businesses register on the site and tell which projects they need help with.
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Mother Jones’ move into social media
Producer: JD Lasica
11:15, September 2010
Mother Jones began in 2009 to build out its presence on Facebook and Twitter. In this interview, Steve Katz talks about Mothers Jones’ embrace of Facebook and Twitter and use of those social media platforms to extend their reach and generate new stories.
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The debut of The Hoop Fund
Producer: JD Lasica
2:23, August 2010
The Hoop Fund is a new social enterprise with a terrific pedigree and promising future. It enables participants to meet the makers of products we buy, invest in their businesses and become part of the prosperity of their communities.
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What’s driving your organization?
Producer: JD Lasica
14:13, August 2010
Pamela Hawley, founder and CEO of UniversalGiving, discusses her recent talks at Cisco and at TEDx about key strategies for corporate engagement in social responsibility.
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Crowdflower: Toward a world of crowdsourced labor
Producer: JD Lasica
03:42, July 2010
Lukas Biewald is the CEO and founder of Crowdflower, a very interesting startup that connects companies with workers around the globe looking to complete crowdsourced tasks. They take simple tasks and break them down, using a global network of workers to determine, say, if a tweet about a brand is negative or positive, or if a piece of content violates a site’s community guidelines.
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Tiny Buddha: Simple wisdom for complex lives
Producer: JD Lasica
07:37, July 2010
An interview with Lori Deschene, founder of Tiny Buddha, who gave a keynote at the Wisdom 2.0 conference in Mountain View, Calif., to address just that: how to lead a more balanced, purposeful and meaning-driven life.
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A chat with the founder of dotSUB
Producer: JD Lasica
08:10, July 2010
Michael Smolens is the CEO and founder of dotSUB, an innovative startup that provides subtitling for videos. The videos can be subtitled through volunteer crowdsourcing or restricted to professionals for business use.
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Green Mountain Coffee: Changing lives
Producer: JD Lasica
06:10, June 2010
Amanda Cooper is the new media specialist for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. She talks about the company giving 5 percent of its pre-tax profits to social and environmental causes for a number of years with a specific focus on poverty and hunger relief.
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FeelGood: A new approach to fight hunger
Producer: JD Lasica
07:54, July 2010
An interview with Kristin Walter and Talis Apud-Martinez, the co-founders of FeelGood, an innovative organization, based mostly on college campuses, that offers a new way to make a difference in the fight against hunger.
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Why Wikipedia insists on open video
Producer: JD Lasica
06:47, July 2010
An interview with Erik Möller, deputy director of the Wikimedia Foundation, who explains why Wikipedia decided early on to support open standards for all video used on the online encyclopedia.
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How nonprofits should be using storytelling
Producer: JD Lasica
15:21, June 2010
Nonprofits and public-benefit organizations have a hard time telling their own stories. They assume that the public shares their passion for the cause, and so they move on to conveying dry stats and research reports to buttress their case. They should be telling stories. Suzanne N. Smith, head of Social Impact Architects in Austin, Texas, discusses why storytelling is so important to any organization.
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Zanby: Create your own community
Producer: JD Lasica
5:19, May 2010
Leif Utne — technologist, journalist, activist, musician, social entrepreneur — talks about Zanby and its potential as a customized collaboration community.
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TakePart: Spurring people to take action
Producer: JD Lasica
4:32, April 2010
The single most difficult issue that those of us in the social change movement confront is: figuring out how to get people to take action. TakePart, an initiative of Participant Media, is a good place to start. Adriana Dunn, editor of the TakePart blog, talks about the kinds of actions that Participant Media is trying to encourage online. The highest profile campaign recently has been around “The Cove,” winner of the best documentary Oscar, which highlighted the annual brutal killing of dolphins at a Japanese fishing village.
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Justgood.tv: Covering social good events
Producer: JD Lasica
10:48, April 2010
Arabella Santiago, founder of Justgood.tv, talks about the startup’s efforts to live-stream events put on by nonprofits and social change organizations. She explains what’s needed if you want to do a live stream of your nonprofit’s event.
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Chat with the founders of Eventbrite for Causes
Guest post by Katrina Heppler
7:27, April 2010
Julia and Kevin Hartz, the co-founders of Eventbrite, talk about how Eventbrite for Causes helps nonprofits to raise brand awareness and raise money through events that are published throughout Eventbrite’s network.
Using social media to help combat climate change
Post by Julie Katz
1:10, March 2010
Finding a balance between creating a movement and actively, successfully campaigning without coming off as a brand ambassador is very hard to come by for many nonprofits, especially when the campaign is backed by corporate interests. ido30 pulls it off. It’s a Denmark-based nonprofit promoting low-temperature laundry as a way to help combat climate change.
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‘The Cove’: Will movies usher in a new era of social change?
Producer: JD Lasica
4:11, March 2010
Christopher Gebhardt, GM and Exec VP of TakePart, the digital arm of Participant Media, discusses the organization’s efforts to spur the public to action through Hollywood productions and online campaigns. He talks about Participant’s actions to spur people to take action around “The Cove,” winner of the Academy Award for best documentary feature.
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Helping Haitians via mobile, crowdsourcing & social media
Guest post by Katrina Heppler
9:57, February 2010
Brian Herbert of Ushahidi, Robert Munro of FrontlineSMS, Lukas Biewald of CrowdFlower and Leila Janah of Samasource discuss how they came together with the support of other organizations on the ground in Haiti to deploy a critical emergency communications system to help save lives and provide emergency resources to people following the January 2010 earthquake.
DoSomething.org: How young people can take action
Producer: Sloane Berrent
1:12, February 2010
At Davos, we chat with Nancy Lublin, CEO and “Chief Old Person” of Do Something, a nonprofit organization that gets young people excited and involved in causes. She discusses three trends important to teens right now.
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‘Philanthrocapitalism’: Givers are more likely to change the world
Producer: Sloane Berrent
2:34, February 2010
In our coverage of Davos, Matthew Bishop, business editor of The Economist and author of “Philanthrocapitalism,” talks about the role of the wealthy and the future of giving.
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Ning, Davos and Haiti recovery projects
Producer: Sloane Berrent
1:56, February 2010
At Davos, Gina Bianchini, co-founder and CEO of Ning, talks about the Open Architecture Network and the She 28 Campaign, a project that gives women in Rwanda the skills to start their own business making sanitary projects using banana leaves.
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Laura Tyson on closing the gender gap
Producer: Sloane Berrent
2:28, January 2010
At Davos, we chat with Laura Tyson, former chair of the US President’s Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton administration, about closing the gender gap.
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BetterWorldTelecom: Saving nonprofits money
Producer: JD Lasica
6:22, January 2010
Salem Kimble, social media manager for BetterWorld Telecom, discusses the socially conscious telecom provider that serves nonprofits and small businesses. It donates 3% of its revenues to social causes.
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Information into action: Africa and beyond
Producer: Ken Banks
2:05, January 2010
Ken Banks talks about the release of a film and a book that cover different aspects of non-profit digital activism. Info-activism.org explores how rights advocates “use information and digital technology to create positive change.” Actions are broken down into 10 tactics that provide original ways for rights advocates to capture attention and communicate a cause.
CauseWorld: Support causes on the go
Producer: Beth Kanter
8:33, December 2009
Beth Kanter discusses about how the new mobile application Causeworld works. App users earn “karma points” when they walk into stores and check in with their cell phone. No purchase is required at any store, and karma points can be redeemed nine predefined good causes. Enter a store, check in, and get the karma points offered to you. Once you’ve collected enough karmas you can donate them to a variety of causes.
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Social media for social good
Guest post by Jordan Viator
7:28, December 2009
Nonprofit Live TV interviews Matt Mahan, Nonprofit and Business Development Director of Causes, and Carie Lewis, Director of Emerging Media of the Humane Society of the United States. The participants discuss how smaller, resource-constrained nonprofits should be using social media. Mahan and Lewis give examples of how outreach on Twitter or Facebook can engage support for a cause or organization.
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eduFire expands its tech curriculum
Guest post by Katrina Heppler
3:46, November 2009
Jon Bischke, founder of eduFire, describes the educational training start-up’s new Tech Channel and tells us how eduFire is using social media throughout the company’s platform.
Rexi Media: How to turbo-charge your presentation
Producer: JD Lasica
6:03, November 2009
Danielle Daly, co-founder of Rexi Media, discusses five ways to make your presentation skills more effective. Its new app, Presentation Pro, has become a hit for its straightforward tips on what you need to watch out for when presenting.
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The story behind Invisible Children
Producer: JD Lasica
6:36, November 2009
Laren Poole, a filmmaker who co-founded Invisible Children, talks about the groundbreaking human rights organization, which is trying to free children forced into armed conflict.
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Forge: Helping to revitalize African communities
Producer: JD Lasica
4:51, November 2009
Kjersten Erickson, founder and executive director of Forge, discusses the 6-year-old international NGO that works with refugees and war-affected populations in Africa. “We provide a support system to allow refugees and post-conflict communities to rebuild and revitalize themselves,” she says in this video interview conducted at Social Capital Markets 2009.
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Global Voices: Lifting up the powerless & voiceless
Producer: JD Lasica
8:42, October 2009
Rebecca MacKinnon, co-founder of Global Voices, talks about the international bloggers network, its reach and impact, and some of its programs, including Rising Voices and Global Voices Advocacy.
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Using nonprofit tech to benefit society
Producer: JD Lasica
9:51, October 2009
Amy Sample Ward, global community builder for NetSquared, talks about the field of nonprofit tech and social change, enabled by nonprofits, individuals and corporations.
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DonorsChoose: Crowd-funded public education
Producer: JD Lasica
6:33, October 2009
DonorsChoose CEO Charles Best discusses the groundbreaking charity and its model for funding public school projects around the country. Individuals contributed around $17 million in 2009 for books, field trips, art supplies and technology needed by classrooms in low-income areas.
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Cause marketing with celebrities & social media
Producer: JD Lasica
13:40, October 2009
Some $6 billion was raised online in 2008 for charity and nonprofits — less than 5 percent of total US charitable giving. Chris Noble, CEO of Kompolt (now CauseMedia), thinks we’ll see that trend follow the same growth curve as ecommerce over the next 10 years, and as it does, cause marketing and cause campaigns will play an increasingly important role. Noble talks about the rapidly evolving field of cause marketing — working with companies to promote a social good. Major brands have begun backing charitable causes, and celebrities have as well. Now social media, and participation by online communities, is throwing an extra dimension into the mix.
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An inventive cause campaign to fight malaria
Producer: JD Lasica
9:52, October 2009
Socialbrite’s own Sloane Berrent and her friend Doug Campbell of Mindshare launched Causeitsmybirthday, a cause campaign with a wild premise: parties in seven major cities on seven consecutive nights to raise money for malaria nets for orphanages and refugee camps in northern Ghana. She discusses the results: more than $16,000 raised.
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YouthNoise: Helping young people network a cause
Producer: JD Lasica
8:03, September 2009
YouthNoise offers a community dedicated to creating lasting positive change around the world, with the resources to build campaigns, amplify projects and kick off grassroots movements. The site offers a wide variety of tools, Web and mobile technologies and peer support that let members turn ideas into action in areas ranging from health to human rights, from education and the environment to poverty.
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Toward a Web of open video
Producer: JD Lasica
7:58, September 2009
Mark Surman, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation, hopes a concerted push toward open standards will “shift the market away from a black box video plug-in, where the video is separate from the rest of the page, to something where video can interact with Javascript” or other elements on a Web page.
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Matt Mullenweg on the state of WordPress
Producer: JD Lasica
5:52, September 2009
Founder Matt Mullenweg discusses the state of blogging platform WordPress, its astonishing growth here and abroad, the vibrancy of the consumer open source movement and his estimate that about 8,000 coders are contributing code and themes to WordPress today.
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eduFire: Real-time Web learning
Producer: JD Lasica
4:49, September 2009
Founder and CEO Jon Bischke shares details about his new company, eduFire (tagline: “Live video learning”), an online platform that provides learning on subjects from A to Z by teachers around the world. More than 5,000 instructors are teaching more than 30,000 students.
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How to make your website more accessible
Producer: JD Lasica
14:53, August 2009
Glenda Watson Hyatt, a trainer and conference speaker, offers advice on how to make websites and blogs more accessible to the disabled — and why it’s important that you do.
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Mokugift: Plant a tree for $1 to fight global warming
Producer: Katrina Heppler
5:10, August 2009
Mokugift lets you plant trees in Central America, Africa and Asia for a donation of just $1 per tree. Since the site’s launch, more than 75,000 trees have been planted. We chatted with the site’s co-founder, Hans Chung.
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How the National Wildlife Federation uses social media
Producer: JD Lasica
6:32, August 2009
Danielle Brigida, social media outreach coordinator, discusses the social media efforts of the National Wildlife Federation, the nonprofit organization that inspires Americans to protect wildlife for our children’s future.
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BBC’s Save Our Sounds project
Producer: JD Lasica
3:14, July 2009
The BBC World Service’s Save Our Sounds project seeks to preserve disappearing sounds in society. Kate Arkless Gray explains how the project has begun preserving users’ contributions of sound snippets, ranging from the sounds of a 64k modem to rare bird calls.
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Symbian: Open source has made the difference
Producer: JD Lasica
5:56, July 2009
“Being open source has made an incredible difference in how we interact with the community,” says Anatolie Papas of the Symbian Foundation, the operating system that powers nearly half the world’s smartphones. She talks about recent changes at Symbian, the value of open source, and the large number of software developers around the world writing code for Symbian-powered mobile devices.
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How Convio uses social media
Producer: JD Lasica
6:33, June 2009
Convio offers online fundraising and marketing software and donor database and CMS solutions to its more than 1,200 nonprofit clients, ranging from a seven-person nonprofit with remote staff to large institutions like the Humane Society and American Cancer Society. Jordan Viator, interactive communications manager, discusses Convio’s social media efforts, much of it through the Connection Cafe blog.
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• Watch video in beautiful H.264 QuickTime on Ourmedia
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Mexican arts center ‘saves lives’
Producer: JD Lasica
6:45, June 2009
Here’s a digital story about Los Cenzontles Mexican Arts Center in the San Francisco East Bay. Instructors there teach young people to connect with their heritage through music, dance, arts and crafts and more. This six-minute testimonial includes a clip of Los Lobos performing a benefit concert at the center and my interview with Los Lobos lead singer David Hidalgo (pictured at left), who talks passionately about how the center “saves lives” by giving kids an alternative to drugs and violence.
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How KidsAreHeroes uses Twitter
Producer: John Haydon
7:18, May 2009
Here’s a screencast I did about my recent meeting with Gabe O’Neill of Kids Are Heroes. I was completely blown away by two things: his unwavering sense of mission, and the fact that he uses only Twitter for social media actions. Kids Are Heroes recently won the competition for Richard Branson’s first ever PitchTV show! In this video, I talk about my meeting with Gabe and the four success factors that contributed to his success: 1. Solid sense of mission; 2. Remarkable content; 3. Be active with social media; 4. A reason to fight.
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Change.org: Turning concern into action
Producer: JD Lasica
5:53, May 2009
Change.org is a social enterprise that’s helping to raise awareness about important social causes and empowering people to take action, chiefly through the efforts of leading nonprofits. Ben Rattray, founder and CEO, describes the organization this way: “We’re an online community and media network for social issues, focused on engaging and informing people about the most important issues of our time — global warming, homelessness, fair trade — and compelling them to take action.” Actions might range from joining an organization and making a personal pledge to signing an online petition or calling a congressperson’s office about an issue. Thousands of nonprofit organizations have signed up and “claimed their profiles” on Change.org, allowing them to add additional information and interact directly with supporters and donors.
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NTEN helps nonprofits grapple with technology
Producer: JD Lasica
8:22, May 2009
Holly Ross, executive director of the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN), discusses the organization’s mission of helping nonprofits learning how to effectively use technology and social media. She also talks a number of reports that should be of interest to nonprofits as well as a workshop/training series led by Beth Kanter.
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Global Hug Tour: Raising funds for 50 international causes
Producer: JD Lasica
9:33, May 2009
Gail Lynne Goodwin of Inspire Me Today and her husband Darryl — an ordinary couple from Boulder, Colo. — were sitting around one day and decided to make a difference in people’s lives around the world by launching an event that combines good vibes and charitable giving with the power of social media. Their new project is called the Global Hug Tour. In fall 2009 they’ll board a small prop prop plane, fly it more than 31,000 miles and visit 50 cities around the world over five months to give away an anticipated $1 million in donations to worthy nonprofits. Oh, and give 2,000 hugs in each of those locations. The causes run the gamut from breast cancer and AIDS prevention and treatment to grizzly bear preservation.
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Intel’s chairman on its charitable efforts
Producer: JD Lasica
14:37, April 2009
At the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Intel chairman and former CEO Craig Barrett sat down for a joint interview with the Intel Insiders (disclosure: I’m a member). The next day, Barrett gave a keynote at CES in which he announced a wide-ranging new initiative by Intel to support the philanthropic micro-lending efforts of Kiva.org and the nonprofit charity Save the Children all across the globe. Barrett mentions the Intel Teach program to put technology in the classroom, which is especially popular overseas. He also discusses the larger role that technology companies — Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, IBM (and Google, though he doesn’t name them) — are playing in the evolving field of corporate social responsibility.
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Kiva’s president on micro-lending
Producer: JD Lasica
4:46, December 2008
Here’s a short interview with Premal Shah, president of the nonprofit microfinance lender Kiva.org, conducted at the Craigslist Nonprofit Bootcamp in San Mateo, Calif. Premal discusses Kiva, which supports small businesses and entrepreneurs in the developing world by generating $25 loans from members. He also talks about other online services that are of great help to nonprofits, including myc4, microplace, prosper.com, Google Checkout, techsoup and Salesforce’s program for nonprofits.
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Samasource: Outsource the responsible way
Producer: JD Lasica
4:45, December 2008
Here’s an interview with Leila Chirayath, founder and CEO of Samasource, a nonprofit organization in Silicon Valley that that connects small and mid-size businesses with individuals and firms in the developing world that can perform outsourcing work (such as data entry) in a socially responsible way. They have pilot programs in Kenya, Nepal and rural India, and their goal, as their website says, is “to catalyze sustainable economic development and poverty alleviation by creating a thriving, active market for socially responsible outsourcing to developing regions.”
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eBay’s Giving Works program
Producer: JD Lasica
8:58, October 2008
Here’s a conversation with Kristin Cunningham, general manager of eBay’s Giving Works program, about how you can help nonprofits through your purchases on eBay (and how nonprofits can help themselves). Giving Works, now 5 years old, has raised $150 million for charitable causes on eBay.
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A talk with the founder of Drupal
Producer: JD Lasica
11:51, October 2008
Here’s a chat with Dries Buytaert, founder and creator of Drupal, the open source content management system that is now powering tens of thousands of websites, including Ourmedia, The Onion, Sony Music artists (see myplay.com) and many others. Dries talks here about Drupal, the power of open source publishing, and a new partnership with Acquia, a Boston-area company that gives citizen publishers a free publishing platform and tech support to get it up and running.
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Social venture and the social enterprise
Producer: JD Lasica
9:34, October 2008
Sara Olsen, a founding partner of the Social Venture Technology Group, talks in this 8-minute video interview about social enterprises, with a focus on a project her group backed, Patricia Ruiz Corzo’s Grupo Ecologico Sierra Gorda in Mexico, which conducted an experiment in “gourmet carbon.” Sara chatted a few minutes after her panel talk at Social Capital Markets in San Francisco.
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Social causes on campus
Producer: JD Lasica
4:54, October 2008
Aden Van Noppen of Brown University discusses an effort, supported by the Acumen Fund, to involve college students in social causes. Interview conducted at the Social Capital Markets conference in San Francisco.
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SoCap: Advancing the social good
Producer: JD Lasica
3:52, October 2008
Here’s an interview with Kevin Jones, founder of an important new conference called Social Capital Markets. The three-day gathering in San Francisco, with 650 attendees, focused on social enterprises, the blurring line between nonprofits and socially conscious for-profits, and the tidal wave of interest in organizations that promote the common good (especially in the wake of the stock market’s meltdown). VCs, entrepreneurs, foundations, aid agencies and journalists all attended.
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• 2nd interview: Behind the scenes at SoCap (August 2009)
Update: Behind the scenes at SoCap 2009
Support nonprofit causes with Causecast
Producer: JD Lasica
6:16, September 2008
At TechCrunch 50, Ryan Scott, founder and CEO of Causecast, talked about the new project on the day of its launch. Causecast empowers people who want to make change. It’s a platform and social network where media, philanthropy, social networking, entertainment and education converge to serve a greater purpose. Jennifer Lopez, Kanye West, Matthew Modene and Jenny McCarthy are among the Hollywood celebrities that have pitched in on behalf of a cause for the Santa Monica-based outfit.
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Kaltura: open source video
Producer: JD Lasica
9:35, August 2008
Kaltura offers an open-source platform, toolset and nearly free video hosting solution for small and large companies and nonprofits. The company’s goal is to bring interactive video to every site and to create the world’s largest distributed video network. We caught up with CEO Ron Yekutiel at the Stanford Summit.
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• 2nd video interview: Kaltura: Open source’s growing influence
Reduce your carbon footprint
Producer: JD Lasica
5:49, August 2008
Here’s a short interview with Deborah Kaplan, executive director of Zerofootprint.net, an amazing organization based in Toronto and devoted to help organizations, cities and individuals recognize their carbon footprint and take specific measures to help reduce climate change. They’re working with the cities of Toronto, Seattle, Edmonton and Ottawa to help citizens reduce their carbon footprints. For starters, check out their One Minute Calculator.
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Making social causes actionable
Producer: JD Lasica
7:41, June 2008
At the NetSquared conference for nonprofits in San Jose in May 2008, one of the most intriguing projects I heard about was Social Actions, a project to tie together disparate cause movements through an open API that would aggregate information about dozens of different campaigns and allow users to take action to further a cause. “Our mission is to put actions in front of people who are most likely to take part,” founder and project lead Peter Deitz said. It’s an ambitious undertaking, and at lunchtime we chatted about where the project is today and where his team will be taking it.
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Maplight shines a light on politics & money
Producer: JD Lasica
4:41, June 2008
Sean Tanner, research director of MAPLight.org, talks about how the organization provides transparency to the political donations system through widgets that tap into pubic information databases.
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Amazee: A social collaboration platform
Producer: JD Lasica
5:49, June 2008
Dania Gerhardt, co-founder and chief of finance and operations for Amazee.com, discusses the Zurich-based social collaboration platform that went live in May 2008. She discusses Amazee’s ambitions as a global activism platform to advance the social good in this 7-minute interview.
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Participatory Culture Foundation: Toward democratic media
Producer: JD Lasica
11:29, May 2008
Through software and advocacy, the nonprofit Participatory Culture Foundation works to build a fairer, more open, and more democratic media space. Its key contribution to date has been Miro, an open-source video player and podcast client. We sat down to hear the latest with co-founder and executive director Nicholas Reville.
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NetSquared: Remixing the Web for social change
Producer: JD Lasica
9:10, May 2008
NetSquared, an initiative of TechSoup Global, enables social benefit organizations to leverage the tools of the social Web. Its annual conference each May brings together scores of social change makers and innovators from around the world.
• Blog post: NetSquared: Helping social change campaigns
• Watch video on Ourmedia
Beth Kanter is CEO of Zoetica, a consultancy for nonprofits. See her profile, visit her blog, contact Beth or leave a comment.