Entries Tagged 'Non-Profits' ↓

"It's almost impossible to describe how important the Web was for getting the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund off the ground," said co-founder Karen Dalton-Beninato. Karen and her husband Jeff, who grew up playing music in the Ninth Ward, used Web technologies and social media to reach out to music fans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Now, almost exactly five years later, another crisis is hitting the shore, the Gulf oil spill.

"With the current state of the economy, we get more used instrument donations than anything else these days, but it's been an amazing ride. New Orleans is going to have a rough summer with Gulf Coast tourism dropping already after the oil spill. Hopefully people will keep the city and its music in their hearts."

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Karen and Jeff started the fund in a Chicago FEMA room when it became clear that many musicians and others wouldn't be able to return to New Orleans for weeks if not months. Jeff, who grew up playing in the Ninth Ward and was a member of the 80s pop band the dBs, as well as playing with roots and jazz outfits, turned to the Internet. He and Karen put together a Website with an online donation function.

Podcasts were a powerful way to reach out to both a distributed public and a fractured musical scene, as was the blog they started. They used social media and more old school Web tools to beat the bushes and pass the hat. Straight out donations, walkathons, downloads and t-shirt sales. Money came in to help get people home, to help them repair storm damage and to pay rent and, above all, to give them back their means of making a living: get them back their bones. In addition to money, people donated trumpets and trombones, traps and guitars and even pianos.

There's a feeling that once a certain amount of time passes after a disaster, people should have the decency to be OK. Unfortunately, given the sheer bulk of the mess, both physically and politically, that's just not been the case with New Orleans, as co-founder Jeff Beninato reminds us.

"If you think this tragedy is over think again. There are still families out there in corners of this country trying to figure out what they are going to do to get their lives back to some normalcy. There are so many musicians who were well known in New Orleans that are totally unknown where they are now. Imagine building your fanbase or your work base in your workplace and suddenly it all disappears."

And now what promises to become the single largest ecological catastrophe in the nation's history, the Gulf oil spill, is bearing down on the city. The travelers and the money they bring are starting to dry up again. The resource economy, fishing, shrimping and crabbing, that all funnels into the city, is faltering. The need to plug in to this newest of technologies - the Web - to save the oldest - music - is pressing, again. There is some truth to the notion that this technology we cover levels and democratizes. NOMRF is using it to make the process of helping the men and women who provide the soundtrack to your hopes and dreams more egalitarian and more direct.

Think trading tracks and files is "peer-to-peer"? Pass the hat at the Green Dragon and buy a guy a trumpet so he can gig and get his kids new shoes. That's peer-to-peer, brothers and sisters. Can I get an amen?

I said...

Can I get an amen?

Alright, then.

Are you involved in a non-profit in the Bay Area that could use a spruced up website? Given that a lot of these organizations are run by volunteers and have to be very careful about how they spent their money, it doesn't come as a surprise that web design isn't always a priority for a lot of non-profits. Web design firm ZURB, which has done design work for companies like Facebook, Yahoo, eBay and the New York Stock Exchange, is giving away a full redesign (or a completely new design) to a deserving Bay Area non-profit.

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How To Apply

While ZURB is announcing this competition today, submissions won't officially open until March 4th - though the company told us that they would be more than happy to look at early submissions, too. Non-profits will be able to submit their proposals until March 18th and the actual redesign will happen during a 24-hour design marathon on April 8th. The only requirement for applying is that the non-profit has enough passionate volunteers and employees who are willing to help out on April 8th.

If you want to submit a proposal, here is what you need to do:

Email wired@zurb.com with the following info:

• The project you need design help with
• Details about the team that's going to be at ZURB's office for 24 hours on April 8th
• Why your organization is a fit for ZURBwired

Previous winners include the Pie Ranch and Second Harvest Food Bank.

The company is also looking for additional volunteers to help out during the 24-hour marathon session. You can find additional videos from last year's event here.

According to Ask.com spokesperson Nicholas Graham, while companies are expected to help community organizations, it's not unheard of for these cause-related partnerships to also benefit the companies. After donating $25,000 to Autism Speaks through a targeted awareness campaign, 80,000 visitors changed their Ask home pages to Autism Speaks-related skins and 63% of campaign visitors became permanent users. Despite the fact that the promotion lasted only a few days, Ask saw a 10% increase over other holiday and non-cause related skinning promotions. In anticipation of October and Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Ask is building upon its community successes and teaming up with Susan G. Komen for the Cure in "Search for the Cure".

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The search company is donating up to 50 cents per consumer who successfully answers a health fact and reskins their Ask homepage with a breast-cancer related graphic. The skins display a series of questions that challenge consumers' understanding of breast cancer prevention, early detection and treatment. The campaign will last until the end of October and all proceeds will benefit Komen for the Cure and their mission to eliminate breast cancer. Similar to this Ask campaign, GoodSearch also runs cause-related campaigns in order to benefit charities. Rather than switching out page skins, GoodSearch users specify one of 83,000 charities and 50 per cent of all advertising-related payouts are designated to the charity of choice.

Says Ask spokesperson Nicholas Graham, "Health and reference are already two of our strongest verticals. It makes sense for Ask to team up with Komen and increase awareness amongst our 50 million monthly visitors."

According to the American Cancer Society, there are about 2.5 million breast cancer survivors in the United States and women have a 1 in 8 chance of developing invasive breast cancer. While there are a number of breast cancer-related corporate partnerships, only a few are fully embraced by health advocates. In recent years, environmental health organizations have formed the Think Before You Pink campaign as a backlash movement against companies that work on pink ribbon campaigns but manufacture products linked to the disease. Because Ask specializes in delivering information to its consumers, a public information campaign on breast cancer seems like a great fit.

Says Graham, "When you engage a community of users, the service becomes more robust. It makes a positve difference in the online and offline world." To change your skins and support Komen for the Cure visit the Ask Skins gallery.

The Ford Foundation has just granted $300,000 to the Wikimedia Foundation to support Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia's repository for free, sharable multimedia files.

The grant will fund a study of barriers to entry for users and contributors new to Wikimedia Commons. The project team will also identify best practices from similar media-sharing sites. The team will design and implement a simpler workflow for uploading, licensing, and describing media.

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"We are thrilled that the Ford Foundation is supporting this project," said Wikimedia Executive Director Sue Gardner in a statement issued today by the Wikimedia Foundation.

"We want to make uploading files to Commons as easy as possible so that people everywhere can join us in helping Commons grow. The bigger Commons is, the more people it will serve."

According to the Ford Foundation website, the funds are granted to select organizations that support emerging leaders, research and dialog, and life-changing or life-improving innovations. Typically, fewer than 3 percent of grant applicants are selected for funding, and purely scientific projects are not typically considered for these grants.

Ford Foundation representative Jenny Toomey said in the Wikimedia statement, "The global community that is building Wikimedia Commons is setting the standard for the way that video and images are uploaded and shared through the Web.

"The whole process is simplified, promotes collaboration, and is driven by consensus among the community. Ultimately, this approach and others like it can help ensure that the Internet remains a rich and open space for learning, expression, and participation."

The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization which operates Wikipedia, the free, online encyclopedia. Wikipedia contains more than 12 million articles in 265 languages contributed by a community of more than 100,000 volunteers.