I’ve mentioned OpenAustralia here in the past and have also mentioned it in a number of the workshops I’ve given over the past 12 months (Disclosure: I’ve also supported them financially and am friends with some of the key volunteer contributors).

OpenAustralia is a grassroots effort to make the Hansard more accessible. The initiative is expanding into State politics and this has sparked an interesting exchange with the Clerk of Queensland Parliament.

The concerns outlined in the Clerk’s response to OpenAustralia’s requests are familiar to me having been raised in a number of the workshops I’ve facilitated over the past few months. These include issues of:

• Copyright
• Liability relating to re-publishing
• Resourcing
• “Authorative source” concerns

As the momentum increases in the “Government 2.0″ space these issues will be raised more and more often, I suspect. How the OpenAustralia appeal goes will be of great interest – perhaps setting the tone of future exchanges in the space.

As some of you may know I’ve been working with the folks at the Inspire Foundation on a contract basis for some time (since October last year) specifically focused on their recently re-launched Reach Out service in Australia, and soon overseas.

Zumio provided and managed the development team over most of that period – and the launch effort explains a good part of my silence here and on Twitter of late. (I hope to post more on the re-launch soon…)

During my time on the project the team at Inspire asked me if I’d be interested in joining the team on a more permanent basis to work with them to help develop Inspire Digital, a social venture established within the Foundation with the dual goals of further developing some of the Foundation’s services and also to provide consulting services to other organisations where there is alignment in mission to Inspire’s broader goals.

I recently accepted Inspire’s offer and as of today have commenced with them in the role of Head of Social Technology. It is an exciting new role that will no doubt evolve rapidly in the coming months as the venture develops.

Both Inspire and I hope that I can continue to work in the area of social media and networking providing workshop, presentation and consulting services, now under the Inspire Digital banner.

For the foreseeable future I’ll be continuing to blog here about all things social- and web-related (hopefully with a bit more frequency I might add!) – so no need to update any bookmarks. I’m looking forward to sharing the new adventure with you :)

A little while back I came across a post by Allen Benamer that outlines a hierarchy of technology needs for non-profits.

I think it’s a great post, and generally agree with his advice around the range of needs (ranging from “mission” to “social media”). However, I do wonder about placing “social media” as the last slice on the pyramid. I wonder because perhaps this misses potential opportunities for social media to act in place of a more traditional website.

This might take a number of forms – but by way of example: a non-profit may consider using a blog hosted on the open-source WordPress platform instead of a more traditional website. This is a (fairly obvious) use of social media that enables non-profits to launch a site at very low cost.

But maybe we can take that a step further: perhaps nowadays it’s enough to have a solid presence on MySpace, Facebook or Ning – that such tools may provide a sufficient touch-stone for donors and other constituents to learn what they need about an organisation’s activities, negating the need for a fully-fledged website?

In fact, in some respects such a presence, embedded within the social networks (that Allen places 3rd in the hierarchy) may have significant benefits that investing in a traditional website first would miss.

An extreme example of this is the Modernista! website (the site is no longer live), which essentially leverages a variety of social media tools (Flickr, Youtube and a blog) to fulfill the purpose of a traditional website. Or Nau’s use of Flickr to promote their relaunch before their main website was up and running – in this case being a “teaser” campaign of sorts.

Depending on the non-profit, a variety of social media spaces could be used creatively to circumvent – or at least delay – the need for (usually significant) investment in a traditional website.

Just to be clear: I am playing “devil’s advocate” here to a degree – there’s no doubt that a solid corporate web presence will benefit a non-profit – but I think it’s worth challenging the argument that social media should be the last thing to think about as a non-profit, especially when so many benefits can be derived from considering them earlier in a non-profit’s development.

As regular readers would know, Zumio donates 1% of nett profit to a worthy cause each quarter. This month we’ve chosen another Project H Design project to support: the Hippo Roller redesign.

The Hippo Water Roller is a fantastic example of simple but effective design in context with a worthy social outcome. From the Hippo Water Roller website:

In many countries, traditional water collection involves carrying a 5-gallon (20-liter) bucket on the head. This practice puts a great burden on the body and can damage the spine, neck and knees over time. A full Hippo Water Roller only feels like 22 pounds (10 kg) when rolled over level ground, making it possible for almost anyone to transport 24 gallons (90 liters) of water in much less time and with greater ease.

The San Francisco chapter of Project H Design have “re-designed the Hippo Roller for improved shipping efficiency for wider distribution and a lower price point” and they are raising funds for new tooling to produce the redesigned rollers.

Zumio is of course delighted to be able to contribute to this goal. This is the second Project H Design initiative we’ve supported – the last was Lifestraw distribution to Mumbai. I’d definitely suggest checking out their (soon to be updated) website, or follow them on Twitter or Facebook, for more about their work.

P.S. if you’re wanting to support the Hippo Roller project, simply drop Emily at Project H Design (her email is in the receipt notices etc.) to let her know.

Just a quick note to say that the Web Standards Group FullCodePress is happening again in May this year. What’s FullCodePress?

Web teams from different countries take each other on to build a complete website for a charity in 24 hours. No excuses, no extensions, no budget overruns.

If you’re in a non-profit and would like to apply to be the lucky charity, check out the details and apply before Friday 17 Apr 2009…

Today’s Alertbox references findings of a Nielson Norman Group research study on usability of donation forms for non-profits.

I’ll be grabbing a copy of the full report, but I just wanted to focus on a couple of points from the Alertbox piece.

The first is this point about stated motivations of donors – what they are looking for from organisations when choosing to donate:

We asked participants what information they want to see on non-profit websites before they decide whether to donate. Their answers fell into 4 broad categories, 2 of which were the most heavily requested:

• The organization’s mission, goals, objectives, and work.
• How it uses donations and contributions.

Makes sense – this is how I’d answer too. The first point turns out to be the most important:

…an organization’s mission, goals, objectives, and work was by far the most important. Indeed, it was 3.6 times as important as the runner-up issue…

…(Information about how organizations used donations did impact decision-making, but it was far down the list relative to its second-place ranking among things that people claimed that they’d be looking for.)

On finding the donation link, the piece says:

Amazingly, on 17% of the sites, users couldn’t find where to make a donation. You’d imagine that donation-dependent sites would at least get that one design element right, but banner-blindness or over-formatting caused people to overlook some donation buttons.

Banner blindness means that using “big bold buttons” can actually have the opposite of the intended effect. (If I had a dollar for every request to “make the button bigger and more prominent” and having to argue this case…)

Having clearly labeled navigation options is also important. In my own testing I’ve found that the word “Donate” far outperforms other labels (e.g. “Support”) – another case of being clear on your trigger words for navigation.

The last point I thought worth mentioning was a point specifically on usability. For the most part usability was ok, except for one standout:

Our testing did identify some small usability problems, but the only big problem was caused by sites that used third-party payment services, which stumped some users.

My interpretation of this point is that when non-profits rely on third-party payment pages such as those provided by PayPal or their bank to take donations, that the user experience is significantly impacted.

I think this is particularly problematic for smaller NGOs and non-profits who can’t afford to setup their own e-commerce system, and who therefore rely on such third-party systems.

My experience with such systems as a user has never been good, so I advise my clients (as I did my previous employers) to avoid such systems. My argument was that the break in continuity (being directed to a different site) and the usability issues often inherent in such solutions would significantly impact donor confidence, and by extension $$ raised.

I’ve sometimes heard the argument that people trust the banks’ system better than the non-profit’s website, or that including PayPal as an option on your site actually increases donations.

But the usability issues have always been my biggest concern in not implementing such third party payment systems. (I have only begrudgingly started using PayPal more often because trying to pay by credit card in a PayPal enabled system is such an awful experience.

To date, however, it’s been only my word against the vendors’. It’s good to have some empirical evidence on the matter – so I’m looking forward to reviewing it in more detail.

Zumio is proud to support the Australia Tibet Council (ATC).

I feel truly blessed that the last four donations I’ve made are to organisations I have a personal connection with through friends and colleagues. ATC is no different – my long-time friend Ashley Brown and his wife Tahne are very heavily involved with the organisation.

Both they and the volunteers and staff at ATC have done a tremendous amount of work to increase awareness of Tibetan culture in Australia, including participating in the organisation of visits by the Dalai Lama, as well as advocating for the human rights and democratic freedoms of the Tibetan people.

This included last years team up with GetUp on the Olympic Silence is not Golden campaign.

Please consider supporting ATC so that they can continue their good work.

For those that don’t already know, each quarter Zumio donates 1% of nett profit before tax to progressive causes. ATC is the recipient for the Oct-Dec 2008 quarter.

Just a quick note that one of my clients, the digital arm of the Inspire Foundation, is looking for a Producer. Check it out if you’re interested, or pass it on to anyone you think might be…

As I’ve mentioned previously Zumio’s charter is to donate 1% of net profit to organisations doing good things in the community.

OpenAustralia.org

For the July-September 2008 period I chose OpenAustralia.org.

OpenAustralia.org is a volunteer run organisation that makes the workings of our Parliament more transparent, by transforming the (inaccessible) Hansard transcripts of Parliament into a more accessible (both technically and socially) form.

Ever since I first heard about OpenAustralia.org, when I met Matthew Landauer at Jelly Sydney) I’ve been excited by the project – I see it as a really important part of our Democracy and am dumbfounded why this isn’t something the Government already does.

OpenAustralia.org is not yet established as a charitable organisation as yet, so I hope the funds can go some way to helping them achieve that goal.

(You can follow OpenAustralia.org on their blog or via Twitter.

ANTaR

For the October-December 2008 period I chose to support ANTaR (Australians for Native Title and Reconcilation). My friend Priscilla has been working there for some time and I’ve been impressed with their grassroots advocacy work, more recently around Indigenous health.

little and LOUD

On a related note, my wife and I, along with members of our families, don’t do gift giving for each other at Christmas; instead we collectively donate our funds to a chosen organisation instead. This year, we chose little and LOUD, a charity co-run by Rhoda Lazo – a friend and colleague who I met when we both worked at Digital Eskimo.

little and LOUD is “… inspired by children and their natural ability to creatively express themselves in a way that communicates beyond borders and spans all backgrounds, cultures and ages. This is how Little and LOUD began and how it continues to this day.”

They are currently running a project with Fote Primary School in the Solomon Islands. While not directly Zumio-related, I wanted to give little and LOUD’s work a shout-out here as I’m a fan of what they do.

I’m a big fan of sustainable design – especially when designers turn their hand to addressing problems such as preventable disease reduction in the developing world.

Some time ago I came across what I consider an amazing product called the LifeStraw. From the LifeStraw website:

Half of the world’s poor suffer from waterborne disease, and nearly 6,000 people – mainly children – die each day by consuming unsafe drinking water.

LifeStraw water purifiers have been developed as a practical way of preventing disease and saving lives, as well as achieving the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by one-half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe water by the year 2015.

At USD$25 each (for the family version), LifeStraws are a low-cost (by developed world standards) means of purifying water to prevent common diarrhoeal disease.

At around the same time I also came across Project H Design, which:

… is a charitable organization that supports, inspires, and delivers life-improving humanitarian product design solutions. We champion industrial design as a tool to address social issues, a vehicle for global life improvement, and a catalyst for individual and community empowerment.

I saw on Project H a initiative that aims to provide families in Mumbai with LifeStraws – and I thought this would be a great cause to support.

Part of my “charter” for Zumio is to donate 1% of Zumio’s quarterly net profit to a project with social justice or sustainability goals, and for the Mar-Jun 2008 quarter (yes – I’m a little behind!) I’ve put the funds towards this project.

Unfortunately with the Aussie dollar fluctuating so rapidly my donation probably isn’t stretching as far as it could have, but all the same I hope that my small contribution will help…