Social Actions helps individuals, nonprofits, and foundations make excellent use of social media so that peer-to-peer solutions to local and global problems can flourish.

The underlying assumption of my project is that person-to-person social actions are an excellent incubator for broad social change. My project puts this assumption into practice by harnessing new technology to reduce as many barriers to meaningful participation as possible.

My intention is to help individuals participate in grassroots development and social change campaigns regardless of their location, wealth, or technological expertise.

Toward this end, Social Actions:

• Provides a search engine of peer-to-peer social change campaigns;
• Aggregates peer-to-peer social change campaigns from 14 unique social action platforms;
• Publishes materials for individuals on planning and implementing peer-to-peer social change campaigns;
• Distributes materials for nonprofits and foundations on engaging constituents;
• Connects technology consultants and thought leaders with nonprofits and foundations;
• Encourages collaboration among social action platforms.

These activities support the Social Actions mission by helping individuals to

• Find and support active peer-to-peer social change campaigns;
• Become effective wired changemakers independent of their age, location, wealth, or social media knowledge-base.

Nonprofits and foundations:

• Learn how to leverage the resources and passions of real people;
• Find professionals who can assist with creating and implementing a social media strategy.

Social Actions encourages collaboration among social action platforms in an effort to ensure that the technology underlying peer-to-peer social change campaigns integrates well and reflects the full potential of social media.

Unleashing the power of well-conceived peer-to-peer development and social change campaigns has the potential to dramatically improve the human condition worldwide. As people learn from one another’s technology choices and best practices, the quality of peer-to-peer social actions improves.

By creating a single entry point for finding, starting, and learning about such campaigns, Social Actions community members can teach and inspire at the same time as they create meaningful change through their own actions.

To date, Social Actions has:

• Worked with 14 social action platforms to create a single feed of new person-to-person campaigns. Social Actions aggregates content from BringLight, The Care2 Petition Site, Change.org, ChangingthePresent, Kiva, Change.org, DemocracyinAction, Firstgiving, Fundable, GiveMeaning, GlobalGiving, Kiva, PledgeBank, Razoo, SixDegrees, and ThePoint.com.
• Built a fully functional entry point into the world of grassroots development and social change campaigns. Users can use our search engine or browse by location, theme, and platform to find new actions in their location or area of interest. Users can also keep track of the actions they like, share them with friends on social networks, and create widgets to syndicate interesting actions on their own websites or social network profiles.
  
• Established partnerships with leaders in the field of non-profit technology and social change. I have presented webinars for the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) on the subject of person-to-person fundraising, wired fundraising, and micro-philanthropy. I have also written and published articles on Personal Democracy Forum, TechSoup, NetSquared, and NTEN about starting social actions and selecting the right combination of technology platforms.
  

Using a custom-built installation of the Drupal opensource content management system and a syndication method called RSSA (Really Simple Social Actions), my project is breaking down the content walls that separate various social action platforms, ranging from Kiva’s micro-credit platform to Givemeaning’s group fundraising portal.

Social Actions is the only place on the internet where users can create original feeds of person-to-person campaigns from across several social action platforms and then choose to support, track, syndicate, or review these actions. Visitors can also use the Social Actions widget and interface to automatically link to actions from their own websites or social network profiles.

Social Actions aslo publishes resources on planning and implementing grassroots development and social change campaigns so that visitors can launch campaigns tailored to their specific location or area of interest.

RSSA and the emerging micro-format for social action are open standards. Any organization can republish the content from an RSSA feed on their own website and social network profile, or convert their own activities into a format that works with RSSA.

This standard simplifies knowledge and information sharing. Organizations and our social action platforms can plug into the network we are creating in order to add functionality and content to their own services.

Many of the components to Social Actions are freely available in the public domain. All of the articles I publish and tutorials I prepare are licenced under a Creative Commons “distribution attribution” license. This means that any organization can republish Social Actions content as they see fit.

The open source software I am using is also freely available. I plan to document the customizations I have made to Drupal modules so that other developers can add similar functionality to their Drupal-based websites.

Social Actions is on the cutting-edge of person-to-person development and social change campaigns.

I am using ICT to:

• Popularize Really Simple Social Actions (RSSA)
• Create a universal micro-format and API for storing, sharing, and syndicating peer-to-peer social actions across multiple platforms and social networks.
• Develop an automated personal assistant to simplify the process of initiating a successful grassroots development or social change campaign. (see charts below)