The Realist Idealist

I like the idea of taking ideas or terms that people are familiar with and tweaking them for use in the social sector. In the case of this post’s title, I had enough backlash from two friends when I said “pimp” that I almost refrained from writing it. Almost. Maybe there’s something wrong with me in my trying-to-make-good-things-happen-ness - something terribly un-nonprofity and/or un-PC - but let’s be honest, “‘Technologically Improve’ My Nonprofit” just doesn’t get the job done.

“Pimp my Nonprofit” is a regular bi-monthly brainstorm session - primarily for do-gooder geeks - convened by NetSquared. I live in DC, so I… you know… go to the DC one. It’s an awesome group, full of energy, ideas, and practical strategies for how to make good things (actually) happen. If you’re in the area and interested in this stuff, you should definitely come check it out.

Last night the organization to be “improved” was OneWorld.net, a fast-growing, content rich site looking for ideas to take their tech strategy and online communication efforts to the next level.

(My strongest connection to Oneworld is that we found the office I work in through their network).

I was going to write more of a rundown of the evening, but Jared Goralnick already did that here on his great blog Technotheory.com.

In general though, Oneworld is running on a Drupal platform, and there’s probably a half dozen new things it seems they should do immediately (i.e. more content sharing, better aggregation, reaching out more to similar sites, etc). There’s also at least a couple things it seems they should probably think about doing differently or ceasing altogether so as to focus more on a few key things with their small staff of 4 - two of whom I gather are full time editors.

I personally had trouble trying to determine whether they were trying to be a place where people come to spend a lot of time (i.e. truly socially network), or a place that people come from other websites to find well done, specific content.

From looking at their site, are there things y’all can see that would be helpful?

ps Huge thanks to Google-DC who hosted the event. Awesome digs as always.