This post was written for Craig Newmark’s CraigConnects initiative in response to this blog.
Watching Google Zetigeist’s 2011 in Retrospect video yesterday reminded me that we’ve had a rough year. A really rough year. The recession and its effects have shaken the American dream to its core. Crackdowns on protesters worldwide have shown how much injustice has been inflicted just beneath our consciousness. From child abuse to animal cruelty to human rights abuses, we have work to do. And while I maintain rock-solid optimism for 2012, it is only because I’ve been inspired by the promise of passionate activists combined with revolutionary technology. This is why I’m so excited – giddy, really – for what’s ahead on Causes.
Over the past year, we’ve seen passionate activists use the tools on Causes for real, off-line impact. Eric Ding funded his first cancer research study from donations through the cause he started from his med school dorm room. The Cove campaign turned the Empire State Building red to raise awareness of the bloody slaughter of dolphins in Taiji, Japan. Causes users sent over 1350 “Welcome Home” messages to our troops coming home from Iraq. We’re on to something.
In 2012, we want YOU to change the world. The people who are building the most powerful movements on Causes are people just like you. But you really do have the ability now, like never before, to create movements for the change you want to see. Causes has always been a platform for bottom-up grassroots movements to take form and gain teeth. But in 2012, we’ll take this to a whole new level. If you’ve been on Causes.com or any cause in the past month, you’ve seen that we’ve already started updating the 600,000 causes on our platform. From the Campaign for Cancer Prevention to Keep the Arts in Public Schools, we’re working hard to make each community a more effective tool to create change. You can see a sneak preview of our new pledge feature at www.causes.com/itcanwait, and this is just the beginning.
In 2012, we’re going to launch new tools that better enable organizers to get things done. We’re going to continue supporting the activists and nonprofits organizing campaigns that will change the world. And in 2012, we will continue the fight for a more open and transparent democracy where anyone can change the world. You can join us at www.causes.com. By this time next year, I hope we can all come together and talk about the big wins that were accomplished in 2012 by the biggest world-changer of the year…you.
Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of Shiloh’s Kitten Corner! My name is Shiloh and I work on the Impact team at Causes.com. I start my workday by putting together a news brief for the rest of the office that highlights what’s new in the world of social media, nonprofits, technology, and social good. Here are a few of our favorite reads from the past week…plus a kitten. And this week the kitten is extra special because I adopted her two weeks ago.
Social Media
Kitten Corner: Tabitha
1. Why is it important for companies to iterate based on user feedback? (Mashable)
2. Pinterest is a virtual bulletin borad that allows users, companies, and even nonprofits to pin images that reflect their interests. (John Haydon)
Nonprofits
1. In order to engage supporters, nonprofits need to understand what motivates people to interact and donate to their cause. The infographic “Where and Why People Donated their Time and Money in 2010/2011 Trends” provides great insight on that. (Frogloop)
2. According to new research on mobile giving, donors are impulsive, social , and tech-savvy. (Katya’s Non-Profit Marketing Blog)
Technology
1. Learn why SOPA and PIPA, two congressional acts that aim to censor the web in the quest to end piracy, threaten the openness of the Internet. (Mashable)
2. Facebook has just announced a further extension of the Open Graph and the launch of 60 new apps (including Causes!) for Timeline. (The Facebook Blog)
Social Good
1. Despite the recession, global giving is an emerging trend. In fact, US giving to international causes rose approximately 15.3 percent in 2010. (YaleGlobal Online)
2. Through a viral social media campaign, tech entrepreneur Amit Gupta, has managed to find a perfect bone marrow match. (Mashable)
Facebook is a place to express what you care about and connect with friends around those interests. The causes you support are an essential piece of that picture and thanks to our new app for Facebook Timeline, Causes makes it easy to express a fuller picture of who you are and what you care about on your Timeline. We’re so excited that you’ll be able to highlight the pledges you take, the petitions you sign, the causes you join and the other things that help tell a rich story about who you are and what you care about.
One of the simplest and best ways to help your cause is to raise awareness around it by sharing with your friends. Sharing is fundamental to spreading movements and achieving social change. It makes you an advocate and helps spread the word. Causes is the best tool for sharing your causes with friends and family — taking action and sharing it is the core of what people do on Causes. Now we’re taking the next step to enable you to express your passion on Facebook Timeline.
Social change is, well, social. This type of change can’t happen without networks of people discovering ideas, sharing them and working together to take action. People in your network all have causes that they care about and Timeline will make it easy to discover new causes with your friends and share the experience with them. With Causes bringing social good to Facebook Timeline, you can discover what your friends and family care about and help them change the world.
To review your Timeline settings on Causes, go to http://www.causes.com/account/privacy.
At Causes, we’ve been dealing with intermittent static asset failures. This manifests as certain images, stylesheets, and Javascripts failing to load and leads to a poor overall user experience. Our band-aid solution has been to fail over load balancers, which resolves the issue (until it crops up again). This is far from a perfect solution, and we still only know to failover when we get enough reports of site issues. Using Duckweed (http://github.com/causes/duckweed) and some simple Javascript, measuring static asset failures from the client can help determine when we’re having major problems.
First, put this Javascript in your layout (or load it onto every page some other way):
<script language="text/javascript"> $.post('/duckweed/track', {'event' : 'static-asset-attempt'}); </script> <%= javascript_tag 'static_asset_check' %>
Then, create another Javascript file named ‘static_asset_check.js’ that simply contains:
$.post('/duckweed/track', {'event' : 'static-asset-success'});
There are two important things going on:
- Every page registers a ‘static-asset-attempt’ event
- Every page attempts to load a static asset that registers a ’static-asset-success’ event
So, count(static-asset-attempt) – count(static-asset-success) indicates how many times the static asset did not load. Because we’re only looking at one static asset (the Javascript file we created), this is only a sampling of the total static asset failures — but that’s still good enough to alert us as to when assets are failing more often across the board.
At Causes, we use Geckoboard to create pretty graphs from Duckweed data. Duckweed’s histogram function is really nice for producing the data for these graphs, but it can only take one event. The difference between two events (attempt – success) is really what we want, so I implemented a histogram-delta view that does just that. See commit ab13d1b for the gritty details. Now, the following URL:
http://mydomain/duckweed/histogram-delta/static-asset-attempt/static-asset-failure/minutes/60
yields a useful and pretty graph like:
Does this kind of work interest you? Do you want to help migrate us to Cloudfront? We’re hiring!
Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of Shiloh’s Kitten Corner! My name is Shiloh and I work on the Impact team at Causes.com. I start my workday by putting together a news brief for the rest of the office that highlights what’s new in the world of social media, nonprofits, marketing, and social good. Here are a few of our favorite reads from the past week…plus a kitten puppy.
Social Media
Puppy Corner: Shanti
1. Check out this comprehensive list of 45 hashtags nonprofits can use to promote social good on Twitter. (Socialbrite)
2. It will probably come as no surprise that the most-searched term of 2011 is ‘Facebook.’ (Mashable)
Nonprofits
1. What are some of the nonprofits to watch in 2012? (The Chronicle of Philanthropy)
2. Here are a few tips that will help amplify your nonprofit’s social media success. (Mashable)
Marketing
1. The 2012 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report has full of great information of great information and insights for nonprofits and marketers. (Kivi’s Nonprofit Communications Blog)
2. In “The Dawn of the Relationship Era” it is important for nonprofits to look inward and understand why they matter. (Katya’s Nonprofit Marketing Blog)
Social Good
1. YourGood has put together an infographic on where and why people donate. (Network for Good Blog)
2. What does the future hold for corporate philanthropy? (TriplePundit)
Welcome to our series, “Great Nonprofits,” where we highlight a Nonprofit Partner that changes the world and uses Causes to tell their story. This week our Great Nonprofit is Carol’s Ferals.
Over the last year, Amazon Watch has accomplished a lot with the help of the Causes community – from supporting Ecuadorian activists in standing up to pollution caused by Texaco (now Chevron), to continuing the fight against the Belo Monte Dam in Brazil. This holiday season, Amazon Watch is teaming up with TV personality Layla Kayleigh for a special year-end campaign, declaring December 28th “Stand for the Amazon” Day.
Amazon Watch is working to create a wave of online support on the 28th, through Facebook posts and tweets with the hashtag #Stand4TheAmazon. What’s more, leading up to that date – and through the end of the year – every dollar donated will be matched by other Amazon Watch supporters, up to $25,000!
By joining this cause, you can support future Amazon Watch campaigns and help fight on the front lines of the battle to save the rainforest and preserve the rights of indigenous communities.
You can “Stand for the Amazon” by joining Amazon Watch on Causes.com today and making a donation (that will be matched!) at causes.com/stand4theAmazon.
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