Sarah Davies

“You can touch my boobs,” she said to all of us in the hallway. “It’s no big deal.”

Livejournal is in a rage today over this post and this clarification.

Apparently there was a mixed-gender group of people at ConFusion and then later PenguinCon who put forth the idea that people who support open content and open software might be amenable to consensual open sexuality, specifically getting felt up.

As I have two X chromosomes and I’m attending LinuxFest Northwest this weekend, I feel obliged to comment.

There is definitely a lack of diversity within the American open source community, particularly gender diversity. There is certainly awkwardness and avoidance around the topic of sexuality. I don’t think either of those things are healthy. Humanity is diverse and sexual. The open source community would do well to accept this fact and attempt to rectify some of it’s shortcomings.

I think that many women agree with open source principles, if only because women tend to be more liberal and idealistic than men. And what is open source if not liberal and idealistic? Women do not, however, feel (generally) that their time is best spent debugging code for hours on end. What the open source community has failed to emphasize is the plethora of non-coding work that needs to be done. We need graphic designers, god help us. We need people to manage projects, to come up with new features, to do usability testing.

I have known very few other women who code. I have known many women, however, who enjoy spending their volunteer time building community tools. We, as the open source community, must reach out to these women and invite them into our projects and our conventions.

As far as sexuality is concerned, I think this problem is not specific to the open source community. This is a problem with America in general. We focus on sexuality as the pinnacle of self-worth, and the bottomless pit of sin. The open source community is built of smart people, and my hope is that they will outpace the general public in ridding themselves of these perceptions, but I think diversity of gender and sexual orientation must be a precursor to that exorcism.

Here are my notes from the Nonprofit 911 teleconference with Randall Winston, one of the founders of Causes on Facebook.

Here are the notes from Nonprofit 911:
introduction
slides
notes

Here are my notes:
Basics for Nonprofits

Any user can start a cause. Only nonprofits can make an official nonprofit profile. Both are free of charge. To make an official nonprofit profile, go to http://www.causes.com/partners/new. You will need your EIN number. Your profile will be approved within 24-48 hours. Facebook will verify you as a 501(c)3. Your profile page will include your total donations, total number of donors, total number of supporters, and total number of causes. You can also add your own information, such as mission and history.

Once you have a profile, you can access donor information including name, address and amount donated.

Causes should be seen as a specific campaign or initiative, not an organization. The profile represents the organization. One organization can (and should) have many causes. The photo on each cause should relate to the cause. It should not be your organization’s logo.

When a user creates a cause, they browse the database of nonprofit profiles and pick one to be a beneficiary.

There is a 4.75% fee taken from each donation made through causes.

Questions

Q: What if we already made a cause for our organization? How do we change it into a nonprofit profile?
A: First, sign up for a nonprofit profile, then change the cause into a specific campaign. Upload pictures or video that indicate to people that the cause you created has changed to a specific campaign.

Q: What’s the difference between a group and a cause?
A: A cause has a nonprofit profile associated with it. One nonprofit profile can manage a cause for each of it’s chapters, or each of the bills that it’s concerned with. Groups don’t have that hierarchical structure.

Q: How do donations made through causes get to us?
A: Checks are sent out on the 15th of every month.

Q: What’s your business model?
A: We are a separate company from Facebook, but we have the same venture capital funders as Facebook. We want to branch out into new territory and engage youth. We currently make no profit. If we monetize in the future, it will be through advertising. We will never monetize nonprofits, including selling donor information.

Growing Your Cause

One person can only invite 12 people per day. So you need to be diligent about inviting new people every day, and encouraging them to invite more people.

Add links to online blog posts, articles, or video about your organization through the media board. People like to know that your organization is doing ongoing work. Every time you change a link, it goes to your members’ news feeds.

Start debates and discussions on your wall. Encourage your members to engage and talk to each other.

Offer rewards to the people who recruit the most members or raise the most money.

Questions

Q: Do you have examples of organizations that have had a large return on their time investment?
A: Love without Boundaries recently won our causes giving challenge. We awarded $25,000 to the cause who attracted the most donors. You would think that large causes would typically win, but it was actually the small nonprofits who diligently ran campaigns to get people to invite their friends to donate, who won. Love without Boundaries’ cause page was just a personal story about why the founder started the cause. Then she emailed all her friends who weren’t even on Facebook yet, and they invited their friends, and the cause spread virally.

Q: How do you prevent fraud?
A: You can disassociate any cause that you do not want to benefit your organization. But if someone starts a cause for you, but doesn’t quite get your mission right, you should reach out to them and give them more information. UNICEF didn’t want to join Facebook because they were afraid of losing control over campaigns that represented them, but one of their supporters started a cause for them and raised $10,000. Then they saw the power of exponential organic growth.

Q: In what creative ways have people used causes?
A: One organization gave presentations in classrooms at their University, and offered a pizza party to people who learned more about the cause. The League of Education Voters posted videos of themselves being excited about their own cause and what they would do when they reached their goals.

Q: How much do causes raise typically and how many causes does each nonprofit typically have?
A: Randall has seen fewer than 10,000 people raise over $100,000. Some causes choose not to have a beneficiary and only exist to distribute information.