Category: SmallChangeNews

Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork

sCNN has what you have, our name, our word, our story: Our News. And Hour News. We have countless hours invested in developing those things we are most passionate about: a rigorous integrity. a practical, powerful vision. personal connections globally. the simplest infrastructure that could possibly work. and a genuine readiness to replicate and recreate all of it.

sCNN began as a conversation at the Giving Conference in Chicago, July 2004. It was first conceived as a marriage of Google and eBay. When that possibility ran dry, it was generalized to “Giving Market.” Then it morphed quickly from a philanthropic banking and exchange superstructure, to a foundation endowment, to a matchmaking sort of service. Always the purpose was the same: to connect people with personal and financial gifts and people doing good work on the ground, active givers and gifted activists, in the most efficient market possible.

Through months of conversation and documentation, creating and recreating, we let go of layer after layer of complexity: the transactions, the funding base, the personal and project data, even most of the contact data. We didn’t want to own anything we didn’t have to, no accounts, no data, no fee structures. As we peeled away structures and controls, the core idea got stronger not weaker — until we got down to the one thing that we knew that a few people and few dollars could implement immediately: a weblog. And a blogroll. The rest of the site is our grateful acknowledgement of our supporters along the way.

In the weblog, we document our project. We do what we’re inviting others to do. The blogroll is our project, linking others and sharing resources. We link to all the other project blogs we know about: Local News. Blogging and blogrolling is so simple and cheap that almost anyone can use — and replicate — our site. When it replicates, we get new blogs and blogrolls of projects, network nodes: Network News. This is the core of the idea, blogs of blogs of blogs all focusing and linking, for funding and implementing projects for the common good.

Working onsite and online, sCNN has made personal connections that span the globe. Already it is an international organization that owns virtually no assets, other than its blogrolls and blog posts. Those are entirely open and public for reference, copying and replicating. There is no reason for any level of growth to make it otherwise. As our links and postings grow, the sCNN name has the potential to become a virtual brand name for small-scale giving and action, serving everybody and owned and controlled by nobody.

What We Have is a good start, and a good space: a name, a vision, a weblog. A set of blogrolls that we offer for joining and invite active copying so we can create more links between projects. Local News and Network News. A wiki web working space with full documentation of our earliest evolution and development: Old News. A short list of powerful tools and resources: News You Can Use. A growing list of financial and social supporters: Newsmakers and Extra! Extra! An initial dropcash campaing to fund our most basic and direct expenses.

Soon we will have graphics to go with our name, a dedicated and permanent hosting location, and an email infrastructure that will support moderated public posting of project news and needs. What We really Need now is your name, your word, your story… because small Change News is Your News.

What Do You Have?

• Who are you and what do you already have going for you?
• Who do you know? Where are you connected?
• What’s already working, and why?
• How did you come to care about this issue?
• What gifts, talents, passions, skills and experiences do you bring to this?
• Are you spending your own time and money on making something happen?
• Do you have the funding and need people to work with?
• Who’s already supporting this project?
• Who can we contact, as references, to find out more about the good work you’ve already been doing?

What Do You Need?

• What would it take for you to make a difference?
• Are you looking for partners? Connections? Some funding? A place to meet? Some special sort of expertise?
• What kind of connections and contributions do you need to give your own gifts, and make your own contribution, more fully?
• What kind of support do you need for this project?

What Will You Do?

• What will you do if you get the help you need?
• What are your immediate next steps?
• What results will you produce?
• Where will you report your progress and success stories?
• How will all of this benefit you, your contributors and the situation and people you are wanting to serve?
• What can you promise to this project and anyone else who will join you in it?

Until we get live, open and fully public, we invite your attention, good wishes, comments and assistance in spreading the word. Thank you!

technorati: sCNN | SmallChangeNews

Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork

The core of this whole sCNN idea is two-fold:

1. Open Blog… anyone anywhere who has a blog that is reporting planning and progress on projects for the common good will be able to post a bit of news or requests for assistance here.

2. Replicating Blogrolls… we will troll the open blog postings and keep popping project blog links into the Local News and Network News blogrolls. Ideally, the blogrolls will be swiped and displayed by those listed in them. Everybody magnifying the links to everybody.

In this way, we hope to create a center of giving and receiving for the common good, a place where your gifts and your needs can meet.

Until we get the open public email posting functionality working, we’re pulling referrals out of comments and emails. These two came from comments and have been added to the blogrolls:

Christy said… The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami blog + wiki is an amazing resource for information and for linking to people and groups who want to help and who need help in the overwhelming relief and reconstruction work.

Ted said… I also have a project blog and my friends Tristram (from UK) & Georgia (from Hungary) have one for their projects in Spain (where they live), Ivory Coast and India.

Thanks and Thanks. More project blogs? Slap ’em in a comment box! We’re still a little slow… but we are rollin’! Link to us!

technorati: sCNN | SmallChangeNews

Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork

Valerie Mrak is the director of the Journey to Peace feature documentary project. This comes from her 2004 yearend newsletter…

Before the world knew him, Martin Luther King decided that something had to change in Birmingham, Alabama. Though King was uncertain of the future, he was clear about the decision that he faced. He could demonstrate and go to jail, or not. One can imagine him saying as he joined the group of protestors,”Something has to change in Birmingham. I can go to jail in Birmingham, and I am willing to do this.”

Most of us would be quick to back off from identification with such a hero, but Journey to Peace writer, James DeVinney suggests that each of makes choices such as this, which determine who we are to become. If you consider that each action or thought bears an impact of some kind, then you may see how these choices create a back drop for scenes of your life that your are continuously creating.

Eventually these scenes build to a climax, or invite some kind of turning point. In what DeVinney calls a defining moment, a person confronts their own worst enemy; themselves. In such moments, we see the truth about our reality and our choices. This is when a person says, “Am I strong enough to deal with this?” and “What am I going to do about it?” This is when we face the real challenge: “Am I going to run or to embrace it?”

Journey to Peace needs to raise $500,000 to tell the stories of six little individuals turned Nobel Peace Laureates. They are the only project in the new sidebar without a blog. They do, however, have a beautiful website and realistically aspire to grow into a tremendous network news node as they begin to use their early footage to invite peace conversations worldwide.

technorati: sCNN | SmallChangeNews

Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork

sCNN wants to be a model Center for connecting people, resources, requests and actions — what you want, what you have, what you need and what you are willing to do — for the common good. We don’t need to be huge, but we want to be clean, clear and easy to copy.

• We want to connect people, ideas and resources… with each other. We want to help announce what is good, share what is useful, find what is needed and do more of what counts.
• We have explored many ways to do this and decided to build out a new corner of the blogosphere for this specific and important purpose. We have built this first site and will continue to develop and share it.
• We need people like you to post your news, projects, progress and gifts. And we need Network Affiliates, organizers and connectors who want to clone this blog, post the logo, copy the Network News roll, and begin to build their own Members News roll.
• We will post and link to the Small Change news, blogs and sites that we find and we’ll add your project blogs to our Members News roll or your own replication of this page to the Network News roll of Affiliates.

We want to open this space for team and eventually public posting of news and requests. Until we get there, open and fully public, we invite you to join our team, send your news, give us your attention, good wishes and comments, and generally help us tell the world that we’re here. Thank you!

technorati: sCNN | SmallChangeNews

Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork

Here’s a good example of the kinds of things that sCNN wants to connect…

Ted Ernst works in Chicago, running a government program for wards of the state who are graduating into adulthood. In a normal year, he takes several weeks of unpaid time off, buys his own plane tickets and flies to Africa to organize and teach organization. He supports that work by email and other activities from Chicago, as well. If a tsunami hit the African coast, he’s the guy I’d want to pour some money into. I love that he’s started all of this work on his own dime (and with his partner Regula), on the web in wiki and blogs, and on the ground with shovels and malaria nets.

sCNN wants to be a linking space to more work like this. It wants to be a center among centers… so that all of it/them can grow stronger. I’m building out the Blogrolls this week… what projects and people should be listed here? A first draft of guidelines for posting should also be coming this week, but please don’t wait for that. Tell us which blogs and bloggers you think belong here. Thanks!

technorati: sCNN | SmallChangeNews

Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork

As reported in yesterday’s posting, tsunami relief donations are pouring in. Personally, I can’t seem to stop quoting the figures from Catholic Relief Services: $700,000 collected annually and now $9.1 million collected in two weeks.

How can any organization process and distribute ten or twenty times the money it usually handles in a year? Could you eat 10 times as much this year as you did last year? Could your organization do ten times as much work? I think not.

Questions will of course be raised about how this money is spent. Let that be as it will, but I’d like to suggest an alternative to pumping tons of money into these huge organizations. Give small. Give to little people. Ask around. Who do you know? I have a friend whose son worked in Sri Lanka. Who does he know there. I have a friend in Thailand. Do they know groups that can use resources… and what kind of resources?

Could small be more powerful now? Maybe. Think about it. And what about bloggers? Are there tsunami relief projects that are being reported in weblogs? Post the addresses in the comments. Can we make connections here between the little people? Start conversations? The money might take longer to get there, but the conversations about what’s happening can provide much longer term support. Please post project blogs in the comments here.

I haven’t had time, but I want to look up what Sri Lanka and Thailand and Indonesia already sell to us. I’ll try to buy more of that stuff, as I need it. The news and the flurry of checks writing will be over long before the rebuilding. Can we open conversations and buying patterns that can support rebuilding long into the future?

technorati: sCNN | SmallChangeNews

Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork

This came in from Chris Corrigan today,

In other news, a Buddhist temple here in Mission, BC, just sold its building worth $500,000 for tsunami relief. The head monk said that they could operate from a “temple of compassion” and that they bricks and morter needed to go. The sangha was shocked at first, but in the days following realized what a gift the action was, both for the Red Cross and for their own practice.

Small change all over…sCNN as a temple of compassion…

Thanks, Chris! This is certainly one of the ways that we should think about sCNN, as a sort of gathering place for compassion — not a mushy, feel good sort of compassion, though, but an active, cutting, clearing, opening and stretching — and blogging (grin) — compassion. Clarity that Works!

Please add tsunami relief and/or common good project blogs to the comments here so we can start growing the Local News (projects) blogroll!

technorati: sCNN | SmallChangeNews

Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The earth acts and the ocean reacts. Millions are devastated by the waves and millions more start throwing money into collection buckets on the streets and online. America has been active these last few years in making war and now people are reacting with unprecedented giving toward making a difference for tsunami victims.

CS Monitor reports that Catholic Relief Services usually takes in $700,000 in disaster relief donations annually, but has taken in $9.1 million in less that two weeks since the tsunami hit. Kids are raising money in cookie and lemonade stands, older folks on fixed incomes are foregoing what used to be essential purchases, because they see a need. They are giving to website collection points and they are giving to strangers on the street who say they are collecting for disaster relief.

None of the giving is complex and much of it is not large. It’s small change. And it’s adding up, in absolute dollar terms but also in social infrastructure and capability terms. An object in motion tends to stay in motion. So, too, with people, I think. All of these folks who are learning how to make connections, raise money, give online, read weblogs about relief projects… this is all useful infrastructure… and some of it is going to stay in motion.

The opportunity now is that when the wave of tsunami news and giving and action subsides, there will be some excess capability that can be directed toward other needs, closer to home perhaps, where little individuals can keep on making contributions to the common good.

technorati: sCNN | SmallChangeNews

Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork

sCNN is an emerging invitation whose effectiveness rests in the power of the blogosphere. News out today of a new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project which says readership of online journals has grown significantly during this past year.

…27 per cent of adults in the U.S. who spend time online said in November they had checked out a blog or two… [up from] just 17 per cent who said in February that they had read an online journal.

Opportunity seems to be growing for sCNN. Significantly, growth was expected to accelerate as tsunami relief efforts are reported and followed via weblogs. So much the better if people come to rely on blogs as a way of connecting with good work.

technorati: sCNN | SmallChangeNews

Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork

A few weeks back, Phil Cubeta his View from the Dumpster at GiftHub. In it he says, “…there is a need for a nonprofit membership association of funders, activists, and forprofits devoted to the public good, and supportive of grassroots efforts…”

This raises a heap of questions for me, all directly related to sCNN strategy. What I’ve been envisioning and developing here is a place where individuals (and organizations, if they like) can give to individuals (some of whom may have organizations chartered as non-profits). This necessarily swims a bit upstream, against the common assumption that you must organize a 501c3 structure in order to do good on any kind of meaningful or sustainable scale.

So as Phil talks about wanting to support non-profits to support grassroots, mostly I’m wondering if/how these two ways of being can play together.

• Are the skills and mindsets required to form and maintain the current structures dictated by 501c3-ness consistent with the skills and mind of grassroots movement?
• If sCNN is to run on the passion and responsibility of individuals, what role is there for large gifts and formal organizations to support it?
• Would establishing sCNN as 501c3 make it stronger or sell it out into the view that formal structure must precede all real action?
• Can little individuals organize significant and sustainable movement without bowing before the God of tax-deductibility?

I don’t assume for a moment that non-profit and grassroots cannot play together. Mostly I think they don’t, though. Perhaps that’s because I’m most often talking about a strong form of grassroots, where the little people are doing things, not just sending in their checks. In my view of grassroots, everybody moves. How do we organize that? It still sounds more like OpenSpaceTech and blogging than 501c3 to me, but I’m glad to bring it all together if we can.

P.S. to Phil… can you add sCNN to the GiftHub blogroll, please, thanks?

technorati: sCNN | SmallChangeNews

Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork

After a month of group emails, we finally had the Open Space Institute monthly board meeting/conference call last night. Wrapped some voices around one of the original incarnations of sCNN. An idea tentatively dubbed, Open Space World Service Market. With resounding support and encouragement from my fellow board members, I am moving forward with creating a market for OS offerings/requests via the OSLIST worldwide email listserve. As I pencilled out the logistics of the thing after the call last night, it became clear that a blogging function is essential for ease of implementation and administration. Looks like another node.

Have also learned a lot about CSS and done signicant scrubbing around GlobalChicago.NET in the last month. The way forward on sCNN development is clearing now. At long last.

technorati: sCNN | SmallChangeNews

Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork

This from the CS Monitor…

At this time of the year, charities of every shape and size are hunting for the most generous donors. To find them, the Catalogue for Philanthropy has a counterintuitive suggestion: Look in the nation’s poorest states. That’s because the Catalogue’s Generosity Index for 2004 shows that giving as a percentage of income is highest in states where folks have the least to give. Mississippi – the nation’s poorest in terms of average household income – ranks No. 1 in generosity, followed by Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana.

By contrast, residents of the nation’s richest states appear downright Scrooge-like. Connecticut claims the highest average household income but ranks 44th in terms of percentage of income donated to charity. New Jersey and Massachusetts seem even stingier, ranking 47th and 49th respectively in giving, despite their second- and third-place rankings in income.

This article goes on to comment on why this is so, considering religion, geography, race and other factors. That seems not as important as noticing that little individuals give significantly from what they have. My guess is that they’d be closer to their recipients, too.

I think that’s the opportunity with sCNN… to make more personal giving connections between little individuals. If people can date online, surely they can get to know each other well enough to support projects for the common good.

technorati: sCNN | SmallChangeNews

Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork

Have mostly caught up with so many other blogs and will be focusing on opening this space more this week, blogrolls and the new format.

Doing a bit of study and struggle with CSS formatting… toward having a really clean, easily share-able blog template. Anybody got good how-to-CSS resources?

Thanks to Lisa Haneberg for the financial contribution that came in this week and to everyone who is linking and visiting here. Over and over I’m finding that the response to what we’re trying to do here at sCNN is unique and exciting.

And so we keep going. Looking forward to picking up the pace a bit this week. Please stay tuned.

technorati: sCNN | SmallChangeNews

Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork

It’s not public yet. Maybe that’s why I’m inclined to write about it here. [grin] Maybe I just need something to show for my hours of wrestling with CSS code as a total novice.

Been working on new sCNN blog template that will facilitate sharing and make starting new sCNN network nodes and project blogs easier. Have also begun building blogrolls for new blogs being created for Imagine Chicago and UmuMama.

Still trying to figure out how to get so much online stuff done while working around the duty schedule and access restrictions here at the Center. Slowly, but surely once again, we are making progress.

technorati: sCNN | SmallChangeNews

Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork

In between shifts here at the Jamyang Buddhist Centre in London, I’ve been spending most of my free time catching up on e-things. Mostly I’ve been working to replicate sCNN for Imagine Chicago and a new worldwide motherhood project called UbuMama — even before sCNN is even built out and stable for itself. I’d like to think this means that I’m on the right track!

I met with Bliss Browne, founder of Imagine Chicago, here on Monday and will reconnect tomorrow evening at a local event hosted by Imagine East Dulwich, before she’s off to South Africa to plan the next Global Imagination conference and take next steps on UbuMama. I’m grateful to be able to be helping with such good things. Developing…

technorati: sCNN | SmallChangeNews

Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork
 

Thanks to those who’ve emailed me in these intervening six or seven weeks. There has been much happening, but mostly in face-to-face conversation. Internet connections and blocks of time for dedicated buildout have been scarce.

We have, however, built node and project blogs for Nepal AI National Network, Bairoling Monastery, Imagine Chicago, BALLE-BC, had conversations about starting some others. A few project blogs even popped up on their own. Will be getting the links to these posted to sidebar soonly.

Time is still scarce enough that I’ll leave this post without making the links here. The sidebar will add these soon. Mostly what’s come clear in these conversations is that this idea has real merit.

I continue to settle into my 3-month work program at Jamyang here in London. More on that here and here. May yet start a Jamyang blog before I’m finished. [grin]

technorati: sCNN | SmallChangeNews

Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork

The short answer is a lot, even though I’m half a world away from home, working and retreating in Boudhanath, outside of Kathmandu, Nepal. Finally the dust (and connection issues) are settling enough to catch you up on the Small Change News news.

Here is what we now have:

Funding – Lisa Haneberg has offered a source of funds directly related to her e-book sales ForBossDay. She is donating $1 for every sale and has listed sCNN as one of the four places her customers can direct a dollar of their purchase. So everybody with a boss go check it out! Boss’s Day is October 16th! Press Release.

Domain Names – We are now officially the Small Change News Network and have registered SmallChangeNews.ORG and .NET. The site is still hosted (cultivated) inside of GlobalChicago, but can be moved when I get back to Chicago.

Email Infrastructure – Our new email address is mailbag@smallchangenews.org. That’s the front side. On the backside, there is now a tidy little tangle of Yahoo, Blogger, Gmail and a few other services that will help manage the flow of information here.

First Network Node – We’ll know when sCNN is really working, when it starts to be replicated. Well, it’s working now! The Nepal Appreciative Inquiry National Network (for peaceful development) is now listed in the right sidebar as our first Network News node. We set up their blogs following a successful national conference here (in Nepal) last week. Official and personal reports posted here.

Projects, Contributors, Referrers – The lists in the right sidebar are growing, and now all the links there are in place, as well. Please, keep ’em coming!

And here is what we need:

Logos – We need some good looks. When this thing really gets cooking, we want the sCNN logo to show up on project blogs everywhere, and to be able to list many many blogs in many big, interconnected blogrolls, so as to increase attention to the whole swarm of them. We need at least a handful of the small button-type logos that we like to litter our blogs with.

Projects Blogs – Do you know people doing extraordinary work who are or could be blogging their progress and results? Please send them our way, so we can grow the Blogrolls here!

Blogrolling Options – Blogrolling is the one I know best. What other links management tools do you like and use in your blogging? We really need a blogroll that we can let any project leader add themselves to and we can just review the additions for spammers. Maybe this is too much to ask? Please advise!

Ongoing Funds – For hosting fees, service fees, a working conference planned for 2005, database development, and special projects as they come up. We’ll set up a PayPal donation button soon.

Please send… buttons, project bloggers and funding offers to mailbag@smallchangenews.org. Thank you! …and stay tuned!

technorati: sCNN | SmallChangeNews

Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork

Greetings from Kathmandu! We’re here, Buddhi Tamang and I, demonstrating blogging and getting ready to use a weblog to post the proceedings from the Open Space and Appreciative Inquiry conference that we will conduct over the next four days. If we can get all the technology to work, the new blog will show up in the sidebar on the left in the Local News area, as a new project. This particular project is nationwide here, and seeking to identify and grow what is already working here. Looking forward to a busy four days!

technorati: sCNN | SmallChangeNews