See What’s Out There

Here’s a nice Earth Day treat from Lewis Black.

Hat Tip [EarthFirst]

What’s your message? It might depend on your number–501(c)3 or 501(c)4 or 527.

Because this is an election year, many of our projects have a political bent. But how much of one? Well, that depends on the type of nonprofit status a client holds. Most of our clients are 501(c)3s, but some are 501(c)4s or 527s. The degree to which they can speak out on political issues or campaigns is determined by their designation. Some of our clients, like the Sierra Club, have all three designations, in which case, their money has to be divided into different funds with c3, c4, or 527 designations, and used appropriately. (There are actually 28 different 501c designations! But we’re only going to talk about three here).

501(c)3s are defined by the IRS as charitable, religious, scientific or educational organizations and mostly consist of public or private foundations such as Red Cross or Habitat for Humanity. The money they use for media is generally to educate viewers about issues or an organization’s mission, with or without a call to action at the end, such as “join us” or “donate now”. Although they can heighten public awareness about certain issues, they aren’t allowed to show political affiliation or urge people to vote for or against a specific candidate. They can only use a small percentage of funds to lobby. They can issue a “Tell Congress you’re fed up” statement, as it is not specific to any candidate, or release a non-partisan report on a politically charged issue such as global warming, but they must stop short of advocating for or against a particular candidate.

What we hear often is that many (c)3s don’t go as far as they can because they worry that if they violate the restrictions, they will lose their nonprofit status.

c4 funds are different. 501(c)4 organizations are described in the IRS code as non-profits that promote social welfare; but unlike a (c)3, a 501(c)4 organization can lobby for specific policy change. Examples of prominent c4s include NARAL Pro Choice America and Moveon.org Civic Action. Here is an example of the difference: A 501(c)3 can tell you how important it is that you use your right to vote, but a c4 can ask you to sign a petition to Congress about a specific piece of legislation. However, c4 money cannot be used in election campaigns on behalf of or against any candidates.

A 527 group (or 527 funds) can influence the nomination, election, appointment or defeat of candidates for public office. 527 money can be used on behalf of or against candidates; for instance, Political Action Committees (PACs) are 527s. Here is where it gets confusing if it isn’t already. A 527 is NOT allowed to coordinate with a specific election campaign. Rather, it must be an “interest group” who is advocating on issues or mobilizing voters. Not surprisingly, sometimes 527s get into trouble for pushing the limits. For example, in the 2004 election cycle, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was a famous 527 that was eventually accused of coordinating with George Bush’s campaign in its anti-John Kerry ads during the presidential campaign.

Are you confused yet? Well, let me tell you, it can be hairy trying to work out messaging for these various organizations or funds in the video and social media marketing campaigns we undertake on their behalf. But we really enjoy the challenge and are happy to be doing a lot of work this cycle around the critical elections this fall.

A couple of years ago someone said to me, Michael, why doesn’t Flickr, which already allows for uploading of photos just add video. Wouldn’t that be a smart business thing to do and a natural, given that they already have the key elements in place. Well, yeah.

Late for sure, today Flickr launches Flickr Video.

This is not YouTube. Flickr has a limit of 90-seconds for video and what it looks like is that they are going only for those videos you record on digital camera, not all out movies.

Coverage from CNET:

In a bid to broaden Flickr if not actually crush YouTube, Yahoo is adding videos to what has just been a photo-sharing site.

The change, which the company plans to launch publicly later Tuesday, is a modest but significant extension of Flickr’s features. The videos, limited to 90 seconds and 150MB, will be shown as thumbnails alongside users’ photos, and will inherit all the features of photos stored on the site: users can add comments, captions, comments, geotags, and privacy restrictions so only friends or family may view the videos, the company said.

Coverage from TechCrunch:

The product is not a YouTube clone by any means. The Flickr team, led by Director of Product Management Kakul Srivastava, spent considerable time debating the feature set and user experience internally before launch.

The goal is not to have people upload long videos or clips of copyrighted material. To reinforce that, videos can be only 90 seconds in length and 150MB in size (however these limitations may be changed later, Srivastava says).

In a phone prebriefing, I was very critical of the length limitation. But the team then brought me in for a demo and I was sold. The short clips are a perfect compliment to event photos, in my opinion.

This is just a little preview of what we are working on with EarthFirst.com. Stay tuned for more.

We talk a lot about video, but pictures can do amazing things as well to educate and inform and move an audience. For example…

What The World Eats is a photo essay about what families around the world eat. It’s a series of pictures of a family in a different country posing with all the food they eat in a week. It also shows the cost of that food. The regional differences and taste differences are amazing. It’s a big issue of concern to the global development community. Click here to check it out.

The photographs are by Peter Menzel from the book “Hungry Planet.“

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

2nd Annual DoGooderTV Nonprofit Video Awards

Chicago, IL & Seattle, WA January 11, 2008

See3 Communications and NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network announce the co-sponsorship of the 2nd Annual DoGooderTV Nonprofit Video Awards. Nonprofit organizations are encouraged to submit their videos to the contest, hosted on DoGooderTV, the video sharing platform for nonprofits. The grand prize winner will be announced at NTEN’s annual Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC) in New Orleans on March 21. The winner will be awarded an all-expense paid trip to the 2009 NTC to be held in San Francisco.

The theme of this year’s contest is From the Ground Up: Using Technology to Engage Constituents and Make the World a Better Place. The goal of the contest is to highlight the work of nonprofit organizations and to spread the word about the creative ways they employ media to bring about social change. Last year’s winner, Avaaz “Stop the Clash of Civilizations” received a standing ovation when played at the conference. This video has been viewed over 1.5 million times on YouTube.

Nonprofit organizations and their constituents are invited to submit videos used in support of a 2007 campaign. Videos can be from a wide variety of issue and interest areas including (but not limited to) activism, environment, education, disability, economic development, human services, international development, health, and the arts.

Entries will be accepted until February 15, 2008 at which time finalists will be determined. The finalists will be shown on www.DoGooder.tv beginning March 1, 2008; individuals will be able to vote on their favorite entry through March 20, 2008. For complete contest rules and to submit or view videos, please visit the video contest home.

See3 Communications creates compelling visual media and internet marketing initiatives that enable nonprofits to maximize exposure, deepen connections and produce results. Our background in video production, web development and nonprofit marketing and fundraising are combined to create campaigns with emotional appeal that compel target audiences to action. For additional information about See3 Communications, visit www.see3.net

NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network is the membership organization of nonprofit technology professionals. NTEN facilitates the exchange of knowledge and information within the nonprofit community. We connect our members to each other, provide professional development opportunities, educate our constituency on issues of technology use in nonprofits, and spearhead groundbreaking research, advocacy, and education on technology issues affecting our entire community. For additional information about NTEN, visit www.nten.org

Contact Information
Mary Dombrowski
Director of Operations
See3 Communications
(773) 784-7333
mary[at]see3[dot]net
www.see3.net
www.dogooder.tv

Holly Ross
Executive Director
NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network
(415) 397-9000
holly[at]nten[dot]org
www.nten.org

A while back I wrote a post about how there are just too many Michael Hoffman’s out there and with Google I am connected to all of them, even the anti-Semite Michael Hoffman who consistently gets top billing on Google. It is a story really about how the web connects people who otherwise would never know each other. Take a minute now to Google yourself and all of your top staff or consultants. You might be surprised at who else comes up.

I was recently contacted by yet another Michael Hoffman who asked me to link to his website. Here it is.

I still need some help with this so that we can dislodge the evil Michael Hoffman from his Google and Wikipedia rankings. So, if you can spare a link, please put “Michael Hoffman” on your site somewhere and link it to this post or better yet the first one I did.

My new OLPC laptop came tonight… My 9-year-old Meital is in charge, so hopefully I will be able to film her doing a review of it sometime this week.

For those of you who don’t know OLPC, have a look here.

Click here to make a special Hanukkah donation to the American Jewish World Service.

I was reminded today about an email that I received years ago. It said that when you go to Google and search on the word “Jew” you get an neo-Nazi site. And so, this email went on to say, please put the word “Jew” on your site and link it to the Wikipedia page for Jew. This is what’s called a Google Bomb — when a group of sites get together to manipulate Google’s search results through the use of links. It worked right away, and the top search for Jew has been, for years now, a link to Wikipedia.

I hadn’t thought about this in a long time, but I had occasion to search on the word Jew again. In the Sponsored Links section of the Google results page (the Adwords links) there was an ad from Google, with the title: Offensive Search Results. When I clicked on that link, what I got was a nice window on how Google operates:

An explanation of our search results.

If you recently used Google to search for the word “Jew,” you may have seen results that were very disturbing. We assure you that the views expressed by the sites in your results are not in any way endorsed by Google. We’d like to explain why you’re seeing these results when you conduct this search.

A site’s ranking in Google’s search results relies heavily on computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page’s relevance to a given query. Sometimes subtleties of language cause anomalies to appear that cannot be predicted. A search for “Jew” brings up one such unexpected result.

If you use Google to search for “Judaism,” “Jewish” or “Jewish people,” the results are informative and relevant. So why is a search for “Jew” different? One reason is that the word “Jew” is often used in an anti-Semitic context. Jewish organizations are more likely to use the word “Jewish” when talking about members of their faith. The word has become somewhat charged linguistically, as noted on websites devoted to Jewish topics such as these:

* http://shakti.trincoll.edu/~mendele/vol01/vol01.174
* http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/jonah081500.asp

Someone searching for information on Jewish people would be more likely to enter terms like “Judaism,” “Jewish people,” or “Jews” than the single word “Jew.” In fact, prior to this incident, the word “Jew” only appeared about once in every 10 million search queries. Now it’s likely that the great majority of searches on Google for “Jew” are by people who have heard about this issue and want to see the results for themselves.

The beliefs and preferences of those who work at Google, as well as the opinions of the general public, do not determine or impact our search results. Individual citizens and public interest groups do periodically urge us to remove particular links or otherwise adjust search results. Although Google reserves the right to address such requests individually, Google views the comprehensiveness of our search results as an extremely important priority. Accordingly, we do not remove a page from our search results simply because its content is unpopular or because we receive complaints concerning it. We will, however, remove pages from our results if we believe the page (or its site) violates our Webmaster Guidelines, if we believe we are required to do so by law, or at the request of the webmaster who is responsible for the page.

We apologize for the upsetting nature of the experience you had using Google and appreciate your taking the time to inform us about it.

Sincerely,
The Google Team

p.s. You may be interested in some additional information the Anti-Defamation League has posted about this issue at http://www.adl.org/rumors/google_search_rumors.asp. In addition, we call your attention to Google’s search results on this topic.

There are a whole group of new companies challenging Google on search. Yes, it’s true. Google is great, but lots of results are useless. Some of these new companies working on better search are combining the algorithm — that automated formula that uses context and links to determine relevance — and combining it with human editors. The results are often better.

There are a growing number of these companies, including ChaCha (which has actual people helping you with search) and Mahalo which has edited results for the top 10,000 search terms and the algorithm for everything else. Will one of them create better search? Maybe they can. (In the end, I think all of those companies are really a play to get bought by Google or Yahoo or Microsoft.)

The charge against Google is that they are too reliant on the computer. They deny it. Google says that they are also looking at the role of human editors. But I think the letter above clear show’s Google’s belief in the power of the machine.