The growth in social media tools has meant a boon for the third sector
With this year's big money purchases of Last.fm, YouTube and the rest, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the Web had become about the megabucks and little else. But the growth in social media tools has meant a boon for the third sector too and 2006-2007 saw charities, non-governmental organisations and citizen's groups taking advantage of all web 2.0 has to offer. All of this means that, in today's networked world, it has never been so easy to care.
In fact, some may think it's too easy. The year's biggest e-engagement story was undoubtedly 10 Downing St's ePetition site, after 1.7 million people used it to sign a petition against road pricing. As commentators pointed out, at the time over 3,000 people were also using the service to petition Tony Blair to "stand on his head and juggle ice-cream".
However, at the very least, the ePetition site gave many people their first taste of civic engagement.
"One-click" politics has proved to be a great way to raise both awareness and funds. The majority of Facebookers might join groups such as "The Drunken SMS Appreciation Society" or "David Cameron is a hottie". But this year's most popular social networking site also let's users support "causes". The environment seems perfectly designed for widespread promotion of doers of good deeds - those who bring enough of their friends to the cause are rated in a top five of "recruiters" and, if your friends give money, you get upgraded to a "fundraiser". It may seem trite, but it capitalises on the kind of peer recognition that drives the web. Not only that, thanks to the sheer numbers of people who use sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, which launched its "Linked In for Good" service this year, it is tantalisingly viral.
Of course, you can still do viral without going near a social networking site - and some did it very well this year. Amnesty International, which has just celebrated the first anniversary of its irrepressible.info campaign against internet censorship, has long been making use of the wider blogosphere with attractive content for bloggers to use on their sites. But one of my favourite campaign banners has to be their recent "sow the seeds" graphic - a beautiful flower in Amnesty pink that grows up the side of a blog or MySpace page, seducing millions of readers to click for more.
However, it gets a lot better than banner ads and Facebook groups. Charities that led the way in e-advocacy this year did so by aping the architecture of participation behind some of the best participatory sites on the web. The Dogs Trust launched DoggySnaps, a beautifully simple idea that allows dog owners to easily share photos of their four-legged friends online. This built just the right type of community receptive to the Dogs Trust's core message. Also, Oxfam struck gold with Oxjam, an elegant interface that let young people organise and search for local music events, creating an instant, month-long, national music festival that both raised awareness for Oxfam's causes and recruited its next generation of supporters.
The increasing availability and descending cost of web-based engagement tools is making the third sector a force to be reckoned with, resulting in nothing short of a revolution in civic life. To its credit, the government is slowly recognising this fact. In March, the Cabinet Office commissioned an independent review, which recognised "the power of information" generated by, among other things, citizen forums such as Netmums and MoneySavingExpert, and encouraged civil servants and politicians to engage with them. However, it wasn't all good news for civic forums this year. The news that parenting forum Mumsnet had settled with child-rearing expert Gina Ford, after users of the site posted allegedly defamatory material about her, reminded us that libel laws designed with major commercial publishers in mind could still threaten the grassroots.
Despite these setbacks, it is clear that, on balance, the web is good news for advocacy. I should know - I head up an advocacy organisation that was brought into being by an online engagement tool (and 2006 New Media Award winner) Pledgebank. Within two years of its inception, it has been immortalised in Hansard. Sure, this is as much to do with hard work and a passion for the issues among a broad base of people - the tools of online are simply that: tools. However, the emerging armoury of communication and engagement options opened up to charities, not-for-profit organisations and grassroots organisations not only make their jobs easier, it promises to revitalise democratic debate in the 21st century.
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