Hi, I'm new to the group but am intrigued by the hGrant idea, especially as I work at a organization, www.donorschoose.org , that both gives grants (to teachers) and receives them (from the public). We have thousands of proposals that public school teachers have posted on our site, and individuals can give directly to those projects. (Similar "microphilanthropy" sites include Kiva.org, Modestneeds.org, and Global Giving.) We've been talking about applying microformats to our proposals (each has its own page) to make them semantic, but none of the existing microformats seem to fit what we're doing.
Ideally, instead of hGrant you'd have something slightly more general like hGive. This would allow organizations that are seeking contributions / in-kind donations / volunteers to use it, as well as organizations/people who are looking to volunteer, donate, etc. (I'm thinking of online volunteer clearinghouses such as http://www.nycares.org which exist in most US cities I believe.) Possible fields: * direction: seeking or offering? * medium: cash or items or volunteer time? * project cost / grant size: (perhaps other pricing data like minimum donation, payment types accepted, currency -- not sure what the standards are for price data among other microformats). Also, loan or grant? (For example, Kiva and ModestNeeds give loans, DonorsChoose and Global Giving give grants) * demographic: some kind of data about the recipients -- avg income?, number of people the project will serve, etc. * geotag * keyword tags ("education," "Shakespeare," "clean water" etc.) I'm sure there are other possibilities / desiderata, especially around volunteer projects (one time vs ongoing, group vs individual, etc) but this is what comes to mind. If there were an implementable standard, I'm pretty sure I could get DonorsChoose to start using it, and help spread the word to our sister sites. Eugene, I hope this isn't hijacking your thread, since it's a bit different from what you originally proposed, which I think is a great idea (I've been a fundraiser for many years so I know how hard it is to get to that foundation data). Thanks, Mike Everett-Lane Executive Director, DonorsChoose New York -------------------- 347 West 36th Street, Suite 503, New York, NY 10018 212-239-3615 ext 204 [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.donorschoose.org _______________________________________________ microformats-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
