Hi, my name is Mike Everett-Lane and I work for DonorsChoose, a nonprofit philanthropic marketplace that benefits the public schools in the US. I recently joined this group (and have been learning about microformats) because I think microformats could greatly benefit microphilanthropy sites.
This is building off of the "hGrant" idea which Eugene proposed some time ago. I mentioned the idea of expanding it to a more general "hGive" on the regular microformats list, but now that there's "-new" I thought I'd repropose it. I've written up some thoughts on my blog and also reproduce them below. I would really appreciate your help in figuring out how to proceed with standards and implementation. http://triptronix.net/ishbadiddle/archives/2007/02/15/15.20.40/ DonorsChoose (where I work) 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, Modest Needs, Global Giving, and GiveMeaning. All are essentially philanthropic marketplaces that bring together givers and recipients. And thus all could benefit from opening our data in a way that would make them accessible beyond our own websites. Picture the following mashup possibilities: * Phil has just moved to Brooklyn, and wants to get involved with his new community. He enters his address into a Philanthropic Mashup site (made with Yahoo Pipes?) which aggregates local funding needs. He can filter those needs by cost, by type of program, and by demographics of the recipients. He decides to fund a classroom project at DonorsChoose and make a Back-to-Work Grant to a local family through Modest Needs. * Jennifer has an old computer monitor she wants to donate to a local school. She calls a few schools but no one needs a monitor. She is able to search for local organizations that are seeking computer monitors, and finds a nearby women's shelter that is in need, so gives it there instead. * Ashley is teaching her fifth grade class about water quality. They go to the Philanthropic Mashup site and find water quality projects all over the world. They decide to raise funds for one of those projects in Burkina Faso, sponsored by Global Giving. Later they follow up by looking for other projects in the same village, and find a Kiva loan for a new small business there. * John is a programmer in Topeka who wants to help out literacy organizations, a special passion of his. He posts an offer of services his blog, with details of the hours he wants to commit and the types of services he offers. A literacy program in Saskatchewan has need of his skills, and is able to find John through Google because he has marked up his offer with the proper microformats. * The Bailey Foundation wants to improve its outreach and reach more nonprofits with its Animal population control grants program. It posts data on its grant program (available amount, application deadline, etc.) on its site. An animal shelter that has never heard of the Bailey Foundation is able to find them and get funding for its Spay Day program. These are the kinds of things that microformats could make possible. We at DonorsChoose have 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. I also recently talked with Tom Williams at GiveMeaning who is also interested. I'm posting this here as what I hope will be part of a larger conversation about microformatting microphilanthropy. Ideally we would have a microformat "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 New York Cares which exist in most US cities I believe.) Here are some of the potential parameters: * direction: seeking or offering? * medium: cash or items or volunteers? * cost: (perhaps other pricing data like minimum donation, payment types accepted -- 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). There also could be total cost vs. cost remaining, interest rate data for loans, etc. * date: for expiration dates, volunteer event dates, application deadline dates, etc. Cf. hCalendar standards. * demographic: some kind of data about the recipients -- avg income?, number of people the project will serve, etc. * geotag: where is it? * guarantor: is there an organization that guarantees this request? This would separate an individual asking for help (I need a loan) from an organization asking for help on behalf of an individual (Modest Needs will provide a loan to the individual whose identity and need they have confirmed). * keyword tags: ("education," "Shakespeare," "clean water" etc.) The Foundation Center's Foundation Directory has a list of Foundation Fields of Interest which could be the basis for a standard Program Type list. * description: The executive summary. 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 in the nearish future. And then, of course, Utopia Ensues. Thanks for your help with this. -- Mike -------------------- 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-new mailing list [email protected] http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-new
