socially marketing

Still curious? Here are more basic facts:

Five nonprofits will list their projects and cases on our site. They are:

• Body by Brandy 4 Kidz , Roxbury, MA
• Rushing Rivers Institute, Amherst, MA
• Housing and Services, Inc. , New York, NY
• Coalition for the Homeless, New York, NY
• Literacy, Inc., New York, NY

Most cases will report their outcomes within six months. Project listings will run longer at around twelve to eighteen months. These longer cases will be reporting every three months so that donors can keep abreast of any new developments.

If your nonprofit wants to list with us, e-mail info@socialmarkets.org. We will be adding new nonprofits soon!

And again, we’re launching November 21st!

STILL not at liberty to talk about how the site is being architected but I can safely say that we’re slowly coming out of coding and into QA (quality assurance). It’s really fun watching your specs turn into code which then turns into a usable web site.

The question here is whether or not we’re going to make our launch date on spec (without descoping, otherwise known as the art of throwing out non-essential “features”). It’s quite possible considering the heavy descoping we did just to fit the site into this timeframe but we’ll see (says the ex-tech lead within me). If we descope, that’s fine but I can promise one thing. We’re not going to lose the essential parts that makes socialmarkets what it is.

And what are those things?  Our uniqueness comes from the fact that we add transparency to a process that often has none. We ask nonprofits to report their outcomes to donors. It seems like a simple task but very few nonprofits are transparent in that way. You want to test it? Try it. Donate $50 to any nonprofit you see out there. Six months later, ask them what happened to your $50. You’d be surprised at the various answers you’d get. They really won’t be able to tell you what happened to your $50. And they won’t tell you if the project or the case that your $50 went to was a failure or not.

Believe it or not, failure in the nonprofit sector is not something your average fundraiser likes to talk about. It seems… well, unseemly. It’s as if the nonprofit was not a good steward of your money. What they don’t like to tell donors is that their work is hard and not always rewarding. Let’s get real, folks. If a nonprofit is working with certain kinds of clients, their efforts, despite best intentions and great workers, may fail. That’s OK. It happens. Considering the obstacles in a client’s life, you as a donor and they as a nonprofit may be just happy to have given them some help. And hopefully, the next time around, the nonprofit will try to help that same kind of client a different way until they find a way that works best. Sounds like QA testing for a software program? I hope so.

So that’s where we are both with the nonprofit sector and the software application-to-be that is socialmarkets. We’re in testing mode — constantly. And with the hope that our next attempt may be the one that finally changes everything for socialmarkets, the nonprofit sector and even, our clients.

We just started coding for socialmarkets.org's alpha release in November. I'm tremendously excited about it and looking forward to blogging more about this after the press release rolls out. Suffice it to say, we're employing some cutting-edge architectures to make socialmarkets.org fast and reliable.

I'm not entirely at liberty to tell you about everything until the PR folks here start going but I can say it's going to be a fun ride from now until November!

Our landlord, Tate Hausman, is throwing a party and you’re invited! And not only are you invited to come on in, you’re invited to be our neighbor!

The party is at The Studio Guild, 18 w 27th St, 10th floor in the Flatiron section of Manhattan on August 23rd from 6 PM to ???.

This is NOT our official housewarming but it’s an open house party for the Studio Guild which is a loose collection of nonprofit types like us all hanging out on three floors of the same building. Joomla people like PICnet and Drupal consultants like Advomatic are some of the tenants in our space. Apparently, these parties are a lot of fun too so I hope you all come on down and visit us. I’m going to be there but Jeff will not be as he’s taking a vacation in preparation for the craziness that’s going to happen when our office starts up officially on September 1st.

So what’s the real point of the party? Tate is looking for more tenants for the space and there are two desks available right next to us. So not only can you drink yourself silly, you can find office space for the Next Big Thing that you’re building. Seriously though, I’d love to have you visit us as I’ll be all by my lonesome.

If you are coming, please e-mail me at allan@socialmarkets.org.

I’m proud to tell you all that our fiscal sponsor is GivingNet , formerly known as the Community Foundations of America. We were able to transform a chance meeting with a GivingNet manager, Doug Yeager, over at the Salesforce.com Nonprofit Roadmap Summit into our fiscal sponsorship. Carla Dearing, the President and CEO, and Caroline Heine, Chief Operating Officer, has been instrumental in helping us get socialmarkets off the ground because they’re not just our fiscal sponsor but they’re handling our back-end operations as well. What is amazing isn’t that GivingNet is our fiscal sponsor, but that socialmarkets so clearly fits into their strategy . Sometimes, I’m in awe of the kismet of it all.

And even more good news, Tate Hausman of the Integration Proclamation, is now our landlord. As of September 1st, we’ll be in our new office over at 18 West 27th Street in the Flatiron district of Manhattan. Yup, we’re getting less and less virtual as time goes on. We’ve got ledgers, desks and what not going on. And it means that I won’t to have to be in what passes for my computer office here at my home. Who knew that the prospect of air conditioning could be so sweet?