DoSomething.org is one of the largest organizations in the United States assisting young people to foster the causes they care about. Being a driving force in creating a culture of volunteerism and social entrepreneurship, the NGO is on track to mobilize two million young people in 2011.

Inspired by the same cause of fostering citizens’ action from the bottom of the problem, I have recently found some interesting start-ups in recent Social Enterprise Competitions in New York City.  Pando Projects, Long Tail and Catch A Fire are examples of new social enterprises using the Web as platforms to foster social action in real life.

Why is there an increasing number of online platforms fostering citizens´social commitment and entrepreneurship?

There is a new wave of social commitment around the world, which is taking the form of social entrepreneurship and volunteering.

• Social entrepreneurship is a new escalating social movement. There is an increasing belief among both citizens and governments that social change is possible by starting solving social problems at the grassroots levels. This movement is gaining prominence in comparison with other traditional forms of social action as activist movements or public policies.   Google Trends gives a fair image of this rising trend. The following chart shows the Google worldwide searches of the concept of “social entrepreneurship” in the recent years:
• Similarly, volunteering is becoming more and more fashionable. People want to “do something” for the society. And the society values it. A good example that demonstrates this is that volunteering activities are now part of our resumes.

Milena Arciszewski, founder and CEO of Pando Project, finds that ” for a long time Americans have expected politicians, scientists and business leaders to develop solutions and deliver the change we desire. But we are starting to realize that we can no longer afford to wait.  Change doesn’t just come from a few leaders; if we want change, that change needs to be initiated and carried out by all of us on a local level”

On the other hand, the Web 2.0 is a big responsible of this new trend. The new Internet is a perfect enabler for common people to communicate, actively participate and act together, jumping over any formal requirement. Many of the new websites are thought as platforms for people to connect with other people with similar interests in order to pursue common goals. These web-based NGOs above named serve as bridges for social entrepreneurs and volunteers to start fulfilling their social commitment. Thanks to the Web 2.0.,  there is a decreasing importance of the role of institutions and formal vehicles to be able to jump into action. In all domains. Social action is just one of them.

How are these web-based NGOs acting?

DoSomething, as well as the start-ups Pando Project, Catch A Fire and Longtail Grants are good examples of how the Web 2.0. may be used to foster social entrepreneurship and volunteering experiences. All of them are using the power online to get the people involved in social ventures offline. However they take different approaches and use different

web resources:

• DoSomething.org focuses on fostering volunteering among the American young society. An extensive range of social volunteering offers can be found in its website.Users can filter according to the cause, the people involved, the location and the working time required. The website also allows young people to present their community action projects, without requiring them to be signed up as an association or NGO. Any person seeking for followers and supporters of their social cause can also upload her video or start a discussion in the blog of the website.

• CatchAFire.org focuses on matching NGOs needs with skilled volunteers (young and less young). The social enterprise measures its social impact by monitoring the money saved to the NGOs. Its big limitation is that, opposite to the other examples, Catch A Fire does not work with community action projects but only with 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations.

• LongTailGrants.org is an online fundraising platform targeted toward highschool and college students who want to raise money, awareness, and support for their own socially beneficial projects. By not requiring grantees to be associated with 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations, Long Tail goal is to catalyze youth community engagement by allowing students to start, and earn money from, whatever project matters to most to them. The interesting (and somehow controversial) approach of this social venture is that it allows youth to ask for money just as a reward or payment of the social action they are proposing to their communities. For instance: “if you pay me US$1,000 I will clean our park for the next 4 months”.

• But the most interesting start-up I found in this field is PandoProjects.org . The mission of Pando Projects, in words of her CEO, Milena Arciszewski, is to “empower Americans to develop their ideas, step up as leaders, and launch projects to drive meaningful change within their communities”.Opposite to DoSomething.org, Pando not only allows people to use its website to translate their ideas into social action, but also provides them with technical assistance (on and offline) to ensure the success of the socially beneficial projects. To this respect,  Milena states that: “While DoSomething encourages people to launch projects to tackle different issues, they do not offer support to help people run those projects effectively.” When asking about the kind of support they offer to the social projects, Milena explains that: ”Pando provides a platform of mentorship and online tools to simplify the process of grassroots activism, giving Americans an easy way to start and run successful projects to make a local impact and create a better world”.

Exciting social projects with different approaches but a common feature: the understanding of the huge opportunities that the new Internet bring to ordinary citizens, empowering them not only online but also in real life. There is a new big step that the Internet has taken: today, it is not only a perfect bridge to connect people from around the world, but also a very efficient tool to connect people from same communities and with same interests to act together locally and offline.  The Internet is paradoxically becoming the most suitable tool to get to know your neighbor. This opens a huge spectrum of possibilities for society, that I very much look forward to explore in the upcoming posts.

Mark Earls writes in Herd: How to Change Mass Behaviour by Harnessing Our True Nature that traditional marketers completely misunderstood the mechanics of mass behavior. Instead of a direct relationship between brand and individual, our instinct is to look at what others around us are doing, using and possessing, and emulating that behavior.

Think the ubiquity of text messaging, the explosion of the Internet itself and the crowding of social networking sites: all examples of activities that entered daily activity not so much because of top down marketing, but because each lubricated the social interaction of those among us.

While the talk in the video above is about and for commercial brand managers and marketers, there are considerable lessons to be learned by the NGO, non-profit and governmental agency communities. This primarily includes how to inject ideas into the public sphere, have them take hold in the collective imagination and develop a life of their own.