It can be fun trying to keep a track of thinking around online communities and effective ways of using the web, and then trying to work out how that relates to the voluntary sector. For instance:

On Gerry McGovern’s blog, which emphasises focusing on the customer not the organisation, Thinking Web, not website “If your product or service is being discussed in the blogosphere, you must be there, listening and contributing. Is it more important to publish your content on your website or on the websites most of your customers frequent? If your organization has particular words for describing a service, and those are not the words your customers search with, you must change your words.

“On the Web, we need to think beyond the organization. What is success? Is it that having a website? Or is it getting people to act in a certain way? It is the results of what you organize that matters, not the organization you created or where you created it.”

So does that mean that trying to create your own online communities, and then measuring activity etc, isn’t important? My short answer, as often, would be “it depends” (long answer on application and a small fee). For another aspect, try Ed Mitchell’s blog entry, Community ROI Report, where he says “Many of us are wrestling with emergent community metrics and their meaning in this time of increasingly distributed community activity.”

How do you get statistics simple enough to collect and report reliably across sites which aren’t yours? But then Facebook’s new Pages facility has a built-in ‘Insight’ section, giving some feedback on views and visitors.

A couple of international (English speaking) voluntary sector developments:

From The Malta Independent: Enactment of legislation to strengthen the voluntary sector - “The National Council of Women welcomed the Voluntary Organisations Act, passed by the House of Representatives on 24 September.” This item is rather truncated and doesn’t explain much but it appears that a Commissioner will be established and voluntary work supported.

From Scoop, New Zealand: The New Zealand Federation of Voluntary Welfare Organisations and New Zealand Council of Social Services are delighted to see that the Community & Voluntary Sector portfolio has been promoted to Cabinet level (in the government).

Does Britain need an equivalent to ProPublica, a non-profit newsroom launching early 2008? I think the States has a greater need, and we have the likes of OpenDemocracy already, but any comments?

Here’s an excerpt from Nonprofit Online News aboutProPublica:

“I’m not surprised to learn that the project is backed by some of the very same grantmakers whose vision has opened up opportunities for nonprofits and the Internet. Investigative journalism is clearly at risk and while I am intrigued by the choice of a former Wall Street Journal editor as its leader, I have a lot of hope for ProPublica. They understand exactly what role they could play in the renewal of democracy in the United States.”

ProPublica - Journalism in the Public Interest:

ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that will produce investigative journalism in the public interest. Our work will focus exclusively on truly important stories, stories with “moral force.” We will do this by producing journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them.