TechSoup / CompuMentor | Social Signal

If you want to see how technology is transforming the non-profit sector, start by looking at TechSoup, a project of CompuMentor. This non-profit organization provides technology resources to more than 80,000 non-profit organizations across the United States and Canada. Their NetSquared project aims to dramatically expand the strategic technology capacity of these organizations by engaging them in a series of online community activities, culminating in an annual conference.

TechSoup’s NetSquared team has challenged us to do some of our most creative work. We could describe Marnie Webb, parent-organization CompuMentor’s Vice-President of Knowledge Services, as Social Signal’s godmother: Marnie’s interest in our work on Drupal and tag-based aggregation helped us define the company. Marnie herself has helped define the possibilities for tag-based collaboration with her introduction of the nptech tag, which now gathers resources on non-profit technology from across the web.

We worked with Marnie to develop an online community strategy for NetSquared to engage its diverse user base in a process of online learning and discussion about the latest generation of online tools and techniques. Marnie brought in Billy Bicket; he worked closely with us as we implemented much of this strategy, from setting up the NetSquared web site and configuring major web site features to managing custom development work and writing and editing site content. Billy has a great appetite for the brilliant concept or turn of phrase that will turn a web page into a web event, which helped us refine our thinking about web site rollout as a process of activity and event planning. That process is now underway with renewed vigor thanks to Gina Cardazone, who is captaining the 2007 site redesign and tackling it with an inspiring level of discipline.

NetSquared has rapidly become one of the web's most visible forums for exploring the social web's significance to nonprofits. The levels of interest generated by the online community has led to the successful launch of NetSquared groups in San Francisco and other U.S. cities, and to an overwhelming demand for conference registration. That success has confirmed hopes that NetSquared would give rise to a durable, vibrant online community, taking a key position at the heart of TechSoup's future online plans.