While this blog isn’t about politics, it’s interesting to learn how a political candidate in the USA is using both Basecamp and wikis to organise the campaign and the volunteers. And it was primarily the volunteers who asked for the wikis.

Below are a few heavily edited snippets, but read the whole article at: How the Barack Obama Campaign Uses Wikis to Organize Volunteers.

… organizing a campaign across a state the size of Texas, both in terms of number of people and geographical size is a daunting task.

…The Obama campaign is using software from business intranet provider Central Desktop to manage “precinct captains” — volunteers who get out the vote and spread the campaign message in specific precincts across the state.

… Central Desktop is a wiki-based collaboration tool that competes with 37Signals’ Basecamp.

… the idea to use collaboration software to manage precinct captains was actually something that bubbled up in the campaign from the grassroots volunteers who were out in the field.

…The specific appeal of Central Desktop’s wiki-based approach is that allows volunteers to shape the messaging and quickly collaborate with each other without the need to go through a webmaster.

[Via Read/WriteWeb: How the Barack Obama Campaign Uses Wikis to Organize Volunteers.]

Does your organisation need to organise people? Basecamp has a free option — you could try it out. And there are plenty of free wikis around that you could experiment with.

Have you already had experience with Basecamp or wikis? Tell us your experiences in the comments.

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Beth Kanter’s post about her process for raising funds as part of the America’s Giving Challenge tells the story of Pharoth, an orphan in Cambodia. The story reinforces the all-important point that Beth makes:

…all nonprofits need to use stories as part of their communications and fundraising.  Research and studies have shown that donors are more likely to give if they are hear a story about one person who has been helped by the charity versus numbers and statistics. I now have a collection of stories about the Sharing Foundation.

[Via BlogHer - Social change, Non-profits & NGOs: Stories, Conversations, and Supportive Network are Key for Social Fundraising.]

It’s easy to think of charities who use the story technique, who ask for a dollar a day for a named person, for example. But there are also still many organisations who would benefit from working a little harder on putting stories to statistics.

Stories engage our human hearts and allow us to feel that the ‘problem’ is manageable. We can’t help hundreds, or thousands or millions who need a particular service, but we do feel able to improve the life of Josephine or Johnny.

What are the stories in your organisation?

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New Zealand Connections is:

a wiki for NZ connectivity. This wiki will hopefully cover various aspects of connectivity in New Zealand, ranging from Internet connections, mobile connections, through to voice connections. Technical advice about modems, settings, and other devices will hopefully find its way here.

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