And of course our website is a dynamic marketplace linking donors and social entrepreneurs/grassroots organizations around the world. So far, over 1,000 projects have received support from the GlobalGiving community. Changing the world, indeed.

We’d love to be with the “cool kids” at Web 2.0 Expo.

Now in it’s third year, Calling Back the Salmon brings together Native American tribes, scientists, and people from the headwaters of the Sierra to San Francisco Bay, to share their talents and voice in helping to restore wild salmon populations in central California.

With all volunteer help, (i.e. very little budget) Web 2.0 technologies have significantly improved our communication efforts. These tools include:

Synthasite for web content management,
Myemma for email marketing,
Twitter for social networking,
Facebook for social networking,
ChipIn for on-line donations,
Wikidot for internal document posting and planning,
TechSmith Jing for Screen capturing and audio slides,
Flickr and Mobileme for online photography, and
Jumpcut for online video content.

These tools help to improve the lives of others by enabling people throughout the watershed, from Truckee to San Francisco Bay, to get involved and take action in restoring and protecting wild Chinook salmon from becoming extinct in central California.

The Web 2.0 Expo in 2008 was valuable because we were able to find new tools that have significantly improved our communication efforts. We hope to learn even more at this year’s expo so that we can expand our communication toolbox.

As lead counsel in the California marriage case, we entered the national spotlight when we won marriage rights for same-sex couples. Immediately following that historic ruling, we were forced to defend that rights at the ballot. The No on Prop 8 campaign required not only NCLR, but progressive groups across California to utilize all forms of communication to get our message across that Prop 8, if passed, would be a radical and unprecedented change to the California Constitution that would put all Californians at risk. On November 5—the day after Prop 8 passed, NCLR filed a lawsuit challenging its validity. As we move forward with our litigation, our supporters are engaged now more than ever, and that they are calling on their allies to get involved as well. Our allies are speaking out in all parts of the progressive movement and not just in California. We have connected with labor groups, religious organizations, civil rights groups, as well as reconnecting with old friends, classmates, and coworkers who support our mission of justice and equality. And this is due, in large part, to our presence online which allows people constant access to our latest work and ways to get involved. Essentially, these technologies have made it easier for people to connect and participate.

For example, we have recently utilized Facebook to create an online rally. Overturn Prop 8: Online Rally in Support of the Prop 8 Legal Challenge is a month-long event that has been wildly successful. This highly visible form of solidarity calls upon our supporters to change their profile picture to an image with the message “Equality Should Not Be Put up for a Popular Vote.” In two weeks, we’ve had over 7,000 people sign on to “attend” and are inviting friends to join them. Because of this activity, we’ve also seen more people become fans of NCLR’s page on Facebook which connects them to our other areas of work, not just our marriage work. We’ve also seen incredible participation over the past weeks on Twitter. Our followers are growing steadily, and we continue to see spikes of activity every time we issue a news update or call to action. Because of these channels of communication, our updates and news are spread far and wide, and at an incredible rate. We plan on harnessing this momentum on March 5, the day of oral argument by hosting a live blog and a live Twitter session to keep our supporters updated constantly throughout the hearing, and to offer our take as the arguments unfold. We will rely on these technologies to keep our constituents engaged as we wait for the California Supreme Court’s ruling—and we will be poised to organize and act.

Although NCLR is fairly new to these technologies, we have seen an incredibly positive response. As we move ahead in our work, we’re hoping to utilize more technology to promote our events and to gain more members. Social networking tools like Flickr and YouTube will give us the added visibility that we will, undoubtedly need in the coming years.

We use the web to distribute the cost of hiring a journalist to look into stories that might otherwise go untold. Then we try and sell the first publishing rights to this content to reimburse the original donors. If we can’t sell the content we give it away under a Creative Commons share alike no derivatives with attribution license.

We strongly believe that journalism is a process not a product and that this process should be participatory. While the web has strengthened the process of journalism – it has weakened the ability of traditional news organizations to cover local communities and do long-form civic journalism.

As a small nonprofit startup, funded through the Knight Foundation, we use social media to get our message out and partner with the public to fund and create great journalism.