TechSoup Announces Top 21 NetSquared Social Change Web Projects

San Francisco, CA – April 19, 2007 – More than 15,000 votes were cast in the first step of the unique NetSquared competition for the best projects using the social web for social change.

The winners, who will be brought to the NetSquared Conference on May 29 & 30 in San Jose, to compete for the $100,000 NetSquared Technology Innovation Award, are (in alphabetical order):

• 100 Innovators - the world's most important story has started to unfold
• A Global Neighbour Network: NABUUR.com
• A Light on Money and Politics: MAPLight.org
• Addressing Africa’s Problems Through Social Networking Sites
• An Anti-Genocide Community: Building the Political Will to End Genocide
• Aspiration Social Source Commons
• Big Brothers Big Sisters Agency Information Management (AIM) System
• FamilyFarmed.org
• Farmer 2 Farmer Learning
• Freecycle.org
• Global Women's Leadership Network
• Grassroots.org Toolbox
• HELP International Telemedicine Humanitarian Emergency Mobile Medical Clinic Network
• Kabissa 2.0: Strengthening the Social Web in Africa
• Maps 2.0 – Geospatial Tools for Nonprofits and Humanitarian Relief
• Open Source, Open Standards Video
• Social Web Tools for Developing Countries: Yankana.org
• Stop Family Violence
• TakingITGlobal.org
• WiserEarth
• YouthAssets - Connecting the World's Most Vulnerable Youth

“We're kind of blown away, quite frankly,” said Daniel Ben-Horin, President and Founder of TechSoup, the nonprofit driving the NetSquared initiative. “We expected 50 project nominations - we received 152. We expected perhaps 500 people to wade through the long ballot and vote - we had more than 3000 ballots by the close of voting on Monday. There’s a lot of interest out there in truly seizing on the potential of the social web to drive a very different, community-based form of social change.”

According to influential philanthropy observer Phil Cubeta, NetSquared “… is using a little money, and the power of convening to foster any number of grassroots tech projects whose ambitions are not just making a buck, but also, or even more importantly, building social capital, reinventing citizenship, fostering conversation and collaboration, and revitalizing not just giving and philanthropy, but democracy. You can vote for the project of your choice, but when all get attention, none lose.”

It was a tough competition for the winners to secure the coveted invites to the NetSquared Conference. In true American Idol fashion, many of the 150 nominated projects did everything they could to lobby their supporters. The success of these efforts resulted in a tie between two projects, which was resolved by admitting an additional project to the conference.

The Top 21 projects listed above, which were chosen from a field of 152 entries, will be grilled by experts at the NetSquared Conference held at Cisco headquarters. During the event, 350 conference participants – including venture capitalists, philanthropy experts, web developers and social activists – will scrutinize the projects for financial sustainability, web-based technological innovation, and social impact. The three top projects, as decided by a vote of conference participants, will divide most of a $100,000 Technology Innovation Fund raised by TechSoup for the Conference. Remaining funds will be split among the rest of the participating projects. In addition to cash grants, finalists will also receive s in-kind support from developers and consulting services firms like San Francisco-based Citizen Agency.

About NetSquared

NetSquared’s mission is to spur responsible adoption of social web tools by social benefit organizations. Nonprofits and NGOs thrive on relationships, which means the social web holds tremendous potential to transform their effectiveness and impact.

At this year’s NetSquared Conference, 21 social benefit technology projects, which were chosen from a pool of 152 (http://www.netsquared.org/projects), will compete for the $100,000 TechSoup Innovation Award in a “wisdom of crowds” scenario. The first NetSquared event quickly sold out last year; attendance at this year's Conference is by invitation. Those interested in participating in NetSquared should contact netsquared@techsoup.org.

The NetSquared initiative is spearheaded by the nonprofit technology Web resource TechSoup which offers a wealth of information on products, applications, best practices, online forums, and ideas on nonprofit tech topics from networking to open source and Web 2.0. It also gives its 400,000 unique monthly visitors access to the TechSoup Stock service, which offers hundreds of hardware and software products donated by leading providers such as Microsoft, Cisco, Symantec, Intuit, and Adobe. Since its inception in January 2002, the service has distributed more than 2.7 million products to nonprofits in North America, Europe, and Africa, and freed up over $600 million for other uses.