Ideablob Helps Anti-DOMA Advocates Find One Another

by Nathaniel Whittemore · 2009-08-22 13:35:00 UTC
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In the last year, the monthly $10,000 prize offered by social enterprise contest site Ideablob has become an essential piece of the funding landscape for very early stage social startups. In this cycle, a group of students running a new marriage equality campaign are demonstrating the power of the site (and the Internet as a whole) to help groups of like minded activists more easily find one another.

The campaign is called the National Marriage Boycott. Change.org Gay Rights blogger Mike Jones has the full story and background over in a great piece titled "Students vs. the Defense of Marriage Act." The basic idea is to get people to pledge to boycott the institution of marriage until everyone has equal rights under federal law. The campaign started at Stanford, but is rapidly expanding around the country.

I think there's a lot exciting with this story. First, I think it's vitally important that platforms like Ideablob are making it easier for groups of people with important ideas to get the basic resources they need to build something real. Second, it's constantly exciting to me to see how the internet is making it easier for activists who were once geographically dispersed to find one another and organize around the issues that most matter to them. In fact, the National Marriage Boycott's website is powered by the Ning customized social network platform, a point that reinforces how much easier it is to organize passion now.

But there's a lesson here too. Ideablob is an incredible platform, but it's successful because of the passion and organizing power of the contributing projects. Even this month there are dozens of great groups to support (including the excellent looking CommuniTeach project I've recently become acquainted with). For these projects and platforms to succeed, however, they need the participation of people like all of us reading this blog to succeed.

Learn more about the National Marriage Boycott on Mike's great post, and vote for them on Ideablob!

Nathaniel Whittemore is the founder of Assetmap. Previously he was the founding director of the Northwestern University Center for Global Engagement.
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