Top Trend 2010 #5: Online Action Beyond Donations

In 2010, I predict that there will be a significant uptick in the importance of online platforms that allow for socially-minded action beyond just more effective fundraising.

2009 saw online action platforms become an even more regular and important part of the philanthropic game. The Case Foundation held its second "America's Giving Challenge," and the Chase Foundation just concluded it's $5 million Chase Community Giving, run entirely through Facebook. The centrality of Twitter and Facebook as platforms for nonprofit brands to engage with their stakeholders has steadily increased. We even had a major controversy with Kiva, a leading light on online engagement.

Yet in the coming year, the promise of online action platforms goes way beyond even really creative donation apparatuses.

Crowdsourced micro-volunteerism: 2009 saw the launch of The Extraordinaries platform that gives causes the ability to ask volunteers to help with microtasks like finding public spaces for children to play or tagging images for important archives. This sort of activity promises to expand as groups get more used to thinking about how they can leverage the masses.

Micro-work: A big innovation from the last year was the launch of Samasource's platform for micro-work that gives refugees and impoverished populations in Kenya and India the ability to be a part of the digital economy by taking on small tasks like tagging photos. Their "Give Work" iPhone application created an opportunity for iPhone users to help the process by supporting the work financially and ensuring quality. Look for more of this.

Highly targeted brand-threatening campaigns: One of the things we've seen at Change.org is that if a company is doing something bad, and you have a specific enough target and a few hundred or few thousand people, you can often make enough of a stink to get policy switched fast. Look out for more of this next year.

Personal impact monitoring: There is a whole new world of iPhone applications, internet enabled monitors, and more to keep better track of your impact on social and environmental change. For example, I wrote about Earthaid last week. Expect to see this become more and more normal.

Shareholder advocacy: This is pretty specific, but with new rules about how companies need to allow shareholders to vote on company issues via online proxy, the floodgates are open to a new world of shareholder advocacy. Check out Moxy Vote as an example.

Distributed for-profit investment: There are a lot of folks out there (like Sprowtt) trying to figure out how they can enable average citizens to invest in for-profit startups. If that starts to become a realistic option, it could change the way companies are born.

And finally, I do think there is still a lot more creativity out there even when it does come to online fundraising, donations, and investments. For example, Vittana (and a number of still to be launched social startups) are pushing new ways to support education.

All in all, I think 2010 is going to be the year that online action platforms really come into their own.

(Photo: blakespot)