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Tools for Organizing

One of the things the Planning Committee has tried to emphasize throughout the weekend is the importance of bringing the things you learn here back to your campus and community. To make that a little more concrete for you, we'd like to recommend a few tools that we have used in organizing this conference, and a few that we recommend as our favorites...

Changing the Present

If you're looking to raise money for a nonprofit organization, Changing the Present is a great option. Any organization, large or small, can create a profile and a fundraising drive, and you can track who's giving through their social network. They also have a Facebook application, so add that to your profile and start raising money for your favorite organization!

PledgeBank

Do you want to get something done, but can't do it alone? Are you looking for a way to gather a bunch of people together to do a collective action that needs a group? Take a look at PledgeBank – a conditional pledging tool that lets you create a pledge to do something, but only if others will join you. Before you start that community project or plan that campus event, make sure that there are others to help you out -- social change is great, but social change with others is even better!

Wikis

Are you tired of wrangling a group of people to plan service events, only to end up exchanging 57 different versions of documents and spreadsheets? We can help you solve that problem. If you've never used a wiki before, it will change your life...it provides one place for everyone on your planning committee to house information, thoughts, conversations, etc. The Planning Committee used WetPaint this year because it's easy and it's free, though there are certainly others. And if you're looking for a quick (and funny) explanation of how to use a wiki, check out Common Craft's instructional video.

Google

Whether you want Google to take over the world or not, they have darn good tools for organizing. The Planning Committee has used Gmail, Google Documents, and Google Spreadsheets to keep track of our correspondence with all 900+ of you...the Google suite is really pretty amazing. And our conference bloggers are using Google's “Blogger” to keep everyone (present and not present) up-to-date on what's happening this weekend.

Pics and Vids

Sometimes there's really nothing like picture and video to capture your community work, and through tools like Flickr and YouTube it's completely free to not only upload your photos and videos, but you can even add them to your website! The next time you do a service project or lobby Congress, take some pictures, put them on your website, and share them with the world!