New online social network for charity sector
Howard Lake | 11 October 2007 | News
Dublin-based Ammado is trialling a new online social network specifically for charity staff and supporters in the UK and internationally. Over 250 nonprofits around the world, including the Resource Alliance, are using it in advance of its launch in December.
The Resource Alliance, which stages the annual International Fundraising Congress this month, is inviting all 900 delegates to become members of Ammado and use it to network with each other.
Once they have created their own profile on the site, currently in beta testing, delegates will be able to see who else is attending, send messages to fundraisers from similar causes, organise themselves into national groups or create online debates.
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The Resource Alliance will itself use its Ammado webpages to set up separate online groups for speakers, delegates and volunteers, and will use the delegate community to notify people of last minute changes to the schedule.
Resource’s Alliance’s events director Alan Bird says: “The IFC brings together fundraisers from up to 50 different countries but until now the first you’d know about who else was going would be when you scanned the delegate list when you arrived. It gave you no chance to see in advance who might be working in the same area as you, for instance, and to try to make contact with them.
With Ammado, we can start the networking that IFC is famous for before the conference starts and continue it once it has finished.”
Ammado was set up in 2005 in Dublin by Ireland-based entrepreneurs Dr Anna Kupka and Peter Conlon.
Dr Kupka says: “Ammado has launched a new era of social interaction. Enabling not-for-profits to form their own online network, and creating a global community of people who care, ammado aspires to dramatically increase the resources in the not for profit sector. Ammado combines social networking, philanthropy and entertainment with the power of the internet to accelerate fundraising, awareness and communication.”
Ammado follows the launch of Forum3 Network, an integrated online recruitment and social networking resource from Charity People in the UK. That differs from Ammado in that it is directed primarily at charity sector staff rather than their supporters and donors.
Ammado’s upcoming launch comes as many fundraisers and donors embrace online social networks like Facebook, Bebo and MySpace, and more add-on ‘apps’ for fundraising appear on Facebook.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.