I like this color scheme better (myself)

http://www.ned.com/Ned_test_url2 .html

Other thoughts?

Josh Friedman said:

Our goals for the site:

1. Provide the best index for 30 causes.

If you had it in a data base that counted the number of click throughs, you could order the causes based on the popularity on your own site.

2. Fund specific grassroots efforts, each less than $1,500, using a ChipIn widget and work towards one per month (we hope to do more).
3. Get sponsorship for each of the 30 categories (we are tweaking the financial model); companies can have an immediate corporate "do good" program and get recognition on their site; the logos on the site are just placeholders for real sponsors.
4. Drive traffic to the sites listed, promoting great causes. Traffic will come from search engine optimization, the sites we are linking to, the sponsoring companies (through ned.com bug on their site) and perhaps even buying traffic.

Specifically, we would love hear from you:

• sites that are not on the list that should be, or sites on the list that shouldn't be

I will work on making you a list. Just not this minute.

• an additional two more causes/categories - we don't have environment (though, we do have clean water) - and five sites for each cause.

Same as above.

• comments/suggestions on the interface. We are trying to keep this simple and effective...not too cluttered.

The interface right now defines "cluttered" in my mind. It hurts my eyes and my brain (oh me of little brain..) How about bigger groups...maybe based on MDG? then a page for the lists under each goal?

• anyone who is better at HTML than I (probably most everyone) to provide a bit of coding assistance to clean it up (it isn't working well in IE, but fine in Firefox).

You can send me specifics to look at. I really don't have the time right now to code a site (I can't imagine why!) but could trouble shoot.

This site is part of a larger plan in building socially-aware businesses, and helping people take action. in addition to this, Mark, Lev and I are working on Chomper and a Facebook application (to be discussed soon). All of these concepts could flop, but hey...the life of the entrepreneur, huh?! The ned.com concept could conceptually help a lot of good organizations/people.

Look forward to any/all comments!

The green is definitely better, Mark.

The text right now is too small for my old eyes.

I must admit the overall design UI is very web 1.0. Then again, the whole concept of social entrepreneur is very 1.0 for most people too...so what the hey.

JF: Thanks for your comments. All are excellent.

If you had it in a data base that counted the number of click throughs, you could order the causes based on the popularity on your own site.

JF: Great idea. This would likely be something that we do after proving that a) the site is worthy and b) generating traffic such to dedicate resources to build a DB-driven site.

I will work on making you a list. Just not this minute.

JF: Thanks!

Same as above.

JF: Thanks!

The interface right now defines "cluttered" in my mind. It hurts my eyes and my brain (oh me of little brain..) How about bigger groups...maybe based on MDG? then a page for the lists under each goal?

JF: After reading your comments and thinking some, I agree. There may not be much we can do for the alpha/beta stage, though. If you/anyone has any great/simple ideas, please bring forth. The issue is that I have been doing the HTML and neither Mark, nor I, have technical talents. Perhaps another thing to be done after initial rollout and proving the concept works. The tie-in to MDG is a really cool concept...I dropped Mark a note on that: perhaps we put a little UN/MDG logo on those that correspond, or something to the effect.

You can send me specifics to look at. I really don't have the time right now to code a site (I can't imagine why!) but could trouble shoot.

JF: Thanks. After reading your current projects, I won't bother you now with HTML. Your list makes me, the tireless entrepreneur, tired. ;-) I may bounce a few things off you, though, if we can't find other help.

Well, I'll tell you "what the hey"! ;D

You need to make NED sticky. You are not the yellow pages. Links are yesterday. Wake up and smell the coffee -- don't board a sinking ship.

There are about 17.5K 3-char combinations. About 50K alphanumeric (with restricted use of hyphens). But maybe only a couple hundred keywords / brandable names. Investigate this space: e.g. how many 3-char domains are among Alexa's top 500? in the USA? in Europe? in other areas? This is (IMHO) the cognitive space you're in.

Some examples: http://www.mtv.com/ , http://www.cnn.com/ , http://www.ask.com/ , http://www.gmx.net/ .

Some example from the next decade will include names like http://md.gs/ , http://cv.cx/ , http://nor.biz/ , etc. (I've got about 230 of these 3-char [1] or less thingies)

;D nmw

Sticky.

Who knows what will be in the category header links to make things sticky? Perhaps rather than links to wikipedia it will be links to moderated threaded discussion. Or links to open wikispace. Who know what level of new ideas for collaboration, personal and org involvement there could be? Clearly the new index page will be better than what is there now. Constant and never ending improvement.

Hmm -- maybe you can look at the stuff in a more "toolset" fashion. And focus the homepage more on the community that is present at any moment in time -- pick up on the "5 min" idea, but turn it into "I need" and "I can offer" 5-minute things, and maybe also that people can collaborate by engaging the toolset, and perhaps thereby also make a contribution to "cause" in order to use these tools.

Just thinking out loud here....

:) nmw

It could be each category drills down into a threaded discussion on that topic that includes need/offer toolset type and other information as well. Toolsets and discussions porting over into engagement and action.

Hi Mark, Josh and all -

Nice start - I really like the index idea.

Via a friend's site, I just came across a VERY interesting web developer Felix Turner. And also his design feed blog

Some very cool web apps worth looking at.

Also, maybe Felix would consider some pro-bono work for a good cause? Never hurts to ask, right...?

Also, I'd love to add my site www.givingarts.com to the index. Not sure where it fits...it overlaps a few categories (btw, can items be listed in more than 1?) - Education and Gifts are two possibilities..

Wondering whether a "Youth Philanthropy" category might be something worth considering? I can think of "YouthGive" plus there are others.

Alternatively - or even in addition, perhaps a category such as "tools" or "fundraising resources" or something like that might be helpful as well.

I like Felix's design style, clean and elegant overall. And sure, we can ask if he would help, the page really just needs to be hit with a pretty stick.

Yeah, the idea (for now) is each org only be ever listed once and under just one category. So many things overlap this will then hopefully put org under the category that is their core competency. If you come up with three more great web sites for "Youth Philanthropy" we'll put add that category and include Giving Arts and YouthGive.

This index will be on the main page as a placeholder...just much better than the one that is there now. It will be moved to a page inside the site once the community software is running, be it Drupal, o/net open source, or whatnot...no ETA on that.

Also...

If anyone has a well designed 88x31 non-animated gif/jpeg under 3k logo they can sponsor any section they desire until there is a paid sponsor for that space.

Such aggregators strike me as if they were a "vertical communities" (hmm -- what does that make the other communities? ;)... [1]

Some day this will all be mainstream -- and that'll be the day for http://waitressing.net/ (and such)...

(nonetheless: channel remains channel -- short and sweet! :)

;D nmw

verticalnet.com was a client back in the day.

I think creating vertical communities around categories, then allowing simple cross pollination between categories could be very interesting. Of course adding in elements of project funding (via Giving Project), grassroots involvement and collaboration. Let's hope for the day this will all be mainstream to be very, very soon.

haha -- and your 88x31 bit just gave me an idea (.NET) -- I am quite amazed that such stuff is still available. When it resolves I'll send you a shippy tic...

;D nmw

Why just one category per org? In TEN's case it makes us not involved in slavery or trafficking or youth causes?

Ive been sitting on this comment because I wanted to make sure I agreed with myself, but I am not a big fan of the advertizing per category idea. I think it looks a bit tacky, it does not look like something you can trust. Also - what if you start puting up ads for companies that we dont want to be associated with?

All great questions John.

>>Why just one category per org? In TEN's case it makes us not involved in slavery or trafficking or youth causes?<<

With only 30 categories and 150 organizations we’re creating our own limited resources. Quite the opposite of WiserEarth which hopes to list over a million NPO and NGO's worldwide. Ashoka could fit into multiple categories as well, I suppose most orgs would. There may be a time (soon, who knows) where the information design allows otherwise, but for now highlighting 150 orgs, and bringing in a handful of new ones monthly as others are moved to an archive page is interesting.

>>Ive been sitting on this comment because I wanted to make sure I agreed with myself, but I am not a big fan of the advertizing per category idea. I think it looks a bit tacky, it does not look like something you can trust.<<

I just searched trafficking on Google Ashoka is on the top paid sponsor spot and there are six sponsors down the side. Seven sponsors on a page with 10 "organic" results. A search for trafficking on Yahoo finds four paid advertisers in the right hand column, and the the top one is madebysurvivors.com

>>Also - what if you start puting up ads for companies that we dont want to be associated with?<<

This is the challenge with any aggregation effort I guess. Yahoo indexing or search results is one thing, and the sponsors/advertisers are totally independent. And ultimately both organizations either thru organic or paid search want visitors to their web sites. The advertisers and natural search results (and searching public members) are three groups that never talk to one another at Google or Yahoo. Here it is conceivable there could be dialogue, so this type of ad under trafficking on Yahoo (which would never be on a Ned page) could be discussed.

Who knows, there may even be category specific moderators that would approve sponsorships.

Open to many different ideas and approaches.

edit: spelling

Re: advertising...

I really like the way moo.com does it with their "Folks we dig. Stuff we like" section on the About Us page.

Agree 100%, I thought they did a neat job too.

A very nice blend of "we" the org and use of corp logos

I would shift closer to the moo model, integrating some of John's comments -- right now it looks very close to those pages that come up when a domain goes dormant, full of useless links. The green text is a good design choice overall, use a darker shade of the same green for easier reading of links vs text. The text at the top I would like to see in less bulky narrative form -- perhaps pull out the keywords only and use them as a sidebar with additional resource links?

Thinking of how to integrate this content graphically, using less words....beyond the Moo model....

Good points, Evonne!

And maybe these would also vary depending on "sub-community". I cannot see anyone searching for "overlooked people" per se, but maybe some related concept. It might even be useful to do some "focus group" testing to see what works.

That brings up another idea: if you've got 30 or more "compartments" then what will happen to the networking? Do you want people to mingle or do you want highly focused subgroups? I think with 30 subgroups the chances of site-wide community involvement are probably close to nil. With maybe 3 or 4 or perhaps half a dozen, then people would probably be much more prone to "surf around".

ps: oh, yea -- forgot the 1 "vitamin per day" approach (never mind ;)

>>Do you want people to mingle or do you want highly focused subgroups?<<

I want both...I think. People and grassroots orgs that can dig deep into their specific area of focus... and the ability for people and orgs to cross pollinate and learn from one another across various other areas of focus.

A little late to the discussion, but my thoughts on a few of the comments (which are all great...thanks for the discussion):

• Current design/text/layout: We haven't been really happy with what is currently there, but the two folks are working on it (Mark and I) aren't that good in html, layout, design, etc. Felix's work is great and getting someone like that to help out would be spectacular. The current site is a bit boring, but the concept , we think, is pretty good and wanted to get going with something, rather than waiting for perfection. Applying design/layout expertise would do nothing but help, for sure.
• Categories: Assuming the idea works, the site will stay up to date with links/orgs, as that is the reason for existence in the first place. We ABSOLUTELY want community feedback for sites, links, categories, etc. This is part of the original idea. If we find better sites/causes through the community than what is there, we'll update the links.
• Community: One of the original thoughts (Mark might have mentioned this previously) was that the category heads would link to discussion forums on each topic. Perhaps each link would have discussion forums surrounding it, as well. This is important from the get go, though it will take some time to get up. We are hoping to have a Zooleo app up soon that will enable discussion for the current cause on the page (starting cause is the tree planting in Ghana). Ideally each link and category would have this. We felt it better to start driving traffic and value to these great organizations and not wait for a community forum (but work towards one as quickly as possible).
• Intro paragraph/site copy: Given the current state of search engine optimization (SEO), we need to be sure there is enough text to help drive search traffic to the page. Keep in mind this text is important to explain to readers/searchers why they should pay any attention to us, and help find the site in the first place. Once we have a better layout, hopefully the text won't seem so bulky. This, along with a meaningful blog and discussion will hopefully yield credibility and help further the cause. I agree it needs to be tweaked more, though.

Also, remember that the goal of this project is to become THE resource for links to quality organizations helping the world/community in specific cause areas. Companies that advertise on the site are helping further that cause.