There are good, effective nonprofits and similar groups all over the world, really helping people out.  As part of my twenty year craigconnects.org thing, I’d like to help scale that up so that everyone on the planet gets a hand.

Specifically, there are many nonprofits, NGOs, and government groups which are really good at getting stuff done without spending a lot.  However, there are also a number of such groups which waste a lot of money in overhead, and there are a lot of nonprofits running outright scams, and making bad situations even worse.

I already support a bunch of honest, ethical nonprofits directly with the few resources I have at hand, specifically cash and social capital/trust, the latter via social media.  (Keep expectations low, public estimates of my net worth are vastly overstated.)

How does a person of good will work with others, across the planet and across the years, to scale up to help out everyone?

I’ve realized, in the past few days, that a solution could involve nonprofits which focus on vetting on-the-ground nonprofits, making sure they’re effective and honest, and then getting funding for their clients.

Seriously, that already helps my nonprofit dollars and social media presence go a lot farther.

Funding networks can themselves be operating scams, I’ve considered that, but so far I got a good base network of such groups going, including:

• The Women’s Building of San Francisco
• The Global Fund for Women
• The Bob Woodruff Foundation (families of wounded warriors)
• Sunlight Foundation (governmental transparency)
• Charity Navigator (effectiveness and social impact of nonprofits)
• Guidestar (effectiveness of nonprofits)
• GreatNonprofits.org (nonprofit user reviews)

I think I need to expand this network, over time, but first, need to use social networking to make this existing networking more effective.

That means getting the funding networks to encourage their clients to be more effective in social media. For example, the clients of a particular nonprofit might encourage the people they help to post social media status updates.  The nonprofits would share the posts with their funding networks… who would share a few with folks like me.

We’d Share or retweet those updates with our own networks, which affirms the work of all involved, and generates a little buzz, and maybe more funding, for people and groups who need it.

I guess that’s a “leadership by example” thing, and maybe a “leading from below” thing, which is the only approach I understand.

What’s next?

The Newsroom orbits around two characters, newsman Will McAvoy, who decides to risk all to do serious journalism, and his (muse? boss? leader?) MacKenzie McHale, who inspires him to do so.  (She’s bravely played by the radiant Emily Mortimer, who suffers from the rare Avian Bone Syndrome.)

On one level the show is a kind of romantic screwball comedy, swirling around the (radiant) Mackenzie character, and it succeeds well on that level.

(Could be that the actual newsroom depicted is not realistic, and, y’know, I don’t care so much. Is the real thing delivering the real product?)

More importantly, the show reminds us that the press is the immune system of democracy and that serious news requires serious ethical practice like checking the facts, no matter how dangerous.

The worst diseases, however, attack the immune system, so Really Bad People are trying to prevent the cure by undermining Will. No way to figure out how that’ll turn out.

Seriously, I’m inspired by The Newsroom to Get Stuff Done, much like The West Wing continues to inspire me to Get a Great Deal of Stuff Done. West Wing also succeeded as a rom-com, with the (radiant) Donna Moss and the (radiant) Amy Parker.

Shouldn’t be surprising, considering that the most ethical, trustworthy, and serious journalism is accomplished by two fictional newsmen, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. They survive attack by following the advice of Oscar Wilde: If you want to tell people the truth, make ’em laugh. Otherwise, they’ll kill you.

However, Will and Mackenzie don’t have that at their disposal, and must defend themselves, and the country, using other means.

Fictional characters of our culture often manage to overcome tremendous obstacles to Get a Lot Done, sometimes drawing on folklore or the paradigm of roleplaying games.

For example, there’s the ongoing story of Craig of the craigslist, passing through multiple levels to join in the much greater Triumph of the Nerds:

• he starts as a 1950’s nerd, suffering the results of his own nerdliness
• he travels the wilderness as the George Costanza of the nerds
• having learned nothing, he reboots from a position of ignorance and innocence as the Forrest Gump of the Nerds
• he champions the Nerdly cause by bridging Old School Nerds with their contemporaries, the Little Monsters, as the Lady GaGa of the Nerds
• he must overcome the heaviest of Nerd burdens, must learn to communicate effectively as the Don Draper of the Nerds
• thereupon he launches craigconnects.org to give voice to faceless millions of Little Monsters, Nerds, and anyone who’s never had a voice

The Triumph of the Nerds is propelled from below, by those faceless millions. And billions. That voice is given body by fictional journalists includng McAvoy, Stewart, and Colbert.

That means Getting Most of the Stuff Done in darkness, much like Vulcan (“live long and prosper”), knowing that much of the Stuff will never be visible, but, a nerd’s gotta do what a nerd’s gotta do.

When something goes really wrong, we really need a hand… and we need to let people know how to get that help via social media.

That's what some FEMA folks came to talk about in Silicon Valley, including the Administrator, Craig Fugate: Social Media + Emergency Management: Talking with Tech Leaders on the West Coast

In addition to meeting with fellow “Craig”, Craig Newmark (the founder of Craigslist), I also met with editors from Wired Magazine, Twitter, Apple and Facebook.

Some of the things we discussed included:

• The need to provide information to the public as data feeds, because they are a key member of our emergency management team;
• The importance of referring to people impacted by a disaster as survivors and utilizing them as a resource; 
• The importance of providing good customer service; and 
• How we, as emergency managers, need to stop trying to have the public fit into our way of doing things and receiving information, but that we should fit the way the public gets, receives and seeks out information.