Technology for Social Change

The work we do at Groundwire Labs looks a little different than that of a typical technology lab. True, our programmers are at the top of the field, for example our own David Glick is a member of the team developing the newest version of the software many of us use to easily update and manage our websites (Plone). But what makes Groundwire Labs so unique is that our staff isn’t just developing technology because it's fun and they can, but instead work with our strategy team, with other developers in the community, and with the environmental groups on the front line to get the most useful technology tools out to the nonprofit community.

Current Projects at the Labs

Look what I just did. You can do it too.

The past few months, the team at Groundwire Labs has been working with environmental nonprofits to test the beta versions of a couple of our newest integrations—Megaphone and Simple Social. Megaphone is a letter-writing campaign tool that allows website visitors to click, sign and send letters directly to decision-makers targeted by environmental groups. With the Simple Social tool, users can take action on a website and then click to post a comment on their Facebook page letting people know what action they just took and ask their friends to do the same. Users can tell friends about a letter they just sent to a legislator, a recent hike, or an upcoming lobby day or conference:

Your Auction Committee is going to love you.

Not only is Groundwire Labs home to some seriously talented staff, we are pretty certain we have the best volunteers in town working on our projects. Social Venture Partners and Groundwire volunteer David Habib was a technical development lead on the first two versions of the Microsoft Access database and over the past few months has developed an auction tool for the Salesforce.com database system. Essential to supporting the work many of you do is an auction tool that integrates with your Salesforce database to manage donations, tables, donors, volunteers, and budgets. The auction tool is currently in the beta version with a few of our groups.

Google Analytics made easy

We are also honored to be hosting our fourth volunteer from the Mennonite Volunteer Service, and this year’s volunteer, Matt Yoder, is killing it. He's developed an amazing tool that allows staff to see web traffic and statistics page by page as they edit their website. Information germane to each page is pulled into Plone through Google Analytics and displayed in a sidebar so the number of visitors to each page, how they got there, how long they stayed, and where they went next can be analyzed as you are editing your content. This tool will be available in a few months to Plone users.

 
 
The staff at Groundwire Labs has the best job in the world—we get to put our incredible developer chops to work for nonprofits who are facing an increasingly tough landscape and need solid technology solutions backing them up. And when we see our tools helping groups move people up the ladder of engagement, it inspires us to work that much harder.