GlobalGiving.org: Help Sustain The Kabissa Network (2011)

Happy New Year!

Tobias Eigen — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 12:05:10 GMT

I am excited about what the new year will bring for Kabissa and for all the dedicated and idealistic people in our network connecting people and organizations for Africa.

Kabissa 2011 Core Costs - Covered!

Thank you everyone who has contributed to help cover Kabissa's core costs in 2011. We need $20,000 annually to maintain Kabissa the organization and online platform, and as of today have confirmed receipt of nearly $15,000. $5,370 of this came via Global Giving - you guys are superstars and we really appreciate the support.

We anticipate receiving the rest by June in matching grants from the World Bank Community Connections Fund and the Aid for Africa Foundation, so are going to close this project on Global Giving.

Kabissa Projects - Funding Needed

We will now turn our attention to raising funds for specific projects to develop the Kabissa online platform, which we hope to fund on a project basis and carry out in collaboration with partners. Our top three priority projects and their estimated cost are listed below, which we will be requesting input on from the Kabissa community and posting to Global Giving in the coming weeks.

Overhaul organization directory powered by CiviCRM - ~$10,000
Overhaul Kabissa site user interface and groups by migrating to Eduglu social learning platform - ~$10,000
create new chat functionality for Kabissa groups including private chat and transcripts - ~$5,000

If you are interested in helping out on one of these projects or have suggestions, please don't hesitate to contact us!

Kabissa Gong Gong

Our monthly member newsletter goes out on the second Tuesday of every month, and includes all the latest content from Kabissa Groups and updates to the Kabissa organization directory. The next edition will be delivered by email next Tuesday, 11 January. If you are not yet receiving Gong Gong in your inbox, please click here to subscribe - subscription is free and the best way to keep in contact with developments in the Kabissa network.

Netsquared Interview with Tobias Eigen: Inspiration, Trust, Collaboration

Tobias Eigen — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 15:16:19 GMT

Kabissa - Netsquared FACT Challenge Winner 2010

As you consider which nonprofits to support this year, please take a moment to learn about Kabissa's plans and our funding needs, which I discuss in some detail in an interview published today by Netsquared and excerpted below.

Please donate to Kabissa today. Once you have donated, use Global Giving's Social Networking tools to spread the word about Kabissa to your friends and family. Thank you for your support!

Interview With A FACT Challenge Winner: Tobias Eigen from Kabissa Connections

We recently announced the 5 Winners for the FACT Social Justice Challenge and we are thrilled at the caliber and impact of all the Projects. As such, we want to give you a closer look at these collaborative technology Projects and the people behind them. Each Monday in the month of November, we posted an interview from one of the Winning Projects using the fact interviews tag. This is the last interview in the series - thanks for following along!

This week, we're featuring Tobias Eigen from Kabissa Connections. Kabissa is an online network that helps African civil society organizations use ICT to benefit communities all over Africa. The Kabissa Connections Project is an extension of the existing Kabissa platform that will address trust concerns by revealing connections that organizations have with networks, international organizations, supporters and service providers.

Learn more about Kabissa Connections in the interview below!

Q. What was the inspiration for your Project?

The inspiration for Kabissa Connections comes out of my work with African civil society organizations for over 15 years, the last ten with Kabissa, always with the aim to help organizations put information and communication technologies (ICT) to work for the benefit of their communities. In the early days, I helped build and run “store and forward” email networks in Africa using Fidonet technology. Then in 1999, inspired by a consultancy helping 10 human rights groups in 5 cities throughout Nigeria, I created Kabissa. Kabissa started out as a domain/website hosting provider, then it grew into a technology partner providing Internet training and support. Now it is a network connecting people and organizations for Africa primarily via an online community website.

Over this entire time, economic, social and political change has been coming to Africa excruciatingly slowly. One reason for this, I believe, is that the existing development aid system does not do enough to elevate and empower the people who are in the best position to create change - the changemakers working on the local level to serve their own communities. Even now, after over 30 years of independence in most countries, these local heroes still do not operate on equal footing, at the same eye level, with their international partners. They are under-resourced, often work in deplorable conditions, can’t easily demonstrate their effectiveness, and are accountable not to their beneficiaries and local partners but to the international donor agencies, NGOs and foundations who fund their work.

Another reason is that changemakers, especially those working in rural areas, struggle to use ICT effectively. Regular access to the Internet is hard to come by which leads to people not being able to learn useful tech skills or come up with creative ideas for using tech to help them create change. As a result they waste time online and even unwittingly put themselves and the people around them in danger.

You would think that the rise of blogging and social networking platforms like Facebook present an opportunity for changemakers to use ICT better and to build up their credibility online, but while it is true that they are able to do more online now, the same old problems - and the risks - have also been amplified. Only some, usually those already connected with international charity brands, are effectively leveraging blogging and social networking in support of their mission. Meanwhile local changemakers are trying their best but spread themselves thin on many social networking sites and often fall prey to phishing scams. They also face unknown security risks as they turn to Facebook for “one stop shopping” for both work and play.

Kabissa Connections is an idea to help African changemakers take charge of their presence on the Internet, build a Web of Trust around the projects and organizations they are involved in, and ultimately become more effective and accountable so they can create lasting change in their communities.

Q. What else are you working on right now?

Kabissa the Organization

As explained in our Nov 9th Progress Update, we are working on building trust in Kabissa itself, officially organized as a United States 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. We are completing the transition from technology partner to network by making our own organizational structure and procedures more transparent and accessible.

We will also invite stakeholders to get involved in running Kabissa on various levels, such as:

Joining the Kabissa Board of Directors
Volunteering in ongoing roles such as running Kabissa Groups
Making strategic use of Kabissa to support their networks and local communities
Proposing and partnering with Kabissa on projects of mutual benefit
Funding projects to improve Kabissa to suit their needs.

Kabissa the Network

We are busy setting up a volunteer team and infrastructure so that we can continuously help the people and organizations in our network to make the most of Kabissa to showcase themselves and connect with each other to collaborate, share opportunities and help each other to learn how to use ICT more effectively.

Priority areas include:

Membership Management
Helping members add organization profiles and make the most of their profile, and maintain the database
Kabissa Ambassadors
Recruiting and coordinating a core team of members tasked with spreading Kabissa in their communities and cross pollinating learnings and opportunities
Kabissa Groups
Nurturing and facilitating participation in group blogs, discussion lists, and wikis
Monthly Member Newsletter and Special Mailings
Ensuring that member news, opportunities and ICT tips/knowledge reach members on a timely basis

Kabissa the Platform

As explained in our Sept 22nd Progress Update, we are working on several projects to improve Kabissa as a networking platform and to enable our members working in Africa to leverage it for their own purposes as much as possible. Besides Kabissa Connections, a top priority for us is to upgrade Kabissa Groups to improve their usability and to enable members to participate via email. We are also working to improve the site functionality overall by adding new features such as translation tools so that the site can be accessible to people who speak languages other than English.

Q. What help do you need to to get your Project off the ground?

Funders

In the past we have received generous funding from a range of sources including the Africa offices of the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Institute Information Program, Open Society Initiative for West Africa, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the Lonely Planet Foundation (now Planet Wheeler Foundation).

As of 2007, Kabissa has no employees or institutional funding, and we have been taking a pole pole (slowly slowly) approach to developing Kabissa even though we have many projects that we are working on. This is intentional and part of our transition strategy.

It would speed up many activities and produce a better result if we could secure regular funding for the next three years to recruit a full-time coordinator (~$60,000 annually including a travel budget) and a web development firm to manage the roadmap and produce an integrated site user interface and design (~30,000 annually). Additional activities, including Kabissa Connections, would be proposed, prioritized and funded on a project basis in collaboration with members and partners.

This fall we have set ourselves a modest goal of raising $20,000 in donations from individual donors to cover the core costs of maintaining the organization which include server hosting, book keeping, the annual audit and tax return, and security/maintenance upgrades. So far we have raised about $10,000 towards our goal, and the sooner we can raise the rest the sooner we can focus our attention on other tasks. If we are able to raise more, we will put it towards our projects.

Web Developers

We see Kabissa Connections (and Kabissa as a whole) as fitting into the broader project to keep the web open. We want to avoid reinventing the wheel or creating yet another silo where information goes in and can't come out or be used properly to help make the world a better place.

Stakeholders

We would love to hear from Kabissa stakeholders - African organizations, activists, charities, SMEs, entrepreneurs, networks, foundations, international agencies, students, etc - who are interested in joining together to work on developing the Kabissa platform and ensuring it is as useful and relevant as possible.

Links:

Kabissa Connections Winning Project in the Netsquared FACT Socia

Kabissa Gong Gong Monthly Member Newsletter, Governance Decisions, and Trust Building in Africa

Tobias Eigen — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 13:08:24 GMT

Thank you so much for your support and encouragement, especially during the past few months.

Kabissa has been steadily moving towards our new network structure led by stakeholders, run by volunteers, and supported by a dedicated online platform built in collaboration with partners.

Kabissa may be run by volunteers, but we need money to cover our core operating expenses and to fund much needed projects (see below) to upgrade and improve our online platform. Please keep Kabissa in mind when making your holiday giving choices this year.

In solidarity,

Tobias Eigen, Founder

Kabissa Gong Gong

In October, we relaunched our popular monthly member newsletter, Kabissa Gong Gong, to make sure we can remain connected with Kabissa members who do not have reliable access to the Internet or can't get to the kabissa.org site on a regular basis.

The newsletter goes out on the second Tuesday of every month and contains a summary of all content posted to kabissa.org, so remember to post your content by then to be included.

Gong Gong complements Progress Updates (periodic reports about Kabissa progress) and Special Mailings (targeted mailings with opportunities for specific subsets of the Kabissa network).

You can subscribe to receive Gong Gong, Progress Updates, and Special Mailings in your email inbox at:http://kabissa.org/subscribe

Governance Decisions

In the past, Kabissa operated as a consulting/service organization and the board of directors relied on Kabissa employees to do the day to day work to run the organization. Now, as a streamlined, low-cost network dedicated to connecting people and organizations, there are no employees and the board of directors needs to shoulder more of the work to move the organization forward. In addition, the new positioning of Kabissa as a network serving Africa calls for improved oversight and strategic leadership by Kabissa stakeholders.

To make this evolution possible, the current board (John Githongo, Neema Mgana, Peter Eigen Daniel Ritchie, Tobias Eigen) came to a decision at last week's board meeting to transition into a working board with up to 9 board members coming from the Kabissa community. In January, we will announce a nomination procedure and submission form on the Kabissa website where you will be able to nominate yourself or your colleagues to be invited to the board.

Also at the board meeting, we reviewed and approved the financial reports for 2010 as well as the 2009 Audited Statements and 990 Tax Return which are now available for public review on the Kabissa donation page. We will be deciding on our 2011 budget and strategy in January.

We are pleased to be a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in good standing and are looking forward to the opportunities that the new year brings to deepen our role in helping to connect and empower African civil society organizations using information and communication technologies.

Kabissa Organization Directory Upgrade

I'm pleased to report that WebAccess has been doing a terrific job upgrading our Organization Directory, and that we are almost ready to launch the new site.

The upgrade has cosmetic improvements, fixes numerous bugs, and improves the functioning of the Organization Directory signup form, listings and profile management. It also lays the way for starting to build Kabissa Connections (see below), a new project we are considering based on the Organization Directory.

Kabissa Connections: Building Trust in African Civil Society Organizations

Thank you everyone who voted for Kabissa Connections on Netsquared to get us into the final 15 and thank you judges who selected us to be among the 5 winning organizations to receive a $5,000 cash prize. I also would like to congratulate the other 4 winners, in particular Agricultural Marketing Information Services in Cameroon and Integrated Electonic Peace Building Project in Kenya which are both very innovative and powerful projects deserving of recognition and support.

In a nutshell, Kabissa Connections will address trust concerns by providing a platform revealing the connections that organizations have with networks, international organizations, supporters and service providers. We will do this for organizations working in Africa while collaborating with others on open source tools, standards and approaches that can be replicated in other regions.

I am very excited to receive this recognition for an idea that has been brewing for years and which it appears we will now have the opportunity to implement. We will have more news soon on next steps and opportunities to get involved.

The French American Charitable Trust (FACT) is committed to addressing the fundamental inequalities and injustices in our society by helping develop and sustain networks of community-based groups in the U.S. and France that educate, organize, and empower people to actively participate in developing public policies that directly affect their lives.

Netsquared, an initiative of Techsoup Global, works at the intersection of technology and social impact. The Netsquared platform has a Community Blog open to any registered user to contribute his/her ideas, projects, lessons learned or other information about working in technology and social change. NetSquared Local events support volunteer organizers around the world who convene local community events as consistent opportunities for gathering, sharing, learning and collaborating at a local level. NetSquared Challenges and Partner Challenges call for ideas from around the world for new technologies, applications and mashups that make social impact; and Projects submitted to the Project Gallery can be edited, updated, deleted and shared by the user, creating a rich directory of innovation project ideas.

Kabissa Connections, Global Giving Matching in Oct

Tobias Eigen — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 08:43:27 GMT

We have had a busy month building the new Kabissa, as you will see in the update on Kabissa Activities below.

We are excited about the progress we are making on establishing Kabissa as a self-sustaining, volunteer-run network connecting people and organizations for Africa.

However, we are operating close to the margins currently and urgently need donations to be able to continue. If you were considering waiting until December to donate to Kabissa or to tell your friends to support us, please reconsider in light of Global Giving's generous matching program - see below.

We also need your vote in a Netsquared Challenge going on right now to receive a $5,000 grant as well as recognition and support to realize the potential of the Kabissa platform. Details below.

In solidarity and gratitude,

Tobias Eigen, Kabissa Founder

Give More, Get More Matching Campaign on Global Giving

Starting on October 12, GlobalGiving is matching at all donations to Kabissa at 30%, 40%, or 50%. The match percentage is based on the size of the donation.

$10 – $499 –> 30%
$500 – $999 –> 40%
$1,000 – $2,500 — > 50%

There is $100,000 available in matching funds. The campaign will run until Oct 21 or until matching funds run out.

Please note:

Matching is applied up to $2,500 per donor to Kabissa via GlobalGiving
There is no administration fee applied to matching funds - Kabissa will receive 100% of matching funds
Please donate online as checks may not be processed in time to be applied for this campaign
This will be the final GlobalGiving site-wide matching campaign of the year!

Please vote for KABISSA CONNECTIONS on Netsquared.org

Between October 11-15, community voting is open on Netsquared.org for projects participating in the FACT Social Justice Challenge. Kabissa has thrown its hat into the ring with a powerful idea to build the Kabissa platform and we have a very good chance at success - but we need your help!

1) Here's what you need to do

Vote for between 3-5 projects on Netsquared.org including Kabissa (see 3 recommended projects and direct links below)
Add Kabissa to your favorites on Netsquared and add a comment to show your support
Forward the link to the Kabissa project through Facebook and your social networks

Kabissa Connections
http://netsquared.org/projects/kabissa-connections

Agricultural Marketing Information Services - Cameroon
http://netsquared.org/projects/agricultural-marketing-information-servi

Violent Water Conflicts In Kenya’s Ewaso Ngiro River Basin: Fighting Back With Fair Water Sharing, Metering, Water Conservation And A Win-Win Electronic Peace Building Formula
http://netsquared.org/projects/violent-water-conflicts-kenya-s-ewaso-ng

Thank you!

2) Why it's important for you to vote

If we are among the 5 winners, we will receive a cash award of $5,000 and recognition on the NetSquared and FACT web sites. In addition to direct financial support through the FACT Social Justice Award, FACT is generously supporting fund development assistance for all FACT Featured Projects. This assistance will connect us with fundraising experts and guidance to help us move towards increased investments and greater community impact.

3) How will our project benefit Kabissa members in Africa?

Update on Kabissa Activities

Relaunching Kabissa Gong Gong Monthly Member Newsletter

Mark Root-Wiley, a freelance web designer in Seattle, is generously contributing his time as a volunteer to create a new formatted template for our newsletter.

As Kabissa old-timers will recall, the Kabissa Gong Gong newsletter is delivered to your email mailbox on a monthly basis and contains a roundup of the best and most useful content on the Kabissa website.

We will send out the next newsletter soon, so please add your contributions to the site and make sure you are subscribed to get it when it comes out!

Survey of West African Civil Society Organizations

Kabissa is collaborating with WiserEarth to survey members and non-members working in West Africa in order to gather information that will guide future priorities for our two organizations.

Blog Action Day 2010: Let´s blog about our right to clean water.

We are experimenting with an idea to collaborate with Kabissa members to "curate" tags used to categorize content added to the Kabissa site, with the goal of raising awareness about important current issues and to encourage members to participate in the Kabissa community. 2aid.org, a German charity that works on projects to bring clean water to rural communities in Africa, has agreed to curate the WATER tag in connection with Blog Action Day 2010.

Kabissa Groups Upgrade

After two weeks of testing email discussions in Kabissa groups with only positive results, we have now made some changes to start encouraging Kabissa members to start using it more actively to connect, share information and help one another - directly by email.

From now on, when members join groups at signup or via the groups directory, they now automatically start receiving new posts by email - and their replies to posts are distributed to all other subscribers and added to the site as comments.

To ease the transition, existing Kabissa Group members are all set to nomail by default - you can log in anytime to turn on/off email delivery or switch to daily digest mode.

Organization Directory Upgrade

We are spending $4,450 of the money raised in August on a crucial upgrade to our Membership Database platform. We are almost finished with this upgrade now and are working with volunteers to help us test it and identify bugs.

This much needed upgrade will fix a range of bugs and bring improvements to the way community members can add and maintain their organization profiles on Kabissa. It also will provide new features such as a completely overhauled user interface for administering the database and new tools for managing membership, donations, mailings, reporting and more.

In addition, this upgrade lays the groundwork for projects we would like to carry out in partnership with other organizations next year to leverage the benefits of the Kabissa platform. This includes the Kabissa Connections project idea we submitted to Netsquared. Please help us by voting for it!

2009 Audit and Board Development

The 2009 Audit is progressing well, and due to be completed on time by November 15th so that we can submit our 990 tax return and application for continued membership in Aid for Africa, a unique partnership of some 80 select charities, all dedicated to solving the complex, inter-related challenges facing Africa.

We have a board meeting scheduled for November 4th, at which the two main agenda items are sustainability and board development. In particular we are discussing and agreeing on a plan to establish board terms and expand the board from 5 to 9 board members over the course of the next two years. Our goal is to bring in more stakeholders to the board who can take on key roles as volunteers to keep Kabissa running and growing, as well as represent the interests of members working in different parts of Africa and working on different issues.

Kabissa Building blocks: mailing lists for Groups, Gong Gong monthly newsletter, site translation

Tobias Eigen — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 19:32:41 GMT

Last time I wrote about laying the foundations for the new Kabissa - today I'd like to tell you about some of the building blocks we are using to create the new structure.

To stay on track to achieve our funding goal, we need to raise $2500 by the end of September. We can't do this without you. Please forward this update to 5 friends and ask them directly to make a donation to Kabissa. Consider the math. 86 of us donated in August. If collectively we welcome 125 people into our community and they donate only $20, we will handily meet our goal.

Contents of this progress report:

* Every Kabissa Group gets an email Discussion List * Monthly Member Newsletter to resume in October * Membership Database Upgrade Continues * Turning on Content Translation Tools

Thank you for doing your part.

In gratitude and solidarity,

Tobias Eigen, Executive Director

========================================================= Every Kabissa Group gets an email Discussion List =========================================================

Despite the increasing relevance of social media tools like blogs, twitter, facebook, etc, the fact remains that the best place to connect with people remains their email inbox.

When we launched our new platform in 2008, we moved "beyond email" and focussed our attention on enabling Kabissa members to create Kabissa Groups for their organizations to connect around blogs, news, polls and wikis. This service has been very powerful and useful for some members, especially those already with a social media strategy and blogging skills. However, for the vast majority of members, their engagement with Kabissa has been mostly one-way. They received notifications of new blog posts via email, but comparatively few people contribute to the blogs and responses have been few and far between.

Now each group has an email Discussion List, which means that group members can participate directly by email. Write an email to a Kabissa Group email address. Respond quickly and comfortably by simply replying to emails received from others in the Kabissa Group. All posts and their replies are posted automatically on the site and distributed to other Kabissa Group members. Repost the best information being shared on the blog and shared through social networks and the monthly member newsletter.

We anticipate that our new Discussion List feature will greatly increase the usefulness of Kabissa Groups for all of members, especially those at the grassroots that have limited time on the Internet and struggle to have their voice heard on the Internet.

Learn more about Kabissa Discussion Lists and the newly developed open source software that underpins them: http://kabissa.org/node/4712

========================================================= Monthly Member Newsletter to resume in October =========================================================

In our 2007 member survey, 80% of respondents indicated that they read Kabissa Gong Gong, our monthly member newsletter. One member wrote, "I believe this is the most useful aspect of the Kabissa Community, and I have found it very helpful in sourcing for informations and resources."

Due to lack of resources and, admittedly, our enthusiasm for blogging and social networking, we suspended the newsletter this past spring and instead encouraged our members to participate in the blogs. This approach, as also indicated above, has had mixed results. In particular, it put those Kabissa members working at the grassroots at a disadvantage, since they only have limited time to spend on the Internet and are not able to log into various websites on a regular basis. It also excluded people around the world who care about what is happening in Africa but are not actively trawling the blogosphere for opportunities to connect with and support African initiatives.

In October we will start sending out Kabissa Gong Gong again every month, featuring the best content contributed to Kabissa Groups. Our objectives with the newsletter are to:

* Connect African organizations and people with like minded organisations and people in Africa * Connect International organizations and people with like minded organisations and people in Africa * Give voice to the lesser known organizations in Africa * Keep organizations and people informed about opportunities and how to better use Kabissa.org * Generate more discussions and interaction on the blogs * Demonstrate the inportance/value of Kabissa

You can subscribe to receive Kabissa Gong Gong in your mailbox every month at http://kabissa.org/subscribe

========================================================= Membership Database Upgrade Continues =========================================================

In the last update, I shared the news that we are spending $4,450 of the money raised in August on a crucial upgrade to our Membership Database platform. This work is continuing and we hope to have the new upgrade in place in October.

This much needed upgrade will fix bugs and bring improvements to the way community members can add and maintain their organization profiles on Kabissa. It also will provide new features such as a completely overhauled user interface for administering the database and new tools for managing membership, donations, mailings, reporting and more.

In addition, this upgrade lays the groundwork for projects we would like to carry out in partnership with other organizations next year to leverage the benefits of the Kabissa platform. This includes in particular adding social networking features tailored for African civil society.

========================================================= Turning on Content Translation Tools =========================================================

Another common request from our members in Africa is that we provide Kabissa content in French and in other languages besides English spoken in Africa. Over the years we have resisted due to capacity constraints, and Kabissa has remained largely a community for English speakers.

Now that we are a volunteer initiative, there is no reason not to provide opportunities for volunteers to begin translating content and taking charge of community outreach in their languages. The platform we use provides content translation tools that will enable members to take on translation tasks and site visitors to see content and interfaces in their preferred language.

Expect to see more news on Kabissa site content translation in future progress reports, as well as a menu to switch languages on the Kabissa website. For a preview, see the beginnings of the French site at http://kabissa.org/fr

** Please FAVORITE this project on Global Giving and LIKE it on Facebook. Thanks for all you do! **

Laying the Foundations for the New Kabissa

Tobias Eigen — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:26:16 GMT

Now that Kabissa has begun receiving financial support from stakeholders, it is important for us to begin providing regular updates so that you can understand how your contributions are being put to work to nurture and grow the Kabissa network. This is a crucial moment in the transition of Kabissa from larger project-oriented consulting organization to smaller volunteer organization providing a networking platform on an ongoing, low-cost basis.

Contents of this Progress Report: * Global Giving Open Challenge raised $6365, including $1280 in pledges * Site Upgrade * Introducing Ghislain Siewe, Kabissa Membership Manager * Resuming Domain Registration for African NGOs * Participation in the Kabissa Online Community * 2009 Audit Begins With New CPA Near Bainbridge Island

Do not hesitate to contact me if you have any suggestions or ideas for raising funds or if you can see a role for yourself and are able to regularly commit time to Kabissa.

In gratitude and solidarity,

Tobias Eigen, Executive Director

========================================================= Global Giving Open Challenge raised $6365, including $1280 in pledges =========================================================

Thanks to generous contributions from the Kabissa community, we met (and exceeded!) our Open Challenge goals. You have enabled us to secure a permanent place on the Global Giving platform for Kabissa. As of today, we have received $5,085 from 85 donors through Global Giving since the Open Challenge started on July 15. A number of people were unable to donate in the short timeframe of the campaign and together pledged $1280.

We still need your help! Our total annual budget for covering the core costs of running the Kabissa network is $20,000. To secure this, we have undertaken to raise $5,000 every month until December - which is quite achievable, but only with your involvement.

Please tell a friend about Kabissa directly and ask them to donate. Then spread the word about Kabissa by joining Kabissa on Facebook (http://facebook.com/kabissa) and follow us on Twitter (http://twitter.com/kabissa).

Please contact Tobias if you have any feedback or questions about fundraising.

========================================================= Site Upgrade =========================================================

Thanks to the donations received through Global Giving, we are able to start work this week with the Web Access Open Source team to upgrade our website to the latest version of the CiviCRM platform. This much needed upgrade will fix bugs and bring improvements to the way community members can add and maintain their organization profiles on Kabissa. It also will provide new features in the latest CiviCRM version such as a completely overhauled user interface for administering the database and new tools for managing membership, donations, mailings, reporting and more. The estimated cost of this upgrade is $4,450.

In addition, this upgrade lays the groundwork for projects we would like to carry out in partnership with other organizations to leverage the benefits of the Kabissa platform, for example by adding "traditional" listserv mailing lists to groups, social networking features tailored for African civil society, and support for other languages besides English.

Please contact Tobias if you are interested in getting involved, and create an account for yourself on the Kabissa Roadmap Issue Tracker at http://roadmap.kabissa.org

========================================================= Introducing Ghislain Siewe, Kabissa Membership Manager =========================================================

If you have not yet had the pleasure of encountering him on Kabissa, I want to make sure you know Ghislain Siewe. Since June he has been generously and reliably volunteering 10 hours of his precious time a week to handle new membership applications, correspondence, and database management tasks.

In addition, Ghislain is exploring opportunities for organizing Kabissa members in the Washington DC area through a new Kabissa Connect DC online group and regular meetups.

To contact Ghislain, send an email to community@kabissa.org.

========================================================= Resuming Domain Registration for African NGOs =========================================================

With the help of Georgene Scott, our new book keeper on Bainbridge Island as of March, we have now restarted invoicing Kabissa members currently entrusting their domain registration to Kabissa. In the new year we will start offering new domain registrations once we have our systems in place. This is an important step in our evolution since, as Kabissa old-timers will remember, we strongly believe that organizations should keep their domain registration separate from their domain hosting - and that Kabissa is a natural fit for this given our role as independent, not-for-profit partner to African organizations.

While registering your domain at Kabissa makes for more complicated accounting, since you now have two vendors to deal with instead of a one-stop-shop providing you with hosting, registration and perhaps even web design and maintenance, having your domain registered separately puts you in control over your address on the Internet. At your own will and at your own convenience, you can add more services (for example Google Mail on your own domain) or switch to a new web host if you get into difficultiies with your current host. As a not-for-profit partner we also promise to do our best not to let your domain expire when the renewal date comes up.

Click here to learn more about how Kabissa Domain Registration works, and feel free to contact Tobias with questions, feedback or if you'd like to volunteer to help with this important service.

========================================================= Participation in the Kabissa Online Community =========================================================

As of this writing, Kabissa has 1542 organizations in the database, 3364 active user accounts, 513 Facebook Friends, and 2313 Twitter Followers.

Latest additions to the organization database:

* UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training * HB Volunteer Uganda * Support for International Change * The SCHEF Organization

You can add your organizations at http://kabissa.org/showcase

Latest from the Kabissa Connect Community Blog:

* Pakistan Relief Toolkit: Providing Essential Knowledge and Resources for Relief Efforts * Nigeria: 2010 World Rememrance Day for Road Traffic Victims - call for participation * Transparency International's Annual Report 2009 * New Resources for the legitimacy, transparency and accountability of civil society organisations * Stand up to give young teen girls a chance to better education * Media Freedom in South Africa - sign up

You can read posts and add your own at http://kabissa.org/group/connect

Latest from the Kabissa ICT Peer Learning Blog:

* Facebook Places - new settings to turn off if you need to keep your whereabouts private * The Institute for Reproductive Health Launches Web-Based Standard Days Method Toolkit * SMS Privacy Tips for Election Monitoring And More * Twitter tip: have Qwitter notify you when tweeps unfollow you - great for dealing with spammers * Bring Web 2.0 to your email with WiseStamp extension for Chrome or Firefox * Lessons learned about linking and embedding videos on YouTube

You can read posts and add your own at http://kabissa.org/group/peerlearning

========================================================= 2009 Audit Begins With New CPA Near Bainbridge Island =========================================================

Kabissa is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, and we are proud to have been independently audited continuously since 2004 when we started the Pan African Localization project with funding from IDRC. We have come a long way since then! Now that we are a volunteer organization with a much smaller budget, we ordinarily would not undergo a costly independent audit. However, we have decided to press on since audits are required by Aid for Africa, World Bank Community Connections Fund and the Combined Federal Campaign - all important sources of revenue for Kabissa.

After a lengthy search, we are pleased to have engaged Ball & Treger, LLP, a Certified Public Accounting firm near Bainbridge Island (near Seattle), where our organization is headquartered since 2008. Ball & Treger will complete the audit and 990 for 2009 by November 15th. The estimated cost of the audit and 990 is $6,000.

In case you are curious, you can download our most recent IRS Form 990 and Audited Financial Statements from 2008 from the bottom of http://kabissa.org/donate-now

We did it! $4,860 from 71 people secured a permanent spot for Kabissa on Global Giving

Tobias Eigen — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 16:00:07 GMT

Dear Kabissa friends,

Wow - when we sent out a Global Giving progress report and a mailing to Kabissa members last week, we did not expect to get such an overwhelming response. A warm and heartfelt thank you goes out to all of you who joined in by August 15 and donated to generously support Kabissa. Together we swarmed past our goal of $4,000 from 50 donors to raise $4,860 from 71 donors.

The Kabissa team is deeply honored by your support. We are still processing what it means. We will be in touch soon with more details, but wanted to share this great news as soon as possible.

In the meantime, please feel free to get in touch with us anytime with any questions, feedback or with ideas. We are very open. If you have not yet done so, please join Kabissa at http://kabissa.org so you can participate directly in our network connecting people and organizations for Africa.

In solidarity,

Tobias Eigen and the Kabissa Team

Only a few days left until an important deadline

Tobias Eigen — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 18:48:26 GMT

Thank you very much for your recent donation to Kabissa through Global Giving. I am deeply grateful that you have answered my call. In the coming weeks I will be sending you a progress report to explain in more detail how your money will be spent.

But first, I need your help again. An important deadline is coming up in just a few days on Sunday, August 15. By that day we need to have raised at least $4000 from at least 50 people in order to earn a permanent spot on Global Giving. This is their way of helping Kabissa and organizations like ours to build a sustainable community of supporters for our projects.

As of this writing, 32 of us have already come together to raise $1,620 to cover essential costs for running the Kabissa platform. We still need only $2,380 and 18 donors more by Sunday to meet our goal - together we can achieve this!

Please do your part:

* Call or email at least five friends and ask them to donate at least $20 to Kabissa before Sunday * Post a link to your Facebook page asking your friends to donate at least $20 before Sunday * If you can, make another donation yourself to Kabissa before Sunday

Note: the "donate" button on the Kabissa website takes you to our Global Giving project page, which is at http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/kabissa/

In solidarity,

Tobias