Dr. DigiPol

There are two events in the next couple weeks addressing how Congress communicates with constituents. Today, the Internet Advocacy Roundtable, which is now a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, is featuring staffers from several House and Senate offices along with a leading CRM expert to discuss innovations Congress is implementing to deepen relations with constituents.

On October 1, the Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) is hosting its Communicating with Congress Conference in DC. I am speaking on the second panel of this conference, discussing the scope of the problems faced by Congress, advocacy groups, software vendors, and citizens in dealing with “petitioning the government with grievances.” (For more information on this conference, contact Tim Hysom

What follows is the written testimony for my CMF presentation:

Below is a comment I just posted on Read/Write Web regarding a couple posts on whether online tools have helped non-profits.

According to the initial post on Read/Write Web (September 9), “By non-profits, we mean charities, clubs and any ‘organization whose primary objective is something other than the generation of profit” (Wikipedia’s definition).”

While fundraising by non-profits, per se, is not the generation of profits, I can’t help but be squeamish when I hear a discussion about the successes of non-profits online that focuses almost entirely on fundraising. The web is much, much more than a fundraising tool. And for new non-profits that grow up in the web age, they have the potential to use the web to achieve magnificent things without ever needing to raise gobs of money to support a large infrastructure.