Confused by the title? It’s just another metaphor I’ve started using to describe how brands should distribute more trust to their communities.

I slipped it into this interview, which Geoff Livingston has published on his influential Buzz Bin blog. It gave me another chance to flesh out my previous buzz director posts.

Geoff has kindly shipped me a copy of his new book, Now is Gone, which I began to read on my commute today. I’ll post a review here in due course, but I can tell you I like it already… especially its emphasis on community building. Thanks, Geoff!

It’s good to be back blogging… more about that later.

Too much going on at the moment to blog consistently, which is a pity given that I’ve lots of things to say, regarding Facebook et al.

Anyway, this SlideShare version of Peter Deitz’s powerpoint presentation from yesterday’s webinar, Group Fundraising 101: From Benchmarks to Success Stories does a pretty excellent job of reviewing the current (and rapidly evolving) “Group fundraising” landscape.

Peter defines Group Fundraising as:

The process of gathering money and other gifts in kind over the internet,

by empowering individuals to covey the value of a program or project to prospective donors of their own choosing

through the use of blogs, widgets, images, video and social networking websites.

Meant to blog this last week, but other (actually, quite important) stuff got in the way.

Thanks to Britt Bravo for tipping me off (via Netsquared) about Amnesty’s Eyes on Darfur website, where it is asking supporters to monitor 12 villages in Darfur that they have deemed “vulnerable” to attack via satellite.

And get a load of this.

Listen to the gasps from the audience as Microsoft Live Labs Architect, Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos Seadragon and Photosynth at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Conference in California.Is it just me, or is the pace of innovation speeding up by the day?

Hat tip to cxpartners.

Amnesty’s Dan McQuillan has made a rallying call for a Netsquared this side of the pond - which could be an “incubator for web-enabled social change in the UK & Europe”.

Dan identifies some possible goals:

• To stimulate web-enabled social innovation
• To create a an online-offline community for learning skills, sharing experiences and developing expertise
• To sustain socially progressive activity through alternative business & organisational models

I like the emphasis Dan gives to “activism”, and “the organisational question” in particular…

Perhaps, like the second Netsquared conference, it could aim to incubate a new generation of web-enabled non-profits that use new forms of organising to deliver more directly on their missions.

There is a very real tension between where social media is taking us and how charities are responding (although there needn’t be). Web 2.0 requires Leadership 2.0. Surely two sides of the same coin.

All this may well dovetail with the initiative soon to be unveiled by Bertie Bosredon, the Head of New Media at Breast Cancer Care. Bertie gave me an update earlier this week.

Yesterday, I happened to get a call from Richard Saunders, who is head of website development at NCH, the children’s charity. He also hinted he would welcome a forum along these lines. And Rob Bowker at the BTCV has flagged his interest to me via this blog.

I also know from many of the conversations I had in Brussels last week that there would be an appetite for this elsewhere in Europe, too. Paolo Ferrara left a comment on my recent Buzz Director post to let me know that they are starting to unpick this concept in their own Italian context.

I hope many others will be up for it. But it won’t all be plain sailing; David Wilcox recently held up a mirror to reflect that in the UK at least, the sector has not always been good at being generous in this way.

I’m optimistic. At the start of the year, when I was considering some of the trends that might drive charities in 2007, I wrote that I was “thinking of co-organising an open-space event for those championing social media tools (and change management) within their organisations.” But Dan is right, this is much bigger than a single event.

I would only add that I’d like to see people from all ‘disciplines’ involved in this - I’ve had enough of silo-thinking .

Thank you, Dan; count me in.

This is bloody brilliant.

A bunch of creative types in New York are hiring and did this video one night after work. You can see by the comments, that they’ve received no shortage of offers. Could this be a tactic for a non-profit to communicate the energy and passion of its staff to supporters and potential employees… or vice-versa?

Hat tip to Carnet Williams.