Facebook Causes donations no longer accepted in Canada

Update: June 27

Causes offers some back-story on the situation:

CanadaHelps’ donation processor, Chase Payment Tech, contacted Causes and insisted that we drastically alter our security standards as they relate to the processing of donations.  We are working to find a way to meet these standards without adversely affecting users’ experience or undermining Causes’ ability to provide its donation platform to Canadian nonprofits for free.

So as of May 31 Causes will no longer accept donations for Canadian charities.

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Most of my lies are unintentional.

Like when I suggested at the last Net Tuesday that Facebook Causes was a good introductory way to experiment with friends-asking-friends donations. That particular lie was unintentional.

Causes on Facebook | HomeThankfully Darian Kovacs of Venus Marketing set me straight by letting Net Tuesday know that as of May 31 Causes and Canada Helps (who processes the donations for Causes) are splitting up. This isn’t going to affect the American charities on Facebook Causes, but it means you won’t be able to donate to your favorite Canadian charity on Facebook. Which would be a shame, because Causes’s Birthday feature actually works at raising money.

Damn. I hate it when Mom and Dad fight.

Anyone know the full story?

Here’s the message Canada Helps sent out:

Dear charity,

As of May 31st, 2010, Causes on Facebook will no longer support donations to Canadian charities. Charities and donors will be unable to fundraise using the Causes on Facebook application after this date.

While CanadaHelps has attempted to work with Causes for a different outcome, Causes on Facebook has chosen not to meet the security standards that are required to process credit cards and work with CanadaHelps in the Canadian market.

CanadaHelps puts the safety and security of your donors first. As part of our mandate as a charitable foundation, we provide charities with cost-effective online fundraising solutions that are safe, secure, and trustworthy. We thank you for your continued use of CanadaHelps. We continue to look for alternatives for charities and donors to use Facebook as a fundraising platform.

If you have questions or comments about the decision to stop supporting Canadian fundraising on Facebook, please direct them to Causes on Facebook at partner@causes.com, (510) 981-0790 or
http://apps.facebook.com/causes/about. If you have questions for CanadaHelps, please don’t hesitate to be in touch with our Director of Program Development, Zenia Wadhwani (zenia@canadahelps.org).

Sincerely,
Owen Charters
Executive Director

Causes sent this to Canadian charities on May 12, 2010

We are writing to let you know you that after May 31, 2010 it may no longer be possible for users to make donations to Canadian charities on the Causes platform.

Recently, CanadaHelps’ donation processor, Chase Payment Tech, contacted Causes and insisted that we drastically alter our security standards as they relate to the processing of donations.  We are working to find a way to meet these standards without adversely affecting users’ experience or undermining Causes’ ability to provide its donation platform to Canadian nonprofits for free.

We will keep you updated as these discussions progress.  Moreover, the Causes Team will continue to support your work and answer any questions you may have.  Whatever the outcome, all other cause functionality will remain operational after May.  Do not hesitate to reach out to us at support@causes.com.

Sincerely,

The Causes Team
support@causes.com

Causes sent this to Canadian charities on May 14, 2010

Dear THE DAVID SUZUKI FOUNDATION (Canada),
We are writing to let you know you that after May 31, 2010 it may no longer be possible for users to make donations to Canadian charities on the Causes platform.
Recently, CanadaHelps’ donation processor, Chase Payment Tech, contacted Causes and insisted that we drastically alter our security standards as they relate to the processing of donations.  We are working to find a way to meet these standards without adversely affecting users’ experience or undermining Causes’ ability to provide its donation platform to Canadian nonprofits for free.
We will keep you updated as these discussions progress.  Moreover, the Causes Team will continue to support your work and answer any questions you may have.  Whatever the outcome, all other cause functionality will remain operational after May.  Do not hesitate to reach out to us at support@causes.com.
Sincerely,
The Causes Team
support@causes.com
Our mailing address is:
Causes
2105 Martin Luther King Jr Way
Berkeley, CA 94704
Causes sent this to Canadian charities June 1, 2010

Last month, you should have received an email from Causes about our donation services in Canada. We regret to inform you that we have been unable to reach an agreement with our transaction-processing provider that would allow us to continue processing donations in Canada without introducing substantial fees. As a result, Causes has temporarily suspended donation collection for Canadian charities. We will continue to look for ways to re-open this functionality in the near future.

The good news is that while Canadian charities will not be able to collect donations on Causes, they will be able to use the other tools on the platform to build communities, spread awareness, and run advocacy campaigns. We very much value each of our Canadian partners and hope that Causes remains a core part of their online strategy.

We apologize for the inconvenience and welcome your feedback at support@causes.com

It has always been our goal to provide nonprofits and activists with online fundraising tools that are both easy to use and affordable. This vision will continue to guide our work and we look forward to helping you achieve your mission.
Sincerely,

The Causes Team
support@causes.com

CONFIRMED: Vancouver Change Camp to be held Saturday June 12 at the W2 Storyeum

It’s good to have a hobby. Even if your hobby is something weird, like organizing conferences.
So I’m proud to present the second of this summer’s keep-Eli-out-of-trouble projects:

Vancouver Change Camp 2010

Date: Saturday, June 12
Location: W2 Storyeum
Early-bird tickets are available now for just $15 (until May 15)!
How you can get involved:

WHAT IS VANCHANGECAMP: A participatory, web-enabled event to imagine and build new ways to collaborate for social change in the digital age. ?

WHY: Change Camp is a collaborative, participatory and web-enabled event that is meant to explore the following questions:
  1. How can we help our governments be more open and responsive?
  2. How do we as citizens organize to get better outcomes ourselves?

NetSquared Camp Vancouver: not an announcement

Hi everybody!

My name’s Eli and you may know me from Net Tuesday Vancouver.

Today I don’t have an announcement. Announcements have details, and I don’t have details yet.

But I do have a statement of intent. And an invitation.

This summer I will be hosting a NetSquared Camp in Vancouver. And I want you to be part of it.

I’ve had the great pleasure of organizing the local Net Tuesday group in Vancouver for the last year. By throwing together people from charities and community organizations, techies (consultants, programmers, designers etc.), government folks, marketers and assorted other allies I hope I’ve been able create opportunities for people to learn from each other. At the very least I’ve sure learned a lot! 🙂

So, why is a NetSquared Camp needed?

Net Tuesday meetups are over too quickly! I have to cut off fascinating conversations all the time. And what about those times when a presenter shows you something incredible, but you want to have the chance to try it out yourself with a bit of instruction? Sorry, there’s no time!

That’s why NetSquared Camp will be an all-day unconference-style event with a focus on hands-on learning from Vancouver’s generous and ridiculously talented nonprofit sector and its allies.

How do I get involved?

  • Join the organizing committee. Email Eli to join the team.
  • Prepare a skill to share at the Camp
  • Bring your trickiest nonprofit problem and challenge our experts to solve it!
  • Suggest a sponsor or venue

Can’t you tell me ANYTHING? Surely you have some details…

  • The event will be held summer 2010
  • Saturday is my preferred day of the week to hold the event
  • There will be ~100 participants
  • It will be pretty cheap to attend. Probably $20 for the day

P.S.

Why “NetSquared” rather than “Net Tuesday”?

Net Tuesday Vancouver has always been an offshoot of NetSquared.org, which supports a global network of meetups. And calling an event held on Saturday “Net Tuesday” would be confusing.

P.P.S.

Feeling so keen that you’re willing to buy a ticket for the event even without a date or location? Bless ya! http://NetSquaredVancouver.eventbrite.com/

Net Tuesday May 4: Event-based fundraising

May’s Net Tuesday has been scheduled, with a focus on event-based and friend-asking-friend fundraising.

RSVP now

The event will be anchored by Sarah Hall, Online Giving Specialist at the Canadian Cancer Society. She’ll share some case studies and best practices.

But wait, there’s more:

  • a quick survey of entry-level online tools for friend-asking-friend fundraising
  • http://fundrazr.com/ – a Facebook application that helps you manage events
  • Mobio, maker of an iPhone application that uses bar codes for payment (download the application ahead of time to play along)
  • and maybe even a Twestival postmortem.

Haven’t whet your appetite enough yet?

Then check out an earlier version of Sarah Hall’s slide deck and RSVP for the event.

[slideshare id=2518828&doc=bbuc2009ifesevent360final-091117073408-phpapp01]

How to add captions to your Youtube videos in English and French

My parents have a hell of a time explaining to their friends just what it is I do at work. And who can blame them, since it’s a bit jack-of-all-trades-y.

And so, for their edification, I present a summary of a recent project.

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Subtitling videos used to be VERY time consuming. It would take a volunteer all day to transcribe the video, time the in and out points for each line of dialog, and then enter it all into Final Cut Pro. Ick!

Naturally, we avoided translating most of the video clips we produce. Which makes the David Suzuki Foundation’s Quebec office very sad. <le boo hoo. le sigh>

But now, through the magic of Google’s translation service and Youtube’s automatic transcription and timing features, we can subtitle a video with 30 minutes of effort.  That means we can easily make all our videos bilingual.

Check it out!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2Ew7v7lZeY]
(to turn on the captioning click the triangle button in the bottom right of the Youtube player and then hover over your language)

Here’s step-by-step instructions on how to add French subtitles to a Youtube video:

  1. Upload your video to Youtube.com
  2. Get Youtube to transcribe your video by going to the “Captions and Subtitles” tab Youtube Captions and Subtitle tab
  3. Instruct Youtube to transcribe your video, then wait about an hour.
  4. Download the “English:Machine Transcription” file
  5. Clean up the Transcription file in a text editor, because Youtube’s translation is wonky! (“police team is wasted energy”??)
  6. Upload your corrected text file (but keep the “.sbv” extension” to Youtube

Congratulations! You now have a clean caption file in Youtube that can be automatically translated into dozens of languages.
Translation magic from Youtube

But what if “good-enough” isn’t good enough for you? What if you need a perfect translation?

  1. Cut and paste your timed caption text into Google Translate and let it work its magic
  2. Get a native-speaker to review and correct the translation
  3. Upload the corrected text to Youtube (remember to change your text file’s extension to “.sbv ” and if you’re dealing with a language with accents save the file in UTF-8 format.)

And you’re done!

Helpful links: