Feb
11
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2/11/2007 5:56 PM
From TechSoup.org - the Technology Place for Non Profits.....
In the dwindling club of 90's dot-com survivors,
Craigslist stands as one of the great success stories. Started in 1995 by Craig Newmark as an e-mail newsletter that kept friends posted on San Francisco area arts and technology events, Craigslist soon evolved into a text-based community and classifieds site serving the San Francisco area.
Fast forward ten years (and right past the Pop Heard Around the World that sent many bubble-time businesses to the Internet history archives): Craigslist now serves 99 cities in 19 countries, with sites for each location. Together, they receive 5 million postings a month, in categories such as jobs, housing, events, discussion forums, and personals. The sites attract 7 million visitors and generate 1.7 billion page views each month. Analysts estimate the company's yearly revenue at between $7 million and $10 million.
The phenomenon has become the subject of a documentary film, "24 Hours on Craigslist," which follows a day in the life of the site and the people who visit it in the Bay Area. And in March, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster won an eBay auction for the opportunity to beam the first private communications -- free ads posted by Craigslist users -- at least one light-year into deep space.
Fame, fortune, top billing on the silver screen, intergalactic air-time -- it would seem that Craigslist has little in common with most nonprofit organizations. But despite its wide-reaching success (or perhaps owing to it), Craigslist still operates much the same way that it did in its early days, and remarkably similar to the way many community-based nonprofits do today.
The company's mission statement includes goals such as "restoring the human voice to the Internet, in a humane, non-commercial environment," "being inclusive, giving a voice to the disenfranchised," and "being a collection of communities with similar spirit, not a single monolithic entity." A staff of just eighteen employees supports the infrastructure and provides customer service, in an old Victorian house in San Francisco's Inner Sunset neighborhood that serves as the company's single office. Postings are free on Craigslist's massive classifieds network, except job listings in Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco, which cost between $25 and $75 each -- a fraction of the per-posting cost at other popular jobs sites. (Job postings are free in all cities for nonprofit organizations.)
Meet The List Maker
Craig Newmark, 52 -- whose official title is "Founder, Chairman, Customer Service Representative" -- professes a fierce commitment to the community-building potential of the Internet, to socially responsible business, and to what he calls "nerd values." He regularly rejects hefty buyout offers, and refuses to make advertising a part of the company's business plan. He lives in a two-bedroom apartment in San Francisco and drives a Toyota Prius, but more often uses public transportation.
"Our community has the same values as any religion or spiritual tradition," Newmark said. "Helping other people is a very high value, and that's what we're trying to do."
Newmark acknowledges that people are often amazed by how the company runs so many sites with such limited resources. Again, Newmark traces his success to values.
"The communities run the sites by posting and flagging," Newmark said. "We just run the infrastructure and do the heavy lifting when it comes to abuse and policing. People respect our culture of trust. People are generally trustworthy. They give each other a break, and they give us a break," he said.
Asked whether the income generated from job postings can really be enough to sustain operations, Newmark said, "We're comfortable."
"Basically, [Craigslist] began as a hobby, and that's all it was for a few years," he said. "I had one unsuccessful year when I tried to run the Web site with just volunteers. Then in 1999, I got real. I decided to make it a real company, so I got out of the way and hired people who are much better than I am at making it all work."
Of course, at the rate that the company is expanding, logistical challenges are likely to mount. "Customer service has expanded more slowly than our sites, so we probably need to do some hiring," Newmark admitted. "And obviously the lack of support for local languages limits us." Still, he said there are no plans in place yet for international offices or for foreign-language capabilities on the sites, citing the company's hands-off approach as one of its greatest strengths.
Similarly, Newmark makes no apologies for the company's unadorned text-based Web sites. "A journalist once said we have the visual appeal of a pipe wrench -- and we took that as a compliment," he said. "We have no plans to change from text-only. We're simple and fast, and we get to the point. We're committed to what we're doing, and we're not going to change that."
"We don't have any bureaucratic insanity," he said. "We don't do any promotion … we grow through word of mouth. We just get things done."
Power to the People
Nonprofit organizations have harnessed the power of Craigslist since the beginning, taking advantage of the sites' huge, active audiences and simple through-the-grapevine model to attract volunteers and employees, publicize events and fundraising campaigns, network with other nonprofits in discussion forums, even find free or low-cost office equipment.
The Craigslist nonprofit Web server provides free site hosting to a small group of nonprofit organizations in the Bay Area, including the Center for Accessible Technology, the Film Arts Foundation, and the Center for Public Environmental Oversight. And the Wish List program , a joint project sponsored by San Francisco-based Cole Hardware, lets teachers and nonprofit organizations post a list of equipment and materials that they need and provides an interface for people who want to donate the items.
Nonprofit organizations request help from the Craigslist community more informally, too.
"We post job listings and ads for mobile adoptions and volunteers all the time," said Lynne Tingle, director of the Milo Foundation, a nonprofit animal-rescue organization in Northern California. "People usually say 'Craigslist' when we ask them how they found out about the Milo Foundation."
Tingle said that foundation volunteers also crawl Craigslist postings to find situations that the foundation may be able to help with. A Milo volunteer regularly forwards urgent postings to Tingle -- for example, from a dog owner who is moving and needs to find a new home for his pet immediately. Local municipal animal shelters sometimes post last-minute pleas for pets that have not been adopted and may be killed.
"Craigslist has helped us to adopt out more animals, and also to be able to rescue more animals. It really makes a difference for getting the word out there for us," said Tingle.
The denizens of Craigslist's communities are as diverse a bunch as you'll find in any community, online or otherwise. Not every post yields a gold mine. Take the experience of Ford Church, executive director of The Cottonwood Institute, a nonprofit organization based in Boulder, Colorado, that develops outdoor-education programs for high school and college students. Church recently made his first Craigslist posting, a job listing seeking instructors for a series of backcountry ecology and survival programs. In the first ten days after he posted the job ad, Church says he received 20 e-mails from applicants with job experience ranging from banking to graphic design and ice cream retail to "juggling on the street," but none had a background in education, wilderness survival, or environmental work.
"I chose Craigslist because I know people who have found apartments and roommates [using the site], I heard that it was a good resource for job seekers, and because it was free," said Church. "I did get a few laughs from the applicants from Craigslist, but most of my qualified applicants are coming from a listing I posted on an outdoor-industry-specific Web site."
Basic Training
Craigslist took its commitment to the spirit of nonprofits a step further in 2001 with the launch of its own nonprofit organization, the Craigslist Foundation, which pools online resources and produces events to help nonprofit organizations get off the ground.
"Everyone loves Craigslist," said Darian Heyman, the foundation's executive director. "The initial idea was to harness all that goodwill and turn it back to the community, particularly nonprofits."
The foundation produced its first Nonprofit Boot Camp in October 2004 in San Francisco. More than 500 nonprofits and community groups attended the daylong conference, which included seminars, workshops, exhibitors, and networking events. Attendees choose from two tracks: the Educational Track (where participants attended seminars such as "Spreading the Word: Marketing on the Cheap"; "Doing it Yourself vs. Outsourcing Back Office Functions"; and "Fundraising 101"), or the Pitch-a-thon.
Billed as "Part 'American Idol,' part 'The Apprentice'", the Pitch-a-thon put nonprofit groups in the hot seat to see if they have what it takes to win support, the hearts of tireless volunteers, and all-important funding. Eight nonprofits were chosen randomly from participating registrants to give a five-minute pitch to a panel of representatives from fields such as the arts, local government, health care, and banking. On the day of the event, two more organizations were chosen to give an on-the-fly three-minute pitch.
"Everyone got coaching and feedback ahead of time," Heyman said. "There was a group session on presentation skills, then individual sessions with a variety of experts that could help the groups refine their positioning and pitch."
The pitches were followed by feedback and a Q & A period with the judges and audience members. In the end, the judges selected a winner -- who received cash and other prizes -- from the 10 pitches they heard. (Thankfully, no Pitch-a-thon team had to hear the dreaded words, "You're fired," as contestants on Donald Trump's TV show "The Apprentice" would.)
As it turns out, the $50 registration fee for the 2004 Nonprofit Boot Camp bought participating nonprofits benefits long after the convention center lights went dark. Each month, the foundation connects "graduates" of the Boot Camp with a member of the Leadership Council -- a team of more than 50 active members, including lawyers, accountants, IT professionals, designers, consultants, and other business professionals -- for a free lunch and a free hour's worth of advice on the expert's area of expertise.
"The council members get low commitment, but the nonprofits get high value," Heyman said. "The experts are not expected to do prep or follow-up, and the nonprofit works with their schedule and comes to them. But it's such a great program that many of the experts choose to get more involved."
The program was so successful that the foundation has plans to expand it and bring it to new locations.
It's a popular saying in Net-savvy circles that you can find just about anything on Craigslist. And time and time again, the concept proves true: A city newbie finds an apartment, a homeless pet finds a family, a struggling nonprofit finds someone passionate about the same cause who will volunteer time, money, or know-how.
But for those who don't yet have a Craigslist tale of their own, why not borrow the story of Craigslist itself: A tiny organization with a vision-driven founder, a handful of dedicated employees, a simple Web site, and a focus on community makes millions, goes international, becomes a household name without ever letting go of its values, and puts its money where its mouth is to help other organizations that are making a difference. It might sound like a rose-tinted success story straight out of the movies, but it's not so far-fetched. "People see that we're genuine and for real," said Newmark. "We're just going to see what happens."