Thanks again for organising the Greenpeace meetup, I found it very useful.

I think it's great that all this high-profile NGO website development is happening on Drupal, and that all these quality modules are being fed back into the community.

I had a couple of thoughts about things we could do better. Not necessarily in the meetups themselves, but in terms of benefits to the NGO community:

1. Lower the barrier to Drupal use for (smaller) NGOs.

Most NGOs are small, understaffed and can't afford the 'steep learning curve' that we talked about on Tuesday. Though many could benefit from the community-building capacity of Drupal, particularly for small, special-interest charities.

Possible solutions: monthly/bimonthly Drupal surgeries/workshops that NGOs can come to. NGO-specific installation profiles (that Jason was talking about). 'Pimp my Non-Profit' (that Rob was talking about). Email/web-based support group exclusively for NGOs etc..

Someone also mentioned raising our profile in the NGO community. Sounds like a good way to find out their needs too.

2. Encourage Drupal for Campaigns and Activism

A related area is Drupal for activism. Although most NGOs will be involved in some of this, there are many groups who we might classify as 'activist groups' who are primarily concerned with the advocacy and mobilisation potentials of Drupal.

From the local issue of a new school being developed/demolished to transnational campaigns of freedom of movement/trade/environment or whatever, Drupal is the best platform out there for running a solid, independent campaign on a shoestring.

We need to think about how we can help activists use Drupal to achieve their campaigning aims.

On Tuesday we heard that Amnesty was using SignIt (http://drupal.org/project/signit) as their petition module which is great. But what other modules and configurations can help activists? Can we collaborate on a list?

I've been working extensively with Organic Groups and Advanced Poll/Vote API modules to try and get users/activists mobilising in groups and making decisions in their groups. Drupal is fantastic for decentralised decision-making, in many ways that is what the community is all about.

So perhaps similar for NGOs, we can think of installation profiles (or more simply, module combinations) that would be useful for those of us trying to mobilise through the internet.

Just thought I'd jot down my thoughts before they evaporate. Hope that's some food for thought. Unfortunately, I won't be around for the next meeting (or two), but if we keep some communication here at drupal.org.uk then I'd like to stay involved.

Cheers,

James