Jumo: A social network for social causes
Two days after Monday’s beta launch of Jumo, a new social networking application for nonprofits and their supporters, it was overwhelmed with traffic, grinding the site to a halt. “There were a couple of hours where we actually got up to the top of The New York Times’s most-emailed list,” says Jumo’s awed 27-year-old founder Chris Hughes, who gained global attention as director of online organizing for the Obama campaign. While they’re not disclosing any numbers yet, Hughes says they had sent invitations to “tens of thousands” of potential users and had planned for “a factor several times larger” to visit the site—which still wasn’t enough. But the fact that the site—which is back up and running—was so submerged by do-gooders bodes well for its success.
Not surprisingly, Jumo works in concert with Facebook, where Hughes started his career as one of the Harvard student co-founders. New users fill out a brief profile that includes interests and location, then they’re whisked over to a Facebook-like interface, which slurps in their friends who are also on Jumo. Users can “follow” causes or issues they want to track, see what causes their friends are following, and browse the cause and issue newsfeeds, which pull in mentions from different sources, from Twitter to news stories to blog posts. Content can even be customized by city, and they’re also hoping to add features like listing events and other volunteer opportunities.
This isn’t a way to crowdsource support for a cause, says Hughes; rather, it’s a way for people to join causes that are already in motion. “We make it easy as possible for people to support people in the field who are working to bring about change,” he says. But part of that experience is allowing users to find and research causes that are relevant to them. To aid this feeling of discovery, more than 3,500 causes and projects were pre-seeded on the site, but any cause or project with a charitable mission can easily set up a profile on Jumo. Those who with 501(c)3 status can even accept donations through the site.
