[uf-discuss] hCard for nonprofits

[Marnie Webb]

Microformats list email, Andy Wolber, and David Geilhufe

hCard for nonprofits

Hello,

Communities have a problem listing the organizations that provide
services to individuals.  To solve this, a variety of community
entities, whether it's the 211 project, a foundation's or
organization's website, tend to make information and referral (I&R)
databases to collect and display information about the nonprofits that
provide services in that region.  Of course, this creates another
problem: a multitude of databases, duplicate entry for the nonprofit,
inconsistent information, and managing changed information.

Rather than having mulitple databases scattered around and spending
staff time updating and verifying information, I think microformats
can be used to mark up a nonprofits about page in a way that allows
the data to be maintained in one place and displayed in many.

I'd like to start a project to update the about pages of nonprofits
using microformats.  Before I go much further, I'd like to get some
feedback from you all in response to the concept (will it work? do I
have the theory right?) and four specific questions (below).

1. hCard can be used to mark-up organization information.  US
nonprofits belong to categories as defined by a formal taxonomy called
the NTEE code [1] which includes subcategories.  The NTEE code can be
displayed using tags as categories [2] but I'm not sure what this
looks like.  When I look at the source code for the appropriate pages
in Mark Pilgrim's tests it does not seem to match the description [3].
   Here's an example (taken from my own organization)
CompuMentor
435 Brannan St., Ste. 100
San Francisco, CA 94107
NTEE code:     T40—Voluntarism Promotion, W50—Telephone, Telegraph and
Telecommunication Services, U41—Computer Science


I think I get how the basic information should be repsented:
<div class="vcard">
 <div class="adr">
  <div class="org fn">
   <div class="organization-name">CompuMentor</div>
   <div class="street-address">435 Brannan St., Ste. 100</div>
  <span class="locality">San Francisco</span>,
  <abbr title="California" class="region">CA</abbr>
  <span class="postal-code">94107</span>
 </div>
</div>

But I'm not sure how to represent the NTEE code.  Is the below correct:
<div class="vcard">
 <div class="adr">
  <div class="org fn">
   <div class="organization-name">CompuMentor</div>
   <div class="street-address">435 Brannan St., Ste. 100</div>
  <span class="locality">San Francisco</span>,
  <abbr title="California" class="region">CA</abbr>
  <span class="postal-code">94107</span>
  <span class="category">T40—Voluntarism Promotion</span>,
<span class="category">W50—Telephone, Telegraph and Telecommunication
Services</span>,
<span class="category">U41—Computer Science</span>
 </div>
</div>


2. Nonprofit also need to display the area in which they provide
service. This might be limited by zip codes, counties, state or
countries.  I'm not sure how this could be marked up. In the above
example it is:
Service Area: United States, Canada

What would be the best way to represent that?

3. While the NTEE describes the category and subcategory to which a
nonprofit belongs, it might be useful for an organization to indicate
that they are a registered nonprofit or nongovernmental organization.
This, I could imagine, would help extend this internationally (the
NTEE code is US) and might be what is searched for when figuring out
the display-side of the problem.  So, should nonprofits identify that
they are nonprofits? If so, should that just always be the first
category or is there a better way to do this?

4. I think the benefits to nonprofits are greater solving multiple
entry/multiple database problem above.  Do these sound like reasonable
benefits to you all:
* By using microformats, nonprofit organization can keep their about
current and marked up appropriately and not spend time updating their
entries in any I&R databases.  Individuals and organizations wishing
to display service providers within one service type, region or a
combination of both, can use microformats as the base for the data
they display and be able to spend fewer resources keeping a database
current.
* Marked up data can allow nonprofits core information to by displayed
in unexpected ways without any action on the part of the individual
nonprofit.
* The nonprofit controls the infomration about themselves and does not
have to worry that others will get incorrect input information about
the nonprofit.
* Using tools such as the various greasemonkey scrpits, flock and
firefox extensions, individuals can easily add information about a
nonprofit to their address books.
* Can map services to locations on a map which can be a nice display
but also help to show locations lacking certain service types

I'm digging into all of this without a lot of technical knowledge so I
really appreciate any help in validating this concept, figuring out
the best way to markup an organization's information, and describing
the benefits.

best,
Marnie

[1] NTEE code: http://www.guidestar.org/npo/ntee.jsp
[2] tags as categories: http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard#Tags_as_Categories
[3] test pages from Mark Pilgrim:
http://diveintomark.org/projects/greasemonkey/hcard/tests/3-6-1-categories-2-plural.xhtml,
http://diveintomark.org/projects/greasemonkey/hcard/tests/3-6-1-categories-2-singular.xhtml,
and http://diveintomark.org/projects/greasemonkey/hcard/tests/3-6-1-categories.xhtml.