Inside PBS Blog

Social change can be messy, but fortunately, these days itâ€â„¢s also mashable.

A contest called the NetSquared MashUp Challenge is calling on Web innovators and designers to create and submit mashups that use the Web for social change. The challenge, sponsored by the nonprofit community site TechSoup, is offering cash prizes for the best mashup projects, and will distribute $100,000 to the finalists.

Submissions are being accepted until March 14, 2008 at 5 p.m. PST.

Mashups are Web sites or widgets that combine data from two or more different sources to illustrate their relationships--a program that combines public real estate records with a street-level map to show where home foreclosures are occurring, for instance.

Organizers of the challenge are looking for mashups that âہ"provide deeper insight into the social issues affecting communities around the globe.â€Â The best submissions will be used to build a gallery of mashups that citizens, schools, and community-based groups everywhere can learn from, replicate, and build upon.

As the contest organizers put it: âہ"Ultimately, we believe this work will help accelerate the use of Web-based tools in the field of social innovation as well as encourage people to re-imagine collaborative possibilities. We believe that sharper insight leads to smarter decision-making about how best to spend limited resources and time.â€Â

Past NetSquared mashup projects include Maplight.org, which displays the link between money and politics by bringing together information about campaign contributions and legislative votes, and ChicagoCrimes.org, a browsable database of crimes in Chicago that maps criminal offenses in the city.

TechSoup was part of the nonprofit world long before there were mashups; the organization was founded in 1987 as CompuMentor. The TechSoup Web site is currently visited monthly by more than 400,000 people looking for nonprofit tech know-how--and the occasional insight that only a mashup can provide.