Arck Interactive Gives Back

UPDATE 4/16/2012: The contest has ended and we’ll be notifying the winner shortly. Thanks to everyone who participated!

We are all about community at Arck. After working with many fantastic organizations and non-profits over the years, and having recently relocated our offices to an incredibly community-focused area, we realize how much organizations give without asking for much in return. This is our chance to give back.

Arck Interactive pledges to donate a customized social networking platform, containing a collection of our open-source and proprietary plug-ins and a custom theme, to an organization or non-profit of the community’s choosing. All you need to do is let us know which organization is the most deserving, why they are the most deserving (as a comment below) and and we will do the rest.  If you’re thinking about adding a new organization, put some serious thought into how a social network will add value to their vision.  Many organizations do not need this type of technology and we want to see our donation to be put to heavy use.

The donated social network will enable the organization to actively communicate, collaborate and engage existing and new members.  People who are looking to get involved in your cause will be able to participate in a thriving social community that could include online giving or fundraising through your platform or ours. Communication is everything, and the networks that Arck is known for have connected hundreds of thousands of people around the world for many purposes.  We’re certainly not Facebook (nor do we care to be), but our small team of 6 does make a difference in our own unique way.

The poll will close Monday, April 16th and the organization with the most votes will win.

The rules are simple:

• One vote per person.
• You must be an authorized representative of your organization, or have permission from an authorized representative of the organization, in order to add your organization to the list.  This can’t work if the organizations that are added don’t want or need a social networking platform.

Cheers!

The Arck Interactive Crew
Paul, Billy, Sam, Ben Fryc, Andras & Ismayil

PLEASE ADD TO THE LIST OF ORGANIZATIONS BELOW

Arck’s first pro-bono project: A global social intranet for the Homeless World Cup. Made with love and Elgg.

We’re ecstatic to announce the start of our very first pro bono project: a global social Intranet for our favorite non-profit organization, The Homeless World Cup. We’ll be using the popular open-source social platform, Elgg, to create a hybrid content management system/social network that will be used to connect the organization’s 70 global partners. The network will enable central communication and allow the organization to share best practices, files, photos and other media to help develop internal projects across the globe.

For those who are unfamiliar with the event, The Homeless World Cup is an annual, international football tournament, uniting teams of people who are homeless and excluded to take a once in a lifetime opportunity to represent their country and change their lives forever. It has triggered and supports grass roots football projects in over 70 nations working with over 30,000 homeless and excluded people throughout the year.

Inspiration for Friday

I love the tactile quality of letterpress designs. This site inspired us to design our wedding invitations for deep relief letterpress.

If you were an alien intercepting Earth’s radio waves, this is what you’d see.