Omidyar Network today announced a planned grant of up to $1.5M to Herdict, a project of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.  Herdict is a crowdsourcing platform that allows individuals to contribute real-time data about website accessibility and outages around the globe.  Stacy Donohue, Omidyar Network director of investments for government transparency, made the announcement during a presentation at the Gov 2.0 Summit in Washington D.C.  The grant will be used to build Herdict into a standalone non-profit and recruit a CEO.  Additionally, Donohue will join Herdict's board of directors. Read more...

Piryx.com, the first online fundraising tool to integrate real-time giving into social media networks, today announced it has released new widgets for Facebook that will allow leading non-profits and NGOs to leverage social media into a powerful global fundraising tool that can raise millions almost instantly. Read more...

Sage North America today announced the Connect with Sage grant contest for its recently launched, award-winning Sage Fundraising Onlineservice. The contest will award grants to six nonprofit organizations. Entrants will be in two categories - Smaller Organizations and Larger Organizations - based on annual funds, and contest winners will be determined based on the total amount raised using Sage Fundraising Online. Read more...

Blackbaud, Inc. (Nasdaq: BLKB) has announced the launch of Blackbaud Social^TM, a new offering that provides social media solutions for nonprofits to create both private-label and public socially-enabled communities. It is the only integrated social platform that offers organizations an easy way to extend their mission, access user data, and leverage it for meaningful constituent engagement. Read more...