Transparency resources

From CharityScorecard

This page lists some resources that may be useful for non-profit orgnizations that are looking to make their day-to-day operations as open and transparent as possible. Our Transparency Questionnaire also offers a list of ideas about different aspects of operating tranparently.

1 Wiki Hosting
2 Spreadsheet Wiki Hosting
3 Desktop Office Software
4 Creating PDF Files
5 Microsoft File Viewers
6 Accessibility
7 Mailing Lists
8 Open Process

Wiki Hosting

(Re: Transparency Questions #19, 21, 26, etc.)

Practically speaking, one of the easiest ways of to make your organization as open and accessible as possible is to set up a wiki that any of your employees can add pages to and that the general public can see.

Most organizations currently have a "brochure" site -- a public web site that is well organized and maintained, and is carefully designed to be attractive and easy for new vistors to navigate. We suggest that you continue to maintain that brochure site, and that you set up a wiki as a completely separate second site, with a different set of goals. The wiki should be set up so that the general public can view it, but you can think of the wiki as an "internal" workspace -- don't try to gear the content to outsider visitors, but instead let your employees (and volunteers) use the wiki as an interal collaboration tool, and place to keeping notes to themselves.

Once you have a wiki set up, your employees will be able to easily add pages about any of the work they're doing -- status reports, memos, policy suggestions, to-do lists, etc. Wiki sites often grow to have a large number of pages, with some pages that are well maintained and extremely useful, and lots of other pages that are obsolete and not especially interesting to most people. That's fine. Don't think of the wiki as a polished lobby -- instead think of it as a busy workplace, like a cluttered desktop or a building construction site.

Here are some hosting services that you might want to look at if you're thinking of setting up a wiki:

Hosting Service	Cost	Wiki Software	Set-up	WYSIWYG	Notes
PBwiki	free	custom	1 minute	x	RSS feeds file attachments revision history
Wetpaint	free	custom	1 minute	✓
EditThis.info	free	MediaWiki	1 minute	x
Wiki-Site.com	free	MediaWiki	1 minute	x
Gabriel Wicke	13 € per month	MediaWiki	1 day	x	same software that runs Wikipedia
ViaWiki	free for 5 users	DekiWiki	5 minutes	✓
Socialtext	free for 5 users 50% off for non-profits	custom		✓	features
Google's JotSpot	free	custom	5 minutes	✓	temporarily unavailable

For more information about other wiki hosting services and wiki software engines, see

Spreadsheet Wiki Hosting

(Re: Transparency Questions #19, 24)

Desktop Office Software

(Re: Transparency Questions #24)

OpenOffice.org
- Writer - like Microsoft Word
- Impress - for presentations, like PowerPoint
- Calc - a spreadsheet, like Excel
- Base - for making databases
- Draw - a drawing tool

OpenOffice is similar to Microsoft Office, but OpenOffice may be a better choice for non-profit organizations:

OpenOffice saves files in the open standard OASIS Open Document Format, rather than in proprietary Microsoft formats
OpenOffice runs on more computers than Microsoft office, since OpenOffice is available on Linux computers
OpenOffice is free
OpenOffice can save documents as .pdf files

Creating PDF Files

(Re: Transparency Questions #24)

OpenOffice.org runs on Linux/Mac/Windows, and the OpenOffice applications include a built-in PDF-export feature
On Macintosh computers, all documents can be exported as PDF files from the print dialog box.
On Windows computers, free software is available to convert documents to PDF files:
- Pdf995 -- free PDF maker
- PrimoPDF -- free PDF creator
There are also resources for how to make PDFs accessible to people with disabilities. [1]

Microsoft File Viewers

(Re: Transparency Questions #24)

If you want to work transparently, and you want your work to be available to as many people as possible, you should post your work in a open format like .html, or any other format that can be read on most computers, like .pdf.

Please don't post your work in proprietary formats like Microsoft .doc or .xls format -- those files may be hard to open for people who have not purchased Microsoft products. If you do decide to post files that are in proprietary Microsoft formats, please at least consider also posting links to Microsoft's free Viewer software. Unfortunately, I think Microsoft's free Viewer software only runs on Windows computers, so people using Macintosh and Linux computers may be out of luck, but at least this is a start:

Accessibility

"Accessibility" is a term that describes the idea of making a web site available to as many people as possible, including people who have poor eyesight or other disabilities. Designing your web site with accessibility in mind also tends to improve the site for the average vistor.

There are two sets of Accessibility standards that are commonly applied in the United States to improve access to electronic content for people who are disabled: the WCAG, which was created by Web Accessiblity Initiative, and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, which are the US government's internal rules about the accessiblity. CITES/DRES HTML Best Practices were created by the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign based on those two standards, to improve access for all users.

Some content building tools (such as Dreamweaver 8) have accessibility validators built in.

There are also standalone Validators.

Validator	Cost	Standards	Platforms	Notes
Watchfire Bobby	299 USD	WCAG, Section 508	Windows	free one page tester online
Deque Ramp PE	free to non-profits	WCAG, Section 508	Windows 2000/XP, Macintosh OS X, Unix and Linux	integration with Macromedia Dreamweaver and Microsoft FrontPage
FAE	free, with registration	CITES/DRES HTML Best Practices	online	evaluates entire website saves report for up to seven days

Other tools options, including plug-ins and simulators: [2] [3]

Mailing Lists

(Re: Transparency Questions #18)

For setting up mailing lists with public archives, GNU Mailman is probably the most commonly used free and open source package:

GNU Mailman

Open Process

Here are some links that might be interesting for people who are looking for background reading about the ideas involved in web-based open collaboration.