Yesterday, CFSites crossed its 2500 site mark.  That's 2500 good causes who are now online, in a commercial free way and attracting millions (2.5 million to be exact) of users.  It's nothing to write in the NY Times about, but at the same time, it's a great little service.

That milestone -- do they have mile-pebbles? :) -- got me thinking about the changing nature of the CharityFocus offerings.

Back in 1999, the web was new and we started building websites for nonprofits.  Believe it or not, we even had a sheet of paper that listed all the benefit of WHY nonprofits should use this thing called Internet!  At our peak, we perhaps did 100 concurrent projects.

A few years later, in a rapidly changing technology landscape, websites became more complex.  Nonprofits started asking for "web solutions" with online donations, backend databases and interactive websites.  We tried that but realized our volunteer infrastructure wasn't effective in this dynamic of too many moving parts.  So Matt (Henning), pretty much single-handedly, created this sly little tool on the side called CFsites.  At the time, it was actually competing with our Service eXchange, :) and then became the first step -- content gathering -- part of the process.

Along the way, mostly through serendipity, we took on portals like  PledgePage and ProPoor and realized that we had the infrastructure to maintain these web verticals.  That proved to be defining cornerstone of the next phase of CharityFocus, as we soon built several other major portals in the coming years that ranged from kindness stories to videos for social change to daily good news. :)

Back in the days, Jonathan Freeman (who is currently serving in Iraq) had called us "incubator of compassionate action."  We were doing these online projects, but really, we were just trying to serve unconditionally -- and while we didn't how it fit into the "websites for nonprofit" mission of CharityFocus, it felt perfectly normal for us to gather 40-50 friends to eat lunches with the homeless and meditating on Wednesdays or starting Karma Kitchen in Berkeley. We were constantly changing, and so as we were serving, it didn't really matter what we did.  I think Jonathan was right, but with such a sweeping generalized anthem, it was increasingly impossible to capture CharityFocus into a soundbyte.  But that was okay, because it's not like we had funders to impress. :)

For the first part of 2008, people started noticing CharityFocus.  Major organizations, educational institutions, philanthropists.  We weren't doing much Charity, and neither were we all that Focused, :) but we did tap into some archetype that had concretely touched millions of people without practically any overhead.  Everyone wanted to know the secret juice.  Our answer was simple -- be-the-change.  Most people heard that, but forgot to read the footnote: "for 9 years". :)

So what's coming up?  Of course, it's hard to predict.  But what seems to be happening is web communities.  (It's not the same as social networks, but more on that later.)  Around the themes of our vertical portals, people want to connect and deepen/broaden their connection.  Smile Groups has been our extremely successful pilot, but every site is calling for its own personalize-able gateway.  While we were brainstorming a "Service Space" several years ago, it no longer warrants envisioning because we've already arrived -- with more than 200 thousand members!  So, rather choicelessly, :) we are building Service Space, with a warehouse-storefront model that will allow for cross fertilization of our members in the "warehouse" (back-end) while still preserving the uniqueness of each "storefront" (front-end).

Another trend that is emerging is a connection to place and the intersection of online and offline communities.  For a while, we struggled with this idea of local chapters when our formal work was online, all the while knowing that we had something special in the Bay Area.  As things mature, though, the local-ness is becoming very clear and we are seeing informal gift-economy posses popping up everywhere from Antarctica (yes, it's true!) to the slums of Ahmedabad.

It's fun to watch all this unfold.  I wish that I could point credit to one person or one event or even a frame-able collective intelligence, but the fact of the matter is that  it's a complex series of intertwined conditions.  Just like a piece of art, CharityFocus can't be replicated.  Ultimately the success and failures of these projects will come and go as it needs to, while we are busy being-the-change and serving unconditionally.