June 16 , 2008

Webby Winners Get Just 5 Words

“Angelina Jolie can’t do everything.”

That was the five-word speech from Invisible Children, a Spring Valley, Calif.-based nonprofit dedicated to providing resources to children in war-torn countries, after winning the Webby Awards People’s Voice choice in Activism this week.

The 12th annual international award ceremony, dubbed the “Oscars of the Internet” by The New York Times, honored excellence on the Web in more than 65 different categories -- including activism and charitable organizations/nonprofits -- with nearly 10,000 entries across the U.S. and 60 countries.

LoveIsRespect.org won the Webby Award in the Activism category. The teen-centric Web site is the online extension of the National Domestic Violence Hotline in Austin, Texas and was created to help teens experiencing dating abuse. Activism category nominees included Brad Pitt’s nonprofit Make It Right, dedicated to rebuilding the New Orlean’s Lower Ninth Ward decimated by Hurricane Katrina, and Eyes on Darfur by Amnesty International USA based in New York City.

The Charitable Organization/Nonprofit category included Webby Award winner “Katrina: An Unnatural Disaster,” from New York City-based Open Society Institute, an organization in the Soros Foundations Network. The site highlights the Katrina Media Fellows’ investigative reporting and wants to continue the national debate about the 2005 hurricane disaster.

The nonprofit category nominees’ missions varied – from the Frisco, Texas-based National Breast Cancer Foundation to the Innocence Project, a New York City-based nonprofit legal clinic that tries to exonerate wrongly accused prisoners.

Some nonprofits beat out for-profit companies in securing nominee positions in several categories. DangerousGroundProject.org, a site created by London-based charity No More Landmines, earned a Best Use of Photography nomination by streaming photos of a man navigating London’s South Bank without stepping on the ground - walking on fences, climbing poles, hopping on benches – to emphasize their mission to remove landmines around the world.

The Nemours Center for Children’s Health Media, a part of The Nemours Foundation, created KidsHealth.org, a Web site that provides health and development information in different areas for children, teens and parents, which won both the Webby Award and the People’s Voice in the Family/Parenting category.

“It’s a great support for the fantastic staff and the Nemours Foundation, which invested a lot of effort into this and public education,” said Dr. Neil Izenberg, editor-in-chief and founder of KidsHealth. Izenberg said that the award-winning site is now looking at how to implement social networking in an appropriate way and more video and animation.

“The online world is highly competitive and the search [engines] on the Web usually doesn’t differentiate between a for-profit or nonprofit. So it’s up to the nonprofit to be every good as the for-profit information sources,” said Izenberg, who noted that KidsHealth.org and is the only noncommercial, nongovernmental site that ranks in the top ten for health sites and that the organization works with children’s hospitals and other organizations, such as PBS.

Winners are chosen by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS) and judged by content, creativity, functionality and more. The Webby Awards accepts four different entries for Websites, online video, interactive advertising and mobile Web sites. The 2008 Webby Awards were held in New York City from June 8 to 10, and honored guests such as musician David Byrne and comedian Stephen Colbert.

For a full list of Webby award winners and nominees, visit www.webbyawards.com.

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This article is from NPT Weekly, a publication of The NonProfit Times.

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