social

www.flpin.net I was recently contacted about mentioning this site, and after taking a look around, it appears it could indeed be a good way of putting people in touch with organizations that deal with issues they are concerned with. Basically you choose issues that you are concerned with, a region of Florida, and then the database outputs organizations that match. You can then sign up for announcements from those organizations, so as to better mobilize concerned citizens. I didn’t look at the registration process, but the privacy policy states that all information such as address and name are voluntarily offered, and that they do not share email addresses with the organizations that are linked to from the site. You can sign up with the individual organizations if you care to do so, but that is all done off site from FL-PIN.
The only problem I had was the broadness that organizations can set for their issues. If I do a search under Protecting the Enviroment, marine/estuary, the results currently are FCAN and Pinellas Progressives. Hardly organizations specifically dealing with such a topic. I would limit organizations to a primary issue, with the ability to choose a few secondary issues. Especially as the site grows, and number of organizations increase. Otherwise, the search concept is useless, as all organizations can simply choose all the areas so as to increase exposure.
All in all, the concept though is a good one, and positive tool for citizens and organizations with common goals to find one another.