Cities are opening up. Thanks to a lot of hard work from projects like Open311, The Sunlight Foundation, and OpenPlans, cities are beginning to share their reams of municipal data, electronically, with citizens. Once out in the open, that data will be the feedstock for mobile and web applications that’ll give us real-time smarts about our transportation systems, our neighborhoods, our city infrastructure, the status of local government proceedings, and much, much more.

What if the nonprofit community tapped into these streams of valuable data (soon to become a flood)? The opportunities for nonprofits to get smart about what’s needed from them and where (and map it!) is huge. And that goes for philanthropy too: The potential for better collaboration between funders and fund-ees is immense — and exciting.

As Lucy Bernholz, friend of this project and expert on all things philanthropy has written, “By becoming open resources, public data have gone from being a byproduct of action to being a source of greater community and citizen engagement, profound innovation, and, in extreme cases, a tool for lifesaving and rebuilding communities. Philanthropic data – particularly grants data – are ready to be used for similar kinds of good. The information that is already reported by foundations holds untapped potential for fueling engagement, action, and innovation in communities if it is made open, public, and accessible.”

To move this agenda along, she’s holding  a Philanthropy DataJam. Happening on May 10th, 2010 in Washington DC, discussion during the DataJam will spring from the following questions:

“Imagine if communities, donors, journalists, and funders had easy access to grants information from foundations. What new insights could we gather about needs and opportunities in our communities? How might foundations and individual donors work together, or foundations and public funders? What untold stories about local heroes might the media tell?”

If you’ll be in the DC area on May 10th, be sure to swing by! The DataJam will be held at the New America Foundation, 1899 L Street NW, Washington DC from 12:30 to 2PM. Luckily, for us non-DC residents, the event will be video streamed (and possibly Skyped) as well. Follow the #GiveData hashtag on Twitter during the event for more.

For further interest, check out Lucy’s great “Open Philanthropy: A Modest Manifesto.” and her blog post on the DataJam, here.

If the internet and social media were a religion, transparency and reciprocation could be its golden rules. Be open. Be talkative. Share.

But transparency ain’t easy – at least not at first.

Engaging in an open conversation about data – and sharing resources in a collaborative way – is the driving intention behind Nonprofitmapping.org. The everyday tasks of making that a reality, though, involve a lot of open, free and constant communication. It means not just participating in conversations, but starting them too.

But, I have to admit, it’s not as easy as it sounds. I’ve come to believe that there’s a very real learning curve to be negotiated in collaborative and transparent projects generally – and that goes double for projects with a crowdsourcing strategy at their heart. For starters, web culture demands a kind of constant attentiveness. Post well and post often. Reply quickly. Tip your hat to friends and colleagues with a retweet, an outgoing link, or a thoughtful comment. Respond quickly to administrative needs as they crop up. Be on call and prepared when your website blows a flat.

All that demands that you move around your day with an eye for what might belong in the next day’s mental hopper of social media tidbits. When the team meets virtually, it helps to keep a notepad of worthy notables that might be shared via Twitter or Facebook. And when we approach or pass an important project milestone, I have to remember to keep our followers updated.

Making an effort to be as transparent as possible does contain elements of exactly that – effort. It means that putting your head down and working in your own space doesn’t quite cut it – you’ve got to engage with a larger community at the same time.

That’s not to say that transparency is a drag – it’s just the opposite. Social media and a willingness to work openly scratches an itch many of us have to share what we’re up to with others who are up to similar things. It strengthens the quality of our work and builds relationships, among much else. But as a writer making his first concerted effort to work in a transparent way, I’ve noticed that I’ve got to make slight adjustments to the way I work to make room for all of the “musts” listed above. It’s an interesting mark, I think, of the growing cultural difference between business as usual and the “open source” culture we’d like to help build (to get a sense of this, here’s a TED Talk from Michel Bauwens on his ideas about “open everything”).

Anyhow, this is a long, winding way of getting to the point: this GREAT piece from Spot.Us‘s David Cohn (his blog comes highly recommended too) on the importance of transparency and a willingness to experiment (and even look bad once in awhile) inspired an entire line of thinking last night as I tried to figure out what I wanted from 2010. So here it is: one of my New Year’s resolutions is to be more transparent. That goes for Nonprofitmapping.org, but also for any other projects both professionally and personally. It’s about relationship building, really – the bundle of ties that make us and our communities stronger than we would be otherwise.

What are your thoughts on the transparency learning curve? How has transparency affected your working style?

Here’s to a new year, and here’s to transparency – let’s make 2010 a good one!