FAQ

Kabissa is a volunteer-led non-governmental organization founded in 1999 and organized in the United States as a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. Our mission is to help African civil society organizations to put Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to work for the benefit of their communities. 

The Kabissa platform at http://www.kabissa.org is different because it is owned and governed by a nonprofit organization closely connected with African Civil Society, and because it is sustainably run by volunteers at low cost. We are building an open and empowering platform and nurturing content sharing and tech skills building with our African stakeholders in mind - and not corporate shareholders.

Kabissa represents a vision to empower grassroots organizations in Africa to take control over their own means of communication. While Facebook and other leading social networks are great and all organizations should be using them in support of their nonprofit mission, they are run by corporations that serve their shareholders first and have a track record of changing features without warning and using user data in unanticipated and potentially risky ways. They should therefore not be the only place where we conduct our business and we should use them with caution.

There is an important truth in the notion that "if you are not paying for it, you are not the customer; you are the product."  

Kabissa is sustainably built for the future through its lean operating structure, with all work done by volunteers and contractors. The Kabissa Board of Directors, made up of board members from varying international backgrounds, lead strategy and direction of the organization with input from volunteers, advisors and members. 

The organization operates mostly online and boasts volunteers and contributors from all over Africa and the world. 

Kabissa's official headquarters are on Bainbridge Island, a short ferry ride from Seattle, Washington tucked away in the northwest corner of the United States. 

Our mailing address: 

Kabissa
9874 NE Yaquina Avenue
Bainbridge Island, WA 98110 

Kabissa's primary target beneficiaries are the civil society organizations represented in the Kabissa directory. They are working throughout Africa on a range of crucial issues from advocacy and human rights to education and social services, and through Kabissa they are able to take control over their presence on the Internet and build their capacity to use ICT. Secondary beneficiaries are researchers, students, media, and other interested individuals and organizations that read and use Kabissa content to learn about and contribute to the important work being done by African Civil Society. 

Kabissa's operating costs are funded through donations which we receive directly through our website (http://www.kabissa.org/donate) and through partnerships with Global Giving (http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/kabissa), Aid for Africa Foundation (http://www.aidforafrica.org/member-charities/kabissa/), and the World Bank Community Connections Campaign (http://go.worldbank.org/OZDYSBVR90). 

In 2012 we are investigating adding more revenue sources to the mix, including paid memberships with premium benefits and pitching projects for funding through grant proposals and sites like kickstarter.com. 

We prefer to use the term Civil Society Organization (CSO) instead of nonprofit organization, charity, or nongovernmental organization because it better conveys our grassroots empowerment message and mission. If society is a stool, Civil Society is the crucial "third leg" holding it up. The other two legs would fall down without it - the public sector (government) and the private sector (business). They need Civil Society Organizations to make them to behave responsibly on behalf of citizens as well as fill in gaps in vital humanitarian and social services that they are not able to provide. This is true everywhere in the world, but in many African countries there is a particularly urgent need for a strong Civil Society to address major challenges in governance and accountability. 

ICT is a commonly used term in Africa and we prefer to use it over more commonly known terms such as technology, Internet, or IT. A definition we like is in the Center for Political Culture Glossary (http://culturalpolitics.net/digital_cultures/glossary): 

ICT is shorthand for Information Communication Technology and refers to all the digital devices (computers, cell phones, pdas, smartphones, iPods, etc.) that play a role in the creation of new media modes of interaction between people. The move form the term IT to ICT exemplifies the increasing degree to which communication between people, rather than mere information storage and retrieval, has come to define the world of new media technology.

The continued Kabissa focus on ICT is based on our strong belief that it has a revolutionary role to play in empowering Civil Society organizations in Africa, especially in those communities where otherwise infrastructure is poor and it can be difficult to get any work done at all and be reachable by partners, donors and stakeholders. 

It is true that ICT is becoming increasingly available and easy to use even in the remotest villages in Africa thanks to the rise of mobile telephony and the efforts of many service providers, entrepreneurs, development agencies and advocacy organizations. Nevertheless there is always work to do to empower Civil Society Organizations, especially at the grassroots, to ensure that they are able to control their own presence on the Internet and that they continue to build up their "tech savviness" and skills to use ICT effectively in support of their mission. 

Found a bug? Please report it using the Report an issue with this page link at the bottom of every page. You will be able to provide the URL (web address) of the offending page as well as a screenshot if necessary. The issue you report will be added to our issue tracker where we can address it and also follow up with you by email. Thank you so much for helping to make Kabissa better! 

Welcome! You can join Kabissa by clicking “Register” on the top right corner above , or by clicking here. The new user signup form allows you to build your own user profile and select which if any mailings you would like to receive from Kabissa. 

If you want to use Kabissa to showcase your organization that is actively working in Africa, the first thing you should do after creating your user account is add your organization to the Kabissa directory. Make sure you have all the relevant information about your organization ready (mission, activities, logo, contact details etc) and then log in and complete the new organization form here. (The form is also on the My Organizations page reachable via the dashboard menu after you log in). 

No, we respect the privacy of your personal information and promise not to sell or share your email address and personal information without asking you first. For more details, see our Privacy Notice at http://www.kabissa.org/about/privacy-notice

Yes. Membership is free. However, you are welcome to make a donation to help sustain Kabissa. 

You may be eligible to blog on Kabissa if you are working in African civil society or want to write about topics relevant to Africa. Once you have registered your account on Kabissa and logged in, there are two ways to request blogging privileges: 1) add your organization working in Africa to the Kabissa directory, or 2) submit the Request Blogger Privileges form. 

Kabissa represents a vision to empower grassroots organizations in Africa to take control over their means of communication. Over 1600 organizations working in Africa maintain a profile in our directory and depend on Kabissa for accessing and sharing information relevant to their important work and for building up their capacity to use technology in support of their mission. 

Run by volunteers, Kabissa's running costs are low but we still have costs - and we depend on donations to cover our core annual operating budget which is $20,000 and pays for server hosting and maintenance costs, book keeping and annual independent audit. Funds raised beyond that amount are contributed towards special projects to improve the Kabissa platform and strengthen our network. 

Thanks to the generosity of individual donors, we were given the opportunity to have an exciting and productive year in which we: 

• established an innovative online volunteering infrastructure and started using it to recruit and put to work an amazing, dedicated team of 10 people to run Kabissa including volunteer recruitment, membership management, member content and newsletter editing, and website design and development.
• launched an upgraded website with a beautiful yet flexible design created by volunteers and implemented with streamlined collaboration features created specifically with our African members in mind. 
• proposed and started implementing an innovative Open Data plan to further empower organizations in the Kabissa network by enabling the infromation they put online about themselves to be exported for use offline and "mashed up" with other data by other organizations.
• recruited two distinguished and inspiring new board members, Jeff Thindwa from World Bank Institute and George Scharffenberger from UC Berkeley. They replaced Peter Eigen and Daniel Ritchie, who shifted to the newly formed Kabissa Advisory Board.

We have an exciting year ahead of us. As funding, interest and capacity permit, we plan to: 

• expand our Board of Directors from 5 to 9 board members and allow some of our founding members to retire and move to a newly created Advisory Group. The newly expanded board will take a more active role in Kabissa operations as well strategy and sustainability.
• continue to grow our innovative volunteering infrastructure and bring as many quality volunteers through the six month volunteering cycle as possible who bring fresh energy and perspectives from around Africa and the world to Kabissa. We hope they will never completely leave Kabissa again and instead become committed ambassadors that share benefits of Kabissa to organizations in their communities. 
• continue to provide the best support we are able to Kabissa member organizations and increase the number of organizations benefitting from Kabissa. 
• propose and find funding for paid projects to improve Kabissa. Potential projects on our radar include:
  • Improve website performance so web pages load faster, and create a Kabissa distribution of our website code to make security updates and sharing of code easier.
  • Add new Open Data interfaces to the Kabissa organization directory to enable people to select and download information in it for offline use and include it as a dataset on their websites. 
  • Begin producing an annual Kabissa Yearbook containing a snapshot of the organizations in the Kabissa network and their content.
  • Add support for Multiple Languages to be more welcoming to African organizations working in non-Anglophone countries.
  • Create user-friendly Country and Theme Dashboards that make it really easy to find and make use of the Kabissa organizations and content you need. 
  • Create Mobile Apps to provide access to Kabissa organizations and content from mobile devices.

Our preferred and most cost-effective methods for receiving donations are through bank checks drawn on US banks (no transaction fees) or credit card via Google Wallet (fee of 2.5% plus 30 cents per transaction).

Kindly make out your check to KABISSA and send it to: 

Kabissa
9874 NE Yaquina Avenue
Bainbridge Island, WA 98110 
USA 

To donate by credit card, start at http://www.kabissa.org/donate

Yes. Kabissa is proud to have a coveted place on Global Giving, a giving platform that connects you to the causes and countries you care about. You select projects you want to support, make a tax-deductible contribution, and get regular progress updates - so you can see how your gift is making a difference.

You can use Global Giving to donate to Kabissa projects while also supporting Global Giving. 15% of donations made via Global Giving go to covering their operations costs.

Yes! To donate using PayPal, please click on the button below:

World Bank Staff and retirees can donate to Kabissa through the Community Connections Campaign and have their donation go twice as far, since the Bank makes a corporate matching contribution to all donations. For details and to donate, please contact Viki Betancourt at (202) 473-9127 or by email vbetancourt@worldbank.org.

Yes! Please designate Kabissa's CFC# 11021 to donate to Kabissa via CFC.

Yes. Online donations to Kabissa are secure.

You can verify that donations are secure by looking for the https at the start of the web address on the page where you enter your credit card details - this means that the connection to the payment processor is encrypted and secure.

Our preferred online payment processor is Google Wallet (previously Google Checkout) which provides excellent tips on Internet Safety (https://checkout.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=105821). 

If you have any concerns at all about online donations, please send us a check drawn on a US bank instead or contact donations@kabissa.org.

We have heard reports of problems with Google Checkout/Wallet using iPads and devices that don't support flash. If your transaction fails for any reason, please use an alternate method listed here such as PayPal (which also accepts credit cards and doesn't require a PayPal account) or send us a check. Thanks! 

You can call Tobias Eigen, Kabissa founder and executive director, at +1-206-965-9345 or send him an email to donations@kabissa.org with your question and he will get right back to you. 

If you want to use Kabissa to showcase your organization that is actively working in Africa, the first thing you should do after creating your user account is add your organization to the Kabissa directory. Make sure you have all the relevant information about your organization ready (mission, activities, logo, contact details etc) and then log in and complete the new organization form here. (The form is also on the My Organizations page reachable via the dashboard menu after you log in). 

Many people are involved in more than one organization working in Africa, and Kabissa is set up to reflect this. You can add as many organizations to Kabissa as you need via the My Organizations page - just be sure that you are authorized to do so by the organizations and plan for keeping them up to date. 

We realize that many people in the private sector are making an important contribution to improving the lives of people in Africa, and we would love to have you join Kabissa. You are welcome to apply to add your company to the directory, but your application will be declined if you do not specifically provide a mission statement and description of your activities, services or products that is in line with Kabissa's mission to help African civil society organizations put ICT to work for the benefit of their communities. You can still join groups or request blogger privileges on Kabissa. 

Yes, organization profiles on Kabissa require a "real world" mailing address and phone number. The Kabissa directory contains real people and organizations, and since we don't otherwise require proof of registration the contact details are important for verification purposes. In any case, even virtual organizations (including Kabissa!) are run by real people who should be reachable someplace, and the best and most accountable organizations have official contact details beyond the Internet. 

We prefer that you add your organization to the Kabissa directory and then use the Kabissa blog and groups to share your blog, projects or conference websites. Sometimes, however, we are willing to make an exception to this rule for entities that are operated as a quasi-independent "brand" from the main organization or for entities that are run by individuals without formal organizations. If you really want to have a separate profile for your project go ahead and add it and the membership manager will get back to you if it is not eligible. You have questions about this, feel free to check with the membership manager first at community@kabissa.org. 

Each organization in the Kabissa directory provides its own shortname, which is used to create the web address to directly reach your organization profile page. For this reason each shortname must be unique. If your preferred shortname (e.g. your acronym, organization name or username you use already on other sites) is already taken by someone else, please choose another one. Get in touch with us if you have any questions about shortnames. 

To report an organization in the directory for any reason, please go to the organization's profile page and click on the Report an issue with this page link in the footer. Please describe the problem you have (inaccurate information, bad experience with organization, organization no longer exists etc) in as much detail as possible and we will review it. 

If your organization is no longer active or you no longer need your Kabissa organization profile, you can take it offline by logging in and clicking the Hide Profile link on your My Organizations page. Please contact the membership manager to have your organization completely deleted from the Kabissa organization database. 

You can turn off the contact form on your personal profile on Kabissa by editing your account settings. To get there, you must log in, click on your picture, click on Account Settings, scroll down to look for the personal contact form settings. If you are having trouble logging in, want to report spam or abuse of Kabissa, or need any additional guidance, don't hesitate to contact our membership manager at community@kabissa.org. 

You can delete your user account anytime by clicking the DELETE button at the bottom of the Account Settings page. Note that deleting your account does not delete your content. Any content you have created to date will be credited to anonymous.

Kabissa is a niche network serving African civil society. Posts to our blog appear at http://www.kabissa.org/blog where they are attributed to their authors. A selection of featured posts are promoted to the frontpage at http://www.kabissa.org which then propagates to Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/kabissa), Twitter (@kabissa), LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/company/kabissa) and other social networks. The best posts are selected for inclusion in Kabissa newsletters which over 4000 people subscribe to for free.  

You may be eligible to blog on Kabissa if you are working in African civil society or want to write about topics relevant to Africa. Once you have registered your account on Kabissa and logged in, there are two ways to request blogging privileges: 1) add your organization working in Africa to the Kabissa directory, or 2) submit the Request Blogger Privileges form. 

Yes! You can subscribe to receive Kabissa Gong Gong, our monthly member newsletter featuring the best blog posts. If you want to get more timely news, you can also use your news reader to subscribe to our frontpage (for featured posts selected by member content editors) or specific authors or categories - look for the RSS links on those pages. 

Certainly. As long as your post is relevant to African civil society and you have the authority or permission to post the text on Kabissa, you are very welcome to crosspost to the Kabissa blog. 

Yes! We encourage crossposting from the Kabissa blog. All Kabissa content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Please contact the content team with any complaints about specific blog posts via the Report an Issue with this page link at the bottom of every page. Be sure to mention the specific URL (web address) of the post in question and explain in detail your complaint.  

We are very responsive to requests to remove any content that is in violation of our Terms of Use. Please send an email to editors@kabissa.org with a link to the content and your request that it be removed. 

Kabissa Groups are private, members-only spaces that enable discussion, information sharing and networking via email (like Yahoo! Groups or a listserv) to enable quick interaction and mutual support between group members - directly in our email. Each group has a private online space containing member list, full record of email discussions and wiki pages.

Check out the Kabissa groups directory at http://www.kabissa.org/og/all where you can join groups by clicking the link to "join" (for open groups anyone can join without approval) or "request membership" (for groups that require approval to join).

You can manage your subscriptions to all Kabissa groups in one place by logging into Kabissa and clicking on "Manage Group Subscriptions" (http://www.kabissa.org/og_mailinglist/subscriptions) from the dashboard menu. Note also the links at the bottom of all group messages that you can use to manage group subscriptions or turn off email delivery for a specific discussion thread if it gets too busy. 

Yes. Groups are private. This means that emails you send to a group and content you add via the website are not visible to people outside your group and will not show up in google searches. However, keep in mind that your emails and content will be distributed to other group members and it is possible for them to redistribute it as well as see and collect your email address.

File attachments are not fully supported in Kabissa groups. If you send an email to a Kabissa group with a file attachment, the email and attachment are distributed by email but are not posted to the archive on the website. Likewise, if you reply to a new discussion by email with a file attached it will not be posted to the website. For a full list of known issues with groups and the site generally, see http://www.kabissa.org/beta/issues

Please contact the Kabissa membership manager at community@kabissa.org with complaints about a specific group post. Thanks!  

Yes. If you have an approved organization in the Kabissa directory you are automatically eligible to create and run your own groups on Kabissa. Even without an organization, you can propose a group you would like to run on Kabissa that is relevant to African civil society. Please contact support@kabissa.org to request a group.

Please contact support@kabissa.org if you would like to export your group content. 

Please contact support@kabissa.org if you would like to import or export your group subscriber list. 

You can delete your group by editing it and clicking on the DELETE GROUP button at the bottom of the page. Keep in mind that this is not reversible and you will lose your content and group subscriber list. 

The Kabissa volunteering coordinator maintains a list of available positions at http://www.kabissa.org/about/volunteering 

You can still apply by filling in the application form at http://www.kabissa.org/about/volunteering. The volunteer coordinator will analyse your background and skills and might find a position for you in the volunteers team. 

You can still fill in the online form now so that we have your details on record and can keep in contact with you. Or you can hold off applying until you are ready to volunteer. 

Volunteers commit to positions for periods of either three or six months.

At quarterly evaluation meetings with the volunteering coordinator, the volunteer evaluates his/her performance and satisfaction in the position. Together they decide whether whether to continue on for another period and for how long.

We are gratified that many volunteers that are a good fit for the team choose to stay on for a year or even longer, either in the same position (which helps to provide continuity) or shifting periodically to new positions in order to gain experience with more aspects of operating Kabissa while helping to onboard and mentor new volunteers entering positions they have left.

It will depend on which role you are interested in. However, you will need to be open-minded, non-judgmental, be able to listen, learn, and work in a team. In most other roles, volunteers will usually need some form of prior experience. 

We are flexible regarding hours as many people have other commitments outside of their voluntary work. Most of our volunteer roles require a few hours a week. There is a minimum of 10 hours/week. You should discuss with the volunteer coordinator, the time you have available, your interests, and skills, and how they fit with Kabissa. 

Volunteers may leave the project or take some time out at any point if they feel unable to commit their time (e.g. for health reasons, study or paid employment). Where possible, we ask you to let us know with as much advance warning as possible if you are going to leave the project or need some time out.