Daleel Madani - Civil Society Portal
On 7 November 2011, Lebanon Support, an independent non-governmental, non-religious, non-political and non-profit making Information Centre on Emergency, Recovery, and Development, launches the alpha release of the second version of Lebanon’s most accessed portal on civil society work in Lebanon, with a million and a half pageviews per year.
The new version, under the name of “daleel-madani.org”, contains information on 1300 (and counting) national and international organisations (including, NGOs, INGOs, IOs, Governmental Agencies, etc.), including detailed information on more than 900 emergency, recovery, and development projects implemented in Lebanon since 2007.
The online library of “daleel-madani.org” currently contains 700 categorised resources, expected to become 1400 resources by early next year. They range from minutes of meetings, to maps, to field reports and national studies.
“daleel-madani.org” will keep many other services, such as the Job Vacancies section, one of the most trusted sources for job vacancies in the humanitarian and development sector in Lebanon providing authenticated information on 700 jobs per year.
The new portal will have a much more user-friendly interface, and will allow registered organizations to easily publish content, from job vacancies, news, events, projects, calls for proposals and tenders etc., in addition it will allow a wider audience to be able to access and retrieve information.
Civil society profiles will be organised based on their geographical presence and fields of work as well as mandate and type, this will allow much better networking between organizations, and faster and more efficient searching and filtering.
What will happen to my organisation’s profile and content after the move?
All organisation’s profiles and data will be migrated to the new system, and no data that you have on your old account will be lost. Lebanon Support has made sure that the integrity is safely kept.
How will my organization be able to access its profile on the new portal?
To guarantee proper authentication of access details (username and password and related email), individual organizations have to request a new username and password on the new portal. An easily accessible and usable form will be available on the new website for organizations requesting access to their profiles. Once done each organization will be able to set its own password and to change it at any given time, or to retrieve it automatically through the site in case it was forgotten, this will allow better privacy for members organizations in managing their account.
What will the new portal services be?
- Posting Job Vacancies: The new portal provides a much more enhanced, and concise application form, allowing ease of use and categorization, which will limit spam mail and ensure better applicant standards.
- Posting News, Press Releases and Events: The new portal allows member organizations to post news about their work and projects, as well as to publicize their events, workshops and conferences, in addition of publishing their press-releases.
- Publishing resources: a new service allowing member organizations to publish their electronic resources instantly online, you can publish your newsletters, studies, guides, leaflets, maps or any other knowledge product. Publishing your resources on daleel-madani.org is a great away to guarantee a wider outreach and visibility for your products with an audience exceeding 25,000 visitors per month. Moreover your resources will be listed periodically in the bulletins sent out by daleel-madani.org to its registered members allowing you to reach more than 1300 organizations, hundreds of professionals and civil society workers as well as the general public.
- Post your projects online: posting your organization’s projects online is a great way to ensure visibility of your work and to let other organizations know of what you are doing, which minimises duplication and allows better networking between organizations, also it is a good way to let donors know of your activities.
- Posting calls for proposals and request for tenders: another new service allowing members to post their request for tenders and call for proposals, which will be available in a separate section on the website, allowing better visibility. With daleel-madani.org you can guarantee that your call for proposal has reached a wide variety of civil society organizations, thus allowing better and increased participation in your calls and requests.
- Create your own custom online polls: online opinion polls are great way for civil society organizations to receive public feedback on specific topics and themes. It might be regarding a proposal for a new reform, or feedback on a current project or to see what people think about your projects, campaigns etc…
- Upload your logo to your account’s profile: in a world dominated by visual impressions, an organization’s logo becomes an essential part of the organization’s identity and mission, the new site now allows you to publish your logo in your profile, and it will be listed in the content you publish on daleel-madani.org, this allows visitors to easily identify your organization, and provides better visibility of your actions on the portal.
- Create online surveys: If you are planning to conduct a rapid or a thorough online assessment, now you can do that through daleel-madani.org, no need to contact third parties or to hire a developer, Lebanon Support through the daleel-madani.org platform provides you with this service and can customize the structure, look and feel of your survey, whether it is a needs assessment or looking for a feedback on your projects, daleel-madani.org online survey platform is robust and can accommodate most your needs, and you can track your results online, export them in excel format or in individual pdf forms.
- Host your mailing lists on daleel-madani.org: you can now host your mailing list on daleel-madani.org, allowing the general public to subscribe to your mailing list from within your profile’s page on daleel-madani.org, with a user-friendly subscription form, it is a great way to connect with your audience, and reduces the hassle of managing contact addresses, and the system will also automatically filter duplicates and verifies email addresses and another great feature is that your mailing list address will have the following format: organization-name@daleel-madani.org (e.g. lebanonsupport@daleel-madani.org)
- Host and create your campaign blogs: another great new feature in daleel-madani.org is that it allows you to host your campaign’s blog on daleel-madani.org. Your blog can be customized to your liking as our blogs are easy to use, highly customizable, and are a great way to automatically let your audience know about your campaign updates. The Daleel Madani Blogs are a customised platform for advocacy and lobbying and allows you to organize your content per language, category or topic etc…
Sustainability and costs
The lebanon-support.org portal has been operating since 2009 mostly on volunteer basis, and Lebanon Support’s commitment to continue to provide an online platform for civil society work in Lebanon. The development, design, management and maintenance of the new release of the portal (daleel-madani.org) corresponds to a renewed commitment from Lebanon Support to continue providing a space for knowledge exchange and sharing, and also allowing more transparency on the work of various actors in development as well as enhancing accountability of projects and programs by the beneficiaries and the general public. Thus the design and architecture of daleel-madani.org has a dual purpose:
1) on one hand, it provides civil society in Lebanon with the means and ability to share, publish, and disseminate information and knowledge;
2) on the other hand it provides the general public with a public domain of information and a means of communication with civil society organizations.