Idealist.org
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| Formation | 1995 |
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Exec. Director
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Ami Dar |
| Website | http://www.idealist.org/about-us |
Action Without Borders (also known as Idealist) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1995 by Ami Dar and based in New York City and Portland, Oregon. Idealist is a global network of people and organizations working towards the goal of a world where all people can live free and dignified lives. This organization is about reaching out and connecting individuals with advantages to volunteer, work, and intern. This is a form of a social networking that helps bring opportunities towards individuals. Online and globally, Idealist.org connects over two million people each month with jobs, and volunteer and action opportunities posted by over 111,000 organizations around the world. The organization operates in English, Spanish and French, with offices in the United States and Argentina.
Founder Ami Dar was a "news junkie" by the age of 10–– and ever since he was obsessed with a sense that with all the resources we have now, as human beings, we should be able to do much more about all of the social and environmental problems in the world. The question was how, and that was not an easy one for a 10-year-old to figure out.
In 1985, after his mandatory army service in the Israeli Defense Forces, while Dar was traveling in South America, trying to decide what to do with his life, he got the idea to use modern technology (phones, PCs, and fax machines) to build a network that would make it easier for people everywhere to connect and act on any issue that concerned them, large or small, local or global. That was the initial flash of the conception of Idealist.org. Dar was 24 at the time.
In 1988, Dar returned to Israel. He worked as a waiter, a translator, and a marketing manager for a software company, Aladdin Knowledge Systems (AKS), based in Tel Aviv. Dar continued to think about his vision for a network of people connecting to do good.
In 1992, Dar relocated to NYC to establish the North American branch of AKS. Finally, in 1993, Dar saw the Web for the first time. Idealist flowed directly from that.
In 1994, during his tenure with AKS, Dar began the organization as the Contact Center Network, a community point located on the Upper West Side. Dar’s intention was to create a network of meeting spaces in different communities, where people could connect with neighbors who might share interests and ideas for local action.
To promote the Contact Center Network, Dar established a website (www.contact.org), a simple HTML website with 2,500 links to the websites of nonprofit organizations in 100 countries and all 50 US states. Contact.org quickly attracted a strong interest from individuals and organizations. In response to the online enthusiasm and the clear need for a web-based directory of nonprofit resources and opportunities, Dar repurposed the website to do just that. Dar set out to find every nonprofit organization on the Web and arrange the sites by topic and geographic location, thereby creating a ‘virtual’ Contact Network Center, which launched in the fall of 1995.
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