Our friends at NetSquared.org understand as well as anyone the tremendous potential the Web holds for non-profits and NGO’s working for social change. They help these groups build strategic capacity, knowledge and skills through online tools, greatly enhancing their effectiveness and impact.

And voting has begun for NetSquared.org’s Mashup Challenge to decide which projects will go on to the 3rd Annual NetSquared Conference (N2Y3), which is to take place May 27 – 28 in San Jose, Calif. You may remember that our grantee MapLight.org was a winner last year.

The community will select the 20 mashups that will go to the conference on March 24. At the conference, NetSquared will ask the 20 selected project teams to present their mashups and attendees will vote to select the top three. They will receive a share of $100,000 in prize money.

Here’s the link to this year’s candidate projects. And since the folks at NetSquared encourage each of us to share our slate of selected projects, here are five I know I am voting for (all Sunlight Foundation grantees):

 

MAPLight.org: Mapping Money and Politics

OpenCongess.Org: Track Congress With Social Data

Ask Your Lawmaker: Connecting Local Communities To Their Lawmakers

Following Political Contributor Influence

MetaVid: Community Video Archive Project

Congratulations to NetSquared…And good luck to the projects!