Monitoring individual animals through a collaborative crowdsourcing and citizen science platform

Online communities can have positive effects onsocial capital and ultimately on organisational performance. Theformer is of great importance to non-profit organisations in thethird sector, for which it is a key component of their success.This paper starts by defining a community. It then discusses theimportance and potential of virtual communities of practice forthe third sector and highlights prior social network analysis of theonline networks for a local conservation organisation. It is evidentthat groups emerge organically from existing social platformsand it is proposed that institutionalised platforms, with moreinteractive features, and that are aimed at a particular audience,could yield further online community activity and lead to furthersocial capital improvements. This paper provides a backgroundand rationale for a research project which aims to determine thevalue of online communities for enterprises, particularly in thethird sector.