Giving Compass' Take:

• Cindy McCain, Chairman of the Board for the McCain Institute for International Leadership, discusses how technology and digital communication impacts various civil society and social issues and how acts of civility can improve the world.

• How can funders encourage acts of civility? What are the opportunities for donors to support more social good technology? 

• Here are five ways to invest in nonprofit tech for good.


United Nations Foundation's President and Chief Executive Officer Kathy Calvin, in conversation with Cindy McCain, Chairman of the Board for the McCain Institute for International Leadership at the 10th Annual Social Good Summit.

Kathy Calvin: Cindy is a world-class philanthropist, humanitarian, and hero, or maybe shero, and especially in the fight against human trafficking.

So we want to talk about how technology and digital communications can make the world a better place, but it's also creating some acts of incivility. And you've thought a lot about how social media is affecting us today and how we could take some steps against it with your new Acts of Civility Campaign.

Cindy McCain: Well my husband and I both worked together on some issues and of course he had his own issues and both of us shared a great deal about things we saw as the years passed. The incivility became not just huge but almost insurmountable, in my opinion, in many ways. And it bothered both of us and we not only talked about it but we tried to figure it out,  and I just simply said to him, 'You're already doing it.' He worked across the aisle, he would listen to anybody, he was part of a discussion...

Anyway, it was something I thought that after his passing, I thought it was extremely important because you're seeing what I'm seeing and that is the internet is toxic in many ways. So in my small way, I wanted to create something and maybe start a movement on simply on just being civil to each other;  acts of civility.

Calvin: And you're asking people not to sign up or be on a website; just do it.

McCain: My call to action was and is..in your neighborhoods, and in your lives, in your work life, whatever it may be, perform an act of civility. Maybe that's talking to someone that you disagreed with or even argued with in the past, but listening is a large part of this.

Watch the full video about acts of civility from Mashable.