Just as you can never really tell if an online community will really take off, you also really don't know what form that success will take. And ChangeEverything.ca has proven that in spades.

First there was the out-of-the-blue thunderbolt of site moderator Kate Dugas' "Got Hats?" initiative.

Now comes the runaway success of community member EnviroWoman's blog about her resolution to live plastic-free in 2007.

Each post tells the story – often hilarious – of her attempts to find non-plastic alternatives to a product many of the rest of us take for granted. Her blog posts invariably foster lively comment threads that become little resource libraries, pointing to plastic-free options and information.

Beneath the self-deprecating humour, there's a serious determination to live up to the commitment she's made, and she now has hundreds of fellow community members pulling for her. (ChangeEverything.ca just signed up its thousandth member.)

But that's only the tip of the iceberg: EnviroWoman's saga has struck a chord across the blogging world. Treehugger, the 800-pound gorilla of sustainability blogs, picked up her story; across the Atlantic, her blog has become one of The Guardian's "sites we love".

It's another example of how passion, transparency (check out the deodorant thread) and practical relevance can combine with a distinctive, engaging voice to
yield real power. With a dawning awareness that we'll have to make profound changes in our lives – and that switching to compact fluorescents alone won't cut it – EnviroWoman is steering a deft middle course of change between the daunting and the incremental. And a growing number of people are hopping on for the ride.

Think "financial institution", and you likely think of pinstripes, vaults and armed guards. Oh, and a powerful, deep-seated aversion to change.

So it'll probably startle a lot of people to see the latest project from Vancity, Canada's largest credit union. ChangeEverything.ca is an online community targeted (but not limited) to residents of Vancouver, Victoria and B.C.'s Lower Mainland. We spent the past few months building it, and launched a few days ago.

Here's how it works: Once you register, you can begin listing changes you'd like to make: as personal as changing your hairstyle or getting your bike out of storage, or as broad a global transformation as you can imagine.

Then you start blogging about your progress toward making that change. But the real substance of the site happens when someone comes across your change and gets inspired; they can join it. Now both of you are blogging, discussing, and potentially collaborating on making the change happen. 

This is one of those cases where building the site is only half the battle; you have to work ceaselessly to foster a thriving online community. Fortunately, Vancity has hired a terrific moderator for ChangeEverything.ca, Kate Dugas. And we'll be working closely with Kate and Vancity in the months to come to ensure the site's underlying functions and design give the community it needs to take root, grow and, yes, change.

The feedback we're receiving, even in these early days, is wonderful. The blog OpenSourceCU (home, by the way, of the best list of credit union blogs you'll find anywhere) calls ChangeEverything.ca "the best example of any financial institution successfully using the social web (blogging, user-generated content, building a true online community). Wells Fargo should be taking notes along with every credit union with a culture open enough to participate in social media with their members."

We're also getting some constructive suggestions from folks like Darren Barefoot, Vancouver's leading blogger and the one-half of the tech PR duo Capulet Communications.

In a blog post where he compliments the design (thanks!) and advises some changes to make the information architecture easier to understand, he says, "Also credit Vancity for a taking a big risk on this project, which really has nothing to do with them besides their brand in the banner." Agreed.

We'd love to see you at ChangeEverything.ca. As OpenSourceCU says, "You must visit the site and see for yourself.It’s exactly how the brand of a 'credit union' is supposed to be represented. Efforts like this can change the entire industry/movement/whatever-you-care-to-call-it."