A place to capture and share ideas, experiment with and exchange links and resources about the adoption challenges, strategy, and ROI of nonprofits and social media.
To celebrate, ChildFund International is giving gifts of
agricultural love and hope from the organization’s gift catalog for
every 200 Twitter followers @childfund
receives. These efforts will directly benefit children in Gambia,
Zambia, Kenya and Ethiopia. There is no cap on on followers, and the
offer will continue through July 27.
Each country has different needs so the gifts vary:
Chickens for a school in the Gambia
A goat for a family farm in Zambia
Mango trees in Kenya
Vegetable seeds in Ethiopia
As part of the effort, ChildFund International is sending Flip
cameras to program directorate offices in each of the four countries to
report back. They will share the recipients’ stories and photos with
the social web. ChildFund wants to show folks how their efforts and
these items benefit children and their communities. It is also a
commitment not to simply promote, but to continue an accountable dialog
with the social web.
So tell your friends. By simply following @childfund we can all make a difference in a child’s life.
ChildFund enlisted our help with this effort. It’s an honor to
work with them to help bring their new brand to life on the social web,
and work to directly benefit children in these four countries. The
organization has served children since 1938 and helps 15.2 million
children and family members in 31 countries.
Dubbed a “local blogging guru” by the Washington Post, Geoff’s award-winning book “Now is Gone” was released in 2007 and has been cited by the Wall Street Journal as a valuable resource for social media.
Paul Buchheit is the created of Gmail and Adsense and has set up collaborative process to get advice on how he should donate "a bunch of money." He isn't relying on the traditional approach of asking an expert, but wants to crowdsource suggestions through social networks. As he writes on his blog:
One of the great things about the Internet (other than the obvious) is
that it enables people to collaborate in new ways, and each contribute
little bits of their time and knowledge. Wikipedia is probably the best
example of this, but I think it's possible to do much more. I'm not
quite sure how to make this work, but I expect that in 10 years we will
have much smarter "collective" systems that leverage small bits of
time, knowledge, etc from large groups.
This is my first
experiment in solving this problem. Actually, in some ways it's my
second experiment -- a few months ago I posed a question about the "best use of money",
and although it was only meant as a thought experiment, people also
provided a lot of specific suggestions. That was rather encouraging.
Here's how it works:
The money MUST go to an IRS recognized public charity. No exceptions.
Don't contact me. I already don't read the email I have -- I don't need more.
I'd
like to see broad support (from real people, not spam accounts) along
with some evidence that it's a good idea, and perhaps endorsements from
knowledgeable people.
I've suggested my favorite charity, the Sharing Foundation because of their work with Cambodian children. So, I added an entry on Google Moderator - so if you think it is a worthy cause - please do vote! Or perhaps you want to suggest your organization or favorite charity and "win a bunch of money."
It will be interesting to see how this experiment works. Is this a peek into the future of major donors?
I dig speaking at nonprofit conferences and events, and one of my favorite topics to cover is the real-time use of social media. It's the perfect mix of emerging technologies, social media, communities, and the web - some of my favorite things.
The conversations inevitably get stymied around Twitter - which is no surprise, as every nonprofit is trying to figure out what the tool means for them. A channel for promoting your mission? A monitor for listening to chatter about your cause? A way to connect your org to your community? It's all of those things, but it's also something else: a real-time fundraising tool!
Tara Hunt calls it Whuffie. Chris Brogan calls it the Trust Economy. I call it the Deep Network. Real-time fundraising works because of social capital...because we tend to trust the people in our network. When an org sends an email, the open rate can be low - but when a person sends an email to friends, the open rate is 90%! This is because of trust, and works the same way with Twitter or any other people-based network. When we build up large, diverse networks consisting of supporters, friends, and peers, we are creating a bank of trust to draw upon when needed. When it comes time to ask your network for something, they will not need the time to interpret your motivation - because they know you and your org. And some will be ready to act...right then!
So use Twitter for listening, communicating, and promoting, but don't overlook the platform as a vehicle for real-time action. Build your network around mutual trust, a sense of community, and personal attention. If you've taken the time to cultivate a trusting, loyal, and engaged following, you should be able to turn that social capital into financial capital - and in a hurry if need be. After all, when you're among friends, it's never hard to ask!
Chad is an internet marketing, social web geeking, podcasting, skateboarding, family-oriented web guy running a green nonprofit at www.GoGreenCharleston.org/
Submitted by Rebecca Leaman, publisher of Get your sanity back, Wild Apricot's non-profit technology blog
Great new presentations on social media are coming out almost daily, now that we're deep into conference season, and many are directed specifically to the needs of non-profits. If you've been thinking of launching or expanding your organization in social media, Slideshare is a good starting point for information and advice. But it can be time-consuming to pick through a wide range of slideshows to find those that are up-to-date, actionable, and appropriate to nonprofits.
Here's a hand-picked selection of presentations to get you started.
Some of these have become popuar standards, while others are new material that you may not have seen before. In fact, a few of these presentations were just made available in the past few days! And, as always, if you have a favorite social media presentation to recommend to other nonprofits, please tell us about it in the comments.
Social Media for Non-Profits: Overview What is social media, why should a non-profit care, and who has the time for it anyway? Beth Dunn’s presentation covers the basics, complete with case studies, and suggests Quick start and Advanced Quick Start tactics to launch your nonprofit into social media.
Social Media for Non Profits and Special Causes John Sheridan’s presentation at at Pod Camp Halifax 2009 gives an overview of social media and social networking, with plenty of non-profit examples.
Social Media for Non Profits Primal Media’s sideshow is loaded with information on trends, recent statistics, and examples of social media used by nonprofits.
Nonprofit Soc Media Overview Maren Hogan says “These are the things that I would do”: here’s a step-by-step overview of the basic tools and tactics of social media, starting with a website and blog.
Return on Investment (ROI)
Social Network Fundraising is a presentation by Justin Perkins, Director of Nonprofit Services at Care2.com, featuring research on Social Network Fundraising and use of new media for nonprofit marketing — and an excellent analysis of the ROI for nonprofit social networking campaigns.
Using Social Media to Increase Website Traffic A look at the return on investment (ROI) for using Digg.com and StumbleUpon.com to increase visitors to your website, using the National Wildlife Federation as a case study.
Tip: Whenever you view a slideshow at SlideShare, do scroll down below the presentation area to check for helpful notes on the slides and/or interesting information in the comments thread. And remember — SlideShare is a social networking site, itself, so take a few minutes to explore its features and consider signing up to connect, share, comment, or just to build a library of your own favorite presentations!
Can you add to this list of resources?
Does your nonprofit have a social media how-to or a case study presentation to share? Please tell us about it and leave a link in the comments.
Hundreds if not thousands of online tools are available to help nonprofit organizations with online communication. But with the plethora of tools available, it can be daunting to keep up with what tools can help your nonprofit organization build a stronger web presence, become more efficient and to know just which tools are easy to start using immediately.
David J. Neff, Director of Web, Film and Interactive Strategy at the American Cancer Society High Plains Division, sat down with me for our Connection Newsletter this month and shared his top 5 recommendations for online tools for nonprofits in 2009. Amid his top picks, David harped on a few tools and sites in particular
David's top picks include:
Social Networks
Video
File Sharing
Email
User Experience
Have any personal favorites in the way of online tools for your nonprofit? What tools do you think will be the best and easiest for nonprofits to use in 2009?
Jordan Viator is the Interactive Communications Manager at Convio, and manages the Connection Cafe blog, all things new and social media related and all the company's corporate Web sites.
There's a lot happening this week in the nonprofit and social media space, particularly related to encouraging generosity, giving, and volunteering using social media tools. So much so, that I'm taking a brief break from packing up boxes for our move across the country next week. Of note, I wanted to let you know that the reflection paper about America's Giving Challenge from the Case Foundation has been published (Allison Fine and I were the co-authors.)
I attended Craigslist Nonprofit Bootcamp on Saturday. The plenary sessions were a gift and were focused on answering the question how we can inspire with these tools. The speakers included an amazing morning key note by Arianna Huffington, luncheon talk by Facebook's Randi Zuckerberg, and an all-star closing discussion panel. (I live tweeted and blogged the event)
One of the best quotes of the day came from Arianna Huffington who said, "To be generous, practice generosity." She shared some powerful stories from the heart, and also mentioned that we shouldn't think we're too small to make a difference. "If you've ever been in bed with mosquito, you know that isn't true." She also announced that the Huffington Post has a new living section which feature the stories of people volunteering, raising money for causes they care about, and other inspirational stories.
I attended a session on Future Tech with Peter Deitz, David Greenberg, Ramya Raghavan, and Marnie Webb. My notes are here. My take away was from something that Marnie Webb said, "The new tools allow people to self-organize, something that nonprofits have been great at doing. Nonprofits can no longer ignore these tools or they risk becoming irrelevant."
There was also a session announcing the "All for Good," an application that makes it easy for people to give back to their communities through volunteering. The site streams volunteer opportunity content from sources like the Idealist, VolunteerMatch, and others. It also has widgets. It's more than that - it as an API. (It looks very similar conceptually to the pioneering work from Social Actions.)
At the ending "All Star" panel, there was a moderated conversation with 7 luminaries, including Ami Dar and Steve Wright. Some key themes were focus on relationships and how to encourage other people to volunteer or give way to their communities. I was surprised that they didn't involve the audience in the conversation, by not doing this Oprah style or simply reading and responding to some of the tweets. Nonelethess, it was an inspiring session to hear what the experts had to say.
Craig Newmark answered the question "How do we encourage more to give something back to their communities or volunteer using the new web tools?" He jokingly said something like (and I'm paraphrasing) that asking a nerd like him to talk about how these tools can help do more good is like a crime against humanity. I think he was saying that he sees so many possibilities and so much potential and is so passionate about just that that he could talk about it for hours. What he did say that was very important - to encourage generosity we must all become nudges" - that we tell the stories of generous acts by people doing something everyday.
Stories come out experimenting, helping people find their voices or the confidence or the desire to take an action, volunteer their time, or raise money for a cause they care about. When the Case Foundation team launched their Giving Challenge
to test out some ways to encourage more people to use social media tools and online fundraising to give online, they did not know what would emerge. The experiment called the Giving Challenge was:
A 50 day event from December 2007 through January 2008.
The Case Foundation provided awards to participants who raised the
largest number of friends, not money, every day and in total by the end
of the Challenge.
The Challenge raised $1.8 million from more than 71,000 donors, benefiting thousands of causes.
Individuals were encouraged to participate as champions for their
causes as well as organizations (and they did so in large numbers)
What Allison and I discovered is that the winners all came from nonprofits that all-volunteer run or had budgets of less of $1 million. As one of the winners, the Sharing Foundation, I have shared my lessons learned and techniques very widely and inspired others to not only raise money for my charity - but also try it for their particular Causes. As part of the reflection paper, Allison and I interviewed scores of participants to learn what worked and why.
Here's some of what we learned which I'm quoting from the report via Allison's blog:
The structure of the Challenge lent itself to leveling the playing
field and enabling smaller groups to be successful. Those key elements
included the use of Causes on Facebook that enables smaller groups to
connect friend-to-friend at no cost, the short time frame that enabled
smaller groups to hang in there and give it all they had for a limited
albeit exhausting, period of time, the urgency of the Challenge created
by the significant matching dollars offered by The Case Foundation,
and the leader board that enabled everyone to see how they were doing
and spur their volunteers to do more to keep up with the competition.
The winners were able to make their efforts go viral, meaning
friends of friends were working on their behalf to support their
Challenge efforts, because they had talented individuals who spent an
enormous amount of time as network weavers and cheerleaders-in-chief.
The winners had an inner circle of volunteers who outworked less
successful groups not by a few but by hundreds of hours.
Winners pushed power to the edges through their social networks and
were agile, real-time learners. Winners didn’t have set plans when they
started, they just started. Friends of friends blogged on their behalf,
sent text messages, walked dorm room to dorm room laptop in hand
raising friends, asked their office colleagues for help. There was no
one right way to win the Challenge and all of the winners had a robust
mix of online and on land efforts and learned in real time throughout
the Challenge how best to connect with their friends and potential
supporters.
Personal connections were critical in activating the viral effect
of successful cause efforts – by large margins (between 61-74%), cause
champions reported reaching out for donations and outreach assistance
to people they knew personally, including known supporters, family,
friends and colleagues first to spread the word and encourage
participation in the Challenge.
Most winners reported that the friends that they raised during the
Challenge were new donors to their organizations. The urgency of the
effort enabled groups to turn friends into funders. This is a
critically important finding not only for the Challenge but for groups
using Causes on Facebook.
The America's Giving Challenge ended on January 31, 2008 and the idea of using social media and social networking tools has taken off. We're seeing more organizations and individuals use these tools and more organizations set up giving competitions and events that encourage the use of these tools for good causes. Take for example, the Summer of Social Good initiative recently launched by Mashable.
I hope you’ll have a chance to read the report. I’d appreciate your reactions and ideas as would The Case Foundation as they prepare for the next Giving Challenge later this year.
Since March, I've been commuting between Boston and San Francisco. One of the best things about the commute is Virgin America airlines in flight experience. The food is decent, the is leg room in economy, it's clean, and there is wifi. But the wifi isn't the best part, everytime I fly I end up meeting folks who work in social media.
Last night, there was a couple setting next to me who once airborne, opened their laptops and started talking. I kept on hearing phrases like "facebook," "social return on investment," "gift economy," and "social change." I could not resist striking up a conversation with them, especially since we had so much rough turbulence that it helped distract me.
It turned out that I was sitting next to Eve Penny Cowan who is the founder of Future Leaders Institute that guides and mentors youth to employ social entrepreneurship to solve the world’s most pressing needs and Dan Jacobs who is the founder of EveryWun is a platform where individuals can leverage business donations to causes. It's an interesting idea - built on the ladder of engagement and the concept of a gift economy.
Behind me was Nicholas Reville, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Miro, a HD open source video player. It sports a gorgeous interface, built-in content, and the site also has an incredible how-to resource for creating Internet.TV.
I'll certainly be exploring these tools and programs in more depth.
What other airline (and route) offers a great flying experience and offline networking opportunities!
I was supposed to be leading a workshop at the Cause Marketing Forum on Social Media and Cause Marketing at the end of the month. I was looking forward to it because Michael Hoffman at C3 was a sponsor and participating. Unfortunately, I had to cancel and asked Scott Henderson if he'd do on my behalf.
I decided to do an interview with Scott to learn more about what he is learning about Social Media and Cause-Related Marketing. The title of this blog post comes from a post that Scott wrote the other day that I couldn't resist stealing.
(1) Who are you?
I am a cause marketing director for MediaSauce, helping non-profits and corporations use online media to pull off their next big thing.
(2) Can you tell me about the "Pledge to End Hunger" that you recently launched to benefit Share Our Strength?
Goals The main goals were to raise awareness of childhood hunger in America, give people the tools to take meaningful action to help end this solvable problem, and create a case study from which non-profits and corporations could learn how to better use social media in their cause marketing.
Audience Our primary audience was more of a profile than a group. We were seeking to find individuals who cared about the cause and would be willing to rally their respective communities (social media and in-person) to take action. Working from that profile we identified four categories: 1) Active Twitterati and bloggers from different niches 2) SXSWi attendees & ambient attendees (those following from home) 3) Individuals in the email databases of the corporations & non-profits leading the campaign, and 4) Wild cards - people separated from us by 2-3 relationship degrees who fit the profile
Strategy - We chose to center the campaign around the 2009 South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSWi '09). It's an environment that attracts some of the most connected people in a wide variety of industries, creating a unique opportunity for ideas to take root in wider audiences. (Twitter found that out in 2007.) We knew there would be much anticipation and conversation about SXSW in the weeks leading up to it and believed a cause initiative could generate momentum from it.
We started by assembling a team of individuals and companies to serve as our leadership team. We wanted this campaign to focus on the issue of childhood hunger in America and the fact that many different organizations and people were coming together to take up the cause locally and nationally.
The online strategy called for a standalone website to serve as the campaign's main hub and social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to help create traffic. To help us launch the campaign, we enlisted the help of two respected social media industry professionals to co-chair the campaign and organized about 50 individuals from a cross section of industries and niches that were actively engaged on Twitter and blogging to serve as champions. We also utilized limited email sends from Kimball Office, MediaSauce, Kompolt, Capital Area Food Bank, and Share Our Strength to their respective databases.
Our plan was to drive traffic to the website and provide a clear, easy path of action for those who visited and felt compelled to help. We made it so it didn't cost money for person to be a philanthropist. An individual "contributed" 35 lbs of Tyson food just by signing an online pledge to take a meaningful action to help end childhood hunger in America. If 1,000 people signed the Pledge, Tyson committed to deliver a semi-truck of food to the Capital Area Food Bank during SXSWi.
People signing the Pledge had three options to act - give, volunteer, and/or share the message - and the website provided ways to fulfill each action right then and there. It had a link to the Share Our Strength online giving form, another to a zip code search tool to find local food agencies to volunteer, and multiple tools for sharing the message - including a widget that showed the current tally of the Pledge to End Hunger. We placed the emphasis on asking people to share our message, since that would invariably lead to more people to see our message, thus increasing the number of people donating and volunteering.
Knowing this campaign could get serious traction and blow past its initial goal, we planned for a Phase II. With Tyson Foods willing to donate up to three more trucks, we decided to direct those trucks to the states which generated the highest number of people to sign the pledge. To help fuel this state-vs.-state competition, we built the map on the website to show the number of pledges from each state and altered the message the pledge tally counter to include the top five states in order of their real-time tallies.
Metrics for Success - Primary: # of people signing the pledge. Secondary: $ raised for Share Our Strength. Leading indicators: Unique site visitors, Tr.im url click-thrus, Facebook cause members, YouTube videos viewed, #HungerPledge usage, and SXSWi podium mentions.
Results - With the help of the HungerPledge Champions and email sends, we launched the campaign on Thursday, March 5, which turned to be our single largest day of traffic. In the first 28 hours, we reached 1,000 people signing the pledge. By the final deadline of March 20, we had about 4,600 people sign the pledge. In total, we raised $28,000 from 714 people for Share Our Strength - with around 95% of them being first-time donors. Over 19,000 visitors came to the website over the first 21 days and we welcomed 2,600 people to our Facebook Cause group.
The story that we think best characterizes the campaign is the one about Michele Helsel. Michele took it upon herself to spearhead Missouri's second-place finish. She devoted her energies to the campaign for two reasons: her company (Kimball Office) was one of the sponsors and, more importantly, her parents are long-time volunteers at a food pantry in St. Charles, Missouri. When we announced that the extra trucks would go to the states with the highest pledge totals, she set the goal of placing in the top three and getting a truck for her state.
For two weeks, she leveraged every single phone number and email she had to get the word out. Interestingly, she didn't use Twitter, Facebook, or other social media. Just old fashioned phone calls and emails. She reached to her church, her family's Elks Lodge, her husband's Harley Davidson club, her parents' contacts, the local food pantry, and all her customers and distributors (she's the St. Louis sales manager for Kimball Office). With one week left in the pledge tally deadline, Missouri was barely in the top ten. By the end, the Show Me State was comfortably in second with 509 people signing the pledge. And it was all because one person realized they could help the community and had all the tools at her disposal to rally her community.
3. The principles of success? Keys to success?
The most critical key to successful cause marketing is that the cause must come before the marketing. Too often, we see corporations (and even non-profits) put their brands and products/services before or side-by-side with the cause. People are constantly searching for authenticity and will shun those they think are being opportunistic. If you don't give the spotlight to the cause or give little emphasis to solving the problem, they'll discount your campaign right away. It's very similar to life - we tend to admire those people who do good in humble ways.
In terms of online and social media, the main principles are: 1. tell a clear, compelling story, 2. give people clear, simple action steps, 3. make it easy for people to share your story/join your cause, 4. show real-time results to give immediate gratification, 5. be prepared to converse and respond to people with little delay, and 6. realize not everyone is going to care.
If you plan to conduct a campaign (which I hope you do), be sure to devote resources and energy to illustrate the impact your campaign makes. Too many organizations conduct drive-thru philanthropy and don't spend the resources on showing the results of what was achieved. We're still posting content on www.pledgetoendhunger.com about the four food banks receiving the trucks.
4. What would you do next time?
From a website design perspective, we would have made a non-flash mobile version of the website. Using flash for the pledge form hindered us with anyone who came to the website on their iPhone (no flash player).
In terms of the overall campaign, we would have placed a greater emphasis on sending a series of emails to existing databases, especially to those who signed the pledge. These databases represent people who already have an existing relationship with an organization and will be more likely to help than a brand, new person. In addition to using our email databases more, we would have put a greater effort on assembling a coalition of local hunger relief agencies. Those organizations who joined the campaign midstream did deliver results and were the ones who stood the most to gain.
From a social media perspective, we would have used Facebook differently. The decision to create a Facebook Cause group was almost an afterthought for us, since we were more focused on Twitter. Simple arithmetic can show that Facebook has a significantly larger audience potential. Even barely cultivating the Facebook Cause, the membership grew pretty much organically to the 2,600 person total. While some have questioned the value of Facebook Cause, we think it has great value in creating awareness thru peoples' existing relationship networks. Since we didn't have the donation button activated, we can't comment on how many direct contributions came from that group.
5. How is social media changing the nonprofit world? Cause-marketing?
Both are being impacted just like everything else. Social media make it very easy for the 1 billion who own personal computers and 3.3 billion who own cell phone to connect, communicate, and collaborate in ways not possible before. People now have greater expectations of intimacy and immediacy with other people and organizations. Further, they realize that change can happen with a much faster velocity and are no longer satisfied with incremental change. At the same time, organizations have to compete harder to gain people's attention, which is being splintered by the seemingly infinite number of screens saturating us with media.
Non-profits for the most part have been accustomed to relying on their magazines and direct appeals to be their main connections to their supporters. They've mostly been able to set the schedule for communications and have often defaulted to the annual solicitation as their lifeline. Now that we're no longer bound by broadcast messaging, non-profits are scrambling to shift their personnel and financial resources to more two-way communications. It's no longer enough to have a static website, e-newsletters, and email solicitations. The most prevalent trend for non-profits is that they want to stop experimenting and get a sustainable strategy for integrating online media into their entire communications and fundraising operations.
In terms of cause-marketing, social media make it much easier launch these initiatives. We expect to see even more cause-marketing plays using social media - for better or for worse. It makes sense, since corporations are experiencing the same higher expectations for intimacy and immediacy. Consumers want to know that the businesses they patronize are doing something for the greater community, not just for themselves.
Because we'll see a greater number of cause-marketing initiatives, we can also expect a greater number of failures. We'll also see a greater number of successes. People's expectations for the quality and originality of these campaigns will grow. It won't be enough for companies & non-profits to launch these campaigns using strategies and tactics already used. We will also see a higher bar set for the results that need to be achieved. It won't be enough to raise dollars and generate traffic for surface issues. People will expect to see these campaigns solve the root problems and change the social dynamics causing the problem in the first place.
I am excited about what the coming months and years will bring. I think we're in the early stages of a complete reorganization of how we work together to solve social problems. Self-organized swarms of individuals will have equal footing with the non-profits and corporations. These self-organized swarms won't be satisfied to wait for non-profits and corporations to lead. They will take the initiative like they did with Twestival to rally around a cause and raise money and awareness with little involvement from the non-profit. They will also begin to create more media properties like www.pledgetoendhunger.com that promote the broader cause and bring various international, national, regional, and local non-profits and corporations together to create systemic change, not just local change. Savvy non-profits and corporations will realize this and adapt accordingly.
In December 2006, I launched my first experiment in using social media for fundraising - raising $800 on my blog to help send Leng Sopharath, a young Cambodian woman, to her freshman year at college. I have used social media to help raise the money for her tuition through the Sharing Foundation in 2007 and 2008.
My motivation was a simple act of reciprocity (not what you might read in some of these comments). Cambodia brought me my two beautiful children and I felt strongly that we should give back to the country in some way. That's why in 2006 when Leng Sopharath did not have a sponsor for college, I stepped forward. (She is also an orphan and lived in the same orphanage as my daughter)
The problem was I didn't have any idea of how I was going to make a donation of that size after exhausting all my offline networks. Why don't I blog about it and ask readers for help I thought? A group of 30 people chipped in and Leng Sopharath went off to college. I got into social media infused fundraising by accident as an act of reciprocity and human kindness!
I committed to supporting Leng Sopharath's education for four years as well as providing moral support through regular letters we exchange. I've been thinking about her senior year and how to cover that. I was delighted that Mark Grmes, from nedspace, who has been a repeat donor to my Cambodian campaigns made me an offer I could not refuse.
If he can rent out the 4 remaining offices (at $400 ea) and 60 hot desk spaces (at $175 ea) by 5PM PT Monday June 1, 2009 at his co-working space, NedSpace, he'll not only send Leng Sopharath to college, but to other Cambodians through the Sharing Foundation's college education program. Plus he will also donate $5000 to Epic Change.
NedSpace is a 7,500 square ft co-working space for startups, innovative tech companies, artists, nonprofits and social entrepreneurs located in the heart of downtown Portland, Oregon. NedSpace is located at 920 SW Third (between Taylor & Salmon) Portland, Oregon. You can request a NedSpace tour via Twitter @neddotcom or phone 503-502-0185
This is a modest request and who knows if it will work. You don't have to get out your credit card, vote for anything, or ask your friends to do anything. If you feel so inclined and if you know someone in Portland, Oregan who needs affordable co-working space, please share this information with them. You can help out a friend or colleague, help Nedspace reach its rental goals and help send a couple of Cambodians to college and school in Africa. What could be better than that?
Pete Cashmore of Mashable has a post that asks an interesting question:
Facebook, MySpace (MySpace reviews), LinkedIn (LinkedIn reviews), Digg and Twitter are often compared in terms of features, but which one has the most generous users?
The question is interesting to explore, although the post is about a clever fundraising campaign called the "Altruism Challenge" launched by a Canadian charity called "The World Partnership Walk" to raise money to fight global poverty.
I don't think that you can really compare the entire user base of one social network with another. In this example, the amount of money raised on each site has more to do with how the organization has built a following, identified and nurtured relationships with influencers.
While I was offline today enjoying Mother's Day and the beautiful weather (as much as I could with seasonal allergies), Target launched its version of an online contest.
It's called Bullseye Gives, a special Facebook page inviting folks to
decide how they should allocate $3 million among ten large institutional charities, including:
Parent Teacher Association Feeding America The Salvation Army American Red Cross National Parks Foundation Breast Cancer Research Foundation St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital Kids In Need Operation Gratitude The HandsOn Network/Points of Light Institute
Funding will be allocated based on the percentage of votes each
organization receives.
I went over to cast my vote for the Red Cross, they had 2% of the votes which means that they would receive $74,000 or 2% of the total. You can vote once per day, so I'll probably come back and vote for the other organizations where I have relationships with their social media strategists. (I voted for the Red Cross in honor my colleague Wendy Harman)
Ever since the first online competition launched in December 2006 by Network for Good and Yahoo (ahem, I came in first for my charity, the Sharing Foundation), online contests have been a popular way for corporations, Web 2.0 companies, and even foundations to give away money. We've seen a number of reiterations, from those that allow anyone nonprofit to enter to those that are for a select group of participants.
Today's New York Times article by Stephanie Strom describes some of the most recent online contests, including the Case Foundation’s Giving Challenge, a contest conducted through Causes
on Facebook, Network for Good, Global Giving and Parade Magazine in 2007.
The design of the Giving Challenge was such that any organization, even small grassroots organizations, could enter and even win. (I know from first hand experience) The design of the challenge leveled the playing field because the winners were based on the number of unique donors and any nonprofit could enter.
There have been many remixes of online contests since the Giving Challenge, so many that I can't quite remember all of them. Some that come to mind include:
Razoo March Madness which offered $10,000 in prizes for the organizations that got the most donors. Razzo by the way has been early pioneer in the online contest, having launched an early contest on Facebook shortly after it opened up to those older than colleges and again in October, 2007.
Charity SmackDown had teams of celebrities paired with corporate sponsors to raise money for nine different charities. This contest was based on the total amount raised. Stand Up for Cancer and Corbin Bleu were the winning team. Scott Henderson was one of the organizers (along with Chris Noble). Scott will be leading a workshop at the Cause Marketing Forum later this month and I will be sharing a fabulous interview with him about his learnings from this event and the Pledge to End Hunger.
Some contests don't requires donations to win, but votes. Take for example, the IdeaBlob that gives organizations (and individuals) the opportunity to present an idea and get votes. There are several sprints and the winner gets $10,000. (EpicChange was a winner in last week's sprint)
Winning an online fundraising contest requires a particular strategy. Last fall, Allison Fine and I did a research study on the America's Giving Challenge based on interviews and surveys of participants. The lessons learned will be useful to organizations competing in future online contests.
I'm of two minds about online contests. On the one hand, I think
competition is healthy and pushes us to take a few risks, innovate and explore these new tools, particularly
if the potential reward $ is big. On the other hand, online contests
remind of an experience I had in Hawaii feeding fish and makes about the drawbacks like cause fatigue, transactional vs relational, and promoting scarcity thinking.
What's your take on online contests? Entering one this year?
I happened to notice that the tag #maddie was trending on Twitter as few days ago. My first thought was to mentally run the names of celebrities with the first name Madeline. I drew a blank, so I clicked over and started to read the Twitter stream. I discovered that a premature baby named Madeline (Maddie) Sphor had passed away last week. There was a deluge of sympathy expressions because the funeral and memorial service were taking place.
It was also a virtual rally from friends and networked friends to raise money for the March of Dimes in Maddie's memory. It's also another amazing example of the power of ambient intimacy and compelling, authentic storytelling. It brought tears to my eyes, and I don't know this child or her parents.
The March of Dimes sponsors a fundraiser called "March for Babies" where teams of supporters, many parents of premature babies who are fighters or who didn't survive, raise money to support research that will help find the answer to serious problems that threaten babies.
Maddie's mother, Heather, was signed up to participate at the end of the month and far surpassed her $3,000. Sadly, she lost her child. Her friends and other moms have rallied to also help raise money to cover the funeral expenses as well. (You can make a gift to March of Dimes in memory of Maddie here.)
The March of Dimes has been an early adopter of social media and online community building. (see the many blog posts I've written over the years about their work). So, this networked effect did not happen out of nowhere. I'm curious about:
How does March of Dimes support and work with its community?
How did the organization staff support this effort or not?
Curious how their social media is organized within the organization?
Charity Balls, Dinner Dances, Black Tie Charity Events, and other parties where people donate money to a charity to have fun together are nothing new. Take a look at the web site of any well-established nonprofit organization, and you'll probably see past invitations to these types of events or one for an upcoming event
We're seeing the rise of social media to promote, organize, and in some cases hold the actual charity event itself. While initially driven by "free agent" fundraisers (those not on the organization's board or staff, but who are fans and social media users), we'll begin to see more and more as nonprofits adopt social media as part of their fundraising tool box.
(From an article in the New York Times dated April, 1896 about the Hackensack Hospital's Charity Ball)
Even just a decade ago, a typical nonprofit charity black tie event would have a committee of dedicated volunteers who would plan and promote the event. The committee would be responsible for all details of the event, as well as reaching out to their friends and colleagues with personal invitations to the event. There is a long history of charity balls, in the early years organized by the "Ladies Auxiliary" and chronicled in the society pages of major newspapers.
This is not your mother's or grandmother's black tie dinner dance charity event! These are charity parties designed and organized by fans of a charity, mostly younger people. While it is an offline event, the organizers leverage their social graphs to invite friends to the event and use social media for all aspects of managing and promoting the event. The best example comes from Social Media for Social Change (SM4SC), an organization started by Gradon Tripp, that uses social media tools to raise money for nonprofit. The most recent event was held this weekend to benefit City Harvest at the Roger Smith Hotel. SM4SC's goal was to raise a $20,000 donation with $13,214 contributed as of today. The event includes a silent auction and company sponsorship.
In October, Social Media for Social Change organized a similar fundraiser event at the Harvard Club in Boston and raised more than $20,000 for Jane Doe, an organization that fights domestic violence and sexual assault. At December's Boston Social Media Breakfast, Gradon Tripp shared that the event exceeded their expectations and they decided to replicate the idea in other cities with other charities. The event in NYC was the first.
They also ran a couple of "virtual fundraisers" leading up to the April Event which served to provide an opportunity for those who couldn't attend the event in NYC to contribute and to promote the offline event itself. On March 7, Meg Fowler and others from Social Media for Social Good organized an online fundraiser, called Stay In and Help Us. They asked their friends to figure out how much money they might spend on a Saturday night out (dinner and movies) and contribute the money to City Harvest, a nonprofit organization in New York that rescues food from restaurants and supermarkets and delivers it to soup kitchens and other programs that feed the hungry. The event used social networks like Twitter and Tumblr for real-time updates on the event and had the ladies of Sleepover 2.0 live streaming for entertainment. The event raised about $1,400 within six hours.
On March 26, they asked their online buds to participate in another Twitter-based event, TenBuckThursday, to fuel online donations for April 3rd charity event.
Another example of offline/online charity event was the Social Media Smackdown which took place mostly online, although it was launched at a face-to-face event sponsored by Mashable and Blurb during SXSW and hosted by PayPal, Kompolt and Mashable. This charity event was not a self-organized, networked fundraiser, but an example of an agency-driven event. The two-week fundraiser had nine teams of social media influences and celebrities competing against each other to raise for money for nine different charities. In total, the event raised over $35,000 for charities and non-profits in less than 2 weeks.
We're also starting see how social media and social networks are allowing individuals to connect and self-organize charity events outside of a nonprofit organization. There is a both an online and offline event that take place at the same time. Twestival is the most recent and impressive example. It was a networked fundraiser of a scale we haven't seen before, raising over $250,000 from over 200 cities around the world via Twitter. As my colleague David J. Neff from the America Cancer Society quipped during our panel at SXSW, "Twitter meetups just to meet are so 2008. We want to meet up and do something with more purpose than just have a few beers."
I haven't yet seen any case-studies or how-to posts with advice to free agent fundraisers or nonprofits on how to organize or facilitate this a "Charity 2.0" event. So, here's a few tips for nonprofits and free agents a like:
Organizing live events takes a lot of coordination, planning, systems, and time. Be sure you have the capacity to pull it off. Find and connect with others who want to help you get it off the ground.
If you are passionate about a cause or issue area, do you due dilligence to find a nonprofit that is doing quality work on this issue. Britt Bravo has some terrific advice.
If you are from a nonprofit and you want to facilitate or encourage free agent fundraisers or fans to help you or organize a charity event for your cause, you need to start with listening and identifying the influencers in your issue area. Begin to build relationships.
What are you tips and suggestions for pulling a successful Charity 2.0 Event?
Last week, Geoff Livingston, Qui Diaz and I posted a summary of our findings from our Philanthropy 2.0 research, a survey of the giving habits of the social media savvy, over at Mashable. I'm using this post to roundup the reactions to the study and add some more context.
A common critic of online giving through social media is that the dollar amounts are too low per donor and donations tend to be transactional, not relationship-based or one-time donors. This has been found in a number of surveys over the past few years (see Allison Fine's astute commentary on the recent Blackbaud survey here)
If we look back a year ago at donation trends on Facebook Causes, we also see the same complaint.
But, we know that the demographics of social networks are aging (see my round up the recent research about babyboomers on social networks) and we are beginning to observe that the social web is becoming more of a place for fundraising for causes as well as philanthropic discussions.
As we wrote in the Mashable post:
While the social web has been a fantastic place for nonprofits to harness the long tail of giving with movements like Twestival and the Case Foundation’s Giving Challenge, high dollar donor cultivation has not been prevalent. The goal of our Community Philanthropy 2.0 survey
one month ago was to determine whether there is potential for
nonprofits to cultivate significant donors online (defined as someone
who gives $1,000 or more), and how that can be accomplished.
You can read about the rest of the findings on Mashable, but there were a number of good points made about the challenge of transitioning to social media infused fundraising. While there may be tremendous opportunity, your organization won't be able to reap the benefits if it is stuck in doing the same strategy year after year.
Allison Fine offers some great advice for getting "unstuck"
Keep doing what works but know and plan like it isn’t going to work
forever. In fact, you should plan that this is the last year you’ll be
able to do what you’ve done before successfully. You don’t want to get
caught totally off guard like newspapers that thought they had much
longer to transition from old to new than they really did.
Get your conversations going online NOW! Pick one or two places,
say Twitter and Facebook, and start talking about your issues and
listening to the conversations that folks are having about your cause.
Don’t worry if the conversation is small, don’t worry that it isn’t
leading to donations right now. You need to practice talking to people
online about your cause; these aren’t skills that more traditional orgs
have in their DNA.
Find one fundraising event or idea to take online this year. Use
Facebook to ask your folks for ideas for fundraisers, should we pick a
day and everyone does their own thing like Red Nose Day,
or should we have one event in person, maybe a lower key breakfast this
year instead of a fancy dinner, or maybe a virtual event or contest?
Don’t prescribe, listen and learn.
I'd add to Allison's point about finding a low risk experiment that you can learn from. I've outlined a methodology for this based on David Armano's Listen, Learn and Adapt. Carie Lewis from the Humane Society of the United States has used this approach with impressive results over the last three years.
You have to think of your "experiments" as one part learning, and the other part building up your online
network of donors. It takes time, but does show results as the comments on the original Mashable post seem to indicate:
Two years ago The Children's Wish Foundation of Canada established a
presence on Facebook and incorporated guidelines for our Chapters to
establish their local groups. This integration has lead to lead to 7
Chapter groups communicating local news to their community and a
national group with over 3,400 people sharing their stories and
experiences.
Since then the Foundation has ventured out to
many of the social sites, spreading awareness about our cause and
connecting with supporters. We have experienced great success with
wishes granted, funds raised and ultimately; relationships built.
Find your supporters; engage them, create trust and your organization will reap the rewards.
Just recently I asked for help within my social network at Twitter to
spread the word about something I am very passionate about, Braille
Literacy. I used a cli.gs link http://cli.gs/sccm so I could track traffic to the link. People
were really responsive and helpful to our cause to save a very special
and unique school which provides blind and visually impaired children
music education with a full braille curriculum (the only school of it's
kind in North America).
The 12for12k project - http://www.12for12k.org
- has been successful at attracting all kinds of donors, with $1,000
coming from at least one corporate sponsor. We have also had great
gifts donated for giveaways and that has helped us achieve fantastic
support and awareness. We are also about to announce a new corporate
sponsor who will be donating a percentage of every sale they make.
This
project has been driven purely by the partners giving up their time for
free, and the fantastic support of donors and supporters since the
beginning.
As a long-tail project (12 months and ongoing
awareness and support for the charities involved) it's proving to be a
useful social media for good project.
Kari Dunn over at the Social Citizens Blog offers some great points about the importance of having your donors make an emotional connection with your organization - and that donating time is a way to accomplish this. She references the work of Jennifer Aaker at Stanford University and her research that supports this notion.
This leaves me with some questions for all of you as you think about moving forward with a social media strategy for charity or fundraising:
What are best small learning pilots to get started to attract bigger dollar donors through social media?
How is your organization planning to incorporate a social media strategy in your fundraising efforts to attract larger dollar donors?
Last May, I had the honor of keynoting and teaching workshops at the ConnectingUp Conference in Brisbane, Australia. Prior to my departure, I was researching Aussie sim cards for my nokia on Twitter. That's how I met Eddie Harran who was kind enough to tell me where to get the best rates.
He attended the workshop because he was interested in getting into nonprofit work and was hoping to find some volunteer opportunities. That's why we made the above video.
Last week I attended SXSW where I met Nadia Payan, young woman who raised her travel and other expenses so she could attend SXSW. I retweeted her request for help. She made effort to find me at SXSW and thank me personally for retweeting her request. By the way, a key part of any fundraising - no matter the context, donor amount, or whatever - is saying thanks.
Now, I'm hoping that Nadia will pay it forward to Eddie in true gift community fashion. And for added good Karma for Eddie, just played this on Akoha.
Can you help Eddie get to San Francisco for the NTC Conference in April?
One strategy might be cultivating relationships with freelance fundraisers and activists. These smaller scale efforts represent some of the more creative fundraising campaigns undertaken on Twitter. Typically launched by an social media savvy individual, who cares deeply about a charity or Cause, and these campaigns use platforms like Twitter in an unique way to raise money for that charity from their network.
He offered to put a permanent
tattoo of the Twitter user's name on his arm, to the highest bidder. His cause says a lot about who he is and who is friends are! Following the best practices of person-to-person fundraising and that is to talk about why the charity is important to you, he shares his reason, "kids deserve awesomeness".
He put the word out on Twitter and his network started a bidding war. Louis Gray writes about how he bid several hundred dollars for the honor. In the end, Melanie Mitchell was the lucky winner, bidding $2,112 to have her Twitter name on Drew's arm. Louis Gray has an interview with her.
Last month, the Twitter community came together online and offline in over 180 cities around the world to raise money for charity:water with the highly successful "Twestival" fundraising event which brought in over $250,000
for clean drinking water in developing countries. The event attracted
a lot of attention because it was an example of integrating a live
charity event with Twitter. (See this white paper by Susan Mernit for a detailed case study.)
We're now seeing the concept of a Twitter "Tweet-a-thon" evolve.
The first Tweet-a-thon took place in September, 2008. It was
launched by Dr. Mani who raised money for heart surgeries for poor kids in India. Last month, Joel Comm sponsored a Tweet-a-thon
event that was larger in scale, included celebrities, and live
streaming. The dual purpose was to promote Comm's recently published
book and to raise money for a ministry that provides clean water in Kenya. According to Joel Comm, $13,000 was raised.
The next reiteration a "Tweet-a-thon" fundraising event is taking place until March 5th and
the goal is to empower marginalized women and girls in the world’s
poorest countries. What's different is that you don't have to give money out of your own pocket.
During the four-day campaign, each Tweet will leverage a 10 cent
donation – up to 50,000 Tweets – from NCM Fathom to the global
humanitarian organization CARE. The Twitter campaign honors
International Women’s Day and the upcoming event A Powerful Noise Live! in 450 select movie theatres nationwide on March 5th.
Here's how you can donate ten cents (or more) to the cause without spending a dime of your own money:
Each A Powerful Noise Tweet must include the hash tag
#apowerfulnoise to generate the donation. Twitter users are encouraged
to craft their own Tweet or use one of the examples below.
“I support empowerment of women worldwide with this tweet. Each
tweet raises 10 cents for CARE. #apowerfulnoise
http://shortn.it/tweet-a-thon”
“First time you can raise money for worthy cause by sending a tweet.
Help CARE support women globally: #apowerfulnoise.
http://shortn.it/tweet-a-thon“
Twitter users may donate their avatar and replace it with an image of the red female sign. The image is available here.
Not too long ago, I submitted my chapter to BJ Fogg's Psychology of Facebook Applications. The chapter is an analysis of Facebook applications that help raise money or awareness or encourage people to take a social action. My conclusion was that we're still in the early stages of Facebook Apps for good and that we'll see better results through effective collaborations between nonprofit fundraisers and application developers.
The key here is that collaboration between nonprofit needs and application developers that's for all applications not just Facebook.
Social Actions has designed the Change the Web contest to stimulate innovative and effective web application development that facilitate social actions. The winning application will receive $10,000. Social Actions is reaching out to social software tool builders to dream up a new tool to help people find and share
actions. It can be an application for any web enabled device -- IPhone, web site, blogs, Facebook, or other social networks.
'Related Ways to Take Action' WordPress Plugin:
A plugin you can add to any WordPress.org blog that identifies the
keywords of each blog posts and then displays related ways to take
action.
Twitter Action Pack: A directory of 30+ Twitter accounts that automatically post actions on the issues you care about.
Firefox Ubiquity Command: A Firefox mashup that lets you highlight any phrase as your browse the web and find related ways to take action.
Fun and humor, used in the right way and in the appropriate context, can help boost your social fundraising campaign. A personal challenge typically issued as statement like "if we make our goal, I'll do or donate xyz" can also energize your campaign.
I did this for my recent birthday campaign, using the Facebook
Causes matching challenge that if our cause raised $5,200, I'd donate
ten times my age or $520. It worked.
The personal challenge doesn't have to be making a donation. It can be something outrageous bordering on public humiliation.
My personal favorite is Erin Ennis who took a winter dip in Vermont's Lake Champlain as part of a personal challenge to raise money for Special Olympics Vermont. Before taking the plunge, he setup a group fundraising page at FirstGiving. His page features a famous clip of Seinfeld's George Castanza shouting "I was in the pool, I was in the pool." People who donated enjoyed the opportunity for innuendo in the comments. While a modest amount raised, Erin surpassed his fundraising goal by 50%.
Can this work for larger campaign goals?
In 2006, Sarah Bunting, who writes the blog Tomato Nation, a culture and humor blog, offered to shave her head if her blog readers donated to DonorsChoose.org,
a site that allows donors to purchase school supplies for needy
classrooms. Her readers responded, raising approximately $30,000 in a
few days. Keeping her end of the bargain, she saved her hair off.
And, if you don't believe me, you can view the video on YouTube. Her efforts were chronicled in a recent Wall Street Journal article.
A year later, Sarah Bunting announced
that it was time to do it again. Not the head shaving, she selected another type of public humiliation. She launched the month-long campaign
with a goal of $40,000, again to support DonorsChoose.org. Ms. Bunting raised $75,000!
Oh, the humiliation she selected? She wear tomato costume all day.
I
don't mean some wear-a-red-outfit-with-a-green-hat,
only-go-outside-to-buy-milk bullshit either. I mean a big old spherical
tomato-mascot rig, red tights, foam leaf hat, the whole bit — on the
subway. To Rockefeller Center. Where I work, on the same floor as Saturday Night Live,
50 feet away from the president of Bravo. And then out for lunch, where
I will pause to perform the post-kiss Angela dance from My So-Called Life in the plaza. And then back to work. And then out for a drink.
And if shaving your head (or your face) doesn't sound like your cup of tea for a personal challenge, you can always grow a mustache. Ed Schipul grew a mustache for charity to raise money for a children's hospital.
The most recent example comes from Holly Ross, Executive Director of NTEN, who is willing to loose her dignity to help $10,000 for the Nonprofit Technology Conference scholarship fund. If the $10,000 goal is reached by February 28th, Holly will let donors vote on how she will loose her dignity:
Make her own "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" video. (She won't wear a leotard until they surpass their fundraising goal and bring in $25,000)
Eat a bacon explosion. It's the pork-phenomenon that's swept the internet. She will eat a whole one.
Play her college marching band trombone. In Union Square. In Daylight. A bunch of her college friends have already vowed to turn up to mock her.
The Nonprofit Technology Conference is the premier meeting for people who work with nonprofits and handle the technology. Despite the tough economic times, the nonprofit technology community is really excited attending the 2009 NTC and the event promises to be as vibrant as ever. But not everyone is able to convince their nonprofit organizations to make the investment in this time of tough choices. So, NTEN has set up a scholarship fund and has been actively fundraising, asking for cash and frequent flyer donations:
Give to the Scholarship Fund. Thanks to Convio, NTEN will waive the registration fees for up to 57 attendees. Every dollar of your gift will be matched by Convio, up to $10,000.
Donate Airline Miles. Airfare can be one of the pricer parts of getting to the NTC. If you have airline miles you're willing to share, we'll help you find a scholarship recipient who needs them.
I've donated frequent flyer miles and, of course, a little cash. I'm voting for the Beyonce video. This is a excellent way to combine some fun with a great cause.
What is the most outrageous thing you've heard of someone doing to help raise money for a good cause or charity?
Last week when I was in San Francisco, I skyped into the I of North Fundraising Conference where I did an afternoon session with Steve Bridger. We have a conversation with the audience about the opportunities and challenges of using social media as part of your fundraising tool box.
Howard Lake has documented the conference and posted the presentations, notes, photos, and videos. It's worth checking out. The hash tag #iofnorth will take you to the other knowledge shared at the conference.
Amanda Rose at the London Twestival Photo was taken by @mikebutcher
The Twestival combined online twitter fundraising with a groundswell of offline self organized events in 202 cities around the world on February 12th. This world-wide fundraiser, with a $1 million fundraising goal, brought together the Twitter community for an evening of fun and to raise money and awareness for charity: water.
Last week, I was in San Francisco leading a workshop and helped organized a group of attendees for TwestivalSF. Unfortunately, I was sick, so didn't make to the event. One of the workshop participants kindly brought me bag of schwag which included a t-shirt and other goodies and told me how wonderful it was!
The Twestival events kicked off in New Zealand and traveled around the world. Everyone was watching closely, would they make their $1,000,000 goal? Would Twestival forever change the nature of social media fundraising. It has taken few days for Twestival to report on the results. Allison Fine wondered outloud why it was so difficult to find out the final numbers and whether it was a strategic decision because they were disappointing. She came to the conclusion of "campaign exhaustion" and "system challenges" which were on target.
Based on the an analysis of previous fundraising campaigns (see "Twitter As Charitable Giving Spreader: A Brief History and Meta Analysis of Fundraising With Twitter"), the first time I heard about Twestival I knew it signaled something different. Almost all the previous fundraising campaigns using Twitter were organized by a single person or organization. Previous fundraising on Twitter was about individuals leveraging their personal networks.
This was something different because it was a networked fundraiser of a scale we haven't seen before and not controlled by a non-profit organization. The first post I wrote was called "Look Out Here Comes Everybody To Raise Money for charity:water on Twitter" with a wink to Clay Shirky's work. In the comments, there was quite a lively discussion from nonprofit professionals raising some cautions and concerns.
This made me curious:
How did Twestival get started? What is its relationship with charity:water?
What was the role of the nonprofit, charity:water, in working with Twestival?
How did the relationship originate?
How is the event being organized?
What does this say for nonprofits in an age of connectedness?
Amanda Rose is a Canadian who moved to London from Toronto several years ago with a strong background in events, PR, and marketing. She co-founded a film and event locations company where she does consulting. She recently completed a MA in Communications Management which is where she started to tap her passion for social media, particularly micro-blogging.
As one of the key people on the Global Twestival team, her role involved a lot of different tasks; setting the strategy, writing the guidebook, mentoring city organizers, establishing teams for sideline projects, administration, working with the charity, securing partnerships, developing website content, and communications. As Amanda notes, "It quickly became too much for one person, particularly as a volunteer. I felt responsibility for the charity's brand and overall protection of the volunteers so they could focus on what was important."
Not long after they announced Twestival, it took on a life of its own. Says Amanda, "I knew this was a very exciting project which would not only raise a lot of money but would create awareness and bring communities together. I originally thought that we may have 50 cities involved, but only after a week of announcing it on Twitter there were over 100 cities signed up with new requests every hour. Over a dozen Twestivals were registered in the UK alone. There was a process to become an official city because I wanted to ensure that there were teams established because organizing an event alone can be a daunting prospect."
Amanda shares how she worked closely with the nonprofit, charity:water. Says Amanda, "The organization was very receptive, creative, and professional. Scott Harrison, founder of charity: water was enroute to Ethiopia when we discussed Twestival. He was extremely enthusiastic, asked a lot of questions and connected me with the rest of the NYC office to work through logistics."
Amanda says that the most important goal was that everything was done in a professional and secure way in working with the nonprofit organization, charity:water. This happened on a short-time frame too. Says Amanda, "It was really the last two weeks when Scott returned from Africa that they began to get actively involved with the NYC Twestival, attending meetings and offering whatever knowledge and resource they could. The team was fantastic and we had regular Skype calls and emails discussing issues that came up. They set up a page on their web site about the Twestival for the event and really listened to us."
Amanda says that the skills required to manage over 200 teams of volunteers include:
A strong vision
Leadership ability
Management and delegation skills
Administration skills
Multi-task
Communication and networking skills
Clear understanding of social media
International experience
Event management skills
There were many times Amanda was surprised by the responses to the event. She observes that many companies, organizations, and people wanted to come together and participate without knowing exactly what or how. Amanda notes that "It became a balancing act of figuring out what was appropriate for the Twestival sponsorship and keeping supporters engaged." This is probably a challenge that many event organizers with event sponsors have to face.
Amanda says "I did not expect to find myself in tears at 3am after seeing a video by a team in Asheville who spent their weekend making a video after campaigning locally, spreading news about how 1 in 6 people in the world don't have access to clean and safe drinking water. The sheer amount of talent and contribution that came out of Twestival was mind blowing."
Amanda is thrilled with the way the even turned out, but says she would do things differently next time around:
1) Don't Spearhead A Worldwide Event Alone. Amanda says the next Twestival needs a better system and more capacity for managing the large number of cities and volunteers that want to participate. She notes, "I believe I did the best I could under the circumstances but felt really frustrated because I wanted to give city organizers all of the resources they asked for but either physically didn't have time or capacity to implement."
2) Providing A Better Virtual Hub To Support Volunteers. Amanda says the website was a key element in reaching out to the cities and that she was not prepared for the amount of work that went into setting it up. Says Amanda, "Even through this was a volunteer-run event, there was a level of expectation from people once they signed up. I think most understood that we were doing the best we could with our resources and limited time - but it was frustrating not to be able to offer them something beyond a blog to connect and share."
3) Be more prepared to work internationally. Amanda says it was difficult to work with cities around the world, all with different financial systems, fundraising approaches, and cultures.
4) Set up a system for incoming donations to be aggregated quickly and easily. Donations were coming in from several streams, including Amiando, Tipjoy, Paypal, and cash donations. This made it difficult to tabulate the amount raised quickly. In addition, being able to produce real time tracking reports that showed how much each city still had to work to achieve their original fundraising target would have motivated them and spawned a bit of friendly competition.
5) Extend the planning timeline to 2-3 months. Amanda admits that it was stressful to work under these very tight timelines. "However, not unlike Twitter which is restricted to 140 characters, I wanted to challenge everyone to see what we could do in the span of a few weeks. This generated a lot of buzz and enthuasiasm on Twitter and extended offline." Amanda observes that volunteers were amazed with what they could do in this short a timeline and the amount of creativity that surfaced was truly inspiring. Amanda points out, "Hawaii raised over $7k in 9 days, Toronto $10k in about 15 days. What we are left with now are international teams who have a passion to do this again - only bigger. The feedback so far has been incredible and many cities feel disappointed that they couldn't reach their goal this time; but the amount of awareness they were able to generate through their community or local press is a testament to their hard work."
Amanda says they've decided to extend their fundraising deadline beyond February 12th so they can reach the $1 million goal. Says Amanda, "At the moment the fundraising tally is over $200k, which is pretty amazing considering there are zero costs related to that (unless you count lack of sleep). One million was always a big aim to have and from the original goals set out by cities and other pending projects, it was certainly achieveable which is why we decided to put it in the press release. When we knew the number would be close, we acknowledged this as a way to increase awareness and encourage donations from the mainstream. This was extremely successful from that standpoint and I have no doubt that we will reach our target, it just may take a little bit longer."
charity: water have invited Amanda to visit Ethiopia with them at the start of April (costs paid by private donors, not fundraising). She is planning to document exactly where the Twestival money is going by drilling a well and meeting with locals who will benefit from this project. Says Amanda, "I think that today, people want to have that connection with their contribution and charity: water embraces social media as a way to be as transparent as possible. This is why they were the perfect charity to work with on this somewhat experimental event series to match social networking with social good. I am grateful for the opportunity and excited about the future. "
The Humane Society of the US launched an online photo contest in honor of Spay Day. The contest combines wisdom of the crowds with person to person or rather dog to person fundraising. If I was a friend of Zoe's
owner, I'd donate to the Humane Society. (Well, as you know I'm both a dog lover and a supporter of animal welfare organizations, not just because I'm sucker for cute dog photos.)
The contest offers a web and
Facebook version. It looks, from the point of view of an outside observer, like a success. I look forward to hearing more about the contest and the lessons learned from Carrie Lewis, HSUS's social media rockstar. She'll be presenting at SXSW, on a panel about social media and ROI.
Over the years, I've watched the Carrie Lewis at the Humane Society do
a fantastic job managing the organization's social media strategy and
projects. In 2007, the Human Society implemented its first photo petition campaign to protest Wendy's treatment of animals
. They tracked the number of photo submissions they got, but they also
listened carefully to the responses they got from participants.
As Carrie Lewis mentions in the comments in the blog post , "Since
this was our first run at a photo petition, it was difficult to get
across exactly what we wanted people to do without writing a book. So
every person that wrote in and needed help was answered personally.
This gave us a good idea of how to more clearly explain ourselves next
time." This particular photo campaign had many technical
glitches and ultimately the number of submissions was less than
impressive. Did HSUS proclaim that photo competitions were a waste of
time?
No.
The next iteration of a photo contest, LOL Seals
, made it as easy as possible for people to participate. That's what
they had learned from the first campaign. The first contest, they asked
people to upload their photos and tag it themselves, which meant they
had to create a Flickr account and know what “tagging” was. The second
contest, they used the Flickr API which made everything automatic --
from tagging and uploading without the user having to even touch
Flickr. They had about 3,000 submissions and captured about 2,000 new
email addresses.
I think the secret to the Humane Society's
success with social media is that they have used metrics to
learn what works and what doesn't. They are also masters at the Listen, Learn, and Adapt methods. Now with some years of experience and knowing what works, what doesn't, they can do a traditional ROI process.
Grace mentions how the Humane Society has successfully broken down
staff silos. The HSUS team has daily 9 minute meetings, unless there
is something really important then they can run a few minutes longer.
These short briefing meetings have helped them be more efficient and
effective with every aspect of multi-channel campaigns. This is a
great examples of how one nonprofit has embraced social media and that
it isn't an isolated activity by one person.
In the presentation, the Humane Society shares both the tangible and intangible benefits that their social media strategies provide. This is the first step in a traditional ROI process. These are:
Tangible:
Increased email database
Obtained original content
Obtained free PSAs
Raised some money
Recruited new donors
Recruited members, fans, friends
Intangible
Raised awareness about our issues
Engaged people to participate in the issue
Generated discussions on our issues
Received buy-in from the top
Received recognition and media attention (online buzz)
How
do they know they've been successful? They use metrics to measure the
results and translate into values. What
metrics do they use? Here's a list:
# of submissions/comments # of friends, fans, members over time # of new names added to email file # of donations/amount of donations # of video / photo views # of subscribers (RSS, blog) # of blog and wall comments # of voting participants # of blogs linking to us / covering our story (consider quality) # of friends recruited (TAF) Frequency of bulletin reposts on MySpace Content of keywords, comments (what are people talking about?)
Grace Markarian also offers some tips to get started where she emphasizes the importance of getting buy-in from your organization's leadership, gotten over fears of "losing control" of messaging, accepted that it takes time to listen and build your presence, and your organization is ready to integrate social media into other Internet activities.
Her conclusions - and I wholeheartedly agree, are:
Integrating social media into your nonprofit's marketing and fundraising campaigns can help build buzz and online actions (like donations) slowly, but their email marketing is the #1 driver of success.
Social media allows HSUS to reach audiences that may not reach through other channels or at all, but you must allocate the resources to monitor and communicate with this audience to sustain success.
Participating on social network sites allows them to experiment with new technologies, but it requires constant willingness to learn.
In February 19th, Joel Comm has organized an event called "Tweetathon" on Twitter to promote and sell copies of his new book, Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time and help a nonprofit that supports children in Africa, China, and India. The event takes a television concept from the 1960's, the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethons, which does non-stop celebrity performances and pitching to raise money for charity and puts it on Twitter as well as live streaming on ustream.tv.
Joel Comm has assembled a roster of Twitter celebrities with fairly large networks (Scoble, Vaynerchuk, and Pirillo) to help with the 12-hour event to sell books and raise money for a charity called "WaterIsLife.com." I asked @joelcomm how they selected the charity and he said he knows the organization personally and can vouch for their work.
I looked the charity up on guidestar and could not find a nonprofit named "Water for Life" that had Ken Surritte listed as the contact. On the Water is Life site there is not a fleshed about "About" page that tells me anything about the organization's board, founding, budget, or a donation link. After a bit of googling, I discovered that the nonprofit has a different name "Hearts and Hands International" and the Water Is Life is a project. (Still couldn't find them on Guide Star or Networked for Good perhaps their 501-c3 is under a different name?)
Hearts and Hands International is a non-profit 501 C(3) started by Nita
and Ken Surritte. This foundation helps children at risk around the
world. Hearts and Hands assists by providing programs and volunteer
teams to help with needs of children.
In addition to clean water, they are providing support for orphaned children in Africa, China, and India. The Water is Life project got underway to help children in Kenya last November. (And, I know from colleague Allison Lowndes who runs a nonprofit to help children in Kenya how compelling the needs are there)
The founder, Ken Surritte and his wife, appear to be a social co-entrepreneurs driven by personal passion to help children in need in developing countries. He also appears to be a very creative fundraiser having set up some cause-related marketing efforts on his site. I suspect this social entrepreneur is so focused on making sure these children get clean water, food, and other support that he doesn't have time to update his web presence and perhaps wants to make sure that every penny he raises goes directly in delivering these important services! I can relate to that! And it looks like they have a previous relationship with Joel Comm who has donated copies of an earlier book for donation incentives.
In the video, Joel Comm talks about how this event will make Internet history. The whole concept of a "Tweet-a-thon" is not something new, but he is scaling it. Dr. Mani has run several of these events to raise money for poor kids in India, although Dr. Mani did not have celebrities and his sole objective was to raise money for heart surgeries for children. There have also been multi-channel events to raise awareness for causes and charities. Take for example, Blog Action Day - although live streamed using "social media and blog" celebrities was not a fundraiser. So this is like Twebinar with a heart and celebrities beyond social media circles.
I am thinking about the Twestival event that will occur on Thursday this week and hopes to raise $500,000 for charity:water. (An aside, take a look at the organization's transparency about its 501-c3 status and financial reports). The Twestival came together from the ground up with the goal of raising money for clean water - putting the charity and its' mission before anything else. (Well, maybe another motivation was the desire to meet up with other Twitter users and have a good time. Fundraising events should be fun!) And while there are commercial or business event sponsors (see side bar) there isn't an overt sales goal. I'm attending TwestivalSf so will get see what a local event is like first hand.
This leaves me with some questions ...
Can generosity overtly drive sales or does it need to be more subtle? How does a business balance generosity with making money? Is there such a thing as "authentic generosity"? What are the best practices for "cause-related" social media marketing? What types of "charity" events are more effective - top down organized efforts or ground up distributed events?
Very interesting times for fundraising on the social web.
Nonprofits have unique challenges learning how to communicate on the
social web. It’s not as easy as selling a product or service, it’s
charitable, and often involves education and relationship building with
donors. Now that social media has become increasingly dominant
and the old 1.0 ways aren’t working, nonprofits are grappling with how
to connect with and engage the digitally savvy folks just like you.
The three of us - Geoff Livingston, Qui Diaz, and Beth Kanter - are
working on a special project, dubbed “Philanthropy 2.0″ to provide
nonprofits the information they need to best serve donors and advocates
with meaningful conversations and dialogue about their causes. The
Philanthropy 2.0 research project, funded by the San Francisco
Foundation, Columbus Foundation and Minnesota Community
Foundation/Saint Paul Foundation, will make this information available
to the nonprofit sector. The Project intends to publish the executive
summary of all of our findings in the Society for New Communications
Research’s Journal of New Communications Research and for download on the Internet. Of course, Mashable readers will get the first look at your survey information.
So help us out, and take the survey.
Give causes the information they need to best serve your desires for a
smarter, better nonprofit industry that gets the social web. We’ll also
give away ten copies of Now Is Gone by Geoff Livingston with Brian Solis to people who leave extra insights and feedback in the comments section. The most interesting comments will be selected.
On February 12, 2009, Twitter users will meet up in over 100 plus cities to socialize offline, meet other Twitter users, enjoy some fun, have a few drinks, and raise money for charity: water. This event combines the lessons learned from previous fundraising activities on Twitter:
A local, face-to-face component based on the popular "Tweet Ups" or "Net2Tuesday" meetups
The charity isn't the central organizer of the event - it appears that they are letting their stakeholders run with it and not imposing "branding and messaging" standards. Each localized event is putting its own unique flair to the event.
Micro donations using TipJoy
Focus 24 hour event with broadcasts and all local partners participating to raise awareness (a sort of Blog Action Day on steroids)
They have announced a goal of raising $500,000, based on each city establishing its own goal.
I'm attending the TwestivalSf in San Francisco - anyone else?
In the comments, there was quite a lively discussion from nonprofit professionals raising some cautions and concerns. I've summarized some of themes below:
Is this a swarm of independent mavericks or a carefully crafted and managed groundswell?
David Kinard, nonprofit marketing consultant, mentioned a big concern about peer-to-peer fundraising: the big picture is lost, and the impact to the greater good is diminished. He also had concerns about the apparent disjointed effort underway.
I guess I look at it like this: if you give a hundred people tools to lay bricks, you'll likely get a hundred small structures. If you give a hundred people the tools to lay bricks and get them working off a shared plan, then you can build anything you want. I am all for equipping believers of a cause to go out to the world and do good...but I am less enthusiastic of sending out a swarm of independent mavericks.
Allison Fine observed that the big picture goal of efforts like Twestival is to begin to develop larger ecosystems of activists that are connected and coordinated with one another. She notes, "The focus of leaders in the sector needs to be how to better work within these ecosystems to meet their own missions as well as meet the larger needs of communities."
Marcia Stepanek, who writes the CauseGlobal Blog mentions an interview with Clay Shirky where he describes the importance of new leadership:
What I think is coming is a new type of leadership style that will expand into other kinds of collective action—in particular, real-world collective action. And so, for a traditional institution, this is really a moment where, if the organizational structure doesn't change, then the institution is essentially going to find itself working at cross-purposes with many of its members. This is a challenge that people in the Obama administration are facing; that people in nonprofits are facing; that people in many institutions are facing: how to change the organizational structure enough to accommodate Web-enabled, ground-up, collective action—self-organized groups of members or supporters or constituents that, because they're using new technology tools, are demanding interaction at far higher levels than before. This is something that really is unprecedented. Those organizations which fail to exert new leadership will risk losing support.
This lead me to ask what exactly were those new nonprofit leadership skills?
Marcia suggested that the skills are similar to those of a symphony orchestra conductor. Shirky adds to this point:
There is an Israeli conductor, Itay Talgam, who gives a talk on leadership styles using orchestra conductors as the example. And the critical thing that a conductor does is synchronize the orchestra because the complexity of self-synchronization is hard at that scale.
As someone who trained as a classical flutist and has played in a symphony orchestra or two, the conductor's role is pivotal for that synchronicity but if the musicians know their parts, the score, and someone gives the downbeat, they could play without the conductor. Especially if the players in the orchestra have been playing together for years!
David felt this was less of an issue of learning new leadership skills, but simply a distraction.
What I fear is not that swarms of cause-wired activists will force new forms of leadership, but that the leadership will be distracted from doing the right work in the right order because they have to deal with the unintentioned disruption these good-hearted people likely create. If large communities of independent change-agents force sector leaders to take their eyes off the ball of their primary mission, then I think we've done more damage than good.
Twestival: The origins of the 'Tweet, meet, and give"
I was curious about how the Twestival founders connected with charity:water. I interviewed Ben Matthews who was part of the organizational group that dreamed up the Twestival concept in London in September 2008. The group consisted of @amanda, @tommalcolm, @renate and @timhoang. They all work in PR, but Ben is the founder of Brightone, a company that works with charities. So this is a group of social media power users and pr professionals who have some experience with nonprofits. And they were not total strangers to one another. Says Ben, "We knew each other on Twitter."
Says Ben, "The idea was to run a festival that got people who followed each other on Twitter to meet up in real life, but also come together to raise money for a good cause at the same time." This small group organized the first Twestival to raise money for The Connection, an organization that helps homeless people by providing specialist services. "What's amazing is that the whole thing came together in about 3 weeks and generated lots of interest and around 300 attendees (with a waiting list) in such a short space of time."
Buoyed by the success of their first event, the Twestival organizers wanted to do a second event, selecting a charity that had a global outreach and an active presence on Twitter. They were looking for a charity that was transparent and could easily demonstrate the impact of their fundraising efforts. Kiva, charity:water and a few others were mentioned.
This group of Twitter do gooders in London did not a formal relationship with the charity:water management staff, but charity:water's founder, Scott Harrison, was active on Twitter (@scottharrison). As Ben observes, "Well that ticked the boxes on the accountability and global presence fronts. Whatever amount that Twestival raises, every pound, dollar, pesos, krone and whatever else will go straight to charity:water and that money will be used to directly fund charity:water projects."
When the Twestival founders approached charity:water, they listened to the organization's concerns. The nonprofit wanted to make sure that the money raised got to charity:water. The Twestival partnered with amiando and tipjoy to ensure that the money goes into a central source and can be easily tracked. (See Rachel Weidinger's thoughts about the importance of a donation system respecting donor privacy, though.)
Ben also mentions that the charity:water's other concern is that the event must be a success for charity:water's own reputation. "Their 2008 Christmas ball raised a very large amount of money, so we have a lot to live up to, but are confident that the Twestival events happening in over 160 cities worldwide on February 12th 2009, it will be a great success!"
Also bear in mind that charity:water had been aware of the event plans long before any formal announcements were made. They have had control in whether to let, Twestival, raise money for their work. As Ben notes, "If they did feel that we were going to disrupt them from focusing on their core mission, then they could simply say have said no. We would have identified a different charity."
It is also important to point out as Scott Harrison mentions in the video above, that Twitter power users and indeed the founders of Twitter have been supportive of the charity:water over the past year. This large scale event is the not the first. There were other smaller events to support charity:water on Twitter prior to the September event organized by Twestival.
The Swarm Is Organized, Not Random
The Twestival has been a grassroots effort lead by Amanda, a professional events organizer. According to Ben, she had the vision to take Twestival worldwide and has taken on responsibility of organizing the global aspect. With over 160 cities participating, Ben observes, "It's a momentous task with an amazing amount of time an energy required to bring it all together, but she's really achieved so much already, which will hopefully lead to lots of money being raised on the night."
While Twestival is an all-volunteer effort organized outside of the nonprofit direct management and control, the volunteers are highly organized. There are guidelines of how the city organizers can run their own event. It is not a template. Ben says, "We didn't want to dictate what they did, as it didn't matter how big or small it was or how much money they raised. By allowing people to design their own events but under the original ethos of Twestival of raising money for a selected charity, the event becomes more self-organising. Having said that, I'm sure Amanda's email inbox is the busiest in the world right now!"
Tony Scott (@tonys), a technology volunteer, has also been instrumental in the effort. He's put together the main Twestival site that helped the cities to manage their own events.Says Ben, "It's through here that all the details, ticketing, sponsors and other info for all of the individual events are gathered. The dev blog is a testament to his work."
Conclusion
The Twestival just announced a goal of $500,000. So, on February 13th, we'll be able to see where this all goes and how networked fundraising evolves and what the implications are for nonprofit social media strategies and leadership.
Questions to ponder ....
charity:water has a presence on Twitter and has the caught the attention of social media gurus like Twitter's founders and Mashable. Can nonprofits who have relationships with social media rockstars create a groundswell of support?
Many nonprofits perceive "personal networking" on social networking sites like Twitter to be a waste of time. If this campaign reaches its financial goal and is a success for the organization, there certainly should demonstrate a ROI for personal networking and building relationships?
What are the best ways to cultivate relationships with free agent fundraisers and collaborate on fundraisers with them? Seems like facilitative leadership is key.
Could there be other groundswells of disjointed activists who don't connect with the charity - but take on the fundraising or even the program delivery that does not further the greater good?
