More thoughts about Web 2.0 Adoption by Nonprofits

Earlier this week, the Overbrook Foundation released a report on Web 2.0 and nonprofit adoption. Allison Fine, author of the report titled, "Web 2.0 Assessment of The Overbrook Foundation's Human Rights Grantees," is asking for reactions.   The full report and survey instruments can be downloaded here.

I haven't yet digested the report, but I was pleased to see that the report wasn't just a series of data findings, but also include some in-depth reporting on attitudes about using the tools.   Some of the
key themes from focus group interviews:

• Participants felt a “common struggle” in understanding which tools are critically important to their work. “I’m in a perpetual state of anxiety about which tools I’m supposed to be paying attention to.”
• Most of the attendees were at a loss as to where and how to get help for selecting and using new social media tools. “We don’t know who can translate these things for our needs.”
• Participants felt a “common struggle” in understanding which tools are critically important to their work. “I’m in a perpetual state of anxiety about which tools I’m supposed to be paying attention to.”
• Most of the attendees were at a loss as to where and how to get help for selecting and using new social media tools. “We don’t know who can translate these things for our needs.”
• There was almost universal frustration voiced about using outside technology consultants. The organizations felt that it was difficult to identify an appropriate one and felt that they were often left
  maintaining systems or tools for which they didn’t feel qualified. Smaller organizations said that they could not afford help of any kind, particularly their own staff dedicated to technology.
• Many organizations expressed the real difficulties of using technologies with constituents or in countries where the digital divide is very real and their constituents may be at risk of punishment by
  local governments for their activism.
• There were a few instances of constituents self-organizing to support the grantee organizations, as reported by the participants, but not many.
• Participants felt a generation gap with the new technology. “I’m always trying to catch up to my younger staff members.”
• All of the groups are using the web for donations; some to much greater success than others. As one participant said, “Money is the ultimate user generated content.”

I'm thinking about the interview that I had with Jon Udell where we talked a lot about the job of educating people about the possibilities of new technologies like Web 2.0 tools.  We also talked about the challenges of making leap from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 in terms of personal learning.  There is a chicken and the egg problem. To learn about web2.0 and feel comfortable, you need to experience it. 

The recommendations in the report call for more institutionalized capacity building programs around Web2.0. My thoughts are still half-way around the world in Cambodia and, in the US, we don't have the added challenge of a slow Internet connection.  In Cambodia,  NGO staffers were eager to learn about Web 2.0 and find creative challenge ways to get beyond the key barrier of a slow Internet connection.   

Jeremiah Owyang lay out a set of social media adoption questions that corporations ask:

2005: What is Social Media?
2006: Why does it matter?
2007: What does it mean to my business?
2008: How do I do it right?
2009: How do I integrate across the Enterprise

If we look at the these questions in terms of the nonprofit sector, I think nonprofits are lagging at least one or two years behind.   Nonprofits are still struggling to answer to the "What it is and why it matters" questions. Early reactions to the report are in from a few who work in the nonprofit technology field.  Jon Stahl speculates about how nonprofit technology providers cause the anxiety versus alleviate it. .  David Geilhufe says productize! 

The Technovist raises some questions about why the fear of change holds back adoption and suggests that the resistance isn't necessarily tied to specific tools, but more about giving control of direction setting and activities to individual constituents.

In decades past these organizations served as the direction setter, deciding on the agenda and dispatching activists to carry out a predetermined program.  For many years this was the way to go but now because of increased and easily accessible social connectivity a top down method feels stale and is increasingly inefficient in creating social change.

Human rights organizations need to adopt the new model developed by nonprofits like Kiva, which connects individuals to entrepreneurs in the developing world and offers infrastructure and due diligence but also gives its supporters freedom to make their own choices and to set their own directions for support.  With Web 2.0 activist organizations need to increasingly adopt the role of convener and connector supporting rather than dictating the work of activists.  Holding onto a position of top down authority will only end with a dissatisfied constituency moving to another more empowering organization.   

What do you think?  Have some thoughts you want to share?  Participate in the Net2ThinkTank that will be happening next week.

Comments

[John Powers]

Technovist raises important points. Tonight I wanted to link to a really great place--a clubhouse to encourage peer support for people recovering from mental illness near where I live.

I was so surprised that the organization which the clubhouse is a part surely has an annual budget of a million or more. But the Web site is like something I would do, that is, it's broken all over.

When non-profits can't even get brochureware together, it's clear the problem isn't just tools.

That's why your attention to "Why it matters" really matters. My sense is organizations like the one I mention can leap frog to Web 2.0 if only they can get their thinking around that it actually does matter.

[Michele Martin]

This is a really interesting topic that I'm hoping to have time to delve into this week.

Honestly, I think that the only way to get nonprofits to start using the tools is if we can find ways for individuals within those organizations to start using them for personal reasons. I'll give an example.

I do a lot of work with organizations on how to use career plans with their customers. When I try to show them career planning as it relates to their customers, they often don't "get it" because they're very hung up on what they think they already know about career planning for clients. But when I show them how to do their own career plans and then discuss how this applies to working with clients, then they get it.

When I think about my own learning curve with Web 2.0, I got into blogging, etc. because I wanted a way to share my art online. As I got into things more deeply, I began to see applications to my work and began to experiment with ways to use blogs in my work. Same thing with wikis--I started playing with them for myself and then began to apply them in my work environment.

I think that it's too big a leap for people to go from no familiarity with the tools to having to use them in what feels like the high stakes environment of work. If we can find ways for them to start playing with Web 2.0 in the personal realm, I think that they will naturally begin to apply this knowledge in the professional realm.

My .02 this morning.

[Laura Whitehead]

Hi Beth - a great summary, and I'm going to look into this report in detail soon. I agree wholly with Michele's comments above. I do feel the tide is beginning to turn and that in the next year or two there will be a big leap in nonprofits taking part more. The enthusiasm is rising, and hopefully next the learning and understanding. With more and more social applications enabling easier and open participation and sharing in the nonprofit arena, I do feel we'll be seeing a very different / enhanced use of the web to communicate our services and stories in the coming years ahead.

[Brian Zhang]

things are more challenging in 3rd world country, and I am not talking about the one just out of civic war like Liberia where having the lights at night is a luxury thing don't mention the web2.0, well I am here in Beijing China where 120million internet users and 140 million cell phone users, the web2.0 startups were like hot cake going out of stock for VCs year ago and on the other side NPOs are struggling in many ways, some of them are lucky enough to have a working fax machine on their desk, so education is for sure the first thing come to mind that NGO can do more if they could learn few new tricks with social web and its tools, www.ngomatters.org is kind of netsquared but in Chinese, and we add another service like building website hoping by working with a NGO from the ground level may be easier to help them catching up speed if they know nothing about how web1.0 could discourage them from being self-efficient using the web tools, in the end of the day if NGO get lost in trying using those flashy tools how good is that? I didn 't have email until 1997, and I didn't know how to reply SMS on my cell phone just couple years ago, and I in early 30s, so those NGO people could have failed behind, my mother knows how to use SMS nowdays, she was so addicted in a while, so what will be the bottom to push for NGO to be addicted in learning new stuff? Could anyone share your idea?

[Carol Seidl]

Our company just helped launch a not-for-profit blogsite that strives to engage people on issues related to health care in the U.S. The site, healthcommentary.org, is seeking to provide multiple channels of video content (as well as text) and collect video commentary and text from visitors. Beth, I'm interested in you r opinion of how well this site embodies the principles of Web 2.0.