Social Media and Nonprofits: The Line Between NGTD and ROI

One barrier to adoption of social media tools (and other technologies) is a concern from management or your boss about the value or benefits.  What's the roi?  Are you simply wasting your time? Are you, gasp, "not getting anything done"?

Stephen Downes points to a post by Tony Karrer with disagreeing with some points in about the value of blogging in Thomas Davenport's book Thinking for a Living: How to Get Better Performances And Results from Knowledge Workers.  Tony points out this paragraph:

I believe that blogging falls into the unproven category ... at the moment it's a tool for individuals to express their somewhat random musings. I know of no organization in which the benefits of blogging have been measured. Perhaps the biggest problem for blogging is the time it takes to read and write blogs. If anything this tool has detracted from productivity, not increased it. ...

Tony affirms the value of blogging for individuals and the organization, "As people begin to blog and it captures their ideas, thoughts, what they've read, done, etc. it becomes a wonderful resource for  any organization to leverage as part of larger knowledge management solutions."

Davenport's book was published almost two years ago and is reflection on blogging circa 2004-2005.  I wonder if Davenport's opinion has changed.  Is blogging now out of the "unproven category?"  I also wonder if Davenport would say the same thing about social networking sites in the workplace? (See Rob Cottingham's commentary on Shel Holtz's Stop Blocking campaign!)

Downes notes, "There's two ways to look at it. Blogging most definitely helps you and your career and your learning. So it improves productivity. But it may take away from what your boss wants you to be doing (especially if this has nothing to do with helping your career and your learning). So it may hurt productivity. This is the thing: who defines productivity?"

Productivity would be defined in the context of some sort of evaluation of the benefits of the technology - perhaps using a logic model.   Productivity might be defined as efficiency - taking less steps or less times to get something done.  Less frustration perhaps.   But, blogging can also help you be effective - building your personal expertise in a subject matter (related to your work).  Of course, who defines that?  And both can be difficult to measure.

See Dan Mcquillan's summary over at Netsquared some pointers and good thoughts on Social Media ROI and Nonprofits.  What is the ROI of the Social Web for Nonprofits? from Joitske,  who answers from the perspective of nonprofits working for international development.  She, like me, is less interested in the calculation method. She points about Web2.0 ways of working are not yet organisational habits (for nonprofits), but driven more by individuals.  She describes some metrics for thinking about efficiency and effectiveness:

I do think it is possible to monetize the effect of using the social web for development organisations but that's not my specialisation. And when monetizing, it could be the challenge not only to measure the direct cost reduction (like the amount of money saved because employees use free skype calls to talk to partners instead of telephone!) but also the indirect benefits like improved relationships and changed power relations between partner organisations in the south/east and development organisations in the north. (mind you, the term partner organisation is now in common use, but that name may conceal the difference in power at work in the collaboration between the two).

And, in some cases, it might be silly to measure or even unproductive or create a loss in productivity to actually measure.  (The classic resistance to gathering data for nonprofit evaluations)    Jeremiah Owyang, in his post called "The ROI of Blogging? Intangible"

My future colleague, luminary Charlene Li, has already proven the value of ROI, but for me, it’s not needed, I could do an ROI report, convert to time spent, opportunities gained, and business won, but I think I’d be missing some of the point. Why? I already see an ROI in blogging, I don’t need to measure, it’s brought me so many friends, so many contacts, it would be silly to measure.

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Comments

[Michele Martin]

Maybe I'm crabby today, but I always find it amusing when organizations bring up "ROI" and "productivity" when it comes to using social media. Why isn't this question asked when I'm required to attend yet another useless meeting or put together a "cover your butt" report or memo? What about when I'm having to complete both a paper version and a computer entry for the same thing?

So much of what passes for "getting things done" in organizations is about bad work processes that, if fixed, might actually leave more time for more productive pursuits like building your own knowledge and professional contacts to further your organization's mission. I have a really hard time with having to "prove" the worth of something like blogging when we blithely accept so many other work practices that are clearly unproductive because "that's how things are."

OK. I guess I AM a little crabby today. :-)

[Elizabeth Dunn]

I've been flogging the "professional development" angle for the ROI of blogging, having experienced first-hand the power of a long (and continuing) series of well-spent Saturdays researching nonprofit technology and trends on blogs. There's still a fair bit of resistance, though, to incorporating it into one's actual workday as a practice of lasting value.

It is all about relationship-building, and I equate it to the many community events, art openings, and other real-world networking opportunities whose value isn't questioned.

[Allan Benamer]

I think they're right -- there's no ROI to blogging right now for most orgs. [shrug] It's a strategic initiative whose financial payoff is too far down the line for most nonprofits to contemplate. I wouldn't recommend it for most nonprofits. That said, it's much like most of a web site. Many web sites have large portions that don't really fare well under an ROI analysis. There are many reasons to just simply have some brochureware and a Donate Now button and just call it a day. Then again, many marketing initiatives do not have direct ROI and their payoffs are years down the line. There MUST be a reason I knew about a handful of the megacharities even before I joined the nonprofit sector and I attribute that to marketing and advocacy. It's basically brandbuilding for an org and brandbuilding has a notoriously low short-term ROI. If your brand is about transparency and accountability, then blogging works. If you're trying to project something other than that, then don't do it.

I could certainly attest to the ROI for my blog but I'm a terrible subject for a white paper. I didn't subject my blog to a strategic analysis at the outset. I didn't know I was going to write about the things I eventually wrote about. It took seven months before I even started to take it seriously. I'm also not a consultant so I've never even entertained the surprisingly numerous job offers I've received because of the blog. It's definitely an unknown long-term investment. What I can say is that for all my hard work, I've made $200 in Google Adsense money which I've donated to Idealware and YouthAssets. So there's the total "hard" ROI for my blog: $200. Spread that over hundreds of posts and an average time of one hour per post -- it's not even minimum wage.

[Beth Kanter]

It all comes back to what your goals or outcomes are - and whether a blog might support those outcomes. And, as Allan suggests - it's a long term investment. I love this recent twitter exchange from the Forrester Conference about ROI of Social Media -
http://gregverdino.typepad.com/greg_verdinos_blog/2007/10/social-media-re.html

What's the ROI of your business cards?