I'm Speaking at SXSW About Nonprofits and Social Fundraising

 

I'm speaking at SXSW. The panel is titled "Pimp My Non Profit - Real Non-Profits Kicking Ass with Online Technology."  Ed Schipul, the session designer, came up with the title.   The panel will also include Erin Denny, Rachel Weidinger, and Michaela Hackner. (And, we're going to wear pimp hats)

Monday, March 10th
5:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Non profit groups struggle with funding and public support issues on a daily basis. Yet many have overcome the odds and made a splash online and offline by using the latest Web technologies - for pennies on the dollar. This discussion will center around the stories, strategies, triumphs and challenges of innovative non profits with a passion for change and the cajones to rock it out online.

I'm excited to finally meet Michaela face-to-face after following her personal blog and flickr stream over three years.  We connected through the "cambodia" tag on flickr because I was tracking it for Global Voices back in 2005.  The first photo of hers from Cambodia was this one of the four monks crossing the street titled Abbey Road. 

Michaela is now director of online strategy for World Learning.   We've paired up to give a 15 minute talk about using social media for fundraising -- she'll be talking from the perspective of someone inside a nonprofit and I'll be talking from the perspective as an "extra organizational activist" who is not a staff person, but someone who is working as an individual on behalf a case.    

The term "extra organizational activist" comes from Alison Fine's book Momentum and I first heard it back in September 2006 when I read the book and reviewed it over at Blogher.   Here's what she had to say about this role:

Fine says that it is important to encourage individual activism and that social media has become the "extra organizational lifeblood" replacing memberships, the lifeblood of the pre-Internet activist world.   Fine tells us, "When activist organizations take on the role of working within networks and choose to push power to the edges, they shift from doing activist work to facilitating activist work."  She concludes the chapter with some ways that activist organizations can support the efforts of individuals and stay relevant.

The other term that has been used to describe these individuals is "Wired Fundraisers"  by Network For Good in a recent report.    Peter Deitz of Social Actions has a slideshow that walks organizations through the definition and pros/cons of working with a Wired Fundraiser.

Peter identified the pros/cons as:

Pros

• Year round
• New Donors
• Builds Community
• Human Voice

Cons

• Low success rate (not everyone!)
• Steep learning curve
• Difficult accounting issues

Michaela and I thought we might tackle this as a point, counterpoint.  I wondered about whether there is organizational resistance to the idea of working with "extra organizational activists" or  "Wired Fundraisers."  I asked colleagues Katya Andresen and Stacie Mann from Network for Good. 

We’re seeing less resistance as nonprofits witness the effectiveness of wired fundraisers.  We’re seeing increasingly that volunteers/wired fundraisers run the campaign in coordination with the nonprofit or vice versa.  I’d say there’s a high degree of cooperation among the most active fundraisers. 

More often it is not resistance on the messaging, but a lack of understanding/fear of how it works and ultimately benefits the org (tools to get/cultivate the new donors etc.). Once that is clear almost always they are on board.  We are definitely starting to see an interesting spectrum of coordination.

So, it may be less of an organizational attitude of "Help, my fundraising has been abducted by aliens ..." to "how can leverage these extra organizational activists for our organization?"

The audience at SWSX will consist solely of nonprofit folks and the ones that are there are probably already putting these new web tools to work.   I suspect (could be wrong) that there may be a few potential wired fundraisers -- so, have a few questions:

• If you were talking to some potential "wired fundraisiers" what advice would you give them in terms of connecting and coordinating with the nonprofit organization?  What advice would you give them to increase the changes of success in their campaign?
• If you're from a nonprofit organization, have you had discussions about working with wired fundraisers or extra organizational activists?  What were some of the difficult issues you needed to address?  What were the adoption issues?   What did you need to think about?  What's your advice for making this a successful partnership?
• Have any recommendations for a hat?

Update:  Drew Bernard's pointer to correcting Evangelists

Comments

[Lisa Neal]

I am not responding to this particular post but to your blogs and how impressive they are. I especially found the Cambodian one of interest having had a Cambodian babysitter for 12 years. Great work!

[Deborah Zanke]

Sounds like an interesting panel discussion Beth. My comment is about the title: "Pimp my non-profit..."

I know the term "pimp" has taken on a different connotation over the past several years but to those of us working in the non-profit social services sector with sexually exploited youth, the term and the image of the pimp's hat seems inappropriate for a non-profit discussion. I think we need to be cautious about language and about how we sometimes inadvertently glamourize/normalize violence/exploitation against women and girls.

I don't want to come off as the "language police" but the title just struck me as inappropriate. Has anyone else voiced any concerns about it?

[Beth Kanter]

In the interest of transparency, I'm cross posting to the comments that took place in private email between me, Deborah, and Ed Schipul the panel designer. Deborah brought a very good point about the title of the panel.

Ed said:

This is something we are *very* aware of. To the point I have considered renaming the panel, but by the time that occurred all of the printing etc had already gone out.

On the plus side, a somewhat controversial title did allow this, of the three panels we proposed, to make it past the panel picker and be accepted by SXSW as a panel. The fact that we don’t have a larger representation at SXSW for social issues and the nonprofit sector blows my mind! I suspect this is a result of the panelpicker system

In this case we borrowed a title from the DC Netsquared Group from January 2007 as a marketing gimmick.
http://www.netsquared.org/blog/britt-bravo/pimp-my-nonprofit-the-washington-dc-netsquared-january-meetup

The good - the exposure we will get at SXSW will be huge. Netsquared has even contributed one (1) ticket to the Mashup conference coming up as well for the panel to give away as a door prize! So from a PR and marketing perspective this is a good thing for Netsquared and the social sector in general.

The bad part is we do have a somewhat controversial moniker and hints at historical references of depravity. Whether society has reclaimed the word, even in a joking context, is really unknown. Internally I have settled on the “greater good” aspect of having a social voice heard at SXSW. And making sure we as a panel are *crystal clear* that while the title is meant to be funny, the topics we are discussing are world changing and 100% real. And definitely NOT about exploitation.

Last though – what is good is conversation. I appreciate your comments! And I bet I could get Hugh to let us change the name of the panel on the web site if this is a large issue. This might reduce on site SXSW marketing as we were going to wear silly hats and hand out moo cards to be sure the panel is packed. The logic there being if you Deborah and you Beth propose panels next year that it will be know there is a demand for nonprofit and social issue panels at SXSW, right? But I am open to change.

Deborah Responded:

Thanks Beth, I appreciate you passing my comments along. I don't know if you have "Pimp and Ho" events in your local bars out your way but a couple of bars have tried such events where I live and there has been great outrage--particularly from those trying to exit the sex trade and those working with women and girls with this issue. The event has patrons dress as pimps and sex trade workers and plays up the theme in other ways. When I saw the title of the panel discussion, it kind of reminded me of the controversy of these events. You'd never see an event such as "wife beater and victim party", for example. Yet, somehow, when it comes to sexual exploitation, we accept the dynamic. You'd hate to alienate some of the non-profits you hope will attend the panel.

Anyway, thanks for considering my two cents.

[John Phillips]

I just stumbled across this blog, however, I like what I've seen so far. I will be in attendance at SXSW this year and I've notified my business partner that we should attend your panel. Though I don't have anything to say about the name of the panel, the content pertaining to it seems very interesting, and we've often talked about how we can position ourselves as a design company to help non-profits get familiar with the web.

Anyhow, I look forward to seeing this panel, and possibly meeting you as well.