At the Mashable Conference, I enjoyed hearing the latest update from Carie Lewis about her
organization's experience in social media crisis mode and the recent
controversy with Michael Vick. She was able to clearly demonstrate the value of listening and engaging.
Carie has proposed a panel at SXSW called "Let the Haters Hate" (and while you are voting for Carie's panel, consider casting votes for these nonprofit panels). I caught up with her to get some tips on managing angry people.
Given that you are on the front lines, what do you when people say bad things about your issues?
I fight the urge to argue right back. As much as I want to when someone's bashing the organization I love, I refrain from being defensive because that will only fuel the fire.Also, I try not to take criticism and mean words personally.
How do you know when to respond and when to brush it off?
I step back and assess the situation. I look at 3 things.
1 - tone. What is the severity of the person's tone - are they totally negative, neutral, seem like they could be talked to? 2 - influence. How many followers, friends, subscribers do they have? If it's a blog, what's their technorati ranking? How many people are they really talking to? 3 - frequency. Is this a standalone argument / complaint or does there seem to be a trend brewing? Is it the usual suspects or does this person seem to be gathering a following? I look at number of retweets, comments, etc.
How do I leverage the people who are saying good things about my brand?
I have set up extensive monitoring tools for my organization and brand. I respond to people who say positive things about our organization or retweet them often. I put them into a group or spreadsheet so I can keep track of them. I engage with them often, even if its not about my organization. Then, when it comes time for me to call on them for help, they'll want to.
How can do you turn a negative experience into a positive one?
Again, have extensive monitoring tools in place. Most people who complain about you don't even know you're on twitter or reading their blog. When they do, write them and tell them who you are and ask if you can help. You'll probably be able to tell right away if you'll be able to make things better. Not everyone is; keep that in mind. But it doesn't hurt to try - many people are really happy to hear from someone. Find out the root of the problem. If you can't fix it personally, or right away, tell them you're working on it. Keep in constant communication until its been resolved. Stay positive and respectful - as hard as it may be!
Note from Beth: Several weeks ago, I published a guest post by Geoff Livingston called "Creating Movements." where he discussed the crossroads of movements and campaigns and the need for an open culture. The post and ideas resonated with Holly Hight, a field organizer for Bread for the World. We got into a discussion in the comments and she agreed to share some of her experience addressing this issue within her nonprofit organization.
Our nonprofit is not unique. Over the past five years, we’ve stumbled our way into social media. We’ve listened to our supporters online and attempted authentic engagement with various social media platforms. While a large percentage of our organization can articulate the importance of being on Facebook, very few staff can grasp how these tools will help to achieve our goals: greater awareness and involvement in the broader movement to address hunger. Our use of social networking has exposed many cultural differences within our organization.
I am part of a large group of staff within our nonprofit that interacts with our supporters on a daily basis. It’s my job to listen to our members and empower them to get involved. Naturally, my colleagues and I have taken the lead in establishing our organizational presence on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Ning and posting to our blog. It is obvious that our skills directly translate into establishing an online presence. We know what our supporters like, need and want.
In contrast, a large segment of our organization rarely interacts with our supporters. They are tasked with the important work of research, creating our policy agenda and providing strategy for legislative campaigns. Despite their distance from activists, their work is why our organization is trusted and respected in our field. Policy and research staff have a different culture than those of us who work directly with individuals on the group. These two differing cultures recently came to head over social networking.
For an entire month, our organization was working to move forward a bill in Congress. We called on our network to take action with emailed action alerts, phone calls and posting messages on Twitter and Facebook. The response was positive, but near the end of the month many of our supporters were getting very tired. They had made a phone call, written a letter, sent an email, blogged about it and, in some cases; they had even met with their local representative. A companion bill was introduced around the end of the month and in large part because of the efforts of our advocates.
I was excited to inform our supporters about the bill, so I, along with a few other folks on staff, posted message to our Facebook and Twitter pages asking people to take action on the bill. Our supporters even picked up the message for themselves, particularly the people who worked hard for this bill to get introduced. Unfortunately, we were reprimanded for not being “on message” with our policy agenda. (The person who scolded us is not even on Facebook!) I was asked to “control the message” of our supporters online, who were already spreading the message virally.
My initial reaction was one of anger. But I calmly responded with an email that lifted up the excitement of our advocates on sites like Facebook. Hearing about the bill from us first increased our legitimacy and built the relationship with our network. I argued that it’s important for us to offer multiple paths of engagement and thank our supporter when their actions have a result. For our tired supporters who had tried everything on our other piece of legislation, this news was a breath of fresh air!
After this incident, we started to reflect on how our organization can move beyond its greatest fear of losing control and embrace social media? First, we need to move beyond the false dichotomy of message control vs. conversation. There’s a prevailing belief that you can’t foster conversation and get a message out. Social media teaches us that the best way to get the message out is to foster conversation. Conversation leads to ownership; ownership leads to creativity, and creativity leads to collective action.
We are taking a few steps in this direction, primarily by challenging our internal culture of message control and creating space for conversation across departments. We’ve formed an eCommunications Taskforce that includes representatives from every department. The group will discuss our overall strategy with our online presence and establish guidelines for social media. My department will facilitate a workshop about creative uses of social media to achieve our organizational goals. Adopting social media goes beyond getting your organization to be active on Facebook or Twitter. It starts by transforming a top-down culture into collaborative environment that listens, engages and involves its supporters.
How are you changing the culture of your organization to embrace social media?
Holly Hight is the California Field Organizer with Bread for the World.
The event was hosted by the amazing Shira Lazar who currently hosts
Mahalo’s This Week In YouTube and is the Editor-At-Large for
CondeNast’s Jaunted.com travel blogging from around the globe. I didn't realize this, but she is
also the founder of the The Society For Geek Advancement, which aims to
bring together geek culture for social good.
The most dramatic moment of the conference had nothing to do with charity fundraising. It was the surprise marriage proposal on the stage from Mashable's COO Adam
Hirsch to Managing Editor Sharon Feder (she said yes)! (You can read more about that here). And while Pete Cashmore announced that he would be doing a charity event in September around his 24th birthday, I'm wondering what charity wedding registry Sharon and Adam will register with? (Kiva?)
Randi Zuckerberg of Facebook delivered the opening keynote. It covered many examples of how people were using Facebook for online activism as well as how nonprofits were using it for fundraising. She also included some practical advice. I've heard Randi speak a couple of times, including this informative webinar hosted by NTEN. The big news for me was news about virtual gifts for charities. Facebook is piloting virtual charity gifts to users, the
proceeds will support micro-lender Kiva, Project
Red, the World Wildlife Fund and Toms Shoes. The feature may also open up more broadly after tested.
The Wall Street Journal covered her keynote, as did the Chronicle of Philanthropy. They picked up on these practical points:
Don't rely on groups in Facebook, have a Fan page to take advantage of Facebook's viralness. (You can do a lot with the look and feel of your Fan page - see the example of my landing page (or look at the welcome tab if you've already joined). This custom landing page was created by the good folks at Sprout.)
Be a little less "formal" and try a few fun updates and other content that sparks conversations. Randi suggests that having a personality is an asset.
Use video. Groups that post video on their fan pages are
typically able to create more personal messages. And those messages are
more likely to be shared with others.
Tag
liberally. Take pictures at
events and post them to their Facebook pages. When they post the
images, they should tag the people in the photos — a process that
notifies those who are friends of the people that they have been tagged
in a photo on a charity’s page. Those notifications draw more traffic
and, in turn, more supporters, to a charity’s page.
Incorporate
Facebook into your events. If you have a special event, make sure you
invite your Facebook fans to the party, too. You’ll probably attract
more people — and Facebook will tell all of their friends that they are
coming to an organization’s event.
Skeptics in the audience tweeted about the limitations of tool-centric campaigns or wondered if, at the end of day, there was any on the ground social change. Was it all hype?
Toby Daniels, from Think Social, who was called in at the last minute, did a fantastic talk. Best of all, I got to finally meet him and Scott Harrison from charity:water face-to-face. (Check out this post by Toby over at Think Social about storytelling using charity:water as an example.) There were also presentations about Global Giving and Causecast.
The nonprofits Humane Society of the United States, World Wildlife Fund, Oxfam, and LIVESTRONG each gave excellent presentations on how their organizations are using social media. I enjoyed hearing the latest update from Carie Lewis about her organization's experience in social media crisis mode and the recent controversy with Michael Vick. She was able to clearly demonstrate the value of listening and engaging. More details about the nonprofit presentations at the Nonprofit Bridge and Chronicle of Philanthropy.
Photo by David Parmet (In the green room waiting to go on the stage, in between Pete Cashmore and Geoff Livingston) See more of David's conference photos here.
Next was the "Social Media for Social Good" segment. I kicked it off with a talk titled "Be a Generous Geek" which was about the many ways small actions (online and offline) can make a difference, sprinkled with a few stories that were featured in Shel Israel's Twitterville and Chris Brogan's Trust Agents. Next up was colleague Geoff Livingston who talked about building movements (see his slides below and read more here).
Next was Scott Henderson who presented a case study about his PledgeforHunger project. Our segment ended with an amazing talk by Drew Olanoff (you can read about his work here). I'm definitely in on the blameathon on September 9th.
The event ended with a marriage proposal and a lot of geek excitement over social media for social good. There were also some voices of skeptics asking the big question on how to channel this energy and excitement at the awareness level to bring about real change both online and offline.
What I saw at this conference, was a youthful enthusiasm
for generosity, and the desire to do something, but perhaps there is a need for
sharing of best practices and techniques beyond the tools. There is a great opportunity for generations of philanthropists, organizers, and community leaders to enrich each others learning.
Note from Beth:In 1993, I worked as the "network weaver" for an online network for individual artists called "Arts Wire" where I facilitated online conversations, provided technology support and training. Patterned after the Well and using text-based online discussion software, Arts Wire was the first introduction to the Internet for hundreds of individual artists and arts organizations. It was an exciting time to be online because we were at the beginning of World Wide Web. Jeff Gates was an influential member of this community and an early adopter. So it came as no surprise when I ran into him via his blog and the social web.
Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine, popularized the term The Long Tail
to describe a strategy for businesses that sell large numbers of items,
each at a relatively low volume. Despite fewer sales per item,
according to Anderson, such businesses can make big profits if they
reach many, many niche buyers.
In the last few years, the Smithsonian American Art Museum
has been looking at our museum’s online information in the same way.
Our Web statistics showed that the number of visitors to our top ten
sections paled when compared with the total number of visitors for all
other pages, even though only a few people viewed each page. The
challenge: how could we make it easier for our online visitors to find
things of interest even if that information is buried deep in our site?
Anderson recently spoke at the Smithsonian 2.0
conference. Organized by the Smithsonian’s new Secretary, G. Wayne
Clough, the seminar brought digerati from across the country to discuss
how the Institution could make its collections, educational resources,
and staff more “accessible, engaging and useful” to our visitors with
the help of technology. A few weeks ago, American Art’s director,
Elizabeth Broun, continued the discussion by holding an unprecedented
all-day staff retreat to discuss the use of social media within the
museum.
• • •
Museums are changing. Like many other organizations, our hierarchical
structure has historically disseminated information from our experts to
our visitors. The envisioned twenty-first-century model, however, is
more level. Instead of a one-way presentation, our online visitors are
often interested in having a conversation with our curators and content
providers. In response, many of us at American Art have been looking
for ways to engage our public by designing applications that promote
dialogue. By encouraging user-generated content and by distributing our
assets beyond our own Web site and out across the Internet, we hope to
make our content easier to find. In doing so, we are trying to fulfill
our long tail strategy. In order to succeed we will need to approach
our jobs differently.
While the traditional visionary makes connections between the big
pictures, long tail visionaries look for connections between the small
pictures. I am hedging my bets at the grassroots level. And at this
level I, along with my coworkers, play a number of roles.
Explorer. Our job is to look for and make new connections
between our museum, its art, and other online networks. It’s written in
my performance plan! Of course we’ve got a Twitter feed, a YouTube channel for our videos, Facebook pages, and Flickr accounts (we’ve even got a set of images for our just opened exhibition 1934: A New Deal for Artists).
But we’re also looking for new iPhone apps and other online venues for
our work all the time. And with this new interest in social media,
there is a lot of potential for connecting with the larger world.
Advocate. Making our artworks accessible and connecting them
with Americans’ lives has been our director’s long-term goal, and we’ve
noted the cultural shift from a broadcast mode of communication (that
one-way, top down dissemination of info) to a more conversational one.
Five years ago when I first proposed doing Eye Level,
American Art’s blog, I looked at the ways young people were consuming
culture. A blog seemed like a good first step toward attracting youth
to our offerings and hopefully engendering lifelong interest in our
museum.
When the Lunder Conservation Center,
American Art’s open conservation lab, told us they wanted to find a way
to let visitors know when a conservator was working on an artwork, we
showed them how to use Twitter
to inform our museum’s information desks that something cool going on
way up on the third floor. Showing our staff a valuable solution to one
of their real world problems is one of the best ways to advocate for
social media within the museum.
Collaborator. It took a group of us to make our blog a success.
While our goal was similar, we all saw the process in slightly
different ways. Nevertheless, together we made change possible. Growing
pains are emerging, though. As we develop new ways of communicating
with our visitors and members, our jobs and responsibilities will
morph. Bringing order doesn’t require the centralized management of a
“Social Media Czar.” But it does require a strategic plan. Who’s
responsible for what? How will multiple departments contribute, say, to
a Twitter feed without it degenerating into confusion? Organizations
used to one honed public voice may find this difficult to fathom. As we
try to reach many different audiences, many of us will be entrusted to
convey a consistent message. And this can work only if we know how to
work together.
The Luce Center’s Fill the Gap! has been one of the most interesting online interactions we’ve had with our public.
Community Organizer. At the root of all of this techno stuff is
people: individuals who share a common interest. We’re finding new ways
to bring people together and nurture their relationship with the
museum. We do this both within American Art and between our museum and
public. We’re always looking for museum staff to write for Eye Level.
Their stories are the museum. As we develop social media outreach,
we’re also soliciting outside people to contribute their photographs,
insights, and stories.
Recently, the Luce Center for American Art, our open storage facility, requested help to Fill the Gap!
in one of its cases. If an artwork in open storage is moved elsewhere
and will be gone more than a year, the Luce staff is asked to replace
the piece with another. This time, we asked our Flickr audience for
suggestions to fill the empty space. The ensuing dialogue with citizen curators’ suggestions was exactly the type of engagement we want to encourage with our public.
Realist. It’s not easy developing a new organizational paradigm.
I also realize not everyone sees the future in the same way. After our
museum’s social media retreat, I discussed the day’s topics with my
colleagues. Some had valid concerns and reservations. How would this
new goal add to their already busy jobs? With resources at a premium,
would the quality they strive for be sacrificed? And with so much
“junk” on the Internet, would our efforts just be adding to the
cacophony? Good content is still our best cultural currency and we have
a lot of it here. Plus, as I see it, face-to-face dialogues would
always trump anything online. It isn’t the technology I am excited
about, but rather how technology can connect us and even lead to new
understandings about our content.
As long tail visionaries we don’t just embrace new technology —we question it. After the unbridled exuberance for the 1990s’ next best thing,
separating reality from hyperbole has become one of our most valued
skill sets. Our efforts must support our museum’s goals but we can test
these waters, even failing now and then, and still move forward and
evolve. Developing new paradigms require more process-oriented, rather
than results-oriented thinking. We have to be cognizant of the new
structures and relationships we’re building in order to evaluate our
successes and failures. This is the grassroots where long tail
visionaries work best.
• • •
Is it hubris to call us visionaries? Not really. We
are part soothsayer and part prognosticator. And these have become
entry-level requirements for cultural workers at any organization. At
the very least we need to make informed decisions and a lot of educated
guesses about the changes technology is bringing to museums. Is it
provocative? Change, by its very nature, is provocative. Traditional
museum content providers are no longer the only people in a position to
decide what is worthy of our attention and limited resources. Museums
and other cultural institutions are in the midst of a fundamental shift
and long tail visionaries are working together with curators, public
affairs officers, and other staff to make some important decisions.
This transition, though, will not always be easy.
Sometimes I need to be a realistic and pragmatic long tail visionary.
But, I’ll confess, every now and then I can also get really, really excited by the possibilities. Visionaries can get that way sometimes.
Jeff Gates is Lead Producer, New Media Initiatives, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and managing editor of its blog: Eye Level. This post originally appeared on Jeff's personal blog, Outtacontext.
Note from Beth: I invited Stephanie to publish her blog post about the network evaluation discussion we had with Michael Quinn Patton yesterday. If you have thoughts, please join the discussion over here.
Today some Packard Foundation staff who have been thinking about
network effectiveness, plus our visiting scholar Beth Kanter, got to
chat with evaluation expert Michael Quinn Patton about evaluating
networks. Our Evaluation Director Gale Berkowitz invited Michael to
spend a day at the Foundation while he was out on the West Coast.
Michael has a nice story telling approach to sharing his thinking. I
think the stories belong to his clients, but here are my takeaways.
Our
discussion followed along this frame. We talked about the realities of
network ebb and flow. Organizational Effectiveness Program Officer
Kathy Reich mentioned that we get the advice “build your network before
you need it”. And Michael pointed out that sometimes networks will hum
along at a lower level of activity, doing no more than sharing
information e.g., tracking state court cases to predict when the issue
could become a Supreme Court case. While the network is just
“networking” or is engaging in basic activities it is building the
trust needed for the network to activate, moving into campaign mode to
solve something.
He also talked about how sometimes there are subgroups of effectiveness
within a network. When it is time to mobilize the network it may need
to get smaller, leaving behind outliers who have a hard time
functioning in a network.
Michael has heard funders criticized
when they are slow to support a network’s activation; requiring
extensive proposal work when the network is responding to the rapid
emergence of an opportunity. Just when network members should be
devoting their attention to the window of opportunity they get bogged
down in a time consuming proposal process. Could foundations get money
out faster to already trusted partners?
Another essential
network function is to watch for a window of opportunity for
activation. So an early task is to create a shared vision of that
window of opportunity. Would it be a new health minister? a disaster?
front page headline about the issue? Other networks focus on creating a
window.
Sometimes after intense outcomes focused action the
network will settle back into just networking. Some networks stay vital
with scenario planning - what could go wrong? In addition they conduct
drills. (that is what firefighters do; they drill and practice so they
are ready for a fire) Others become a listening, or as Beth said -
sensing network.
Network Ebb and Flow – so it might looks more like this
Evaluation Table
We tried to figure out the axis for a two dimensional grid. We came up with something familiar. One
axis would be the extent to which there are identifiable outcomes. You
could ask; how close are network members’ description of their shared
purpose? The other axis would be process. Where are network members on
process issues; relationship, trust, and understanding of each other’s
niche.
This reconfirmed for me why social network mapping is
tool that can be used for network evaluation. Process questions include
the frequency of use of the network, who you go to get information, how
important the network is to you vs. other things, how much do you trust
the information you get from the network. The questionnaire could
include questions that get to alignment on the purpose and hoped for
outcomes also.
I came away convinced that we
funders and network participants should be patient in our networks, and
I am curious about work that has been done on network life cycles. Feel
free to share your ideas here.
Stephanie McAuliffe is the Director of Human Resources at the Packard Foundation.
Michael Quinn Patton, an evaluation guru, visited the Packard Foundation yesterday. I participated in a lively exploratory conversation about "How do you evaluate network effectiveness?" along with others on the Packard Foundation organizational effectiveness team. I also had an opportunity to hear his thoughts on the state of the
evaluation field, how it has changed and get a deeper understanding of developmental evaluation.
Michael Quinn Patton uses metaphors and stories to talk about evaluation in everyday language. He is a genius at connecting evaluation to other people's contexts. As a result, I had several "ah ha" moments and found a couple of connections for thinking about social media strategy - especially how we address culture change, social media measurement, ROI and the whole larger question of social media for social good.
By way of this post and video, I'm sharing some of Michael Quinn Patton's thinking about evaluation. I invite you to share your thoughts and reactions in the comments.
But first, some context.
Patton has written several books on the art and science of program evaluation, including Utilization-Focused Evaluation (4th ed., 2008), in which he emphasizes the importance of designing evaluations to insure their usefulness, rather than simply creating long reports that may never get read or never result in any practical changes.
He is also the author of a book called "Getting to Maybe" about social change. The big idea in the book is described below:
Many of us have a deep desire to make the world around us a better place. But often our good intentions are undermined by the fear that we are so insignificant in the big scheme of things that nothing we can do will actually help feed the world’s hungry, fix the damage of a Hurricane Katrina or even get a healthy lunch program up and running in the local school. We tend to think that great social change is the province of heroes – an intimidating view of reality that keeps ordinary people on the couch. But extraordinary leaders such as Gandhi and even unlikely social activists such as Bob Geldof most often see themselves as harnessing the forces around them, rather than singlehandedly setting those forces in motion. The trick in any great social project – from the global fight against AIDS to working to eradicate poverty in a single Canadian city – is to stop looking at the discrete elements and start trying to understand the complex relationships between them. By studying fascinating real-life examples of social change through this systems-and-relationships lens, the authors of Getting to Maybe tease out the rules of engagement between volunteers, leaders, organizations and circumstance – between individuals and what Shakespeare called “the tide in the affairs of men.”
This is one to definitely add to the plane reading list and a theme of my talk at Mashable Conference on Friday.
I'm not an evaluation practitioner, so I wasn't sure exactly whether there would be any connection to my work in social media. What I discovered, is that through his engaging storytelling, I got inspired by evaluation.
As Patton shared with us, the field of evaluation is dynamic. When he approached updating the fourth edition of his book, he thought it would be just about updating the stories. In the course of writing the book, he realized the field had changed. Most noticeably in the rise of cross-cultural, international evaluation program work. The question of how to adapt evaluation methods to other political and cultural systems in developing countries was big challenge because evaluation, over the past three decades, has been deeply rooted in the Western ways of thinking.
He then launched into a series of "creation stories" or "beginning" stories to explain the difference between traditional evaluation approaches and "developmental evaluation" (an evaluation of a program that helps you improve it.)
In the beginning, God created heaven and earth. God saw everything. Everything is good. So the 7th day he rested. How do you know what you created is very good? What are you criteria? What are the outcomes? Aren't you a little close to the situation to make an objective assessment? His rest was greatly disturbed by these questions. So, on the 8th day he got up and created evaluation (hell.)
The above story is a metaphor for the traditional summative approach to evaluation - create something, then evaluate it's impact, but don't change the program.
He pointed out that this was very difficult to apply to programs in
developing countries. He realized it when started to look at creation
stories in different cultures.
Maori in New Zealand Creation Story
In the beginning, father sky and mother earth - embraced. Such a fierce embrace - only darkness was in between them. Children were born into this space but they became unhappy and plotted to push the parents apart. It became clear that they would have to join together and need the strength of the oldest. A lot of bickering followed and failed attempts by the younger siblings. Having observed failed attempts, the oldest said said they would have to put their backs into it - back against father sky and feet against mother earth. The push the parents apart. Father sky was crying - and that became rain. Pushing apart parents, had exposed the nakedness of his mother. He began to plant trees to hide her body. They had never planted a tree before. First they tried roots in the air, leaves in ground. It failed. They tried laying them on the ground. Finally they succeeded by planting the roots in the ground. They then grew forests and the eldest child became the god of the Forrest.
Patton points out that they were not sure what they were trying to get too. They didn't know what a forest looked like. They had a general sense, but had to go through a listen, learn, and adapt process before getting it right. This is the essence of developmental evaluation.
A group of people like Adam and Eve were there in the beginning. In the mist, a grass hut appears with no doors or windows. They surround the grass hut. There are noises and they are frightened by it. They spend the day debating - and end up not doing anything because they can't decide. Frozen by fear, they go to sleep. The next morning, the hut is there. The noises continue. The uncertainty is making them crazy. They love the place where they are and they don't want to leave. They decide they have to open up the hut. They cut a door. Out comes the clan, the medicine people who have knowledge. They thank them and share their wisdom.
Developmental evaluation involves asking a lot questions. This story is about the scariness of asking questions, looking at a program, campaign, activity and ask are we prepared to learn about it? Do we stay in that place believing it is okay? The story is a metaphor about the fear of asking questions and the knowledge that comes with it.
I also see this as a metaphor for the fear of engaging from social media. What if we get a negative comment? What if we loose control? That fear keeps nonprofits from engaging.
Some other takeaways from his talk about evaluation:
Evaluation needs to be relevant and meaningful. It isn't a horrible alien thing that punishes people and makes judgments.
Need a culture of inquiry, sharing what works, what doesn't. A willingness to engage about what to do to make your program better.
Evaluation is not about getting to a best practice that can be spread around the world in a standardized way and to answer the question, "Is everyone following the recipe?"
Program development has to be ongoing, emergent. It isn't a pharmacy metaphor of finding a pill to solve the problem.
Real-Time Feedback/Evaluation is different from development evaluation which is directed towards a purpose to do something. Police use real-time evaluation to allocate their resources. For example, if crime increases in a neighborhood, they know how to allocate patrols.
Developmental evaluation speeds up the feedback loop.
The other conversation I participated in was focused on network effectiveness and how to evaluate it. Stephanie McAuliffe captures is must better than I did, so go read her post. Patton observed that thinking about networks has changed. He shared one framework that describes what the network does:
Networking/information sharing/learning
Coordination
Collaboration
Partnerships
The framework assumes that networks can move up or down through these phases. The question is when do the networks move to these other levels? He talked a lot about ebb and flow - that a network could be doing "information sharing/networking" and that you can measure it by looking at how people are connecting and their trust.
The connection here for me about social media is the notion that it isn't just a "campaign" - where you flip on or off switch. It's about this ongoing building of relationships with the people in your network. What you measure is engagement and trust.
Also, there is a catalytic moment when the network needs to scale into coordination or collaboration to take action. He describe how some networks work while in the "networking" phase - they imagine different scenarios or "fire drills." Another metaphor was disease - going from chronic to acute.
He also mentioned the importance of someone playing the role of being a network weaver who captures the lessons/stories in real-time. Someone who doesn't own the purpose.
Evaluating network effectiveness looks at two different criteria. Outcomes as related to purpose. Is the network focused on problem-solving, networking, connecting fragmenting programs, a campaign, sensing network, etc. The other criteria is process - what are the tasks and processes.
What connections are you making between social media and the thinking of Michael Quinn Patton?
On the way to taking my kids to the Montery Bay Aquarium a few weekends ago, we stopped in Santa Cruz to have some fun on the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. My colleague, Nina Simon, who writes the Museum2.0 Blog and is a Santa Cruz local, joined us.
We know that social media inspires fear. What's out there in the darkness that might catch us off guard? The way to get past fear of uncertainty is to deconstruct it. So, what better metaphor for this is to deconstruct the scare house by riding it with an expert in participatory exhibit design?
The first part of the video is the actual ride through the scare house which lasted all of two minutes. After we finished, I interviewed Nina about what was and what was not scary.
So, why not take that same approach to deconstructing social media concerns?
But don't take my word for it. I recently came across an article by Rosabeth Moss Kanter (no relation) from the Harvard Business School called "To Master Change, First Dread It" She
describes the stress and feelings of lost control that change in
organizations engenders. She goes on to say that the stress leads to
paralysis. She offers a counter-intuitive tip for moving past it:
A counter-intuitive tip for mastering change is to start by wallowing in the feelings of dread it arouses.
The sheer nail-biting horror of it all. Get in touch with every
negative aspect, all the things that could go wrong. Then figure out a
way to get that negative force on your side. In short, "Dream your
worst nightmare and invest in it."
I think this is the key to adoption and social media success. To
create your social media guidelines, examine the worst possible
scenario, ask what if questions, wallow in all your fears, etc. I call
this putting a smiley face on the screamer.
How has your organization worked past fear of social media?
Note from Beth: Last week, I hunted down the nonprofit panel proposals for SXSW including one submitted by me on crowdsourcing social change (see the NTEN blog post). There was a panel on slacktivism which caught my eye and later I spotted this post by Ali Cherry unpacking the concept posted on the Beaconfire Consulting blog. She graciously allowed me to republish the post.
While it’s not a new term, a few months ago, “slacktivism” became
the topic of a firestorm debate among nonprofit advocates, online
marketing professionals and social change proponents after a series of
media stories including an article by Warren Clements of Toronto’s
Globe and Mail, “A slacktivist and his crackberry are seldom parted.” The fire doesn’t seem to be going out any time soon.
While the definition is its own debate topic, most agree that it is
the act of doing something that requires very little effort and has
only the perceived effect of impact. Or in the words of Urban
Dictionary, “the act of participating in obviously pointless activities
as an expedient alternative to actually expending effort to fix a
problem.”
So do “click actions” like signing a petition and becoming a
Facebook fan actually make a difference? We want to get the best and
brightest in a room at SXSW and go at it. Help us out and vote for our panel “Can Double-Clicking Change The World? Slacktivism 101″, leave a comment and come to SXSW in March to join the debate with Jacob Colker (Co-Founder and CEO of The Extraordinaries), Premal Shah (President of Kiva) and Jason Cooper (Online Coordinator at Kaboom.org).
And in case you’ve missed the debate, I’ve done some of the reading for you…in the true spirit of slacktivism.
“For [Jacob] Colker, the idea of spare-moment do-gooding is
‘transformative.’ He takes the long view of short attention spans…it’s
sometimes hard for people to find the right organizations to volunteer
for, and it can be equally hard for organizations to capitalize on the
various skills that volunteers bring to the table… But
microvolunteerism, Colker says, ‘is perfectly suited for the Millennial
Generation. They are used to text messaging, MySpace, Facebook, get-in,
get-out, instant gratification. For them, going out and cleaning up a
park — that’s not necessarily attractive to them…’” – Linton Weeks
“Are the publicity gains gained through this greater reliance on
new media worth the organizational losses that traditional activists
entities are likely to suffer, as ordinary people would begin to turn
away from conventional (and proven) forms of activism (demonstrations,
sit-ins, confrontation with police, strategic litigation, etc) and
embrace more ’slacktivist’ forms, which may be more secure but whose
effectiveness is still largely unproven?” – Evgeny Morozov
“Sure, each new technology comes with Faustian ambivalence, but
even though the Twitter protesters may not have lead to any substantial
change (yet), I’d argue that the worldwide attention (and sympathy) for
the cause of the Iranian people was significantly enhanced through the
hundreds of thousands of Twitterers who used #iranelection (especially
given #CNNfail). Was this ad-hoc Twitter community a political
movement? Maybe not. But it politicized and generated social power that
can instigate political change.” – Tim Leberecht
“These groups will need help to find ways to break down their
efforts into bite-size pieces while maintaining the thread of
connection between these immediate actions and their intended longer
term results. And it is exactly these results that are at risk within
the micro-environment. It is quite possible that we will become
frantically busy doing a lot of change stuff that does make the doers
feel great (which is important ) but doesn’t add up to the systemic
social change needed in communities. Does busy mean the same thing as
impact?’ – Allison Fine
“VolunteerMatch is different from slacktivism services because
we’re using technology to help nonprofits and volunteers create
enduring relationships based on real-world contributions of time and
energy (and often skills as well). Whether these contributions are
on-the-ground service roles like working in a soup kitchen or reading,
or whether they are “virtual” opportunities like providing Web design
or grant writing help from home, the support VolunteerMatch volunteers
provide can often be measured in sweat rather than clicks or page
views.” – Robert Rosenthal
“But we have to recognize that just because someone is using social
media as a part of their “strategy” does not automatically mean they
are using it strategically. There are ways to waste time with campaigns
that, in the end, don’t really bring about social change, but there are
ways to waste time with direct mail and organizing rallies too. This
flaw is not that the tools are ineffective; it’s rather a misuse and
missed opportunity by the organization.” – Kristin Ivie
The recipe for effective slacktivism is embracing technology to
attract and organize mass amounts of people combined with an authentic
belief on the part of the slacktivist and action sponsor that it will
make an impact, add in a dose of creativity and recognize that a click
is part of a portfolio of other actions – numbers, stories, face to
face meetings, etc. – both offline and online. Ideally a click action
is used as an entry point for new supporters, or supplemental, and that
most people engage in many forms of action when they care about an
issue. – Ali Cherry
Ali Cherry is the Online Campaigns and Marketing Director at Beaconfire Consulting, where she helps nonprofits grow their supporter networks, enhance engagement and convert donors.
Mashable has been using social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, blogs and others to help promote the initiative and encourage social media power users to donate money to help support the work of these charities. Approximately $30K has been raised to date. (I just made a donation, and you can do so here)
As we reach the final days of summer and folks head back to school, the Summer of Social Good will have its last hurrah at the Social Good Conference on Friday, August 28 at New York’s historic 92nd Street Y. (I'm honored to be speaking). If you cannot attend the event, please be sure to check out their post, “5 Ways to Support the Summer of Social Good,” which includes opportunities for donating without spending any money. Donations close on August 29th, 2009.
Mashable has also been featuring topics on how activists, fundraisers, and charities can use social media as part of their strategy.
That's some of the schwag and a copy of Shel Israels's Twitterville that I purchased at last night's #tbash, the launch party for the book. I also had 17 copies to give away and delighted to meet United Linens and Walter Akana in person!
The launch party was lots of fun - lots of Twitterville's most prominent residents were there as you can see from the #tbash stream and the photos in Flickr by Kenneth Yeung. Also a few nonprofit folks, including Stacey Monk and Frank Barry who were also in the book and great to see some old friends like KdPaine, Chris Heuer, Kristie Wells, Amber Cadabra, Brian Solis and all the folks captured in Brian's photos. The t-shirts were provided by Network Solutions and Shashi was creating customized versions by ironing our Twitter handles! (You can see the front of the t-shirt on this photo of I took of Francine Hardaway and Erica O'Grady)
I love Shel's writing - he tells one great story after another. But
he also has done his homework. Like a sociologist digging up the
remains of an ancient civilization or someone researching their family
history, he went to great lengths to uncover the beginning of
fundraising on Twitter. He looks at how it is evolved in the last two
years.
Nonetheless, the best practices that Shel outlines at the end of the fundraising chapter will still hold true.
Okay, so if you've read this far, you'll notice that there are still four books that haven't been given away. I'll be using those to raise money for Leng Sopharath's senior college tuition. So stay tuned. I hoping the winners will have lots of advice and maybe a screencapture of tweeted best practices for goodwill fundraising and share them in the Twitterville Flickr Group.
The 13 winners
Manny Hernandez who shared his fundraising secrets for Tubiabetes.com
WiserEarth for its sharing it's Twitter thank you note for its fundraising campaign for its API
Jeris Jc Miller who along with Kathy Gill are inspiring the next generation of Twitter Goodwill fundraisers in Seattle. (Please share the book with Kathy and her students)
Lisa Colton from Darim, nonprofit that helps Jewish organizations. She will read the book, incorporate some ideas strategies and then do a book giveaway in their blog asking the same question!
Lindsay Renee from the Georgia Alzheimer's Association who will read it and then use as a featured item in their fundraising auction.
Robin Pratt from the Utah Nonprofit Association who will read it, apply to strategy, and then put in their library for nonprofits around the state to read.
Almost ten months ago I launched Spot.Us via a Knight Foundation grant
which is trying to pioneer “community funded reporting,” the act of
distributing the cost of hiring an investigative journalist. In short:
I fundraise for independent reporters but not through foundations or
grant writing. Spot.Us fundraises by making the argument to the public
that this reporting will benefit us all. If we can get 30-50 people to
donate $20 each around a specific topic – we are in business.
It’s often called “crowdfunding.”I grabbed the term (and the concept for Spot.Us) while I was the research assistant for Jeff Howe who coined the phrase “crowdsourcing.” While working on the chapter about crowdfunding I began studying Kiva.org, Donors Choose, Sell A Band
and other organizations exploring this space. In many ways Spot.Us is
my interpretation of the practices and principles they were employing
for journalism.
So what are those practices and principles? What are the concrete
lessons, mistakes, ideas I can pass along to others who might want to
join this space? In truth there are countless lessons every day. But
here are a few that stick very prominently in my mind.
Specificity and Transparency
Make sure all your ducks are in a row before you launch. It’s a
natural inclination to launch the fundraiser the second you have the
idea. We’ve done this on Spot.Us too many times. We always find that
when we take the time to get our messaging, goals, and deliverables in
a row first, we do much better.
A good example of this is the City Budget Watchdog
series on Spot.Us which has raised $3,785. That series was originally
called “City Budget Blues” and if you watch our quick video pitch you’ll see remnants of that
title. It was only a week or two in that we realized our messaging was
way off. “City Budget Blues” was a bit of a downer and while very on
point wasn’t tied to the goal of the project – to be a watchdog of city
hall at a time when others weren’t acting as the watchdog.
Make sure you’ve accounted for.
A specific attainable goal
The justification for that goal and why people should donate
Messaging: Make sure all parties involved know the messaging.
A clearly defined deliverable
From the donor perspective transparency means something else. It means you know exactly where your money goes.
What’s the difference between donating on NPR and donating on Spot.Us.
The images below should make the case apparent. And NPR has even
improved recently in letting a donation be more transparent and
accountable.
Spot Us Ask
Now imagine if both of these donations were for NPR.
In one case NPR would let you donate to the organization or a
specific NPR affiliate near you. In the second case NPR would let you
donate to a specific story. You’d have a bunch to choose from
and you could pick the one that meant the most to you. Fundraising is
nothing new. People have been doing it for as long as…. well…. people.
What the Internet has allowed is a transparency and specificity in the
act of fundraising that turns a donation not just into a “good feeling”
but a statement and value judgment about who we are as individuals. It
can be fun. The best Spot.Us pitches are those that give the donor that
sense of ownership.
Deadlines and Concrete Goals.
Deadlines and restrictions are great. No joke! Whenever possible
give yourself a deadline. It is amazing what we are capable of when put
between a hard place and a deadline. Moreover deadlines give you and
your collaborators in fundraising (the donors) something to rally
against. It’s a battle against time. One feature set I know Spot.Us
needs is a ticking clock that counts down the days left. Right now we
don’t have that – but whenever we Tweet “x days left to reach y goal”
we get a reaction. Knowing there is a time limit on something gets
people moving. It also gives us a narrative. And that leads directly
into……
Have Something to Cheer About.
In one of our more successfully fundraising examples we caught the
attention of a local blog that covered crime in Oakland. Excited about
the work we were doing they asked if they could send out an email blast
to their list of 500+ about the reporting efforts we were undertaking.
It worked out well – raising a few hundred dollars and spreading
through a few other email lists eventually propelling us to our goal
within 12 days.
What initially caught their attention?
A single Tweet I had done about a single blog post from the
reporter. The blog post was just an update about their reporting
efforts. Some might have even thought it mundane. But it gave us
something to cheer about “hey – look at this, the reporting process in
action.” Giving updates along the way, big or small, gives people
something concrete to examine.
Many people will not donate the first, second or third time they hear about a fundraising effort. According to Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films
it takes on average seven asks before somebody will become a donor.
Okay – so how can one ask seven times without sounding redundant or
annoying? Don’t make a direct ask: Just tell the story of your
progress. Be a cheerleader and that does the asking for you.
In many ways Spot.Us is always trying to tell two narratives. The
story of our pitches (the reporting) and the story of our site and the
pitches (their progress). What are some interesting aspects of telling
a story? Getting new and interesting characters. That’s where partners
and collaborations can be huge.
Finding the Right Partners
It’s easy to want to partner with everyone. Hey, if you can just
convince a few dozen people to join you right off the batt you’ll have
some good momentum and coalition building can get lead you to think
that everyone is a potential partner.
That isn’t the case and assuming right off the bat that your project
will be valued by other organizations is a mistake that will jump back
in your face. It certainly has for me when approaching disenfranchised
communities. Even with the best of intentions other organizations,
especially media organizations (even alternative ones), are viewed as
with suspicion. Partnering doesn’t happen at the drop of a phone call.
What should you look for in partnerships? Here are the things we’ve found we need for all partnerships.
Trust – we want to work with folks that we can trust and who trust us.
The collaboration should be in the interest of all parties.
“Buy in” with decision makers. They need to be on board otherwise it will hit the fan later.
Key liaison – somebody from every party who is tasked to the project.
Commitment of time/resources and/or money from both parties. It does not need to be all three.
Money: Yes, it is the root of all evil, but a little money can
grease the wheels. A commitment from each partner to try and fundraise
x amount also works.
The story/project. We are looking for good stories – that has to be at the heart of it all.
When you do find the right partner it can go a long way. Especially
if you are able to land a big partnership. One article in the NY Times
can raise upwards of $6,000. One newspaper many checkbooks.
Another central character in the narrative of your fundraising, what
you can cheerlead about, is your growing community. These are your
heroes. “I aint too proud to beg”
was always a great quote (The Temptations). But that means you “aint
too proud to thank” everyone and anyone. No donor is too small. You’d
be amazed at what can happen when you give just a little attention to
the smallest donor. The more personable and personal you are the more
one-time donors become partners.
On occasion you might get a member of your community who will help cheerlead with you.
This one Tweet from Tim O’rielly brought in several hundred dollars within a matter of hours.
You don’t have to be the only cheerleader. Other people can join you
– but they’ll only show as much enthusiasm and passion as you do.
Somebody has to wrangle the project and lead by example.
Don’t confuse the medium and the message. Sure, it’s great that we
can fundraise for independent journalists on a custom built site like
Spot.Us. But we could also do it with a simple ChipIn widget.
You can get started with JUST a wiki
That’s right: Spot.Us started 10 months ago using JUST a wiki. It was free to setup. We used a third party site, The Point, to collect money. There are countless sites that will collect money on your behalf. Facebook Cause, Kickstarter, First Giving
and more. Rather than build an entire system yourself use whatever is
already out there. You might also check to see if there are any sites
that work around your specific niche like Donors Choose for teachers.
In summary, my lessons learned include: a specific ask, concrete deadlines, celebrate your successes, get your community to do the cheerleading and start simply -you don't need to do everything.
Dave Cohn is a recovering technology reporter trying to figure out the future of journalism and the founder of spot.us
Here's a note from Marnie Webb on the TechSoup blog about TechSoup's makeover that will be debut on Monday. They're not taking a big bang, flip the switch approach, but doing it in phases. Marnie's deck is a goldmine of information about site redesign. Thanks so much for sharing it!
Note from Beth: If you've been a long-time reader of this blog, you know that I was trained as a classical musician (flute), then later worked in nonprofit arts organizations in marketing, fundraising, and eventually was an executive director of a small chamber orchestra before working as a consultant with many organizations and agencies, including the National Endowment for the Arts. I worked for the New York Foundation for the Arts for 12 years on a range of arts and technology programs, including a network for artists called Arts Wire. I was on the phone with staff at NYFA when the planes struck the towers, not too far from their building. There were artists who had studio spaces in the buildings - lives were lost as well as complete life's work.
I just saw a super post here about the call from JD Lasica who writes frequently for socialbrite.
The topic was the role that artists can play in
shaping communities with particular focus on plans for 9/11, a new National Day
of Service and Remembrance.
The idea is to find ways that artists can help spread the message
of service and also highlight the service work that artists already
perform in communities nationwide.
United We Serve
The United We Serve (UWS) project began June
22 and runs through September 11.The hope is to encourage people to volunteer in their local communities,
not just for a day, but in a sustained, collaborative and focused effort to
promote service as a way of life for all Americans. The challenge is to translate participation in electoral
politics into engagement with governing.UWS sees service as a way to do this. The United We Serve project is a
way to see what’s going on in our local community and connect withlocal non-profits, local city
officials, women’s groups, unions, you name it.The key is sustained relationships to deal with issues. Nel
Abernathy talked about using many of the same tools that were used in the
presidential campaign, noting that when asked and you give people tools, they
will participate. Now UWS is
asking people to do what they are doing, but more effectively, and at the same
time to recognize that what they are doing is not isolated but part of a larger
community.
The focus of the project was narrowed down to four main
issues people are facing:
Healthcare
Energy and Environment
Education
Community renewal
Artists Role
Because artists are often thought leaders and help direct
people to “what’s cool and what’s not”, they have a unique opportunity to help
support this project.
One of the goals of the group is to create a stronger
community among artists, continuing to do things we are passionate about, and
encourage people to participate at the local level.
The arts community is so powerful in telling stories. Art
grabs people who don’t necessarily read the local paper. Do what we do.
In the same way that the Obama political campaign was
successful by providing tools and letting people do their own thing, The UWS
campaign is asking people to do the same thing. “We do our local thing, but in a
national context”.
Three Things Artists Can Do
Look at serve.gov
Look for projects to do
Post your projects
Tell stories
Document
Take photos
Take videos
Post blogs
“This is a community that knows how to make a stink”
Encourage others to get engaged
Pick something from one of the 4 key areas and bring your artistic creativity and utilities to the table.
Some Ideas
Thomas Bates from Rock the Vote, talked about an example
project with Cody Hudsonin Chicago focusing on the environment.They are engaging young people to collect ‘garbage’, and create
something of a community monument of public art out of the found materials.
I
think it would be great for the Mighty United Artists to find a way to
showcase the art that everyone is doing that relates to this. A new
section on the serve.gov site???
Rebecca Krause-Hardie is a trainer, consultant, project manager, and partner in AudienceWorks, helping organizations use new media effectively. This post was originally posted on her blog.
A hashtag is this symbol: #. It is also a Twitter term that describes a keyword, prefixed by that symbol, that helps people track conversations on Twitter.
The HashTags site, a centralized directory of hashtags on Twitter, also offers a good definition:
Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional
context and metadata to your tweets. They're like tags on Flickr, only
added inline to your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a
word with a hash symbol: #hashtag.
Since those early days, hashtags have been used in different ways by nonprofits. One of the most frequent applications has been to use them at events and conferences. It's not uncommon to see the "official" hashtag included with the promotional information about the event, even events or conferences that are not technology focused.
The hashtag creates a backchannel for participants. It also makes it easy for attendees to follow the conversation thread and participate whether they are or in the room or following from afar. That's, of course, if the tag used is unique enough.
Nonprofit Use #2: Sharing Knowledge/Resources As Community of Practice
Hashtags can create an ad hoc community of practice or a channel for people in a field to informally share resources or conversation.
Tagging communities or unbounded networks that might come to life around a tag are not new. The Nonprofit Technology community has used a special tag, nptech, created by Marnie Webb in 2004. It still continues to be used on Twitter as well as other places. Although this was before Twitter, the advice about what makes an effective tagging community still resonates and are applicable to effective Twitter hashtags
There are many adhoc Twitter hashtags where nonprofits, foundations, social entrepeneurs, and others are sharing resources or having conversations. Some occur on a regular basis I don't think there is a formal directory of nonprofit hashtags, but there are few terrific blog posts that have good lists. For example, Socialedge compiled a list of Twitter users in the social entrepreneurship sector that included a list of hashtags.
Given that hashtags seem to appear and disappear like cheshire cats and most seem ephemeral, a massive directory of hashtags for nonprofits is probably not very useful. However, a list of the ten best hashtag communities and conversations might be.
Some of the #hashtag communities are ongoing and unstructured like the #nptech tag community. Others are more formal, structured conversations that happen weekly at a particular time. #4change is a regular chat about social media change. Another example, although not totally nonprofit focused is #blogchat. #blogchat which is facilitated by @mackcollier and uses wthashtag to aggregate the conversation.
In my initial analysis of mega list of 90 Foundations that Tweet, I did not look at hashtags. Nathaniel Naskashima, in a comment on another post, shared some insights from his look at the hashtags used by Foundations on Twitter. He observes that the hashtags are general, not unique.
As you
can see, most of the #hashtags listed above are really way way too
general to be of any use. If for instance, you tagged a tweet about
your Foundation's performing arts program with #arts, your tweet would
be amongst tweets about all kinds of topics in the art world - even
tweets about Paula Abdul leaving American Idol. If, however, there was
a standard #hashtag for philanthropy/non-profit art like #philart
(stands for philanthropy art) or #npart (stands for non-profit art),
then I think we would see everyone in this industry getting a lot more
out of Twitter (e.g. engaging in conversation, finding it more useful
as a social media tool).
I think it takes more a unique tag. You need to publicize the tag and encourage conversation around the tag. Also, having weekly summaries that can be shared in other mediums can make the information accessible to others who don't want to participate on Twitter. For example, the #givelist tag aggregated all the suggestions from Twitter and then created this site. This takes some facilitation. Nonprofit Use #3: Advocacy Channel
Hashtags can be used effectively at different rungs on the ladder of engagement. The best example of educating and engaging is how the National Wildlife Federation is using the #nwf hashtag to engage its audience in watching wildlife.
Another example is their use in a policy debate. EDF has put together a Twitter Guide to the Climate Bill Discussion. The guide points out the hashtags used by people who are supporting the bill or against. It also provides some "tweeting" points for advocates to use. And, in the case of Twitter Vote Report Twitter hashtags have been used for real-time participatory democracy.
What other uses of hashtags by nonprofits are there?
What are the lessons learned for using them effectively?
The other day, I received this Tweet from Betsy Aoki.
Betsy has offered to cover the cost of three more books (plus postage) for me to purchase at the book launch party on August 23rd and get signed copies for the winners.
Here's how to enter:
Leave a comment on this post and tell me how you will use Twitter to support your organization's mission. Or maybe you're a "free agent" - someone who isn't affiliated with an organization, but wants to use Twitter for fundraising.
I'm also expecting that you might consider paying it forward after you've read the book. Perhaps do a book giveaway to encourage donors to donate or give to nonprofits.
Betsy says, "One thing I have found really powerful in working with social media professionally is the power it has to mobilize people to help others. Three copies of a book that the twitter community is likely to embrace (and maybe be motivated by, in order to help those less fortunate) seems cheap to me. I think doing this is much more fun than just buying a book I read myself."
So, leave a comment about comment about how you might use Twitter for good will fundraising for a chance to win Twitterville!
Update: Shel Israel just added another three books so that makes six, plus the earlier three makes nine!
Quentin Young, Founder, and Margie Schap, Executive Director Health & Medicine Policy Research Group
Earlier this month, I hosted a series of guest posts on the topic of Movement Building and Social Media. Karin Pritikin, who I met in Chicago in June and works for Health & Medicine Policy Research Group, reached out to me to share some of the "hallway conversations" taking place in her organization about movements and social media.
Her organization was formed 27
years ago by an activist group of clinicians, social scientists, health
care executives and policy analysts to advocate for health equity and
improved public health. The organization's founder, Quentin Young, has a long history of organizing and supporting movements using low tech tools like mimeographs, bullhorns, placards, shoe leather, sweat (sometimes blood)
and public convergence spaces.
Karin noted in an email to me, "We often talk about how Facebook Fan Pages and tweets reach people quickly, but we wish their was some way to bottle the "grit" of some of the earlier, more visceral methods. Karin posted some snippets of conversation on the Health & Medicine Policy Research Blog that I'm sharing here.
Quentin Young describes an early movement he was involved in:
In 1937-39, I was a member of the
American Student Union – a national organization of high school youth
protestingfascism, racism.The depression was raging.It was a politically charged time and we were
“blessed” (I use the term with quotations) by powerful enemies who served as a
motivation force. Hitler was gaining in
Europe
.
Other fascist leaders were rising to power. These events, and later, World
Events like Peal harbor were powerful motivators. Though one dominant
force that moved us to action was the race issue.
The proximity of
Hyde
Park
High School
to
the
University
of
Chicago
played a role in
the way our “movement” grew. College
students recruited youngsters, exploited our youthful zeal as they exposed us
to the issues of the day.
We connected largely via meetings, not unlike today’s meetings they had fairly versatile formats: sometimes a well-known speaker or someone with special knowledge or credibility about an specific issue, sometimes in large auditoriums, sometimes smaller rooms. There were other organizations fighting fascism in the city, and other youth organizations in neighborhoods on the north and west sides. Occasionally we joined with them for larger conferences, but we focused on building awareness within our own communities.
We distributed literature, leaflets. We had newsletters. We spoke publicly. The tools available for mobilization were primitive.
What does he think is different today?
In the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s
action took place at meetings and demonstrations. Today’s media (TV/DVDs/MP3 players/The Internet
and now social media) has transformed where people are and live.
People stay in their homes and connect using
these new social medial tools and channels. That is where they are. There is less physical outward
direction. The
action people take now is different. The
recent demonstration and sit-in over the proposed closing of the Republic
Windows plant attracted attention and resulted in action, but it wasn’t
attended by many people and it petered out quickly.
Margie Schaps describes the differences from the 1980's onward:
Today you learn about an issue online, or from a blog post, or an email someone has forwarded, and you take action by “clicking here to donate” or by “emailing your congressman” or by forwarding the link to your friends and mobilizing lots of people to e-blast an organization or an elected official to express your ideas.
Our organization, which Quentin founded in 1981 with John McKnight, used to write long policy papers, really meaty 50 page documents that were read by no more than 50 of our collaborative partners. These days we’re evolving toward much briefer messages, distilling issues and action steps into much shorter form/format.
There is a new movement building model emerging. As a policy organization, we still use face-to-face meetings to address issues/inequities and develop solutions. This development of policy is not the movement building part. Movement building takes place as we use new media tools to mobilize interested people to make decisions and take action on these highly specific issues.
Both Maggie and Quentin describe how social media can help power movement building:
The issues that we work on are emblematic of the larger social injustice that needs to be addressed. We create “small movements’ around “hunks of oppression” that are mapped onto the larger social and health trends and issues. Free standing birth centers are a good example of what I mean. We worked for 20 years on the issue of giving medically underserved women in Illinois access to choice in childbirth. It’s a w omen's reproductive rights issue. There’s a sexual/gender equality dimension. There is a need to oppose vested interests that continue to oppress the public– in this case the obstetrical specialties. It took 20 years to get legislation passed to allow the building of these centers in Illinois. There is now public acceptance of the idea. So the small movement we built within the health policy sphere, to leverage change, is now broadening as we make the next step public, garnering broader support from the public to demand these options in their communities.
And by mapping this small movement onto the larger issues of health access for women and for everyone, it becomes more than an example of a hard won victory twenty years in the making, serving as both a motivator and an example of change in process. It really is movement-building on multiple levels. Social media tools will play a large role in getting the word out and mobilizing small groups and the public for progressive policy change.
Says Karin in a follow up email shares, "Beginning that discussion has led to a powerful "small movements that feed change on a large level" framing that is helping us as we move forward. It also is helping steer us to use social media for the "right" part of the equation."
Today was the first day of school in a new school for my kids. What's new can be scary, very scary. I know my kids were a little nervous as they waited in the school yard ready to start their first day.
It's new territory. This is a new routine, new teachers, new friends, and new bicycles! We're close enough to ride bicycles to school - and so almost every day for the past few weeks we've been rehearsing the ride. This morning was the big day!
I'm sure many nonprofits (and foundations) who enter into the waters of social media for the first time feel this nervousness and perhaps fear. Here's a new fear:
Reputation for accuracy, quality, and professionalism will be damaged if the organizations shows its human side.
There's a fine line between personal and personality and being human and being professional. This seems to be the theme that is happening the comment thread over at Sean's Tactical Philanthropy blog in the comments about his Learning From Foundation Tweets post.
I asked Sean, why are we so scared of showing our human side?
Sean felt that the definition of professional in our culture is about stripping out our individual personalities. He feels that it is mistake. Kivi Leroux Miller, in the comments, thinks that being human engenders trust. "If you think about knowledge or wisdom coming from looking at information and experiences from a certain perspective, then I think we need to see some of that human side to really appreciate that perspective and to trust it – if that makes sense."
It is also important not to set too many rules about "personality" or we risk becoming Stepford Wives or unauthentic. It does help to have a general philosophy and guidelines might help. And, aside from Wendy Harman's "Don't embarrass your mother rule," there the balancing act. You don't just want to blog about your pets and children all the time.
My rule for blending in personality is to always link it back in a way to my professional areas of interest. It's funny, one of my most popular and highly rated posts was about celebrating my 22nd wedding anniversary and sharing advice about blogger cultivation.
So, like the first day of school at a new school and new routine, blending in personality might be a little uncomfortable or scary, but it can also make your social media strategy more effective. Agree?
How has your organization grappled with the fine line between personal and personality?
Note from Beth: In response for my call for guest posts on movement building, Cheryl Contee pointed me to her terrific case study about Mom's Rising. This post was originally published on the Fast Company Blog and is being republished her with permission. The original can be found here.
I just got back from BlogHer,
the largest gathering of female bloggers in America. It's the 5th year
of the conference and has grown from a scrappy, homegrown, volunteer
effort to a nationally renowned, corporate-sponsored conference. I had
to pack an additional bag because of all of the swag given away. Brands
like Disney, HP, Chevy, Eucerin, Wal-Mart, Pepsi and many more all
competed for the eyes, ears and keyboards of women from around the
nation. It makes sense: women account for an estimated 70% of all U.S.
retail purchases.
Moms are more powerful than ever, thanks to Web 2.0. According to
Katie Couric who recorded a special clip from the set of CBS Evening
News for BlogHer 2008 (as seen above), 36 million women write or read
blogs each week. I was there because 46% of mommy bloggers have
contributed to a cause or a political campaign. My firm Fission
Strategy specializes in providing social media savvy online strategy
& services to leading nonprofits and foundations. One of our
clients, MomsRising.Org, has
successfully tapped into the power of the mommy bloggers and I went to
BlogHer to further those connections and to learn more about what moms
online are interested in.
With a few keystrokes, any well-connected mommy blogger can mobilize
an army of other advocates to support or take down a brand, a cause or
public figure. The world of mommy bloggers is unique even among the Web
and has its own culture, cliques, leaders, stars and foot soldiers.
Founded in 2006, MomsRising.Org is working towards a family friendly
America--some of their issues include health care reform, toxins in
toys, equal pay and paid sick leave for moms. Fission recently helped
MomsRising re-design its Web site to be more friendly to the plugged-in
moms and those who love them across the country. This includes a
prominent blog, twitter feed, easy ways to share MomsRising content
plus lots of photos and videos.
We worked with MomsRising recently to help them roll out their customizable video for
Mother's Day in which you can embed the name of your favorite mom
and nominate her as "Mother of the Year". The video is over-the-top
funny and features Brangelina, Beyonce, Barack Obama, and a talking
baby. We worked with MomsRising to reach out to mommy bloggers and
those discussing Mother's Day on blogs and over twitter. Twitter is
the 24/7 backchannel for mommy bloggers, and MomsRising tweeted the
video to many moms to encourage peer-to-peer sharing.
The results were spectacular: the video gathered over 14 million
views in a two-week period. MomsRising's citizen membership went from
140,000 supporters to 1.1 million, thanks in part to innovative
blogger, twitter and online partner outreach. MomsRising's story shows
how powerful mothers can be when you enlist their support in ways they
appreciate and enjoy.
You can get up-to-speed with BlogHer '09 through their official liveblogs.
Cheryl Contee is a partner and co-founder of the social media
consultancy Fission Strategy where she specializes in online advocacy,
engagement, and communications.
Sean Stannard-Stockton wrote a reflection on my analysis of the list of “foundations that tweet”
on the Philanthropy411 blog. I look at what was being tweeted and the voice used (institutional versus personal versus a blend).
Sean takes a point of view:
I think that technology and social media in particular is best used
when it helps us more fully express those things that make us uniquely
human.
So he feels that Twitter profiles that are all organizational brand or all personal are boring and that a co-mingled approach (Institutional Profile with Personality or Employee with Institutional Association) work best because:
I think the lesson to be drawn here is that in the search for how
best to share knowledge, the key thing is to put humans at the center.
Knowledge is not some sort of physical element that we can stack in a
room somewhere and index easily. Knowledge is a concept that is rooted
in the very fact that we are human.
As we strive to build a more effective philanthropy, to share
knowledge and support what works, let’s not become disconnected from
the human element that drives philanthropy.
Using social media to be authentically human seems to be pattern today in my reading. Kivi's Nonprofit Marketing Blog has a summary of Chris Brogan and Julien Smith's book, Trust Agents. Kivi describes the central theme of the book as how to be human through your computer. Kivi goes on to summarize four principles in the book that apply to nonprofits.
And finally, Dana Boyd debunks a study that found "Twitter is 40% of Useless Babble." She goes on to say that conversations on Twitter are, well, human.
I vote that we stop dismissing Twitter just because the majority of
people who are joining its ranks are there to be social. We like the
fact that humans are social. It's good for society. And what they're
doing online is fundamentally a mix of social grooming
and maintaining peripheral social awareness. They want to know what the
people around them are thinking and doing and feeling, even when
co-presence isn't viable. They want to share their state of mind and
status so that others who care about them feel connected. It's a
back-and-forth that makes sense if only we didn't look down at it from
outter space. Of course it looks alien. Walk into any typical social
encounter between people you don't know and it's bound to look a wee
bit alien, especially if those people are demographically different
than you.
Why is it that we're afraid of being human in our social media channels? Sean alluded to an article in the WSJ that suggests it is because we don't equate being human with being professional.
NTEN hosts regular "Ask the Expert" chats with people in the nonprofit technology field on a variety of topics. It's an hour on the phone and in a chat room where people get to ask their questions and the expert answers.
Many nonprofits have Fan Pages and Causes and curious about how to best integrate the two. One way is to add a TAB on your Facebook Page for your Cause. There wasn't a link for step by steps, so I fiddled with it while listening to the phone call. Here's how:
To add your Cause to your Fan Page as a tab
1.) Click on Edit Page 2.) Look for more applications and click on the pen and "browse applications" 3.) Search for Causes and click thru to app home page 4.) Click on add to my page 5.) Go back to your fan page - and click on + after the tabs, select causes from the drop down list
That's just for starters. What are some of the other ways you can weave together the two? What works what doesn't?
2. Encouraging and Working with volunteers who set up a Cause
Many nonprofits that are just getting onto Facebook quickly discover that someone (a volunteer or a fan) might have set up a Cause for their organization, but after a while lost interest and it went dormant. It looks like some organizations have had luck taking it over (see this case study about the Lupus Foundation). I like the proactive approach. The video above is from World Visions is an example of encouraging their volunteers to set up a Cause for their organization as part of a coordinated campaign.
How has your organization worked with volunteers who have set up Causes on your organization's behalf?
3. Green talked about the audience they reach through Causes is typically younger and are often first time donors. I wanted to know what they knew or have about these donors philanthropic behavior. Do they tend to give to "issues or causes" versus organizations? How loyal are they?
Causes is less organizationally siloed compared to direct mail. The entry point for direct mail is the organization, that mail piece. There isn't a set of other options. On Causes, it is more a marketplace dynamic because the potential donor can see many other options. A lot of people are new donors and haven't been engaged before. This is their point of entry. For better or worse, brand equity is less important on Causes. What's most important is how you communicate about what we do? For example, look at charity:water and how it does it communications.
What you learned about donor behavior vis Causes? How has this informed your strategy?
4. Better analytics are coming real soon now?
Green didn't want to commit to a specific date, but mentioned that there would be some new and improved analytics data available where you can slice and dice the data by ladder of engagement (joined, didn't donate) and click through rates. Being a little bit of a metrics geek, I'd love to see something like Facebook Insights Tool.
What I didn't hear was an unpacking of the Slacktivism - specifically the philosophical points raised in the article:
The real issue here is whether the mere availability of the
"slacktivist" option is likely to push those who in the past
might have confronted the regime in person with demonstrations,
leaflets, and labor organizing to embrace the Facebook option and
join a gazillion online issue groups instead. If this is the case,
then the much-touted tools of digital liberation are only driving us
further away from the goal of democratization and building global
civil society.
Of course, the ideal case here is when
one's participation in digital activism doesn't subtract from -- and
instead enhances -- one's eagerness to participate in real-life campaigns.
However, it's also quite possible that a significant portion of the
activist population would be morally content with the "slacktivist"
option alone, preferring not to get too close to more dangerous
activities that are likely to get them in trouble with authorities.
So should we be more careful when discussing the success of most
digital activism campaigns, since they may also have unanticipated
adverse effects on more effective forms of enacting political and
social change? (Of course, the relative effectiveness of one type of
activism over another is a matter of great contention too.)
Most people on the call were focused on learning more about improving their Causes strategy as well as specific tactical tips. Frank Barry contributed an awesome guest post last month called: Four Tips for Nonprofit Success on Facebook. He suggested the following resources:
More Resources (I’d go through them in this order):
The SXSW Interactive Festival (scheduled March 12-16, 2010 in Austin, Texas) is a mega huge social media industry event. The final program is done through a combination of an open submission and community voting process. The panel picker process just opened - so you can vote yes or no for the panels you think are worthy of being on the program or not until September 4th.
The nonprofit presence at SXSW has been growing steadily over the past couple of years. In 2008, I was on one of the few nonprofit panels on the agenda. It was organized by Ed Schipul. At the end of that panel, we all hoped there would be a larger nonprofit presence on the agenda for this 2009. And yes, indeed, in 2009 there were many more panel proposals about or by folks who work with nonprofits and voting. Last year, many more nonprofit panels made it onto the agenda and there was even a nonprofit lounge hosted by BeaconFire.
So, let's get out the nonprofit vote for panels at SXSW!
Last year, there was an event called "Social Media for Social Good" organized by Jeff Pulver that prompted quite a rich discussion on whether social media for fundraising and marketing can effect real on the ground change. There's quite a buzz right now about whether or not "Slacktivism" doing activism online, all the time - can effect change. (There's even a panel proposal for Slacktivism)
These ideas inspired the SXSW panel proposal I submitted:
Crowdsourcing for Innovative Social Change Social media builds buzz and raises money, but what about real, on-the-ground change? The Social Change Challenge will crowdsource innovative ideas from nonprofits to change the world. We'll share big ideas for using social media for nonprofit program delivery and some good tips for crowdsourcing for social change.
Jordan Viator invited me to be a panelist on this panel and I agreed because David Neff is a fellow panelist and I bet Jordan will make him wear an apron! Also rockstar, Carie Lewis, from the Human Society is participating.
The Real House Wives of Social Media You've heard the buzz around how nonprofit organizations and corporations are using social media for social good. Now hear from the "real housewives of social media" who are driving successful online campaigns, as well as others who are helping lead the social media revolution.
So, yes, please vote for these panels, but ..... There were over 2200 panel ideas submitted and they only have space for 300. I just scanned the list to SXSW in search of nonprofit oriented panels (in addition the two I submitted) and found a number of them for your consideration. Please try to vote for as many nonprofit panels as possible.
(And, if you submitted a nonprofit panel - and I managed to miss it while scanning 2200 in ten minutes - please add the link and description in a comment. I'll do another Get Out The Nonprofit Vote at SXSW Post and include. I will also be tweeting this post.)
Advanced Brand Monitoring: Let the Haters Hate: This panel will get into the whys and hows to monitor your brand in a social world. you'll hear case studies of social media disasters and how they could have been prevented, as well as how brands have dealt with potential PR nightmares. Twitterstorm, anyone? Carie Lewis.
Change: Examining Competitions For Social Change: Organizations, foundations, even individuals are creating social innovation competitions, hoping to drive social change projects and solutions into the global marketplace. What are these new competitions about—are they working? How do we—innovators, entrepreneurs—know what's going to make real-world impact and where do we start? Let's discuss: join us! Submitted by Amy Sample Ward.
Community Funded Reporting: The news industry is dying but in its wake are new business models to support investigative journalism. One of these is "community funded reporting" which is being pioneered by Spot.us but is happening around the country by various individuals. What is it? How does it work? What are its pitfalls? Where does it surpass the traditional advertising model? This will be a conversation that explores the changing media landscape and how the web can rise to the challenge of supporting our communities and their information needs. Submitted by Dave Cohn.
Evolution, Creation and Extinction (of the organization) Organizations, political campaigns, newspapers. While they're scrambling to figure out "new media" alternate entities spring up around them that exist only online. Is one better than the other? Are older groups evolving quickly enough? Is it better to start from scratch? Will new "online" groups drive their predecessors to extinction? Submitted by Ted Fickes
Networking Good: How to Win Money and Mobilize People! Social networks are transforming how people support causes, how ideas are shared and how nonprofits raise money. Today’s online communities go beyond posting photos or finding dates—they are building social capital, increasing awareness and raising millions of charitable dollars. Learn from innovators how to leverage the web for good! Submitted by Michael Smith.
Can Double Clicking Save the World? Sl’ack-Ti-vism. Noun. Taking action for social change without lifting a finger. As the latest technology allows people to “engage” from their computers/phones rather than getting their hands dirty IRL, will this impact the future of volunteerism? A panel of experts will debate the pros & cons of couch potato activism. Submitted by Jacob Colker.
Digital Protests This session will explore the role that social media plays in protests, through the lens of recent events like Iran and the American health care debate. The panel will cover the various tools (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook) that are being used to elevate protests, examine the benefits and drawbacks of the internet's involvement and whether social media makes protests more or less efficient, and discuss the issue of authenticity in information dissemination. Submitted by Ramya Raghavan.
The Socially Conscious Geek: Makin' Money While Doin' Good: Can you make a living as a geek without sacrificing your ideals? Definitely. These pros have carved out a niche working with mission-driven, ethical clients in both the non-profit and for-profit sectors – and want to show you how to bring your values to work while keeping a roof over your head. Submitted by Leif Utne.
Non-Profits and Social Media: Not the Usual Suspects: A panel of 5 nonprofit leaders, social media monsters, and how they leverage their social networks, to advance their respective organizations missions, collaborate with one another and use social media for social good. Submitted by David Neff.
Handheld Awesome Detectors: Sustainable Apps Making more sustainable choices is getting easier with help ubiquitous information, thanks to passionate geeks. Check in with the game changers beautifully hacking tech to fight climate change. Learn direct what it takes to change behavior at the plug, grocery, sushi bar, and tractor. Submitted by Rachel Weidinger.
Connecting Communities for the Common Good: Owning Online Organizing When community transcends “place,” how do you create dynamic online spaces for activists to connect and take action? How do you use the latest technologies to build active networks and roadmaps for action? How do you balance online action with offline engagement? Come to this session and find out! Submitted Kari Dunn Saratovsky.
LIVESTRONG: The Lance Armstrong Foundation Takes Advocacy Digital : LIVESTRONG has taken the fight against cancer digital, connecting people and communities to drive social change. Using new media tools, we’re recruiting people around the world to build a grassroots movement to help raise awareness, fund research and end the stigma many cancer survivors face. Come hear how we’re changing the world. Submitted by Doug Ulman.
Doing More With Less: How Not-for-Profits Leverage Technology for Change: They've won Webby Awards. The sites attract millions. And the user-adoption numbers are ridiculously high. How is it that not for profits are managing to use communications technologies to rock social change--when they've got pennies to spend? Ami Dar and Nancy Lublin, two social change leaders, present best practices and spot current trends. Submitted by Nancy Lublin.
Museum APIs: What Are They Good For? In Museums, context can be hard to come by. We have basic metadata but the richness of object records is so varied that it ultimately limits use of collections information. Cultural institutions are increasingly developing APIs and linked-data repositories. Who are these for? And what can we build with them? Submitted by Piotr Adamczyk.
Cultivating the Web: Netroots Action for Grassroots Food: The “organic” nature of social media creates fertile ground for activists, but how can online advocacy move beyond e-actions and Facebook Fan pages, translating to local, on-the-ground actions? This panel will explore various innovative and creative uses of social media and online technology to support the local food movement. Submitted by Leslie Hatfield
Social Change for Zero Dollars a Day Using Social Networks: Join SM4SC's co-founders, Gradon Tripp, Meg Fowler and Matthew Knell as they talk through their experiences raising money for needy charities with no fixed budget. Topics covered include pro-social brand development, the real value of social capital and networks and harnessing social media for good. Submitted by Gradon Tripp.
Will Kiva Kill Your Nonprofit? Donations 2.0: Connecting donors directly to the beneficiaries of contributions is a game-changing fundraising strategy. Will traditional nonprofits need to adopt new technologies and fundraising models as donors demand greater accountability for their funds? This vibrant, moderated discussion will include representatives from Kiva, OptINnow, and 2 national advocacy organizations. By Skylar Woodward.
Generation Y and the Future of Nonprofit Communications Generation Y engages more frequently and deeply with nonprofits than any previous generation. Bleeding edge technology has allowed for nonprofits to reach millions of people with nonexistent budgets. This panel will go over success stories from nonprofit organizations and professionals. Learn the secrets of social media, interactive technology, and grassroots support. Submitted by Sarah Davies.
Yoga For Social Networkers: Striking The Right Pose: There are hundreds of social networks, but only one you. Instead of overextending yourself, you need to bring focus on the important things and let go of the rest. Learn how to center your social media practice and balance your online activities. Bring your yoga mat! Submitted by Amadie Hart.
Networked Love, Bonding, Intimacy: Our Interactive Culture Clouds Visual mapping of relationship circles: exploring tools for appropriate social technology in conference cultures where work and pleasure meet. Intimate boundaries, mixing business and love and the essentials of compassion in network culture will be explored through interactive visualization Q&A. Fluid dynamics and connections discussed. submitted by Evonne Heyning
How to Make Your Users Love You We love the energy in the room as people get hands-on experience with
boosting community participation, instead of listening to talking heads. Alexandra Samuel (She's put together a fabulous list of panels by women at SXSW)
Open Leadership: The Upside of Giving Up Control: A social or digital strategy often fails because the culture doesn't support it. The rise of participation puts pressure on an organization's traditional way of doing business. A new way of leadership and managing is needed, called "Open Leadership". New technologies make open leadership not only possible, but a necessity. Submitted by Charlene Li.
So please go vote! If you submitted a nonprofit panel for SXSW and I missed it, please share the link and title in the description. I'll do another round up in the next week or so.
It's been almost two years since I had the opportunity to participate in the first Cambodia Blogging Summer. At that time, Twitter was a place for very early adopters and I used it help get technology T-shirts to bring over the participants. Now we have TweetCambodia that has become a gathering point for people interested in finding and following others who Tweet about or from Cambodia.
How are Cambodians accessing Twitter? The site's helpful FAQ offers four ways that you can Tweet from Cambodia. I'm sure we'll see a lot of live tweeting from the BarCamp Cambodia 2009.
Note From Beth: A few weeks ago, I wrote a reflection on an article in CNET called "Crowded Roads Ahead for Charity 2.0" based on an interview with Toby Daniels of Think Social and Scott Harrison of charity:water. Many people left comments reflecting on how the landscape has changed for fundraising on social networks, including James Wu from Acumen who graciously expanded his thoughts into this guest post.
I work at Acumen Fund and I manage the
organization's social media work. The CNET article struck an anxiety
point for many of us who work in the trenches.
We're really excited about the mention of the new charity:water
website! Making it easy for people
to give to a cause by integrating charitable actions into the
activities, routines, and habits of daily life is brilliant. It's a
small step up the ladder of engagement and won't necessarily lead to
true education about an issue and offline engagement, but that marginal increase in awareness
has a lot of potential for deeper levels of engagement.
Recently, a few staff
members here just started experimenting with Birthday Wishes on Causes
and were shocked at how easy it was for each of them to raise $200 from
their networks without really lifting a finger. Your posts on Birthday Wishes definitely helped give us the courage & a blueprint to dive
in, but it is only one rung on the ladder of engagement.
There was one hypothesis made in the CNET article that I found curious:
"At best, donations could be spread too thin, rendering many
organizations less effective." It could just be a matter of word choice, but I felt this was a bit of
a leap. If fundraising is the only measure of what makes an NGO
effective, then I worry about what the real value proposition is of
organizations soliciting donations. We are seeing a real movement
behind social enterprise & social entrepreneurship due to the
sector's embrace of transparency and accountability. What determines
success, failure, and impact has much more to do with how NGOs are
ensuring the sustainability & scalability of their programs,
grantees, or investees. Again, I think it was just a matter of wording
and taking an excerpt slightly out of context. We certainly can't
achieve any of these things without sufficient capital, but
effectiveness is a measure of so many more variables.
One quote from the article related to Cause fatigue caught my eye. "If one tweet after another is seeking donations, people might just
get fed up." This is absolutely true and the reason why we must lead
with a value proposition that is transparent, and clearly articulates
how impact and long-term sustainability will be achieved. At the end of
the day, organizations have to earn the right to ask. They must ask
"Have we provided enough value, and demonstrated enough proof behind
our model or concept to ask people to give?"
The article also talks about scaling issues for charity:water "...their biggest problem now is scale...You need staff, you need
operational resources, you need to have all your business systems in
place..." I think this was a really interesting and insightful
observation by Toby. I'm not sure that charity: water's
biggest challenge is scale, as it is demonstrating impact and long-term
sustainability. There is no shortage of people in this world who have
an appetite for helping provide safe drinking water to those without
it. And assuming charity: water remains brilliant at marketing and
communications, there will be no shortage of brilliant, talented,
well-connected, well-resourced individuals who will line up to help
them raise an infinite source of capital as long as they can
demonstrate impact and sustainability of their solutions.
I don't think we can underestimate the power of volunteerism in
providing the resources and business systems that a non-profit needs --
especially volunteerism that breeds true leadership. As long as you
have the proper infrastructure to support your community of
proselytizers, scale becomes relative.
I absolutely agree on the need to work in networks of organizations.
In addition to social networking infrastructure and channels, we're
looking to build networked tribes of supporters and advocates all
around the world. Based on the success of our all-volunteer Young
Professionals group in NYC that's developed over the past year, we are
thinking of launching chapters worldwide to help us with our mission of
changing the way the world thinks about "the poor" and tackles poverty.
Stay tuned to Acumen Fund's blog for more news on this soon!
I think Jill Finlayson's ideas on "thought
leadership" are also key in rising above the noise and clutter. Organizations
must establish themselves as a trusted source. And we have to remember,
one of the things that makes Twitter, Facebook, and social media great
is that it's easy to opt-in and opt-out. The power really is with the
people, so things only have to be as noisy as you want them to be or
have tolerance for.
I'm going to sound like a broken record here but to address cause
fatigue and to create a real movement, organizations must ultimately demonstrate
the impact and long-term sustainability of their work. Our challenge at
Acumen Fund is making the concept of Patient Capital one that is
generally accepted as an effective way of fighting poverty.
Unfortunately, patience and complexity aren't the sexiest or most
marketable ideas. But, we feel that people are beginning to wake up to
the fact that there are no silver bullets and that complex problems
require complex solutions that don't happen overnight. This doesn't
mean operating without a sense of urgency, but instead eliminating
unproductive dogma and polarization.
Movement building is all about relationship building techniques
as Beth mentioned in her reflection. Social media offers some great
tools, but the rules for relationship building don't change. The
challenge is creating a high touch experience online as well as off.
James
Wu is a Communications Associate at Acumen Fund where he works with new
media and community engagement. He enjoys the process of cutting and
peeling fruit, and likes to reward himself with milk and cookies before
bed.
Note from Beth:Last week, I wrote a reflection on a CNET article called "Crowded Roads Ahead for Charity 2.0," musing about the solution. A number folks offers some insights in the comments or on Twitter, including Amanda. I invited her to share her thoughts about cause fatigue and scaling as she launches the Twestival Local.
Cause fatigue is something I think about daily; particularly going into our second Twestival this September. I’ve felt a huge mix of pressure and enthusiasm to launch another one from previous organizers and cities who missed it the first time around. I didn’t feel like the Twitter community could handle another cause infused global campaign on the scale of Twestival so soon. My gut told me to think locally and use this international momentum and inspire people to shine a spotlight on a local cause, or a cause that a community would get behind. Where Twestival Global focused all of its energy on one cause, on one day; Twestival Local, taking place the weekend of 10-13 September 2009, has the potential to impact hundreds of causes.
Volunteers around the world feel empowered when asked to use their skills, not only to bring people together at an event, but contribute to something positive. Which is why Twestival Local hopes to challenge city organizers with two important questions with their selected cause:
(1) What will the not-for-profit do with the funds raised?
I think too many times people are raising money without a specific objective in mind. Sure $5,000 sounds like a fantastic fundraising goal, but what if I told you by meeting that target, a local cause would be able to launch an evening food program for the homeless, or make much needed repairs to a home for abandoned girls and boys. People are more likely to relate and give to something they can follow up on and social media allows causes and those supporting to do just that.
(2) In addition to fundraising, what are all the ways your city plans to work with the not-for-profit?
For me, Twestival is more than just about events in cities raising money for a cause. There is a huge opportunity here to bridge the gap between donors and volunteers. Twestival teams around the world are encouraged to think of other ways they can contribute to their selected cause; provide social media training, arrange for a local company to donate products and services, or leverage Twestival to strategize and create awareness.
You wouldn’t know it, but charity: water had very little Twitter presence before Twestival, compared to the way they use it now. Founder Scott Harrison was the only one on Twitter and I’m pretty sure he’d admit that he didn’t really ‘get it’. We sent in some social media heavy-hitters from the Twestival NYC team to give them some free training and now a running joke around the charity: water office is that even volunteers must go through a little Twitter initiation. Causes should recognize specific skills of volunteers as a valuable commodity, the same way it does with cash donations. After working with charity: water on Twestival, I now have a personal vested interest in seeing them meet their goals financial and otherwise.
I have always believed in the power of ‘the ripple effect’. I know that Twestival has inspired causes that otherwise wouldn’t have considered investing time in social media. It is my hope that with Twestival Local, even nominated causes which aren’t selected as a final recipient feel an impact in awareness.
So, can we have a Twestival every week? In my opinion, no. Twestival involves more than just tweeting; they are physical events happening around the world under short timescales. It is also not organized by a cause directly, but by volunteers who took it upon themselves to get involved.
Is the approach of Twestival sustainable? Absolutely. Eventually, the masses will come to realize that Twitter is just a great communications tool. The other fantastic thing about Twitter and certain other social media sites is this ability to develop an online community and empower them to evangelize for you, which can be extremely powerful. Hosting events for fundraising is nothing new. Communicating and engaging with potential donors and volunteers in a creative way is nothing new. To get it ‘right’ is another thing - but there are lessons learned from Twestival that can carry over to even the smallest of causes.
Recently, my best friend Alyson (www.alysonwoloshyn.com) was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer. I mention this only because my life is now directly impacted by cancer in ways I could not have predicted a few months ago. I don’t have a Livestrong band on my Twitter avatar because it is the cool thing to do. I have it because it is something I believe in and have a reason to support. Ultimately people are going to support what resonates with them and how you use social media to reach out can make all the difference.
Causes thinking longer term with social media should recognize that there is no magic recipe, no guarantee of online global fundraisers raising over $250k like Twestival. But, what is exciting to consider and continues to keep me experimenting with social media is how it evens the playing field. Thanks to social media, causes can now have direct and personal impact with their audience in ways that were once costly and ineffective. This much I know for sure.
Amanda Rose is an entrepreneur and creative strategy consultant based in London. She is the architect behind Twestival and one of the only people in the world who can say they have a Masters in Twitter.
Note from Beth: I wrote several detailed posts about Twestival while it was unfolding and aggregated other posts as well. If you want to catch up in the stream, here's some links.
