Source: Rob Cross, What is ONA? (Organizational Network Analysis)
Note from Beth: Last May, Mark Pescue published a provocative essay called the "Tower and the Clouds" which talked about the tension between working in traditional, hierarchical nonprofits and the "cloud" like behavior of working with social media. Much of the my reflections and noodling on this idea has been around how existing nonprofits balance these two approaches. But what about those freeagent activists who have worked outside of the formal structure of a 501c-3. Should they establish a nonprofit for their work to support growth? Could this be a new type of nonprofit or not?
I asked this question of Manny Hernandez, founder of (TuDiabetes.com in English and EsTuDiabetes.com in Spanish). His online communities are the most tech-savvy of the independent diabetes communities: Hernandez built it on social networking platform Ning, the company at which he worked before starting these online communities and his nonprofit. As of today TuDiabetes has almost 10,800 members and EsTuDiabetes has almost 5,400.
Manny answered my question with a fantastic post titled "How To Create Social Change Without Forming a 501-c3" to run as a guest post on this blog. It's filled with good advice on this topic. In a follow up email, I asked him to share his story and describe the benefits and challenges of being a 501-c3 created in the social media cloud.
We started our communities in 2007, more than a year before we started the nonprofit. We decided to become a nonprofit in early 2008 and formed the Diabetes Hands Foundation in April 2008. I wasn't familiar with the concept of a fiscal sponsor at that point (Heck! I wasn't familiar with SO many things back then -and I learn something new about nonprofits almost every day): I would have probably otherwise pursued a fiscal sponsorship much earlier. People have a natural tendency to fear relinquishing control and that can be a barrier for some people who could otherwise benefit a lot from working under a fiscal sponsor. In tough times like this, it's so critical to focus on the core of your mission that any support you can receive, such as the one that comes with being a fiscally sponsored project as explained in the interview with Melanie, is something to consider very seriously.
Working as a nonprofit with an active presence in the social media cloud comes with its benefits. One of the benefits of being a nonprofit is the support you get from people: whether it's financial or emotional - something as simple as retweet of your message on Twitter. When people sense that you are working for a good cause without the goal of making a profit, they come forward and help. That is incredibly fulfilling: almost as fulfilling as seeing a testimonial from someone whom your community has been able to help. And because of the ease of taking action in social media (whether it is through posting a comment, making a micro-donation or sharing something with you friends), the ability for people to help your organization grows exponentially.
One of the things that can get in the way when you work as a nonprofit is that you need to be much more mindful of who you partner with and how you partner with them. Since we started as a nonprofit, lots of groups (some nonprofit, some for profit) have approached us with ideas, projects, etc. to partner around. Typically we embrace most nonprofit proposals we receive to some extent (we can't obviously be all things to all people) but when we're approached by a for profit group, we need to assess the social benefit that our members and all those affected by our work would derive from us partnering with such a group and we need to partner in ways that are central to our mission as a nonprofit (to connect people touched by diabetes and raise diabetes awareness) while we are careful not to endorse or promote products or services. Given the acknowledgement by business at large of the importance of social media as a means of getting the word out about their products and services, nonprofits that are or are becoming social media savvy need to be mindful of this, to avoid making unnecessary and costly mistakes.
Manny Hernandez is a social entrepreneur, community strategist, president of the diabetes hands foundation, founder of tudiabetes and estudiabetes, author of ning for dummies
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