My giving style is streamlined. I have a particular interest area (Cambodia children) and I'm on the board of the Sharing Foundation. So, most of my charitable giving goes there. Next, in line are several organizations where I serve as a board member and a select few Cambodian charities. I know the organizations very well and the people involved. I know I'm making a good investment.
When I give to nonprofits based on
a solicitation, I only give if know the organization first
hand or know the person who asked me personally. I also do my due diligence by checking one of the above sites. I also visit the organization's web site as well.
During the holiday season, I get a lot of requests
from friends, family, or colleagues to support their charity. My giving is
usually in very small gifts - $10 here and there, sometimes $20. So,
I make decisions based on the friend's credibility and judgment and if
I'm not sure, I ask the friend or check out the charity myself. I would never make a donation to an organization that I haven't researched or didn't know.
Of course, if a stranger or someone I
don't know all that well asked to donate, I wouldn't. There
is some theory that backs this up from Robert Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.
There is a definitely some value to putting together a personal giving plan so your holiday donations don't end up - as Britt Bravo has said - like gum in the grocery check out line.
How do you decide whether or not you'll make a donation to a nonprofit organization or not? What criteria do you use? Are overhead ratios important to you? Finally, do you have a giving plan?
The most interesting part of Webinars is the q/a. Someone asked Tara a question about measuring Whuffie or influence. Her response:
This is one of the biggest reasons I don’t like to measure Whuffie. I get the question time and time again when I talk about the book. The question I *should* be getting is ‘what can I do with my Whuffie?’. We should be less concerned about how many followers one has and more about what that person does with that many followers. Not only is Whuffie left better in the non-fungible, ephemeral realm, but it is inconsequential. The measure needs to be in the impact. If we concentrate on our influence, we forget the end goal. We get caught up in our ego.
She pointed to this video from Chris Brogan about overnight success - and how important it is to focus on the results of the work, not the hype or number of Twitter followers. Tara goes on to say:
Focus on the big prize. All too many times, people stop at the influence part:
how popular is that person? how many followers do we have? who is
talking about me and my company? how much love do people feel for me?
While she was talking, I thought about the diagram I had just finished in the book I'm co-writing with Allison Fine. The chapter is called learning loops is about tracking and reflection. We make the point that the focus should be on the impact or the change in the real world.
In early October, I had approximately 20,000 Twitter followers and today that number is almost ten fold. In October, I was placed on the Twitter Recommended User list along with a handful of other nonprofit and philanthropy Twitter users. I tried to leverage this for other nonprofit/charity Twitters by adding lists of Twitter users to my Twitter landing page.
There's no way to maintain strong ties with that many people with such fast growth. So, the point here is that numbers in social media don't matter as much building relationships one person at a time.
A lot of followers doesn't equal influence. As Stefano Maggi points out, there's more to influence besides numbers, there is also affinity. Geoff Livingston put it another way: relationships matter more than numbers with Twitter following. We did an experiment to prove our point.
The bottom line is to focus on the results of your social media strategy, don't get distracted by meaningless metrics like the number of followers, and value the relationships.
Spencer wants to help Stoves for Rwanda leverage matching money from an incentive program being offered by Global Giving called "Give More Get More." If he can raise an additional $500 to bring his total to $2,500 by December 1st, he'll leverage a matching gift of 30% or little over $800 from Global Giving.
As I parent, my hope is that by helping my kids find ways to share their passion for giving - they will make it a lifelong habit. My children, now age and 10, have been big helpers in all my online fundraising campaigns for the Sharing Foundation. They have posed for photos in t-shirts, emptied their piggy banks, helped me make fundraising videos, contributed clothing or other items to drives at school, and have attended lots of fund raising events, including last week's Tweetsgiving Meetup where my daughter won a lunch with Twitterville author Shel Israel that was being raffled off.
Philanthropy doesn't have to be an adults only activity, giving can be part of your family fun. And while it is especially appropriate to do this during the holidays, it can be a year-round activity.
Tips To Encourage Your Child's Philanthropy
1. Teach Your Kids About Charities: YouthGive
is a site that helps young peole and their families easily donate to
charities while learning more about the organizations. The
organizations listed are profiled by other young people. You can also check out nonprofit ratings and other information from Great Nonprofits, a sort of Zagat's Guide for Charities.
2. Let Your Kids Choose:Kayta Andresen from Network for Good has fantastic idea last holiday season, "Give with your kids day" She suggests giving your child or someone else's child $25 to donate to a charity. "You can give them money to spend at Network for Good (which has every charity based in the US) or Global Giving (which
has a bunch of international projects). Let them choose how to spend
it, either by letting them pick the charity or by designating their
donation to a special project. Spend it together online, checking out
pictures and project descriptions."
3.Offer a Match: Blogger Marion Conway,whose children are now grown, recommended the book Raising Charitable Children by Carol Wiseman.
With her children's fundraising projects, she and her husband offered
to match what they raised because they both worked for companies that
matching gift programs.
4. Set Up a Spend, Give, and Save Allowance Policy: Celeste for the studio 501c3 blog suggests this piggy bank,
with separate slots for investing, saving, spending, and donating is a
great way to teach kids about devoting a portion of their income to charity.
5. Encourage Them To Give Their Time: Laura Hecht shared a wonderful story
about a class project where students made cards for some elderly
residents of a group home. They had to work hard to spare the time for
the effort, but when the residents wrote moving letters of thanks, the
kids felt great. As Laura notes, "This prompted a sincere discussion about giving the most valuable thing we possess - ourselves."
6. Buy Gifts That Give Back: Rather than braving the crowded shopping malls, you can spend some time with your kids online and find gifts that give back. The Ebay World of Good Site has a fantastic selection of gifts that will make a difference.
Earlier this month, I participated in a social media library giveaway organized by Steve Cunningham, who like me, loves books. He writes a blog called "Read It To Me" that summarizes business books and also hosts Webinars with authors. This weekend I participated in a Webinar about the book The Whuffie Factor along with author Tara Hunt where we discussed how the ideas apply to nonprofits.
For the social media library giveaway I asked folks to leave a comment on how they would use the books to shape their 2010 social media strategy. I had over 60 comments and boy was it hard to choose only one winner - so I didn't. But the grand prize winner of the books offered by Steve are:
Erin even wrote a little poetry as part of her entry.
My social media plans for 2010 involve 1) developing my own knowledge
and skill set, 2) helping to develop a strategy for my organization-
Metro United Way in Louisville, KY - and 3) teaching within my
organization to develop the knowledge and skills of others.
I believe my new library will help me achieve all three things by prompting me to: - FOCUS my personal learning in social media. - ADAPT my existing social media strategy based on the new things I learn and ideas I have as a result of reading the books. -
GIVE BACK by reporting out on what I have learned and how I am using
the books, both internally (within my org.) and externally (with all of
your fine readers!).
Or, if I had to say it in a haiku:
GETTING A NEW SOCIAL MEDIA LIBRARY [title]
If you share with me, I will listen, learn, adapt, AND reciprocate!
When I announced the contest, I thought there was one important book missing, Shel Israel's Twitterville. So I said I'd kick in my copy. Brian Reich author of Media Rules left a comment offering to include a copy of his book. In addition, I'm sending the winner my review copy of Mitch Joel's Six Pixels of Separation because I think she can learn a lot from Chapter 14 on Participation 2.0.
The runner up winner was Maureen Doyle from Open Museum
What I propose to do with the library you are offering is read it,
try it, share it, and let you know how it works for me, my colleagues
and the people we influence. I am the director of a non-profit
that promotes open museum practices, and we are in midst of launching a
free service for arts organizations: a web site that permits any museum
to create a participatory exhibit space and social network centered on
the museum's collections. As you know, it takes more than access
to create a successful social media network. It takes content, strategy
and elbow grease.
So if we are lucky
enough to win this library, we'll read it, share it and put it through
a workout with a variety of collaborators, and we'll show our
appreciation by pointing to your books, citing your ideas and telling
you how it goes.
A Few Whuffie Winners!
Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to participate in a Webinar organized by Steve Cunningham with Tara Hunt about her book, The Whuffie Factor. I purchased a copy as soon as it was available last May. It's been my bible for community and relationship building. I keep a copy of the checklist on pages 158-159 from the book right by computer.
The most interesting part of webinars is the q/a and Tara got an interesting question about how you measure Whuffie and she wrote her reflection here. I have a some thoughts I'll add in a separate post.
Prior to moving to California, I donated thousands of my nonprofit, technology, and social media books to nonprofit libraries through some giveaways on my blog. I kept two shelves worth of books and one was The Whuffie Factor. Since there were so many good comments on the initial book giveaway post I'm buying four copies of The Whuffie Factor for these nonprofit folks who shared their plans:
Claire Murray who works with Malden, MA's anti-poverty agency, providing advocacy,
community organizing, pro bono legal assistance, housing assistance,
fuel assistance, weatherization, child care, Head Start, free financial
education and tax preparation, even special "matched" savings accounts
so people can develop assets, signing them up for health care and food
stamps, and a walk-in computer center for access to and training in the
technology. She has been using blogs in the computer walk-in center since 2005 (through a technical assistance grant with the CNET, I worked with them back in 2005).
Lana Kraus is the youth engagement specialist for the Kansas Family Partnership who is using social media to build out their online resources library for substance abuse prevention. The longer-term goal is to be a resource to other agencies that participate in the partnership.
FLYyouthDC is creating a social media plan using the WeAreMedia wiki. For
2010, they want to build relationships
with past volunteers, youth clients, family members, donors, and other
supporters. "Like many nonprofits these days, decreased
foundation support means we're really struggling financially. Because
of this, our other big goal is to get back to grassroots fundraising,
not only to help us get through these hard times, but to also create a
continuous stream of funds by offering multiple ways for people to
donate and to share who we are. Of course, being in touch with our
supporters in so many ways means we'll also be able to thank them in
just as many ways!" This is a youth-run organization that works in the DC area.
Johanna Bates, who has worked for a community organization in Massachusetts that will close its doors at the end of year, will venture in the world of consulting. Johanna Bates is one of the smartest nonprofit technologists out there who has a wide range of skills including social media and so many other technical talents I can't remember. I know Johanna is a very generous person and has volunteered for the NTEN NTC Conference annual day of service (see a photo of her climbing a ladder in a community center in New Orleans to help install a wireless network).
If you're reading this and you left a comment and didn't win a book, don't be sad. I'll be doing some more book giveaways during the holidays. I have a big stack of review copies of books and can't wait to share some brief reviews and then give them away!
I usually don't write end of year roundups until those quiet last days of the year, but if Leave09Behind gets legs, that might be next week! But I'm a member of the Social Media Advisory Board for SmartBrief, Inc, a terrific daily summary of social media insights and they asked me to do a roundup post for this week.
Over the past six months, I've been collaborating on a book with Allison Fine, titled "The Networked Nonprofit" and we've been sifting through stories, research, and seeing many patterns. So for this post, I'd like to share 5 fundraising trends that we saw emerging in 2009 related to fundraising and social media and that will most definitely continue to have impact in 2010.
Less than 24 hours ago, Epic Change launched its TweetsGiving 2009, a 48-hour charity event to encourage people to express their
gratitude using online tools and at face-to-face meet-ups. This
two-day event, which ends on Thanksgiving, also invites people to
donate to Epic Change.
Last year, TweetsGiving, raised $11,000 to build a
classroom in Tanzania using Twitter to spread messages of thanks and opportunities to donate. More importantly, the event was one of a series of social media fundraisers that offered evidence that Twitter and other social media tools were not just a passing fad.
This year's Tweetsgiving hopes to raise more than $100,000 in donations. Even though we are well before the ending bell of this year's campaign, there are number of principles that have been in used by other social media infused fundraisers over 2009. These principles will no doubt be copied, refined, remixed, and extended as nonprofits experiment with social media-powered fundraising techniques:
Weaving Together Online/Offline Into Real Time Web Fundraising Events
Last February, Twestival raised over $250,000 for charity:water in 24 hours through self-organized volunteer events in 200 cities around the world. While "Tweet and Meet" events, called "Tweet Ups," were popular with Twitter users in 2008, "Tweet-Meet-Donate" events became more and more common in 2009.
Social networks like Twitter connect us with people online who share our
interests or passions about making the world a better place. They also provide fertile ground for us to organize rapid, collective fundraisers. They key is designing the opportunity for connection, plus self-organizing. As June Holley, a thought leader in networks, would say, "Be Rhizomatic."
We witnessed the power of combining a platform for self-organizing with network building in the winter of 2009 with A Networked Memorial Service for Maddie, in memory of a toddler, Madeline (Maddie) Sphor who passed away suddenly. The March of Dimes community rallied to raise money in Maddie's memory, unleashing a groundswell of support and sympathy expressions.
Social Media Fundraising As Part of A Multi-Channel Strategy
Using social media channels alone for fundraising will not be as effective as making it a part of a multi-channel straetgy that includes traditional fundraising techniques. This includes using email, web site presence, google ads, face-to-face events and reaching out to the online and mainstream media .
A great example of how well this multi-channel approach works is the Humane Society’s Spay Day. In 2009, the organization launched the United State Spay Day Photo Contest in 2009 as one part of their overall effort that included broadcast media and other social media outreach efforts as well as offline event. More than $550,000 was raised last March.
And just last week, GiveMN, a new online web site that hopes to encourage more
Minnesotans to give and help create a stronger nonprofit community for
Minnesota, raised over $14 million dollars in 24 hours using a multi-channel campaign.
Donors As Program Partners Not Just Check Writers
In May, 2009, Peter Dietz, founder of Social Actions, reflected on the future of online fundraising and wrote about a shift in donor expectations. That donors in an age of social media, will come to your organization with the expectation of being full partners in your work, not just an ATM machine to be tapped when cash is needed.
Take this compelling example of how deep engagement can lead to better results from Wildlife Direct. In 2007, WildlifeDirect had 7 blogs in the Democratic Republic of Congo written written about a specific animal by a conservation professional. The blogs were an opportunity to engage people in conversations about the daily challenge of conservation work in Africa These blogs raised $350,000 to pay rangers salaries and help save mountain gorillas in the Virunga National Park. Says Paula, “Two years later, we have over 70 blogs, donations have risen 4 fold, as has website visitation. We treat our donors as partners in our programs.”
Not recognizing the importance of relationship building and
engagement as the first step in getting donations has lead to a number
of articles in the mainstream media or research studies to conclude that social media is worthless as a fundraising tool. If we only continue to use these tools to gather nonprofit trend data, we're missing some opportunities..
The Maturation of Peer-to-Peer Fundraising
Peer-to-Peer fundraising is about empowering people to fundraise on behalf of your nonprofit. It works for marathons and in lieu of birthday presents or wedding gifts, although sometimes it can be a waste of time for nonprofits.
Another trend with peer-to-peer giving we are likely to see is that donors will want the opportunity to have a closer tie with those who benefit from their donations. In 2010, we are likely to see more interaction - not with the organizations, but with the actual recipients of the dollars.
Click at the Heartstrings
We know that good storytelling that tugs at the heart strings opens the purse strings. With "click philanthropy" actions, ways that users can easily spread a message or leverage a donation, it is important to tap into
human emotion. Good fundraisers (and marketers)
know that tugging at the heart strings can open the wallet.
Tweetsgiving is playing off the theme of gratitude, according to recent research is a powerful emotion that encourages positive behavior, the
giving and receiving of thanks (and gifts.) Drew Olanoff, who was diagnosed with cancer, decided to raise money by taking revenge on cancer through his BlameDrewsCancer.com which allowed you with a twitter hashtag, #blamedrewscancer, to blame anything you want on his cancer. And finally, fun and public humiliation - as NTEN's executive director Holly Ross discovered, can be good levers for donations.
Although social media as part of the fundraiser's tool box is not yet the norm, these experiments are laying the ground work for even more dramatic successes in 2010. Social media fundraising tools will come and go, but the ability to leverage one's social graph to raise money for a good cause is bound to be with us for a long time.
What do you think are the key fundraising/social media trends of 2009? What is important to take into 2010?
Tweetsgiving is 48-hour event to encourage people to express their
gratitude using online tools and at face-to-face meet-ups. This
two-day event, scheduled for November 24-26, will also invite people to
donate to Epic Change. And there are a lot more ways to participate.
This year they hope to spread gratitude further and raise enough to
help build an additional classroom, orphanage/boarding facility,
cafeteria and library at Epic Change’s partner school in Tanzania, and
to finding and funding future Epic Fellows like the school’s founder, Mama Lucy. Be sure to check out the Twitterkids.
There is also a conversation happening over at Social Edge about listening and amplifying grassroots voices featuring Stacey Monk and Mama Lucy.
The theme of Tweetsgiving is gratitude, playing off the US national holiday of gratitude, Thanksgiving. According to recent research,
gratitude is a powerful emotion that encourages positive behavior, the
giving and receiving of thanks (and gifts.) It is the belief that one
has received good fortune due to some one or event outside one's
control. Also, other researchers have found that gratitude can lead to happiness.
Tweetsgiving offers a number of ways to express your gratitude online and offline, including different events around the globe. I'm looking forward to attending the fundraiser in Silicon Valley where there will be fundraising raffle for signed books by these authors:
Other goodies will also be raffled off to raise money for Epic Change at the event.
I
have a lot to be grateful for this year, the year our family made a big
move across the country and survived! I'm also grateful for all the
learning through my work as visiting scholar at the Packard Foundation
and for the opportunity to work with Allison Fine as co-author on a
book about nonprofits and social media.
What are you grateful for this Thanksgiving season?
The point of the post is that good storytelling is the heart and soul of donor solicitations and a consistent story must be told across all donor touch points.
This
presents a wonderful opportunity because every time a donor interacts
with your organization it is a chance to share another aspect of your
story and reiterate the work they make possible.
That's an important point for how web site content, engagement, and social content work in perfect harmony as we've been discussing and thinking about the topic of Social Content on the WeAreMedia Wiki. There's the other side of letting your supporters tell their story in their words via social media and then re-purposing it through other channels.
How are you thinking about how your story is being told and retold through both traditional and social channels?
Carey, who is on Twitter with the handle "DrewFromTV," offered $100,000 for the Twitter name "@drew,"
which is was offered for sale by Drew Olanoff, of "Blame Drew's Cancer," who was willing to auction off his Twitter handle to raise money for cancer research.
Drew Carey upped his bid for the Twitter name @drew to $1 million,
announcing that he would pay $1 million for the account if he could get
a million Twitter followers by 2010.
Here's the Million Drew Web Site where you can follow @drewfromTV. It looks like they are using some tracking application. Drew tweeted it this morning. Who wouldn't take 3 seconds to do this simple click action.
http://milliondollardrew.com (RT if you care about destroying cancer)
As part of our ongoing research project into the future of
membership-based advocacy organizations, we’ve been talking to folks
from “new” as well as “older” groups focused on issue-organizing. We’re
hoping to find out how the nature of civic engagement and mobilization
is changing – along with the business models needed to support this
kind of work. Our hypothesis is that new technologies such as Web 2.0
are accelerating change in the sector, and that the nature of how we
support causes will shift – from writing checks to being more actively
engaged, or ultimately doing both. (For more thoughts on this topic,
see Cynthia Gibson’s earlier post.)
All of which brings me to MomsRising.org – perhaps one of the most compelling “new” models for issue-organizing. The
mission of MomsRising is to mobilize mothers, and as they say, anyone
who has a mother, on issues that pertain to their economic security and
well-being, along with that of their families – things like health
care, paid family leave policy, flexible work options, affordable early
learning/childcare, environmental toxins, and ending wage and hiring
discrimination against mothers. Launched in 2006, MomsRising is a
trans-partisan organization that started on a shoestring budget
(supported in part by the Packard Foundation),
and with a very small staff. It has grown quickly – now counting more
than a million members on its list. In fact, MomsRising grew its list
substantially last spring, when it launched a viral video campaign
called the “MomsRising Mother of the Year Award”
which lets you insert your favorite mom’s name and email a customized
video to her. This hilarious video, which has been viewed by over
viewed by over 12 million people, subtly weaves in information about
economic discrimination against working mothers. The campaign has been
blogged about extensively, and is often held up as a model for creative
ways to build a membership list.
We recently had a chance to talk to Mary Olivella, MomsRising’s Vice
President, who is involved in setting strategy for the organization,
about what they are learning about engagement and mobilization–both
online and off. Here’s a quick summary of the highlights I took away
from our conversation:
MomsRising is focused on “movement-building” and
large scale systems change, not just building an organization. They
ultimately want to change policy and business practice; change the
popular culture; and, improve democracy by engaging more women in the
political process.
They explicitly take a partnership/ network approach
and work with and through other organizations focused on issues their
constituents care about. E.g. they work with policy groups,
environmental groups, social justice and poverty prevention groups,
etc. and collaborate to move issues forward. MomsRising can quickly
mobilize tens of thousands of people on an issue, but they recognize
that their partners bring deep issue-expertise.
Since MomsRising is much less interested in building an “organization” per se, they have very low overhead and no central office.
They operate with a very light staffing model: roughly 8 FTEs made up
of 12 total staff, some of whom work part-time, many of whom live in
different states – supporting over a million members!. Most of the work
is coordinated online.
MomsRising focuses on their membership’s needs—and elevating those voices into the political process. They are member-centric, not organization-centric. The organization is there to support the members, not the other way around.
Consequently, listening and responding to their membership
is critical to their success – they say “we have multiple ways to
listen and engage in a dialogue with a diverse range of mothers across
the country”. Members help determine which issues the group focuses on
– not the other way around. They are not a single-issue organization,
rather, they focus on multiple issues of concern to women from varying
economic and ethnic backgrounds because they believe that to build a
truly family-friendly America we need to address the overall pattern of
how policies and business practices are developed.
Data analysis is also critical to their success:
they constantly evaluate response rates (to campaigns/ emails, etc), to
understand what is working, and make adjustments as they go – it’s a
process of continual iteration. Running MomsRising is as much a science
as it is an art.
They are working to combine online and offline organizing
and see that as critical to their success. They encourage members to
“meet up” in their own neighborhoods and run online campaigns designed
to get people to show up in person at a rally.
There are multiple technologies in their tool-kit
and they combine them in any variety of ways depending on the campaign:
website, blogs, ties to external bloggers, online media sites,
Facebook, Twitter, online ads. Increasingly they are looking at ways to
use mobile technology (cell phones) for engagement.
They don’t silo their skills: Their team consists
of a multicultural group of campaign organizers (all women) who do both
strategy and tech implementation – that is, they need to be skilled in
issue organizing as well as be proficient in various tech tools.
MomsRising believes it is critical for staff to understand the online
tools well enough to “push the limit” on campaigns. There is not a
divide between “organizers” and “techies” as in many nonprofits.
To sum it up, MomsRising’s critical competencies
are speed, flexibility, decentralization, integration, holistic
thinking, listening, dialogue, engagement, mobilization, constant
learning, iteration, and rigorous analysis.
Their biggest challenges: 1) educating funders
about this form of ‘new organizing’ that takes a multi-issue and
multi-strategy approach; 2) convincing funders to invest in an
organization that is willing to test multiple approaches knowing full
well that some will fail but that this experimentation is critical to
being able to find ‘break-through’ strategies – it’s challenging
because it’s a “non-linear” model; and 3) evaluating and documenting
their success: they can do this well at tactical level (e.g. response
to email campaign, etc) as well as when their work has played a key
roll in passing a particular piece of legislation or influenced company
policy, but they are also working to obtain resources to be able to
measure traction over longer term periods against larger goals of
cultural and wide-scale policy change.
Does MomsRising remind of you of other novel approaches you’ve seen? Can you think of a way to apply it to your work?
Heather McLeod Grant, senior consultant at the Monitor Institute and a principal contributor to Working WikilyA published author, speaker, and advisor to high-impact
organizations, Heather is the co-author of Forces for Good: The Six Practices
of High-Impact Nonprofits, which was named a Top Ten Book of 2007 by
the Economist.
Be sure to read Cheryl Contee's guest post about a highly successful video campaign implemented by Mom's Rising.
Today, Pete Cashmore had a piece on CNN "Next Year's Twitter? Foursquare" predicting that FourSquare will be the darling of 2010.
FourSquare is a is location-based social network service overlays your Twitter network with an added layer of social gameplay. FourSquare is a location-based social network to help you connect with friends using GPS via your mobile device. What's a location-based social network? For a crude analogy, think about dogs and fire hyrdants or trees or think about ant trails (ants leave behind a scent for other ants to follow the trail back to the ant hole.)
As I was reading this I wondered when someone was going to launch a fundraiswer with FourSquare. Kismet, stumbled upon this today:
FourSquare announced today it was partnering with TechiesGiveBack.org to raise money for CampInteractive, a local not-for-profit which empowers inner city youth through the inspiration of the outdoors and the creative power of technology.
FourSquare - the innovative mobile social networking game - agreed to team up with TechiesGiveBack in order to make it easy and entertaining to raise funds for charity. By allowing a third-party to sponsor the FourSquare Leader Board during the NY Tech Gives Back event, users can benefit the cause simply by “checking in” at venues they would regularly attend. In addition to the regular system of points and rewards, a ratio will be created between points earned and dollars, with the funds raised donated to CampInteractive.
Dennis Crowley, FourSquare’s founder and CEO said today: “This has been something we’ve wanted to do with FourSquare for a long time. We’re really excited about working with TechiesGiveBack and are looking forward to hearing from potential sponsors. This is a great way to give.”
TechiesGiveBack.org is dedicated to unifying the New York tech industry for the purpose of improving the local community through volunteering and fundraising. Co-founder Adam Gillman said today, "We believe that there are a lot of talented individuals in the tech community who are willing and able to give back, but just need an outlet. We decided to create an organization to facilitate those activities." Simon Kirk, Co-Founder continued, “We’d like to get as many people as we can to participate. One way to do that is to be innovative. There’s no reason why giving back shouldn’t be fun.”
In addition to fundraising, TechiesGiveBack.org has planned to bring 50 children from CampInteractive’s program to Manhattan for an afternoon of ice skating and activities.
How will location based social networks change fundraising practices?
I think I want to change Garrison Keillor's well known descriptor of Lake Wobegone. It goes "Minnesota from"where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average." Let's add "and where the charitable donors are extraordinarily generous."
Earlier this week, I wrote about giveMN.org as an example of local and regional online giving initiatives. GiveMN a new online resource that hopes to encourage more Minnesotans to give and help create a stronger nonprofit community for Minnesota. On Tuesday, November 17, they held their first "Give to the Max Day" competition where all donations during the 24 hour period were matched, plus there were incentives for organizations that received the largest number of unique donations.
The unofficial results: $14 million raised for more than 3400 nonprofits
According to a project staff person, "The factoid that blows me away is that more than 45,000 Minnesotans donated! More than 350 orgs received $10,000 or more. We're having lots of fun today hearing anecdotes from happy nonprofits all over the state. What we are most excited about is the number of organizations who are reporting they got new donors. The most heartwarming thank yous are from small ones who have never had online fundraising capacity before and are just thrilled." The campaigns were multi-channel using a variety of fundraising and marketing techniques, including social media.
Match Days have been used by community foundations to stimulate local charitable giving. They are done in a condensed time period - 24-48 hours and local nonprofit rally for donations. Last November, The Columbus Foundation's Power Philanthropy Day was highly successful, raising over $1 million dollar. However, Minnesota has set the bar pretty high!
They are estimating that more than 20,000 donors set up accounts on the giving site. Now that the recruitment phase has done a fantastic job, the next challenge is to build an active base for an ongoing community. The key will be the staff hired to make GIVEMN engaging to donors. Plans may include campaigns that are focused on particular types of charities around the state. The goal is to grow the giving pie.
The GiveMN site is designed for both individuals and organizations. Individuals can browse the site and find local nonprofits and make a donation online. Or, if they want, they can launch their own fundraiser for an organization. For nonprofits, GiveMN offers simple, secure tools to achieve their goals. The site is powered by Razoo, a giving platform.
If the dollar amounts from fundraising campaigns using social networks are disappointing, one response is to say this doesn't work and stop doing it. An alternative approach is to experiment and find ways to improve results.
Twitter for fundraising has been around for two years (read Shel Israel's Twitterville), as of 2009, there seems to be three different tactical models for Twitter fundraising approaches emerging:
1) Sponsored Tweets/HashTags: Donors do not have to open their own check books, but instead retweet or use a hashtag to leverage a donation from a corporate sponsor to a charity.
2) Spreading Person to Person Asks: This approach uses twitter and encourages people to ask their friends through Twitter to donate to a charity and spread the ask to their friends. Successful versions of this approach tie a human emotion to the click action - blame, thankfulness, etc.
3) Tweet Meet Give: This approach weaves together online and offline activities and leverages "Tweet Ups." Amanda Rose and Twestival pioneered a networked version of this approach to benefit charity:water, but it has also been used by single nonprofits.
Take for example, The Free Rice Game, an interactive online game that donated rice to the United Nations World Food Program based on clicking. All you had to do was click and play a word game, and that leveraged a food donation to fight hunger. The game was very engaging for adults and children alike.
For each click, 10 grains of rice is donated. That may seem like a small amount, it is important to remember that millions of people have played the game since its inception in 2007. It is everyone together that makes the difference. The Free Rice Game has generated enough rice to feed millions of people since it started in October 2007 or a total of 70,991,387,110 grains of rice as of October 2009.
In 2008, we started to see click action philanthropy on Facebook with Lil Green Patch raising over $100,000 for the Nature Conservancy. In 2009, it has evolved to incorporate a networked approach and there are even platforms or communities of people dedicated to click action philanthropy, including Every Wun. And it comes as no surprise to see click action philanthropy become more common on Twitter, with the platform Twitcause.
More and more we are seeing fundraisers incorporate Retweet This Message or Use This HashTag to leverage donations from a corporate sponsor or to simply spread the fundraising message from friend to friend. This transition began a year ago as Twitter came into its own as a charitable gift spreader. (See my Twitter Fundraising Timeline.) We've also seen some versions of Twitter fundraisers not do too well - take for example this follow me Twitter and I'll donate a dollar to a charity or applications that integrated donation engines in Tweets.
TwitCause, a service not unlike the popular fundraising application
Causes on Facebook, only built on top of Twitter has been implementing
some new interesting twists on click fundraising on Twitter. As a
basic service, TwitCause will find a cause to support (partially based
on community feedback) and use Twitter to drive awareness for it. They
also ask that you donate some money.
The fundraising campaign added some extra buzz, a sponsor, Ice cream
maker Häagen-Dazs, willing to pay for any Twitter user who tweets out
the support for the cause. The sponsorship worked liked this:
Häagen-Dazs was offering to donate $1 per tweet for the first 500
people that tweet everyday with the hashtag #HelpHoneyBees. The money
was donated to UC Davis research project to further look into Colony
Collapse Disorder, as well as help fund the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee
Haven, which aims to teach people about how to create their own
honeybee farms.
I got some of the back story form Julio Vasconcellos, VP for Business Development, for the Experience Project which operates TwitCause. "I think the #HelpHoneyBees hashtag campaign was very effective and helped
raise $7k for the honey bee research as well as get Häagen-Dazs some
great exposure around the contributions they've been making to the
cause (and of course, to their brand)."
For those that want the numbers:
6,818 tweets sent out during the official week (several more before) by 3,294 unique Twitterers
Total followers reached was slightly over 5MM (these are non-unique
followers, basically a sum of all the followers of each of those
3kTwitterers)
Total Twitter impressions generated 12.4MM (here an "Twitter
impression" is anytime a follower is presented with a tweet - if I have
100 followers and tweet twice, that's 200 "Twitter impressions")
Häagen-Dazs donated $7,000 to UC Davis for research into colony collapse disorder which is afflicting honey bee populations
Participation from some celebrities and notables
Vasconcellos predicts that we'll be seeing more and more sponsored
tweet programs of all shapes and sizes. There are already a number of active causes on TwitCause.
And some are building their own Twitter Fundraising Drive pages for
sponsored Tweet Campaigns. Here's one to benefit Make A Wish
Foundation, each tweet will drive a 5 cent donation from LeapFish to raise $10,000
to send a sick child to Disneyland. That's 200,000 tweets which
compared to these other efforts seems like an ambitious goal. I hope
they make it for Jacob's sake or if not I hope they just donate the
money anyway.
Spreading Person to Person Asks
Scott Henderson called it "creative philanthropy" but it is really the Twitter version of person to person fundraising asks for small amounts, taking advantage of Twitter's ability to easily spread person-to-person fundraising solicitations. He describes last Thanksgiving's Tweetsgiving campaign and Blame Drew's Cancer campaign.
This year Stacey and her flock (I'm one of the honorary turkeys) will launch this year's Tweetsgiving, another 48-hour celebration. They have integrated the Twestival strategy - tweet, meet, and give by organizing meetups from different cities to help promote the drive.
I think one of the important qualities that make these and other retweet or hashtag fundraisers successful is to tap into human emotion. Good fundraisers (and marketers) know that tugging at the heart strings can open the wallet. Stacey is doing this with gratitude, Drew is doing it by blame (blaming his cancer).
So, the click to donate action needs an emotional lever as well as a money lever.
Tweet, Meet, Give
Twestival has had the most success at scaling this model. Plans for 2010 Twestival are already in the works.
Conclusion
We are all curious to see these approaches fundraising on Twitter become a standard practice both for nonprofits and for corporate sponsors. Some questions:
How to set a realistic goal (total dollars = $ per retweet or hashtag) that helps the nonprofit actually implement the project or solve the need?
What is too ambitious or too low a goal?
How does the ongoing affinity/relationship building online and offline impact amounts raised?
How do amounts raised compare - sponsored tweets or person-to-person asks or tweet-meet-give approaches?
How to make a click philanthropy action on Twitter engaging and fun?
How to best incorporate human emotion in the Twitter?
Will this approach become so popular and so many nonprofits and corporations using it that it will create "Cause Retweet Fatigue"
When we kicked off the WeAreMedia, A Social Media Starter Kit for Nonprofits 18 months ago, we included two areas about content creation. There was a strategy module that shared best practices in storytelling and a tactical module called "Tell Your Story Social Media Style." The later focused on how nonprofit could become social content creators, that is how to effectively communicate the organization's story through social media channels like blogs, video, podcasts, and photos. We also touched on user-generated content, inspiring others to tell your organization's story in their own words.
Are we moving towards a "Social Content Strategy." It includes three components:
(1) Web Site Content: This is your homebase. Your organization has a degree control over the creation of this content, most obviously what you publish on your organization's web site. It's branded, it is edited, and scheduled and part of a formal web content strategy.
Let's back up a second and think about what the heck a web site content strategy is. Kristina Halvorson has a good definition: Content
strategy plans for the creation, publication, and governance of useful,
usable content. She goes on to describe it's components:
Now, we know or at least we hope, that more and more organization's web site content is becoming more social. That their web site may be or incorporate a blog as well as integrate, videos, podcasts, and photos. Many web sites are also integrating social features or social networks.
(2) Social Outposts: This is your organization's presence on social networking or social media outposts like Twitter, Facebook, or other places. It is a combination of content you create or that has been re-purposed from your organization's web site, but should also include what people remix or share. This content is a organic, always growing and changing. It is mostly community created.
(3) Engagement: I'm calling this "co-created content"
because I don't have any better way to describe it. We know that
ongoing deep engagement and building relationships is the heart and
soul of social media success. Having a conversation with your
supporters is part of the work. It is also content created by your
supporters that they share through social outposts and that you
re-purpose and remix back through other channels including your web site.
To be relevant today requires understanding context, popularity, and
reputation. In a broadcast era, we assume that the disseminator
organized information because they were a destination. In a networked
era, there will be no destination, but rather a network of content and
people. Topic won't be a given. We're already seeing this in
streams-based media consumption. When consuming information through
social media tools, people consume social gossip alongside productive
content, news alongside status updates. Right now, it's one big mess.
But the key is not going to be to create distinct destinations
organized around topics, but to find ways in which content can be
surfaced in context, regardless of where it resides.
Making content work in a networked era is going to be about living
in the streams, consuming and producing alongside "customers."
Consuming to understand, producing to be relevant. Content creators are
not going to get to dictate the cultural norms just because they can
make their content available; they are still accountable to those who
are trafficking content.
I've been thinking about this intersection of content that the
organization creates and content that is created by the audience. There is a balancing act of how you facilitate that without
controlling it. It's how you use the conversation to
generate, aggregate, and facilitate social content.
How do you plan your engagement and content strategy so they work together in perfect harmony?
What are the specific content co-creation tasks that you need to do? Have a checklist? List of tasks?
Do you need a specific campaign or is this an ongoing activity?
Is your organization thinking about a social content strategy?
I've been noticing a social media spin on making charitable donations in your community, regional, or state. Here's three recent examples.
1) GiveMN
GiveMN a new online resource that hopes to encourage more
Minnesotans to give and help create a stronger nonprofit community for
Minnesota. It is designed for both individuals and organizations. Individuals can browse the site and find local nonprofits and make a donation online. Or, if they want, they can launch their own fundraiser for an organization. For nonprofits, GiveMN offers simple, secure
tools to achieve their goals. The site is powered by Razoo, a giving platform.
Today, is Give To the Max Day where any donation to a nonprofit will be matched. This might even inspire a few out of state donors to give to nonprofits in the land of 10,000 lakes where the men are strong, women are good lucking and children above average.
2.) I Live Here, I Give Here
This site, "I Live Here, I Give Here" is to draw attention to giving to local nonprofits in Austin, TX. According to the site:
Austin is no doubt a caring community. But we don't act on our
values by giving more to charitable organizations. National studies
consistently find that Austinites give far less to charitable causes
than people in other cities. In fact, Austin is ranked 48th out of the
50 largest cities in the nation in per capita giving.
The mission of the I Live Here, I Give Here campaign is to change that.
The partners are a mix of local foundations and corporations. The site lists local nonprofits and links to a donation page.
3.) Chase's Your Communities Your Vote
Facebook users will be able to choose from more than 500,000 small and local charities to decide which community organizations they want to receive donations totaling millions of dollars from Chase corporate philanthropy fund. The Facebook application encourages Facebook users to vote for which small and local non profits will receive donations totaling $5 million. The eligible charity receiving the most votes will be awarded $1 million, the top five runners-up will receive $100,000 each and the 100 finalists, including the top winners, will be awarded $25,000 each.
You type in your zip code or name of a local charity and then vote. You get 20 votes. They'll be using a tiered voting system. I tried to find some of my favorites, but upon reading the fine print noticed that only particular types of charities were listed.
This is similar in contest design and implementation as the Target Challenge that focused on ten large nonprofit organizations six months ago. What I like this about this approach is that they are targeting smaller nonprofits and local charities.
Have you seen other examples of local or regional giving hubs? Do you think regional/local giving campaigns will make a difference in a difficult economy or just add to the noise?
Last week I wrote about a pair of surveys that looked at social media and nonprofits. One came to the conclusion that social media was a waste of time; the other talked about strategic implications on how to be successful.
If you want to be successful using social media in your fundraising strategy, remember:
Build your network before you need it. Don't have your first interaction be a request for money
Focus on engagement and relationship building all the time. You don't have to be doing it at hyper level at the time, but remember relationship building doesn't have an on and off switch.
Story telling is important - as much as can creatively tell a compelling story, the more success you will have.
Should be part of a multi-channel effort -- they all work together. What's important is figuring out the right amount of time to invest in particular channels.
Focus on the outcomes and keep reporting on the work you are doing.
Last year, I made a prediction about social media as part of the fundraising mix and I still feel strongly about it:
I believe social media will become as ubiquitous to development offices
as is the phone, direct mail, and email. In the next decades, we’ll
see rapid adoption of social media for many nonprofit purposes,
including fundraising and as gen y's come into their own as donors.
Some of the new tools now being launched to create a single profile
that can be used across social networks will as analysts predict make
social networks like air. We're still in the early stages of social
media as in the early days of the web and online fundraising,
so, we are in the "it's hype, and not going to last" phase. We're
still in transition and the transition will take many years, but I
believe fundraising with social media tools will not just be a niche
source of income or novelty.
Peter Dietz, founder of Social Actions, pulled out his crystal ball last year, and said “individuals will come to your organization with the expectation of being full partners in your work, not just dollar wells to be tapped when cash is needed. Donations will be a consequence of meaningful engagement, not a measurement of it.”
So, when nonprofits use the best practices around meaningful engagement they see results. Last month at PopTech, I heard Paula Kahumbu, a PopTech Fellow, talk about her organization's work and use of social media.
A compelling example good social media fundraising practice comes from WildlifeDirect, a nonprofit based in Nairobi, Kenya founded by Dr. Richard Leakey. According to Paula Kahumbu, Executive Director, their approach to fundraising was to build a worldwide online conservancy community. Says Paula, “In 2004, a group of committed conservationists, led by Dr Richard Leakey, became convinced that social networks provided the best opportunity for securing a future for wildlife: an approach that could harness the collective energy of countless good conservationists and combine it with millions of individuals around the world who have a genuine concern for the future of the planets wildlife and unique habitats.”
In 2007, WildlifeDirect had 7 blogs in the Democratic Republic of Congo written by conservationists in the field. These blogs raised $350,000 to pay rangers salaries and help save mountain gorillas in the Virunga National Park. Says Paula, “Two years later, have over 70 blogs, donations have risen 4 fold, as has website visitation. We treat our donors as partners in our programs.”
Through blogs written about a specific animal by a conservation professional, WildlifeDirect enables individual donors around the world to communicate directly with the people that they are funding. They’ve created a global movement powerful that can respond to any conservation emergency anywhere more swiftly and efficiently than large bureaucratic agencies to reverse the catastrophic loss of habitats and species and secure the future of wildlife in Africa, Asia and around the world.
On November 19th 2009, at The Paley Center for Media’s International Council Event, ThinkSocial will be recognizing three outstanding examples of innovation, featuring – an individual, an initiative and a collaboration between institutions, which together represent powerful models for how social media can be used to address global problems.
The final selection process includes three elements:
the votes and comments of our panel of expert jurors;
My friend, Manny Hernandez, founder of Tuiabetes Community and author of Ning for Dummies, let me know that today, November 14 is World Diabetes Day. Today, at 14:00 hours (local
time), thousands of people with diabetes will test their blood sugar,
do 14 minutes of exercise, test again and share their results on
TuDiabetes or on Twitter.
He is using a tool called "Twibbon" that makes it easy for people to change their avatar to incorporate a visual for a particular cause.
Exactly two years ago, the idea of changing the visual of your Twitter avatar to support a cause spontaneously happened as part of the Pea Fund Fridays, a Twitter fundraising campaign created by Connie Reece to support breast cancer research to honor Susan Reynolds. If I remember correctly, it was Robert Scoble who did it first and others took his cue. See the range of creative expression in the flickr group.
Two years later, changing your Twitter icon in support of a cause (even though some call this "slacktivism"), is a techniques being used. Remember the sea of green avatars last summer in support of the Iran? There are tools now to make it easy for supporters to change their avatars, although you don't get the range of self-expression.
What do you think? Is changing your Twitter profile in support of a cause a silly click action or the first rung on ladder of engagement to get people to do something offline?
You can win a this set of books, signed and personalized by the authors that will teach you how to be human through your computer, generate tons of social capital, and be a social media virtuoso - plus have some great books to curl up with during the holidays.
Here’s how you win:
1. Leave a comment below telling me your
social media plans for 2010, and why you think these 7 books will help
you achieve what you want to accomplish. Best comment in within the
next week wins the set.
2. Visit one of the following blogs who
have the same set of books to give away. If you really want to
increase your chances of winning, you’ll probably want to visit each of
them and leave a comment there as well. Here’s where to go (if the
blog post is not up yet, check back later in the day):
www.kaushik.net/avinash:
this is the amazing blog of Web 2.0 Analytics author Avinash Kaushik.
He’s simply the smartest guy in the world when it comes to analytics
and what it means for your business.
www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog:
this is the blog of John Jantsch, THE expert on small business
marketing. He’s also writes probably the most practical, hands-on
marketing blog on the planet. It’s a must-read.
Yesterday, NTEN;s Holly Ross hosted an online conversation with Seth Godin and me, along with Roxy Allen and 100 plus NTEN members. These "Ask the Expert" chats take place on the phone with a online chat back channel.
This conversation came about after Seth's provoking post "The Problem with Non" took a swing at nonprofits for lack of adoption of social media, saying it was all due to fear. This caused an angry uproar on nonprofit blogs and Twitter from nonprofits saying there were plenty examples of nonprofits using social media effectively!
Seth quickly reached out to me via Roxy Allen suggested that I do an interview. In turn, I suggested that we have a conversation with the nonprofit technology community with Holly Ross at NTEN as host. This conversation took place yesterday.
Holly started with a great question, "What's in the DNA of each of these orgs that allows them to embrace this change and experiment?"
Seth told a story about men's shavers that illustrated his key point about innovation:
Innovation isn't always about the product, it's about the marketing and communications around the product.
Some organizations looks at landscape changes as opportunities, and others look at them as threats
Our patience with the lack of innovation that is the problem
Participants in the chat shared their impatience with the pace of organizational change, acknowledging that "All NPO's grow from experimenting, they just get freaked out by the tools."
It made think of one of his recent posts about "Asking Why," but while he was talking about shavers, it made me think of hair, and naturally that made me think of hair shirts and quote from Rob Stein about transparency as a hair shirt.
My answer to Holly's question was that organization's that are innovative have leadership that is open to public learning and models that in the organization. There's no better example than the public dashboards of the Indiana Art Museum - Innovation is about opening up and letting the outside in.
Roxy Allen mentioned in the chat that one of the biggest changes will be branding "from the inside out" -
employees have a mouth piece - which is hard to control and a culture
change. She recommended a book from the HR perspective called Brand Inside Essentials. Rekha, shared this essay about the generational differences in public media organizations when it comes to innovation.
The back-channel had a poll feature and one of the questions about change agents inside of nonprofits. One point that Seth made that really stuck with me was about leadership. That it doesn't matter what role the change agent has - but they put on a good show, model passion, and inspire people to change.
We covered a lot of topics - for culture change within nonprofits, nonprofit innovation, transparency, leadership, and the importance of storytelling. We discussed the findings of some recent studies about nonprofits and social media adoption.
Holly Ross has a blog post about some of her key takeaways and Darren from the Groupery also shared his notes here.
If you participated and wrote up a post or have some takeaways, leave them in the comments.
The results of two new research studies about nonprofits and adoption of social media were released this week. One focuses on telling nonprofits not to bother with social media, the other provides some strategic ways to move forward.
Weber Shandwick released the results of a survey of 200 nonprofit and foundation executives to explore how
their organizations (range of budgets) are using social media and the value they derive
from these efforts. Here's the topline results:
There is extensive experimentation with social media in the nonprofit sector, but only half (51%) surveyed are active users
Most nonprofits (67%) say social media is changing how they communicate with broad external audiences, but not narrower categories of stakeholders
Most nonprofits (52%) do not currently have the infrastructure, staff and expertise necessary to take full advantage of social media’s potential
Nonprofit executives (83%) understand that social media makes it easier for supporters to organize independently – underscoring how critical it is for nonprofits to demonstrate their value and relevance to advocates
Ultimately, for most nonprofit executives (79%), the true value of social media has yet to be determined for their organizations
The findings of this research offer insights into how nonprofits and foundations can optimize their use of social media in the future.
Successful nonprofit organizations will:
Move from experimentation to implementation of strategic programs that drive digital engagement
Focus on two-way conversations that build meaningful and sustainable connections with a range of priority audiences
Invest in social media capacity as a means of achieving brand building, advocacy and fundraising goals
Demonstrate their unique impact to underscore relevance to advocates
Measure social media with key metrics for visibility, engagement and advocacy
The survey looked at results and numbers and concludes that social media is not very effective and that midsize organizations should not waste time or effort. The survey was implemented between July 2008 and March 2009 - and the results presented here are focused on impact metrics
In terms of fundraising and attracting volunteers, metrics that most
nonprofit boards and executive directors highly value, the available
evidence suggests that social media is not very effective. To be fair,
that evidence is limited. To date, there are only two surveys that we
know of, one which we conducted, that have sought to quantify the
impact of social technologies in terms familiar to executive directors
and boards. In both cases, the results show that social technologies
are not delivering much in terms of fundraising or attracting
volunteers. While advocates of social technologies rightly point out
that these are not the only metrics by which social technologies should
be judged, they are the metrics that the majority of respondents to our
survey cited as driving their participation. Nonetheless, the
overwhelming majority of respondents to our survey say they are going
to increase their investment in the use of social networking.
Certainly there are different motivations of the sponsors of these surveys, different methodologies, and different conclusions.
My opinion is that nonprofits should not ditch their efforts in social media. It takes time to get results, like anything else. You need to listen, engagement, develop relationships, scale within your organization, and have the capacity to implement strategically. This takes time and social media for nonprofits is still in its infancy. There are no silver bullets. The results are in developing listeners and participants
who may later become supporters.
It’s time to set realistic outcomes, look for strategic efficiencies, and define and share best practices. I don't think it is a good idea to simply dismiss social media. I think it is important to have the conversation, but don't look at ROI in such a narrow - dollars only. Look at the missed opportunity costs of not participating - as well as take it as an opportunity to look at everything you're doing and figure out what isn't working and try social media in its place. It also important to keep measuring and improving.
What does your nonprofit think? Social media forget about it or move forward but implement strategically? Do you think social media is a waste of time for your organization or a technique in the early stages that needs more time to mature?
Update: The researchers responded that their conclusion was that midsize nonprofits should not use social media for fundraising. Sure didn't get that from the title. Further clarification point:
I think
the most interesting "alternative" view of the data we collected is how
many orgs reported no success on the metrics that they initially cared
about but that they were planning on investing more. There are two
possibilities to explain that: 1) they are caught up in shiny object
syndrome and thinking "the reason it's not working is we haven't
invested enough", or 2) they are finding value other than what they
expected and that value is enough to justify increased investment.
This is a point I make over and over again - use the right metrics. Social media metrics - particularly in the early stages of use - are softer ones - like learning and adapting, and engagement. Once you've engagement full measure, then start counting conversions.
With the big holiday charitable giving season just around the corner, there's a host of cause-related giving campaigns waiting in software launch and nonprofits gearing up for their end-of-the-year efforts. Some campaigns will launch soon, while others have already swung into action.
After last week's social media workshop, a gentleman from a local nonprofit came up to me and said, "Well this social media stuff is all fine and good for large national advocacy organizations, but it is not very relevant for small or regional organizations with really tight resources."
Whenever I get this question, I wonder myself. Is social media appropriate or relevant for smaller nonprofits organizations? Would about mid-size organizations? Should they stay away? What is the opportunity cost of not participating?
Today, I got an email from a blog reader, Cindy Williams, who is the founder of a nonprofit, Teaching Hands. They are located in Boise, Idaho. Cindy's nonprofit teaches kids and adults to knit hats and sweaters for less fortunate people in their community. Cindy wrote:
"A couple of months ago I was reading an article about Twitter and went to your blog. At the time was getting my feet on the ground with social networking. I set-up a Twitter account, forgot it, figured a waste of time, until now. I connected with @chrisvoss and learned from his videos how to use Twitter to help my organization.
Today, we are listed as #21/100 from Twitterholic in Boise, Id. From my knowledge we are the only nonprofit in the top 100. We have people around the world talking with us. Building bridges with other nonprofits around the world. We received our first business hiring us as their charity of choice to send proceeds to.
Thank you, for encouraging the little guy like me to tackle social networking. "
So, if your thinking that social media is just for corporate giants and fancy flash web sites to support national campaigns or chains and has no value if you doing work in your local community - think again. Be like Cindy Williams and give it a try.
What do you have to lose with small low risk investment?
What do you have lose by having the conversation?
What is the cost of not participating?
And, if you are small organization and have succeeded, I want to hear about it.
Leave a comment sharing how you're using social media to support your organization's work in a local community or regional effort and using a shoe string budget to do it. And, if you could win a copy of "Twitter for Dummies" that the good folks from Wiley just sent me.
Update: Julio disagrees. He feels that small nonprofits should "just say no" to social media and focus their limited resources elsewhere. I think they should open the conversation and look at what they're doing, what's working and start experiment. It's possible get started without a major investment. What's the opportunity cost?
Last week, I had the opportunity facilitate a "Social Media Strategy Map" workshop for over 100 Bay Area nonprofits. The workshop was hosted by Compasspoint, with support from the Lucile and David Packard Foundation.
I don't get an opportunity to do this workshop with a large group, so this was fabulous learning experience to work out some techniques to make it scale. And they worked! I wanted to capture a couple of reflections on the process as well as content learnings by way of this post.
Ant Trails As Learning Opportunities
One of the things that is essential to good instruction (or presentation) is knowing your audience. Every time I present or facilitate a workshop, I review the web sites and social media ant trails (social media properties) of participants.
This takes a lot of time because I'm not just browsing, but I'm doing a pattern analysis for best practices that I can incorporate into a presentation about social media principles and nonprofits. I think people are more likely to pay attention if they know that they might in the presentation. Also, it allows for a more interactive discussion because participants can share their knowledge. It's a shift from sage on the stage instruction to honoring the learners for what they know.
A couple things I discovered by following participants' ant trails:
The Bay Versus the Bay: This was an excellent example of how social media strategy can support behavior change or action. Some really good design points. For example, note their call to action right on the YouTube video. They were able to share some insights about how they track the success of this effort.
ACLU-Northern California: They are recruiting for a social media intern on Facebook. They used "tagging" on Facebook to make people aware of the note. The note itself is an excellent job description for a social media intern. This prompted a thoughtful discussion about to effectively manage social media interns.
The Valley Medical Foundation: This organization provided an example of the personal versus organizational voice issue that social media often brings up. They shared how they worked through this internally.
Robot Voice Disguiser for Large Group Facilitation
I was lucky enough to be working with good folks at Compasspoint (Nelson Layag, Sue Bennett, and Sierra Catcott) who are experienced facilitators and workshop leaders. They brought along their chimes which are a great tool for getting people's attention when they are working in pairs or small groups. My son lent me his Robot Voice Disguiser which was good for an opening laugh, but the chimes were preferable. It makes me wonder about the various techniques for getting people to shift attention from small group to large group.
I've done this game enough times to know that one key to success is making sure the small groups have people with knowledge of communications plans, hands-on experience with the tools, someone who can facilitate the discussion, and people with hands-on experience using the tools. I've used a couple of techniques to accomplish this and they worked.
Using a google form, I sent a pre-survey that asked detailed questions about social media experience, communications planning, budget size, and job role. On the name tags, we indicated people with social media experience with a "T" and those with communications planning experience a "C." We made sure that these folks were not all seated at the same table - having them spread their experience through the room so there was a C and T at each table.
I also created a stand up, sit down exercise. One part included having people stand if they had a formal or informal communications plan/strategy (half the room) -and then had them sit down in waves to determine formal communications, Internet strategy, and social strategy. There were only a handful of people who had a formal communications plan with a social media strategy.
Next, to ensure that all the people who very comfortable with social media aren't seated at the same table, we did the spectra gram. I learned this technique from Allen Gunn who uses it during Penguin Day. I have people line up from "very comfortable" to "not so comfortable" and facilitate a conversation. Then, had them count off by table numbers.
Wikitation: A wikitation (word coined by Allan Levine, Cogdog Blog) is a wiki that you use to share you presentation slides and links. I used the wiki to take notes and add resources on the fly that come up during Q/A. The wiki becomes an electronic flip chart and resource collector. What's nice is that allows you save paper and be a little bit green, although you do need a couple of key paper handouts (instructions/cards). The wikitation for this workshop is here.
What's the Hash Tag? With more and more people tweeting, I announce at the beginning what the hashtag is and encourage workshop tweeting. I've be using a tool called "What the Hash Tag" that easily aggregates tweets into a transcript. Monitoring the tag stream during the workshop provides a backchannel for people in the room and allows for remote participation.
Revising the Cards/Game Aspect
As my own learning and thinking about social media and nonprofits has evolved, so have the principles and strategies. This has had an impact on the design of the cards, game instructions, etc. I spent a lot of time last week tweaking the point system on the tool cards to guide better strategy decisions. It worked, but the strategy framework itself needs to be rethought.
The first iteration of the strategy cards consisted only of online approaches and was scaled based on amount of time (listening, participate, share story, generate buzz, and online community building). The tools aligned to the components. I've evolved this to engage/listen, social content, spreading buzz, movement building, and offline impact and more fluidity in choice of tools, also adding new ones. A concept framework for strategy could be tweaked further and I have some ideas.
We had enough time so we could use the "life happens" cards where groups lose or win points based on a real life situation. You know, resistance, staff turnover, lack of resources, etc. The groups were thrilled to win points. So, it is making me think that I need to revise the "life happens" to win points if they solve the problem in their strategy.
Report Out Technique
With such a large group, I thought ten reports using the same scenario would be deadly boring. So, we had three scenarios and 3-4 tables working on each scenario. I did the reports out for each scenario which worked really well. People really got into the making up the context part. For example, one of the organizations all of sudden had a famous rap star alumni who made YouTube videos for the organization's campaign.
I asked each to report out and I listened for three things:
What was a best practice or innovative idea and acknowledge it?
Ask a strategy question about something that was missing?
What specific how to resource would be useful to know about?
Is there a tactical tip to share?
We ended with a reflection about what they will take back to the organizations and, of course, I brought along some extra books I've been sent to do a big social media book giveaway (shared myself some postage costs!)
All in all - I can say that I learned a lot and hope participants did too!
Last week we invited people to help us crowd source a Hollywood Ending for the WeAreMedia Wiki. We've spent the last 18 months focused on how social media can support communications and fundraising strategies and now it is time to turn attention to program delivery and other issues.
And you responded with your thoughts! But I wondered, is there a larger frame?
Kismet!
David La Piana released a report last week on the "Next Nonprofit" Blog taking a look at how five key trends are helping shape a new social sector. The trends are:
• Demographic Shifts Redefine Participation • Technological Advances Abound • Networks Enable Work to Be Organized in New Ways • Interest in Civic Engagement and Volunteerism Is Rising • Sector Boundaries Are
According to the executive summary in the report:
This exploration of the five key trends yielded important learnings: While each dynamic has profound implications for how nonprofits will do business in the future, it is their interplay that will transform the sector.
The insight that resonated most was a paragraph in the summary about the importance of rapid experimentation and learning is to the future of nonprofits. I just have to quote it:
For the nonprofit sector to survive and thrive, everyone — nonprofits, funders and capacity builders alike — must become futurists. This does not mean predicting the future (an impossible task if ever there was one) but instead means being attuned to rapid and continual shifts in the environment; continually evaluating and interpreting how organizations can best adapt; and experimenting with new responses and approaches. Being a futurist requires both individual and institutional curiosity, and a willingness to take risks. No one of us can afford to rest on our laurels, assuming that the old ways of doing business will continue to serve us in this dramatically new and ever-changing environment. Nor can we rely on external experts, scholars or think tanks to map the road ahead for us — it is our responsibility to envision and shape the future for ourselves, our organizations and our society.
The section about technology and social media describes a few key projects and trends. Technology, which is a significant driver of change, also affords powerful tools for collective thinking and
action to position the sector to be proactive — not reactive — regarding the trends outlined in the report. What I found most thought provoking were the questions we should ask about technology in charting the future.
One, in particular, very relevant to question we're asking right now as part of the WeAreMedia project:
• What if the sector employed social media tools to engage both professionals and volunteers in designing new approaches to service or program delivery?
Have some thoughts? Add them to the WeAreMedia wiki here.
Twitter has been rolling out new features for its web interface to small groups to get feedback and then onto full roll out. It did this with Twitter Lists. Over the weekend, I noticed that Twitter's beta retweet feature was available on my account and played around with it.
Brian Solis picks out what's interesting about it.
The new retweet feature is particularly interesting as it organizes
your experience directly at Twitter.com much in the same way
third-party clients such as Tweetdeck and Seesmic have offered all
along. Unlike these desktop applications however, Twitter.com remains
as the pervasive interface
for engaging on Twitter. For example, your lists, real-time search
results, DMs, Twitter stream, and now retweets are key pillars to the
personal experience at Twitter.com. For most users, the new retweet
functionality, combined with important, cached searches (including your
username), the need to stray from Twitter’s online hub begins to
dissipate.
The new feature makes re-tweeting a single step versus a two-step process. What I don't like about it is that I can't add my own two cents about Tweet. By making it so easy to retweet messages will this cause an explosion of too much information on Twitter?
I thought about Woodsy Owl.
Woodsy
has been USDA Forest Service's environmental champion since
1970, and is most recognized for his wise request, "Give a hoot. Don't
Pollute." That was before we had to deal with the amount of digital
information we deal with
daily from our email, Twitter, and social streams. So, give a hoot, don't retweet pollute.
And with more retweets, the more likely it is that you will see duplicate retweets. This points to the need for more filters better at filtering than our human brains or relying on changes of human behavior. Louis Gray recently reviewed a new product under development, called Cadmus. It filters your real time streams to group similar posts in your
feeds to reduce the noise. The service currently works on your Twitter account, your FriendFeed account, or on any number of blogs you add. You can also add many RSS feeds at once via OPML.
This is on my list for 2010, to take a deeper dive in filtering tools. Maybe I'm just behind on getting fluent on filtering tools and thus finding the duplication annoying.
What filtering tools are you using to avoid information overload or "too much retweeting"?
About an hour ago I noticed a Tweet from Andy Carvin, NPR's Social Media Guru and social media disaster volunteer coordinator:
Please retweet: Online volunteers needed to help prep for Hurricane Ida, updating HurricaneWiki.org, etc: http://bit.ly/2lPQkr
I also received a follow up email with more details:
So it looks like we're going to get a hurricane after all this season.
Ida is expected to make landfall on the Gulf Coast near the
Alabama/Florida border late Monday or early Tuesday. I've already
started updating the feeds on the homepage to aggregate Ida-related
information, but there are still some tasks to be done.
Most importantly, we need to update the wiki: http://hurricanewiki.org.
We need volunteers to review the wiki section by section and make sure
that there are resources collected for Florida, Alabama, Mississippi
and Louisiana. Much of this was done last year but it can't hurt to be
sure it's up to date. If you plan to work on a section of the wiki,
please let us know which one.
Next, we need to identify useful Twitter accounts so I can begin
aggregating them using the new Twitter Lists feature. If you come
across any useful Twitter accounts related to Ida - local news
accounts, weather spotters, volunteers, local orgs, etc - please add
them to the wiki here:
If you can help out in the next 48 hours, please let Andy know by responding to this thread.
Last summer, during the height of the hurricane season, Andy Carvin, interrupted his self-imposed
summer blogging siesta, to help organize online efforts and coordinate
volunteers in advance of Hurricane Gustav. He set up a Ning site Hurricane Information Center. This site worked much like Katrina Aftermath, with aggregations of content generated by the public, news orgs and
govt agencies.
I've just come across another site/platform that is designed for aggregating information for emergencies and they have also established a Hurricane Ida Information Site. Well, off to do my micro-volunteer task for the day and add it here.
