Beth's Blog: Nonprofits and Social Media

Should We Just Blow Up Nonprofit "Vote for Me" Social Good Contests ?

Today, I stumbled across another reason why I'd like to blow up online contests that use "vote for me" or popularity to make funding decisions.   If a contest or program does not lead with social outcomes and if big money is thrown on the table, it encourages social innovation of another kind.  Looking for loop holes in the contest rules.

In December, the Pepsi Refresh Contest was hailed as the boldest experiment so far of the number of social good contests over the past three years that have used crowdsourcing and social media to encourage innovative social change ideas or to raise money for nonprofits or shine attention on their do good work.  For context, please see this guest post by Bonin Bough, The Global Director of Social Media for Pepsi, published earlier this month on my blog.

Last month, the The New York Times published an article called "Pepsi Trips Over Its Own Submission Rules" which described a little mishap with the submission rules.   Pepsi handled the situation really well by saying, we messed up, we learned from it, and are committed to improvements.

Online Vote for Me Contests like the Pepsi Refresh are designed so participants try to get as many votes as possible from their network in order to win a big cash prize.  For Pepsi, the top prize is $250,000.   There are official rules written by lawyers to protect the corporation and presumably to ward off cheating, gaming the system, or unfair play.

The problem is that if rules do not spell out what is and what is not permissible or are vague, than participants might conceivably use less than ethical tactics to win at all costs.   And while I wouldn't go as far to call the following example  "cheating," the rules do not say that isn't allowed. 

I was looking at the web sites and applications of some of the organizations who were in the top ten for the $250,000 category.  I was curious to see if I could learn anything about their strategy and tactics from visiting their web sites.

It started innocently enough when I visited the site of RiverBender Center and noticed all the grassroots support for the contest, including a local bank that was offering an extra incentive for people to vote by giving away "slacker cards."  I initially thought it was a good idea.

So, I clicked on the offer and it prompted me to register asking for the same fields that one needs to register at the Pepsi site. 

After registering, I got this prompt to go register to vote for the them over at Pepsi and use a specific password -"so that if I forget to vote everyday, some automated bot would go to the Pepsi site and cast a proxy vote on my behalf. 

In all fairness, in the contest guidelines, it doesn't say that this technique is a violation of the contest rules.

Each Application Period is followed by a Voting Period. Individuals who are only interested in registering on the Website in order to vote (as defined below) will be required to meet the Eligibility Requirements listed above in Section 1 and will be required to follow the directions on the Website to register as a Voter.  During the Voting Periods listed in the Application Entry Table above in Section 2, individuals who have registered on the Website to vote for the Applications they think should receive Grants ("Voters") will be allowed up to ten (10) votes (each a "Vote") per Voter per day during each Voting Period. Each Participant in the Grant Program will also be allowed up to ten (10) Votes each day of each Voting Period. For purposes of voting, a "day" shall be defined as the 24-hour period beginning at 12:00:01 a.m. ET and ending at 11:59:59 p.m. ET. Limit one (1) registration per person/email address regardless whether you are registering as a Voter or as a Participant. At the end of each day of a Voting Period, any of the un-used Votes allotted to any Voter or Participant will become void and will not roll over to the next day.

The rules do state that they may allow off-site methods, although it recommends that voter visit the web site:

Sponsor may allow various off-site methods of voting for an Application, including but not limited to mobile, widgets, media (by way of example and not by way of limitation, voting through a cell phone). Sponsor recommends that before a Voter or Participant chooses an Application to vote on, they visit the Website and review the Profile of the Participant for that Application to get more information about the Participant and their Application.

So, is proxy voting an allowable off-site voting method or not?  This points out that contests really need clear guidelines and rules to ensure a level playing field for all participants. 

During SxSW,  Kami Huyse, Geoff Livingston, and I posted our first team thought leadership piece, “Cause Marketing That Leads to Social Change.”  The piece describes our view how cause marketing initiatives in social environments can be effective. 

• Cause Washing Leads to Cynicism (need for authenticity)
  
• Leading with Social Outcomes (theory of change)
  
• Authenticity in Corporate Social Responsibility
  
• Contest Fatigue Sets In
  
• Empowering Stakeholders – Ensuring Change
  
• Use Social Tools to Immerse Stakeholders

As Geoff recently posted some further thoughts and I wondered in a comment:

I’ve been reflecting about the cause cynicism and wondering how much is this something that we as insiders are feeling versus something that is out there more broadly?

Then, I started to think about creative destruction . … what if we could blow up cause related marketing and reinvent so it could have more social impact. What would look like?

What do you think?  Should we just blow up these contests?  Or do they just need to be better designed?

Cause Marketing that Leads to Real Social Change by Zoetica Co-Founders

Credit: Fence photo by Tim Tolle, from Flickr

The following is a joint post by Kami Watson Huyse, Geoff Livingston and myself.

Social media is in is toddler hood, especially as it applies to cause-based corporate giving campaigns and CSR initiatives. Due to the very public nature of pioneer campaigns, we are able to peer into the box to gleen the strongest approaches towards social media and avoid the weaknesses.

At Zoetica, we have been examining social media-based cause campaigns in depth and would like to offer some thoughts on how corporate social responsibility is evolving in the 21st century.  You can read our in-depth post over at Kami's blog.

A fusion approach that balances marketing with social change is needed. Clearly, more research needs done to study what leads to meaningful change in cause-based campaigns and CSR initiatives. As a part of my research fellowship with the Society for New Communications Research, Kami Huyse and I are working on research about how companies that contribute to online communities fare in this important metric of change, and if this also contributes to the bottom line as well.

Through this, and other research, we hope to further the case for tying cause-related marketing to social change outcomes.

Congrats to Megha Bhagat, Winner of HP Laptop/Printer Bundle Theory of Change Contest

Congrats to Megha Bhagat, Winner of HP Laptop/Printer Bundle Contest that I ran on my blog last month.  To enter the contest, readers had to share their "Theory of Change."   Megha is a passionate human rights advocate in India and also lawyer.  Her blog is here.  

Here's her theory of change and social media:

Social Media was at one point of time just about what we read or saw in news or heard over the radio. Then came in social media as an effective mechanism to be able to catalyse change.Maybe the attention its got is relatively new but no denying that its become today such a strong change maker.
I am a lawyer by profession and presently a student of human rights law in my masters at India. Going back to my under graduation days i can say social media helped me bring together people for a cause time and again. Today i use it effectively with maybe another handful of lawyers spread over the country who communicate via mails and help in their own small ways . My theory for a change has some linkages to my law specific profession:

1. How to get Communities like the litigating, practicing lawyers effectively engaging on social media: It is still a fact that in India the lawyers who are practicing,are working in firms have a very very closed view on usage of social media tools. It is important to get them initiated into usage of social media. This becomes important for pro bono services. Some lawyers are ready to help people in distress in pro bono cases and in India you need a strong network of such lawyers. Getting the practitioners all across connected via social media tools ensures that this network is able to deliver services for the masses who donot have enough means for access to justice. Today i am a part of a small group like this, but we are people who are in a younger age bracket and have been using social media for sometime. The change is needed in the whole fraternity where in the sensitivity and readiness of lawyers to take up pro bono cases is encouraged by teaching them how effective social media tools can be for conversing with other like minded professionals etc.

2. Breaking the Myths about Social media: For a community like the lawyers its important to introduce them to the new age social media and what it has come to mean. It is important to make this community to realize that their services can bring about a change in societal access to justice delivery system and more importantly that social media is now not a waste of time but an effective tool for sharing experiences and getting motivated by work that others in their community do. Even as social media experts/trainers engage with professionals from all walks of community it is important that this community is also engaged in breaking their myths, apprehensions etc.

3. Every individual is a change maker: My experience with social media tools has been that conversations, discussions, arguements shared on discussion boards, forums, groups has brought the unconventional professionals to come ahead with ideas that can bring change. A lot of times these discussions have brought ahead an individual who probably would not engage in a certain type of case but is inspired and motivated by following the discusisons and gives his input which becomes an important idea for people like us who are into human rights practicing. It is therefore pertinent to constantly realize that, to bring together an effective change maker group of lawyers who are ready to provide justice delivery services, every lawyer we train in social media tools or even get introduces to such tools becomes an individual who can have an amazing idea.

For me personally i can envisage a system where in we have trained lawyers from all walks of practice in India, in effective communication via social media and such engagement can bring about at least a start of coming together of ideas, brain storming of changes needed and more importantly networks of professionals who are readily available for getting justice to the under served masses.

Megha Bhagat
Advocate
LLM student, NLSIU, Bangalore(Human Rights), India
meghabhagat@nls.ac.in

Pepsi Charity Contest: Learning From Mistakes and Level Playing Fields

From my son's kindergarten class

The Pepsi Refresh Contest is the boldest experiment so far of the number of social good contests over the past three years that have used crowdsourcing and social media to encourage innovative social change ideas or to raise money for nonprofits or shine attention on their do good work.  For context, please see this guest post by Bonin Bough, The Global Director of Social Media for Pepsi, published earlier this month on my blog.

The New York Times published an article called "Pepsi Trips Over Its Own Submission Rules" which describes what happened:

The tiny charity currently atop the rankings in one category of the contest accidentally got a little help from Pepsi itself.

Materials submitted by the Joyful Heart Foundation, a charity started by Mariska Hargitay, one of the stars of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” to help victims of sexual assault, were updated by the staff at Pepsi after the submission deadline, which is against the contest rules.

That upset some of the contestants who wondered whether Pepsi was doing favors for a celebrity. “I can’t edit my own submission, so how did she do it?” said one contestant, who insisted on anonymity because he did not want to jeopardize his chances of winning.

Did Pepsi stonewall and ignore it as we have seen happen with previous online contests?

No.

Pepsi has embraced a learning as you go approach when it comes to social media and the art of public learning.   Mistakes and stumbles happen and as Chris Brogan recommends you need to apologize and learn.  And now we have a real-life example with the Pepsi Refresh Contest making a mistake by not following its own rules, but moving swiftly to acknowledge it, fix it, and move on. This is what Clay Shirky calls failing informatively.

More importantly, we're living in an age of connectedness with all eyes watching.   You can't get away with hiding mistakes anymore.

Level Playing Fields?

Ironically, this story broke right before I was going to hit the publish button on a guest post by Katherine Hutt who shared the details of their strategy for a small nonprofit, Generations of Hope, also competing for the $250,000 Pepsi prize, approximately 1/3 its operating budget in 2009.  At this point, they are at number 80 on the leaderboard, not bad for an organization that had social media on its to do list for 2010.  If they don't win a dollar, at least the contest has helped inspire them to dip their toes in the social media waters.

One interesting point about the design is that Pepsi has attempted to level the playing field by offering different categories for different prize levels so that individuals, nonprofits, and companies can compete.  There isn't a distinction by budget size, although for the top category is says "for those that invest a lot of time."   Does this make for a level playing field?  How does a smaller organization quickly scale up its social media effort? 

That's a question I tossed back in forth with my colleagues at Zoetica.  Kami Huyse, Zoetica's President, suggested that I invite Katherine Hutt to share some thoughts on these questions and others.  Katherine responded with her guest post.

This is why it is so important that Pepsi (and those competing) do so in a fair and honest manner.  I know it is nearly impossible to regular human behavior.   That's why design is so important or else these contests became a sham.

Can Solving Complex Social Problems Be Done By Popular Vote

I'm skeptical that "Vote for Me" contests are the best strategy for selecting the best solutions or ideas.  I wonder if they get in the way of innovation.   In an email exchange with Bonin Bough from Pepsi about the New York Times piece, I shared my view.  He responded with, "We believe that the democratic process is better than us deciding on our own but only time will tell."

I asked him to elaborate further. "I feel this approach parallels what we are trying to do elsewhere (like on our Dewmocracy program) where we want to involve consumers in our brands and co-create with them, not shout at them."

I understand his perspective.  This strategy is more appropriate for selling products, not social change. Let me say this.  If brands want to be authentic in their social media for social good effort, they need a fusion approach that balances marketing with social change.  I think there is a hybrid option for crowd sourcing - and that there is a need for expertise.  

Do you think Pepsi handled its public mistake well?  Do you think a contest should be designed in a way that accommodates a level playing field?  Finally do you vote for me contests are the best way to identify innovation solutions?

Resources

Target Competition:  Ten Nonprofits Compete on Facebook

Red Cross Wins Western Union Contest

Trip Advisor Contest

Humane Society Wins Microsoft Contest

Yahoo For Good Contest 

America's Giving Challenge (2007)

America's Giving Challenge Assessment

Crowdsourcing To Find Clean Energy for India

Case Study Crowdsourcing

Pepsi Fresh Contest: Real Time Tracking

Chase Giving Contest:  The Organizations on the Leaderboard Go Up and Down

Pepsi Refresh: An Insider's View

What Lessons Will Pepsi Learn from Chase Fail

Charities Cry Foul on Chase Giving

Book Giveaway: Inbound Marketing Book (and some advice)

I'm giving away a copy of "Inbound Marketing" by Brian Halligan (Author), Dharmesh Shah (Author), David Meerman Scott (Foreword). I discovered it because of a charity challenge they're running on Twitter to raise awareness of their book, plus raise some money to help Room To Read.  I'm a fan of Room To Read, so I asked Dharmesh for a copy of the book to give away to nonprofits, and he agreed - so if you want a chance to win, leave a comment on how your nonprofit could benefit from in-bound marketing.  And of course, if you want to help out Room to Read, send this tweet.

The definition of Inbound Marketing is marketing focused on getting found by customers.  You can read a more detailed definition here.  I heard about the challenge because Laura Fitton posted this tweet.  I guess you could say it is an example of in-bound marketing.

Now, a few critical thoughts about their charity challenge.  Here's how it is described:

The Inbound Marketing Challenge

The Challenge:  Get as many people as possible to tweet a link to this article, especially the people in the list below by midnight (ET) on Sunday, February 21 2010.

The Cause:  Room To Read a not-for-profit organization that transforms the lives of millions of children by focusing on literacy.

How It Works:  We will donate $Z to Room To Read (up to a whopping $10,000) based on the following formula:

Z = (Number of people on list below that retweet) x $0.01 x (Total Retweets)

Example:  Lets say 20 people on the list below retweet the article (more on how to make this happen a little later).  Then, each retweet is worth $0.20 ($0.01 x 20).  If the article gets 10,000 retweets, that’s $2,000.  If all 50 people below retweet and we get 20,000 retweets, that’s 50 cents per tweet and 10,000 smackeroos for Room To Read.  Cool, right?

Here’s the diabolical part.  My guess is many of you know a few people on the list below.  Enough to where you can tweet them, and they’ll listen/respond.  I even made it easy for you, just use the convenient link next to each of their names.  (Yes, I’m just a helpful guy).

Do Your Part:  Retweet this article and try to get as many people on the list below to retweet it too.  It takes just a minute for you and them. The more that tweet, the more that hear about and the donation amount goes up.

Before I launch into some of my criticism, I want to applaud Hubspot for experimenting with different ways to promote their book and help a charity.  My criticism below is intended to help such efforts have more impact on the charities. 

I've been reflecting on the importance of authenticity in CSR programs that my business partner at Zoetica Geoff Livingston wrote about the other day.  I think cause-related marketing efforts could use a little bit more authenticity too or at least balance profit motives and altruism.

This charity challenge is more focused on getting the word out on the book than helping the charity.  Why?  I think they've set the bar too high for the number of re-tweets and influencer tweets and bar too low for what they'll donate to the charity.   The should have donated something like $1 per retweet and put a ceiling on it.

There is also no psychological or emotional motivation to re-tweet.  Plus, the influencer list is a not necessarily a list of Room To Read's influencers (and in fact, as of this writing, RoomToRead had not even tweeted about this challenge.)  The influencer list is a list of influencers with reach who may be not the attention stream to look at all the replies where as RoomToRead influencers may have less reach, but more affinity with the charity.

The formula to trigger a donation is complicated.   The amount donated per retweet is based on the number of influencers who retweet the message and the total amount donated is multiplied by the number of retweets.  So, if 20 influencers tweet and there are 1000 re-tweets, they will donate $.20 cents per re-tweet or $200.

As of this writing they had 298 tweets and 11 people on the influencer list retweeted. (According to the TweetMeme Widget on the post - which could be underestimated)  So, let's see - that's 298 x .11 cents = $32.78 donated to the charity.    I guess if they sold one or two books, they're even. 

What can we learn about the right formula from previous efforts?

Tweetsgiving which asked people to retweet a message of gratitude in a 48 hour period over Thanksgiving generated over 21,000 tweets.  I know it is a different animal - a campaign implemented by a charity without a for-profit marketing motive lurking beneath.

But if we look at for-profit companies using the sponsored tweet model (e.g. retweet this message and our company will donate $x to charity), there is a better a benchmark. Take for example the Haagen-Daz  campaign to raise money on TwitCause for honeybee research. 

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

I know from my 53rd Birthday Campaign  that it is possible to using the Twitter API, to measure impressions. (Julio Vasconcellio  and Kumar  Garapaty were kind enough to do the heavy lifting using the Twitter API to crunch impression numbers.)  So, one could have set up a donation formula based on impressions. 

Here's a few tips that might be useful to companies that want to help nonprofits by small cause-marketing campaigns:

1. Don't set the bar too high in terms of what you'll donate per tweet.  That's not being authentically generous.   Rather, be generous and set a ceiling on the total amount to be donated.
2. Work with the charity/cause so you can leverage their most passionate supporters. It's not just people who are interested in your product, book, or service.
3. Incorporate some emotional or psychological message in your message spread.

Update: Wow, Dharmesh Shah knows how to listen and redesigned the challenge.

Win A HP Computer and Printer: What's Your Theory of Change for Social Media Use?

HP is giving away laptop and printer bundles as part of its  HP’s Create Change program which is an example of "embedded giving."   That's a buzz word coined by Lucy Bernholz to describe the common practice of building a philanthropic gift into another, unrelated, financial transaction.  Embedded giving is easy for individuals to do, and probably gives them an added psychological boost to know that spending money on purchasing something is not just an act of commerce, it's an act of generosity.  There are also is also a downside.

The idea here is that if you purchase an HP product, they'll donate 4% to one of seven charities, including the Red Cross.  The social strategy includes the widget above that can be customized to show the charity and be shared on different social networking sites or blogs.   They have created many social sharing opportunities, for example:

• Visit Create Change select a charity and share the widget with your network
• Visit the You Tube channel and share a video on How you will Create Change in FY10
• Become a fan of HP for Home to share your ideas
• Follow them on Twitter to receive Create Change and HP Direct updates

They also implemented a bloggers outreach campaign to do a product giveaway.  They asked me to participate along with several colleagues.

• A. Fine Blog 
• My Dirty Life & Times
• Katya's Non-Profit Marketing Blog
• Jolly Mom
• Amy Sample Ward

Here's my contest.  Leave a comment sharing your "Theory of Change".  The phrase "theory of change" is something that readers from the philanthropic and non-profit world know well.  It refers to a fairly new way of evaluating the effectiveness of projects by drawing out the underlying assumptions about how they lead to social change.

The way you do it is to start with the intervention - in this case - social media - and trace it backwards to your proposed social outcome, behavior change, or action as a result of communication.  Here's a terrific example from Wildlife Direct.

So, you want to win a HP Computer and printer bundle?  Write a theory of change for your project or organization's theory of change.  You don't have to be a nonprofit, you can be an individual trying to do go in the world.  Be sure that you fill in your email address in the comments.   State your organization.   The winner will be selected by an esteemed panel of social media and social change experts.

PepsiFresh Contest: Real Tracking and Social Impact Analysis

I've been following the PepsiFresh contest since the launch in December, the largest social media for social good cause marketing effort put forth to date.  I recently posted a guest post by Bonin Bough from Pepsi that gives the insider view. This is a big bold effort.   I'm most curious to see how Pepsi will demonstrate leadership in social marketing and of course the longer term result - social impact.

Jeremiah Owyang has shared his initial analysis of Pepsi's Contest, summarizing the opportunity, risks, strengths, weaknesses, metrics, and impact. 

Strengths:

Pepsi's campaign has a few advantages:

1. First Mover Advantage: Typically, companies that try an innovative approach in marketing will benefit as they garner automatic buzz from press, media, and analysts as they are doing something new.  
2. Deep pockets: Pepsi can reach elbow deep into pockets for a large marketing budget --and plenty of funding for agency partners to initiate.   
3. Extended event lifespan: This isn't just a superbowl event, those who win the funding through crowd votes won't be announced till March 1st, nearly a month after the superbowl, giving this campaign extended life.
4. Not just about Pepsi: Playing to cause marketing, this engages passion from communities to improve other people's lives, rather than shoving a pop singer's associative branding in a broadcast 30 second spot.
5. Celebrity Interaction and Endorsements:

1. Pepsi has gleaned the support from NFL players, and made it a competition to see which cause will get the most votes, see NFL.com
2. Additioanily, they've gotten celebrities like Twitter-god Aplusk.

Weaknesses:

Yet Pepsi may have a few areas of opportunity that may hinder success.

1. Pepsi has yet to show the world they get social marketing.  Their recent entry into the space with the edgy --but sexist "Amp" iPhone applications resulted in severe backlash, and is now a case study on the infamous punk'd list. 
2. Cultural mismatch. Secondly, Pepsi's culture of mass marketing of a brand heavy CPG product will need severe changes of internal culture to embrace social marketing --where success lies in letting go of control.    
   

Measuring Success

Measuring of this investment should be dependent on a few KPIs.  

1. The the overall brand mentions (weighted for positive sentiment over negative) exceed that of total potential reach of an opportunity cost of $20mm in superbowl TV ads?  Opportunity should factor in mainstream coverage as well as social into the formula.
2. Overall sentiment in change towards Pepsi as a brand.  A primary research study should be fielded to ask something along the lines with  "Did The Refresh Everything effort increase your desire to buy Pepsi?"  This should be measured immediatly after superbowl, then after March 1st contest announcements, then 1 year after the programs went into funding.
3. Overall sentiment in social channels: Using brand monitoring software, a study should be fielded to gauge the overall change in perception within the social sphere, whee this effort was focused.
4. Advocacy Reach: Overall spread of campaign through social channels beyond the branded channels to gauge how far this campaign spread.
5. Intensity:  During superbowl, how many people engage with refresh campaign, it's websites, online?
6. Overall impact towards helping communities.  What % of the projects that were funded were successful, what impact did it have on the community? Did it impact the brand of Pepsi?

The last point is critical, in my mind, for Pepsi to demonstrate that the projects did have a social change impact.   Of course, we know in the social change sector that measuring impact and seeing tangible change takes time, a long time.  While the SuperBowl Game will be over in a matter of hours and the contest will last all year, implementing the winner's project that are focused on social change will take time.  It will be even longer before you see and measure social impact.     

I was so happy that Jeremiah Owyang shared his research note taking technique.  It is a good example of tracking in real-time - and something I've been doing for all my projects over the last five years.   So, if you want to follow along on Jeremiah Owyang's scorecard - here it is.

Unfortunately, my plane ride to Mumbai is not equipped with wifi or live US sports - so will be missing it and check in on Twitter when I land.

Pepsi Refresh Project: An Insider's View - Guest Post by Bonin Bough

Note from Beth:  I've been writing about online contests that use social media and crowdsourcing techniques.  In December, I wrote about Pepsi's  bold move of not spending money on Super Bowl ads for Pepsi beverages but using the money for lethal generosity through its Pepsi Refresh Project.  I called Pepsi out in a post called "What can Pepsi Learn About Crowdourcing for Social Good?"  A representative from Pepsi, Bonin Bough, left a comment and I invited him to write a guest post about they are learning about crowdsourcing for social good. 

As frequent readers of this blog know, many pitfalls of online contests have been discussed here. It’s an honor to have Beth ask me to guest post so I will do my best to live up to the quality readers are used to. With the launch of public voting on the Pepsi Refresh Project, now is a good time to discuss the efforts we’re taking to set the new standard for transparency in online contests.

For those who don’t know, the Pepsi Refresh Project is a new effort to empower individuals to make a positive impact on the world.  We’ve pledged to award more than $20 million to support innovative ideas that move communities forward. Anyone can apply for a grant and the public decides who wins.

Each month, Pepsi will award grants up to $1.3 million to the winning ideas across six categories, including: Health, Arts & Culture, Food & Shelter, The Planet, Neighborhoods and Education.

We collaborated with organizations that are dedicated to making a positive difference in the world to design and implement the Pepsi Refresh Project. Our partners include GOOD, a leading platform for thought and action revolving around pushing the world forward; Global Giving, an online marketplace that connects people who have community and world-changing ideas with people who can support them; and Do Something, the largest non-profit teen charity.

Global Giving will vet contest applications to ensure they meet the requirements — for example, grant proposals may not contain profanity or involve political advocacy for a particular party. Each month, we accept 1,000 submissions, and all of the ideas that comply with our Official Guidelines are then posted online for public vote. We’re doing our part to bring transparency to the process by featuring a monthly leaderboard showing which ideas are getting the most votes.

Pepsi has developed an Advisory Board of leaders of non-profit sectors with extensive experience in each of the six award categories. They’re CEOs, foundation presidents and some of the most innovative thinkers in social good, chosen for their proven track record and commitment to moving the world forward. They are not paid for their efforts and they will not have any influence on the balloting or awarding of grants.

We’ve also compiled a team of Ambassadors, who are emerging leaders in the six award categories. They range from start-up founders to activists to neighborhood advocates. They will work to involve the nonprofit community and cultivate creative and innovative ideas in their category. Ambassadors will identify trends in submissions and invite thought leaders in their field to champion promising and innovative project ideas.

So, what’s different about this contest than other online contests? First, never before has a trusted brand engaged in the work of doing social good with the level of resources behind the Pepsi Refresh Project. Pepsi is giving away an unprecedented $20 million in grants and inviting the public to rank the best ideas in an open vote. And the grants are available in a range of sizes, to foster ideas as small as a community garden and as large as groundbreaking medical research. The Pepsi Refresh Project stands apart from other programs in that it is open to a broad spectrum of ideas, and it will be a sustained year-long effort.

Our theory of social change is that new ideas are born from optimism, a curious mind and a creative spirit. We can make a difference by equipping people with the means to bring their ideas to life.  And, we believe social media and digital engagement can fuel, extend and inform these efforts. 

This focus on social engagement is driven from the highest points of the PepsiCo organization – and you can expect to see great things on this front from PepsiCo over the coming years.  What is at the core of all of our efforts is how can we continue to help and support the space by being an organization that is open to exploring and working with all of the bright minds and emerging technologies that are driving social media forward.  

Through the Pepsi Refresh Project, we’re helping to move people’s ideas from wishful thinking to reality. The results so far have exceeded our expectations. After just 72 hours, we quickly hit our 1,000 submission limit for the first month — including at least one submission from each state. We look forward to tracking the winning ideas and we can’t wait to see what people come up with next.

The lesson is: if you listen to what people have to say and give voice to their perspectives, you can inspire people and empower their ideas to refresh the world.

Bonin Bough is the Global Director Digital and Social Media at PepisCo.

Chase Community Giving Contest Ends With Yet More Controversy

Less than two hours ago, Chase Community Giving made the much anticipated unofficial post on its wall announcing the lucky winner of $1 million dollars and five finalists each receiving $100,000 on its contest Fan Page.

This contest was the culmination of a two-part "vote for me" cause marketing strategy that started in November and has been rife with controversy.  In some ways, it comes as no surprise that the race to the finish line ended with more allegations of dubious behavior by contest participants and those watching them compete.  It's left some nonprofit professionals wondering whether these types of contests are a good idea.

The lucky winner, Invisible Children, has won $1 million, but the Huffington Post is reporting that the second place winner, engaged in voter fraud.  Further Huffington Post reports:

In the contest's last few hours, many newly created profiles voted for The Isha Foundation, some of them with dubious-looking names, including Gdfg Kcjbvkljvb and Sdfj Dfsjlfkddjf. Several other profiles with more realistic names voted for Isha, though these accounts have had few if any friends or activity prior to voting.Though many of the profiles supporting The Isha Foundation appear to be new with little to no activity, it's unclear if that is a violation of the terms and conditions of participating in the contest.

Invisible Children has also been accused of fraud during the duration of the contest. Change.org reported on January 19 that many users who had not voted for Invisible Children had been tagged in a photo with an image reading "I Voted For Invisible Children," making it appear as though that user had voted for the group.

Voting for the Chase Community Giving contest ended at midnight on January 23, with an official announcement of the winner coming on Monday, January 26. It is unknown whether Chase and Facebook will be verifying the legitimacy of vote counts after the contest has ended.

I'm not surprised.  The contest was tainted during the first round when several nonprofits that had placed in the top 100 were disqualified without reason amidst criticisms about the contest design.  This happened right before the holidays in December and an article by Stephanie Strom in the New York Times reported:

JPMorgan Chase & Company is coming under fire for the way it conducted an online contest to award millions of dollars to 100 charities.

At least three nonprofit groups — Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the Marijuana Policy Project and an anti-abortion group, Justice for All— say they believe that Chase disqualified them over concerns about associating its name with their missions.

The groups say that until Chase made changes to the contest, they appeared to be among the top 100 vote-getters.

Dubbed the Chase Bank's Online Contest Fail and a firestorm of criticism followed.  The disqualified groups organized a boycott of Chase and probably would have ignited an angry crowd if not a matter of timing.  The events happened right before Christmas when everyone distracted by holiday celebrations.  Chase Bank did not apparently make any formal, public concessions to the disqualified groups and the nonprofits decided to  move on.

All week, I watched the organizations competing in the Chase Community Giving Contest go up and down the leaderboard amid accusations of dubious behavior and tactics by those participating in the contest.

I think the more important question is the debate as to whether these "vote for me" contests are beneficial to nonprofits and social change.   I don't think contests should be banned entirely, they just need to be better designed:

1.)  Contest Design Should Not Promote Scarcity Thinking:  Scarcity thinking assumes no growth and heightened competition.  Contests that are designed to select winners based on popular votes only and huge dollar amounts inspire scarcity thinking.  Much like throwing some fish food into a pond filled with starving Koi fish:

Scarcity thinking also inspires less than honest tactics.  It doesn't promote thoughtfulness or field wide learning. 

Further, for organizations that are pestering their supporters and friends to "vote for me" has the potential of eroding the hard earned social capital.  It does not promote the good kind of relationship building that can really sustain an organization in the long run. It promotes transactional relationships. 

2.  The Role of Experts:   There is a role for expert opinion in crowdsourcing projects to make them more effective. 

Some contests, for example the Knight News Challenge and Case Foundation Make It Your Own, have handled this need for expertise by having a two-tiered process.  The crowd identifies the top contenders, not the winners and a panel of experts selects the winners.    The Brooklyn Museum of Art's Click Exhibition used two crowds - a general crowd and a crowd of curators (Allison Fine and I profiled this project in the chapter on crowdsourcing in our forthcoming book, The Networked Nonprofit)

3.  A Balance of Social Good and Marketing:   Can throwing a lot of money out there for nonprofits to beg for really solve social problems or make the world a better place?  There needs to be a balance of social good and cause marketing or else it might come off as "cause washing."   We know that corporate greed is being replaced by generosity and we know there is potential synergy between financial performance and attention to community and social needs.  But it can't be a pure marketing strategy - there needs to be some theory of change.

The above diagram describes the theory of change for Prizes from a recent report by McKinsey   This type of thinking needs to go hand in hand with marketing strategies to ensure an effective design.

What are the best ways that cause-related marketing campaigns can truly have a social impact? 

Are Online Vote-for-Me Contests A Good Idea?

Note from Beth:  There has been a variety of criticism of contests. Nonprofit consultant Hildy Gottlieb has been a vocal skeptic and is deeply philosophically opposed to online contests as a method of change in the social sector.  Her main objection to "vote me contests" is that it pits one amazing cause against another, perpetuating the scarcity mentality that lives in the hope of a pot of gold.    She also feels that contests have too much of a myopic focus on channeling dollars or click actions rather than engaging people's hearts and minds and souls. 

Earlier this month, I sent out a few tweets asking for the counterpoint to Hildy's view. Jared Paul, the co-founder of a new nonprofit that has a focus on homeless youth and one of the winners of the $25,000 in the first phase of Chase's Giving Community Contest offered to share his thoughts.  While as of this writing, his organization is in the bottom 25% of the leaderboard he shares a few points below about why contests like this can be helpful for small, new nonprofits.

In addition, Andy Amsler, a volunteer for another organization in the bottom 30% of the leaderboard as of this writing, left this comment on a blog post about the value of the contest for their organization.

Now that social media has normalized, can contests like this be a level playing field where organizations with hundreds and thousands of fans and much larger budgets compete along side those smaller organizations?   Nathaniel Whittemore pointed out some further problems with dubious strategies that as he says turns these contests into a farce.

Does these contests really help build capacity of nonprofits and bring innovative solutions for social to the forefront or not?  What do you think?

Guest Post by Jared Paul, A Good Idea

My name is Jared Paul and I’m the founder of a one and a half year old, San Francisco nonprofit called A Good Idea (AGI) that recently made the top 100 in the Chase Community Giving contest. AGI is a vehicle for positive social change ideas that connect people in need with people who want to help. Our largest “good idea” to date will be a fully accredited residential high school for homeless teens in San Francisco, which we will look to replicate in other cities across the country.

As a fairly new nonprofit, this online contest gave us the ability to gain exposure and compete with some more established organizations. The best part was that we won $25,000 and more if we do well in the second phase of the contest (up to $1 million!). Not bad for three weeks work, especially considering that we recently netted $10,000 for 3 MONTHS of planning a fundraiser!

You might ask, how did a less than two year old nonprofit make the top 100 out of 500,000 nonprofits nationwide? Well…sheer hustle, an inspiring video, and a supportive network.

To control spam, Facebook makes it impossible to email more than 20 people at a time, so to email your friend list, you must break your list down into groups of 20. Emailing my list of over 4,000 friends took me a few hours and I helped 40-50 friends through this process, quite time consuming. Chase also created an “activity” page where you could see who was voting for which nonprofit. Everyone had 20 votes to use (and you could only vote once per nonprofit) so people were usually left with 19 extra votes. I began emailing people after they voted, asking them to consider using one of their votes for AGI. While my Thanksgiving wasn’t much of a holiday as I had a laptop on my lap at all times, it was well worth it.

People in New Jersey, Nebraska, and New York who were learning about A Good Idea were emailing me asking how they could start a chapter in their hometown and asking their friends to vote. We started receiving unsolicited donations from people who cried after watching the video on our website and felt the urge to donate money to us. In summary for Round 1, we had our friends vote, we had our friends ask their friends to vote, and we asked total strangers to vote…and it worked!

For Round 2 we came up with a more elaborate marketing strategy including partnering with four other Bay Area nonprofits to support each other, voting parties, the attempt to get celebrities tweeting about us, getting local high schools on board, and much more. So far it hasn’t proven to be enough as we are far behind in the standings, but don’t count us out yet as we’ve got a few tricks still up our sleeves! All in all this process has been an unbelievably strenuous but rewarding process that has left me feeling an enormous amount of gratitude for the opportunity that Chase and Facebook.  Thanks for reading and of course, you can vote for us.

Updated:  Andy Amsler expanded on his blog comment about why these contests are good for small organizations.  You can read more here.

Guest Post by Anne Mai Bertelsen: Contests for Good - An Insider's View

Photo by Ben Golub

Note from Beth:  Anne Mai Bertlesen and I had a quick exchange at the end of year after I blogged about the Pepsi and Chase Giving Contests in December.  She offered to write a guest post that provides an "insider's perspective" having run a number of cause-related ventures including contests.

Just before the holidays, a debate emerged among the greater cause community on the value and role of contests for good.  The debate was triggered by allegations that Chase Bank’s Community Giving program on FaceBook was flawed, that groups were unfairly eliminated and that Chase was not transparent in its management and communication of the program.  (For an excellent summation of the controversy and attendant commentary, see  writer and consultant Beth Kanter’s blog.)  The controversy prompted some conference sponsors to consider hosting a forum to examine how these contests are designed and managed.

What’s missing from the current debate though are the perspectives of marketers and corporate philanthropic managers who sponsor and manage these programs.  Those of us who have planned, executed and evaluated these types of contests for good on behalf of major brands have done so with the best intentions and not to “cause wash” — i.e., buy good brand karma under the guise of philanthropy.  In addition, we know:

• These programs are difficult and resource intensive.  Programs, like Chase’s Community Giving and Pepsi’s soon to be launched Refresh Project, that reach millions of consumers, require significant support from philanthropy, marketing, advertising, public affairs, legal, and customer service departments within a corporation to develop, manage and promote.  This is not a program that one or two people — who have other corporate responsibilities — can do in their spare time.  Just evaluating all the submissions can take many, many people hours.  Amazon, in 2005, and Google, in 2008, learned the hard way.  Amazon discontinued their program after its inaugural year, opting instead to offer consumers a pre-determined list of charities to support.  Google’s 10¹⁰⁰ Project not only extended the contest timeline significantly — adding an entire year — but also changed the program mid stream after receiving over 100,000 submissions.

• They can be extraordinarily expensive to run. Like most marketing programs, these contests require promotional support to get the word out — not only to prospective project/cause submitters but also to the eligible voting population.  The brilliance behind the Chase Community Giving Program is that the promotion took place largely on Facebook; there appears to have been, at least for Round One, no above the line advertising support nor did the firm invest in the development of a separate program website.

• These contests can bring out the best and the worst in participants — particularly if the stakes are high.  The stories that pour in are astounding:  causes and issues you might not have known existed, intriguing solutions that upturn conventional wisdom, the courage and conviction of the individuals involved in these causes and issues.  But for hundreds and thousands of inspiring stories, there will be participants who will engage in questionable behavior — e.g., utilizing bots or offshore submission “sweatshops” to “stuff the ballot;” submitting ideas or media that they do not own the rights to; accusing fellow participants of foul play; gaming the program.

• Depending on the program design, participants may need time and support to mobilize their supporters. Riffing on American Express’ Members Project (disclosure: I was involved in this program), Pepsi Refresh Project has a downloadable toolkit to help participants develop their ideas for submission.  Online seminars that teach non-profits how to use social networking tools is also very helpful as is assigning mentors to projects, which Pepsi will be doing in their program.

• Leader boards can be deceiving if more than votes are required to advance. Some programs have multiple criteria — e.g., achievability, innovation — in addition to popular support as evidenced in vote tallies.  In those cases, displaying votes can inadvertently mislead participants to believe the outcome relies entirely on the votes.  Communicating frequently and prominently about the other eligibility requirements will help — but some will still be confused.  In the case of Chase, it might have been helpful to have a link to Chase’s Corporate Responsibility sitelet since aligning with their corporate responsibility goals was a key criteria.

• Despite the best plans and intentions, criticism will be levied.  Be prepared but patient. And, remember, there are important causes and inspiring organizations that will gain exposure and support because of these contests.

Chase Community Giving in four days away from its second phase of the competition and Pepsi has launched it’s Refresh Project.  I hope that the Case Foundation includes marketers and corporate philanthropy managers in its forum on contests for good.  Just as there are best practices and benchmarks for marketing online, via email, direct mail etc. so too should a body of knowledge be developed about contests for good. And sponsors of these contests for good should be included in the conversation.

Anne Mai Bertelsen is a marketing and digital strategist passionate about making a difference.

Chase Community Giving Contest: The Organizations on the Leaderboard Go Up and Down

(Screen capture of Leaderboard as of Monday, Jan. 18th at 10:00 am w/ four days to go in the voting process.)

In November, the Chase Community Giving launched a contest on Facebook.  At the time, it was one of the biggest online contests thus far, open to more than 500,000 charities and offering over $5 million in prizes. (In December, Pepsi topped that amount with its Pepsi Refresh, a contest offering $20 million in prizes and also launching this week.) 

The top 100 "eligible" vote getters were announced in December.  Each organization received $25,000 and the announcement caused some controversy because of the contest eligibility rules and lack of a leaderboard. 

The second round of the contest opened on January 15th and the pre-contest promotion on January 14th on the contest fan page was met with a chorus of "Vote for Haiti."   Chase had, in face, already donated to the relief efforts, although the link to the corporate press release was not posted on the Fan Page all until two days later.

The 100 organizations are now participating in the next round, "The Big Idea" where the 100 charities share their big idea for changing the world and get votes.  The winner gets $1 million and five finalists will receive $100,000 each.  The top 100 included a mix of nonprofits with an operating budget of under $10 million with programs in designated Chase corporate responsibility areas: education, health care, housing, the environment, combating hunger, arts and culture, human services and animal welfare.  

Over the holidays and into early January,  the Chase Community Giving contest quietly implemented a leader board, a scoreboard showing who is winning based on the number of votes.  In other contests, the leaderboard has been updated in real time.  Unlike standard practice for other contests,  this leader board is updated twice a day. 

Having real-time information is very important to the organizations. It helps them motivate supporters to vote as well as helps organizations make real-time adjustments to their strategy.  Real time leaderboards make the contest very transparent.  Nonetheless, you can still click through to each group's project page to see the real-time vote tally and I'm sure all 100 organizations are monitoring how others are doing to get out the vote. 

The platform initially had some technical problems where the voting pages and leaderboard landing pages did not load quickly or at all.  This may be due to heavy voting traffic or whatever,  but contest organizations came up with creative workarounds.  For example. Friendship Circle, has a web contest landing page that provides instructions on how to vote and a direct link to the Facebook app page.  

Some are some quick observations about the strategies the organizations are using as the contest unfolds.

• Explaining the "big idea" succinctly in a few sentences
  

As Farra Trompeter points out in a post about the contest, it is important to explain the big idea in a few sentences.   As I looked up and down the leaderboard, I noticed that Idealist was in the top 15.  Their proposal for "changing the world" is something they've been working on and getting feedback on for the past two years.  The executive director, Ami Dar, has been a thought leader the nonprofit technology sector for many years.   Because I know their work first-hand, they got my vote!

• It's not just the size of the Fan base, but activating them

In watching the scoreboard, the first and second place contenders have been fluid.  Invisible Children had a dramatic lead in the last two days, but was over taken by Twloha which as of this writing had a lead of 10,000 votes or approximately 37,000 votes or roughly 10% of its Facebook fans.   But this isn't about size of a charity's fan page as you can see by looking at the third place contender, Bridge to Turkiye, with almost 20,000 votes and a fan page base of 4,000.

• Organizing Offline and Online
  

There is also the importance of offline/online connection that can't be ignored.  For example, Friendship Circle, had a rallied at a Piston's Game in Detroit (see above video) and organized 3,000 teens to play freeze tag on Facebook to rally the vote.

The Center for the Pacific Asian Family (CPAF) was around 50th on the leaderboard on Saturday and is now a respective #15 with a small but committed fan base of 600 people on Facebook.  The organization made it into the top 100 because passionate and well connected supporter, Teddy Zee, decided to be their champion.  He is organized parties to get hundreds of people to vote and connect through chats to get their friends to vote during the voting week.  According to Deborah Suh, executive director, "Whether we win the next round (we get $100,000 or $1 million), this has been a great way to raise our social networking presence."

Good luck to all the organizations participating in the contest. Here's where you can go vote!

What strategy advice would you offer to the 100 organizations competing in this contest?

Pepsi Refresh Project: An Insider's View - Guest Post by Bonin Bough

Note from Beth:  I've been writing about online contests that use social media and crowdsourcing techniques.  In December, I wrote about Pepsi's  bold move of not spending money on Super Bowl ads for Pepsi beverages but using the money for lethal generosity through its Pepsi Refresh Project.  I called Pepsi out in a post called "What can Pepsi Learn About Crowdourcing for Social Good?"  A representative from Pepsi, Bonin Bough, left a comment and I invited him to write a guest post about they are learning about crowdsourcing for social good. 

As frequent readers of this blog know, many pitfalls of online contests have been discussed here. It’s an honor to have Beth ask me to guest post so I will do my best to live up to the quality readers are used to. With the launch of public voting on the Pepsi Refresh Project, now is a good time to discuss the efforts we’re taking to set the new standard for transparency in online contests.

For those who don’t know, the Pepsi Refresh Project is a new effort to empower individuals to make a positive impact on the world.  We’ve pledged to award more than $20 million to support innovative ideas that move communities forward. Anyone can apply for a grant and the public decides who wins.

Each month, Pepsi will award grants up to $1.3 million to the winning ideas across six categories, including: Health, Arts & Culture, Food & Shelter, The Planet, Neighborhoods and Education.

We collaborated with organizations that are dedicated to making a positive difference in the world to design and implement the Pepsi Refresh Project. Our partners include GOOD, a leading platform for thought and action revolving around pushing the world forward; Global Giving, an online marketplace that connects people who have community and world-changing ideas with people who can support them; and Do Something, the largest non-profit teen charity.

Global Giving will vet contest applications to ensure they meet the requirements — for example, grant proposals may not contain profanity or involve political advocacy for a particular party. Each month, we accept 1,000 submissions, and all of the ideas that comply with our Official Guidelines are then posted online for public vote. We’re doing our part to bring transparency to the process by featuring a monthly leaderboard showing which ideas are getting the most votes.

Pepsi has developed an Advisory Board of leaders of non-profit sectors with extensive experience in each of the six award categories. They’re CEOs, foundation presidents and some of the most innovative thinkers in social good, chosen for their proven track record and commitment to moving the world forward. They are not paid for their efforts and they will not have any influence on the balloting or awarding of grants.

We’ve also compiled a team of Ambassadors, who are emerging leaders in the six award categories. They range from start-up founders to activists to neighborhood advocates. They will work to involve the nonprofit community and cultivate creative and innovative ideas in their category. Ambassadors will identify trends in submissions and invite thought leaders in their field to champion promising and innovative project ideas.

So, what’s different about this contest than other online contests? First, never before has a trusted brand engaged in the work of doing social good with the level of resources behind the Pepsi Refresh Project. Pepsi is giving away an unprecedented $20 million in grants and inviting the public to rank the best ideas in an open vote. And the grants are available in a range of sizes, to foster ideas as small as a community garden and as large as groundbreaking medical research. The Pepsi Refresh Project stands apart from other programs in that it is open to a broad spectrum of ideas, and it will be a sustained year-long effort.

Our theory of social change is that new ideas are born from optimism, a curious mind and a creative spirit. We can make a difference by equipping people with the means to bring their ideas to life.  And, we believe social media and digital engagement can fuel, extend and inform these efforts. 

This focus on social engagement is driven from the highest points of the PepsiCo organization – and you can expect to see great things on this front from PepsiCo over the coming years.  What is at the core of all of our efforts is how can we continue to help and support the space by being an organization that is open to exploring and working with all of the bright minds and emerging technologies that are driving social media forward.                     

Through the Pepsi Refresh Project, we’re helping to move people’s ideas from wishful thinking to reality. The results so far have exceeded our expectations. After just 72 hours, we quickly hit our 1,000 submission limit for the first month — including at least one submission from each state. We look forward to tracking the winning ideas and we can’t wait to see what people come up with next.

The lesson is: if you listen to what people have to say and give voice to their perspectives, you can inspire people and empower their ideas to refresh the world.

Bonin Bough is the Global Director Digital and Social Media at PepisCo.

Deconstructing An Angry Crowd: What Can We Learn?

Should online contests be redesigned or just go away?  That's the question that Kari Dunn Saratovsky asks in a post over at the Case Foundation blog, one of many blog posts and tweets about the controversy surrounding how the Chase Bank handled its  online contest to give away $5 million dollars this holiday season.  The conversation provides a lot of good lessons for companies wanting to embrace selfish giving without cause washing.

The design is very important.  I think there are some good lessons and perhaps some best practices about how to manage an angry crowd before it escalates or goes viral.

Here's a summary and chronology of blog posts and Facebook and Twitter chatter.  I'm sure I've missed something.

11/16/09: Chase launched the online competition in November.   I blogged about it on November 16 as part of a trend of focusing online competitions on regional and local givings.  Many other nonprofit and do good bloggers helped promote the contest.   The press release from Chase describes the two-step process:

• In Round One of the Chase Community Giving program, Facebook users will vote for non-profit organizations they think should receive a portion of Chase's philanthropy funds. To reinforce the local focus of this program, 501( c)(3) non profits with an operating budget of $10 million or less will be eligible. Facebook users will be able to nominate non profits that serve the general public in the following areas: education, healthcare, housing, the environment, combating hunger, arts and culture, human services and animal welfare. The Chase Community Giving Advisory Board will review the top vote-getters to help ensure compliance with the program's rules. On December 15, the top 100 qualified vote-getters will be announced to receive $25,000 each, and will move on to the next round.

• In Round Two, the top 100 organizations will have the option to submit a Million Dollar Grant proposal to Facebook users, detailing the difference they would make in their local community with the significant extra resources. Facebook users will vote starting January 15, and on February 1, the qualified organization receiving the most votes will be announced as the winner of a Million Dollar Grant from Chase. The next five organizations with the most votes will receive $100,000 each. Additionally, the Advisory Board will donate $1 million to the nominated charities of its choice.

12/16:  Chase announces the top 100 winners on its Facebook Fan Page and in this press release

12/17: The Dark Side of Online Contests.  Kjerstin Erickson over at Skoll Foundation's Social Edge wrote an insightful post about the contest design, pointing out how not having a leaderboard was problem and the need to balance social good and marketing objectives.   Her post was summarized on the Chronicle of Philanthropy blog on that same day.

12/17:  SSDP and other groups were disqualified from the contest. If you look at the posts on the SSDP Facebook Fan Page, you'll how the open organizing took place.  They asked contest sponsors for an explanation.  Without a response, they escalated their organizing efforts reaching out on Facebook, the blogosphere, and main stream media.  They start organizing boycotts and asking their fans to post on the Chase Fan Page (which at that time was opened for comments)

12/19: NY Times, Stephanie Strom writes "Charities Criticize Online Fundraising Contest by Chase".   That I afternoon after reading the article, I wrote a post summarizing Stephanie's piece and adding my own two cents about the lack of transparency and contest design.  The post got retweeted over 160 times. Later that evening, Nathanial Whittemore over at Change.Org wrote a scathing open letter to Chase.  According to the metrics on the blog, the post got almost 7500 views and 114 retweets.

12/20:  I wrote a follow up post expanding on design lessons learned in light of other, larger, crowdsource charity contests coming up which was also retweeted 140 times.

12/21:   The Chronicle of Philanthropy continues its round up coverage.  Blog posts continue to summarize and dissect the controversy focusing on transparency, design, and social good.   

2009 The Year of Perpetual Online Contests: Case Foundation Blog.  Kari Dunn Saratovsky recaps the conversation and lets us know that the Case Foundation is planning host an online forum to make room for a discussion about online contest designs.   The conversation starter, "Do you think that a redesign of online contests could help salvage this concept of online citizen participation while maintaining some level of transparency?  Would you prefer these contests simply go away in 2010 – if so, what might replace them?"

Marsha Stepanek discusses the transparency (or lack of) and damage to the brand.   Scott Henderson points out the issue of control and crowds and John Haydon raises concerns about the Fan Page lock down.  Marc Pitman wonders what can be learned? Stephanie writes about the importance of contests for small nonprofits.  Some hashtags start appearing, including #chasefail and other hashtags.

Chase Facebook Fan Page removes fans comments on the wall and fan commenting ability.

12/22:  Disqualified groups continue to share their frustration about a lack of response on their blogs as well as Facebook Fan Pages.  SSDP sets up a protest site called "Chase Boycott"

We don't know where this will go next.   Maybe this will all fade away with the holiday upon us and all will be forgotten by the opening round for the top 100 organizations to compete for the six and seven figure grants in January.  Or maybe it will fester.  

Source: Slideshare Deck - The Bottom Line on Facebook and Twitter

It's unclear how much damage this has done to their brand, if at all - and if damage could have been reduced if they were more responsive earlier on.

If anything, it provides lots of learning which is the heart of success of social media and potential for constructive discussion and debate about social media, online giving, transparency, and more.  Should the folks at Chase wish to respond, they are more than welcomed to write a guest post on this blog.

Update:  Ami Dar makes a great point that we should acknowledge Chase for trying something new.  I agree, but I think they're missing a fantastic teachable moment about learning, experimentation, and a conversation about online contests, transparency, and reshaping philanthropy.

Facebook and Google Donate To Charities In Lieu of Parties and Gifts

My twitter friend, Joey Leslie, and I traded some back and forth tweets about Chase Bank and Pepsi's Crowdsourcing for Social Good efforts.  Joey (I think) coined a new term, "cause washing."  His definition:

"Hiding a brand behind a cause for corporate benefit."

Joey pointed out that Facebook's donation to Donors Choose in lieu of holiday party and Google's $20 million donation to selected charities in lieu of holiday gifts to Adsense and Adwords products is not cause washing.

As a board member of Ushahidi and an advisor to Global Voices - very pleased to see them on the list of recipients which also included those listed below. (Since Google didn't include a link on the page, I've included a list with links below) I'm curious how they came up with the list - a small committee within Google or did they crowdsource names internally?

Feeding America
Boys and Girls Clubs
Smile Train
CARE, Mothers Matter
World Wildlife Fund, Natural Capital Project
Mobile Creches
Prajwala
HEAL Africa
African Institute for Mathematical Sciences
The Mango Tree
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
Harlem Children's Zone
Save the Children, Latin America focus
Reporters Without Borders
Witness
Loud Against Nazis
Global Voices
Ushahidi
Save the Children, Middle East and Eurasia focus
Grupo Cultural Afro Reaggae
Ashesi University College, Ghana
Pratham
Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience
Shin Shin Educational Foundation
Tzu Chi Foundation

What Lessons Will Pepsi Learn About Crowdsourcing for Social Good from Chase Bank Contest Fail?

Pepsi is taking a bold move.  It's not spending money on Super Bowl ads for Pepsi beverages. Instead, Pepsi is using the money for lethal generosity through its Pepsi Refresh Project, a crowdsourced cause marketing effort to give away $20 million in grants to help revamp communities.  

Rather than donating the money to nonprofits through a traditional corporate responsibility grant program, Pepsi will jump on the online contest bandwagon.  Pepsi will invite "applicants" to submit big ideas to change the world and then ask a crowd of Pepsi Fans to vote on them. Pepsi will have contests every month for 10 months beginning Jan. 13.   

According to a post in GigaOm, The Pepsi Refresh Project will award $5,000, $25,000, $50,000 and $250,000 to individuals and organizations that turn good ideas into projects that make a difference.  The grant categories will be:

• Health
• Arts & Culture
• Food & Shelter
• The Planet
• Neighborhoods
• Education

Right now you can give your email to Pepsi to be alerted about details.   I was relieved to see that they at least, presumably, respect our privacy and had this disclaimer:

Notice: Pepsi will send a one-time reminder about the Pepsi "Refresh Project" to the email address you provide. It will not be collected or used by Pepsi-Cola Company for any marketing purposes.

Let's hope they learn from the recent Chase Bank's Online Contest Fail, other studies on these crowdsourcing contests, and countless examples of crowding sourcing for social change.  I hope they avoid going to the dark side and waste money on projects and processes that don't have impact as well as many nonprofits' most valuable resource: their time.

The Chase Community Giving contest on Facebook is one of the biggest online contests before Pepsi announced their contest, open to more than  500,000 charities.  As of this writing, 1,027,398 people joined Chase’s fan page to cast votes for their favorite charities.   The top 100 "eligible" vote getters, announced a few days ago, received $25,000. They are going to participate in the next round, "The Big Idea" where the 100 charities share their big idea for changing the world and get votes.    The winner gets $1 million and five finalists will receive $100,000.

The top 100 included a mix of nonprofits with an operating budget of under $10 million with programs in designated Chase corporate responsibility areas: education, healthcare, housing, the environment, combating hunger, arts and culture, human services and animal welfare.  (Very interesting to see the American Cancer Society was on the list as its budget - according to a 2005 annual report linked on their Guidestar Profile is well over $10 million)

Several groups who were in the top 100 (before Chase removed the vote tallies on individual profiles), were not on the final list, apparently disqualified.  Here's what Stephanie Strom, New York Times reported:

JPMorgan Chase & Company is coming under fire for the way it conducted an online contest to award millions of dollars to 100 charities.

At least three nonprofit groups — Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the Marijuana Policy Project and an anti-abortion group, Justice for All— say they believe that Chase disqualified them over concerns about associating its name with their missions.

The groups say that until Chase made changes to the contest, they appeared to be among the top 100 vote-getters.

What can Pepsi learn so its contest can truly make a difference in local communities, help them sell more soda, and avoid having its brand get tarnished? 

1.  Open or Closed Set of Participants:  Contest sponsors need to decide ahead of time how open to be in terms of who can participate.  It's more than the basic eligibility requirements -- nonprofit versus individual or for-profit or particular interest areas or even the legal language.

With some contests, the contest sponsor vets a list of participants before letting the crowd vote.  This is how Target ran its contest and more recently PayPal's FruitCake Challenge.  This way, the contest sponsor's dollars are donated to a known set of organizations that have been selected based on corporate values, goals, or philanthropic strategy.  There's a cost here - the cost of not getting the absolute best idea because the person who thought it up wasn't eligible to participate.

But there are some things to think about with a completely open contest, one where anyone one submit an idea and the crowd votes on the best idea and the one with the most votes wins.  The sponsor needs to ask if they are truly committed to the idea that gets the most votes, no matter who suggests it?  

With the recent Chase Online Giving Contest, there were last stage disqualifications.  And although they had a disclaimer in the contest official rules "... or organizations otherwise not in alignment with Sponsor's corporate social responsibility guidelines.  Any organization determined to be ineligible at any time will be disqualified. Sponsor retains the right at its sole discretion to determine eligibility and reserves the right to disqualify any Charity for any reason whatsoever"   this disqualification made them, as Nathaniel Whittemore said, look like jerks - not to mention inspiring a chasesucks hashtag and causing some negative reactions.

2.  Leader board or Open Voting Records:   The big mistake that the Chase Online Giving Contest made was not providing a leader board, that tracked participants progress.  Leader boards and dynamic vote counts help make a contestant's job of getting out the vote easier.  With the Chase Bank Online Contest, the lack of a leader board created a lot of extra work for the nonprofits.  They had to spend time combing through pages of other organization's voting records.  Also, it doesn't make for a clear call to action message.

A leader board can also keeps the sponsor honest.

3.  The Role of Experts:   Pepsi has a list of some difficult social change problems to solve!  And it's great that they're going to use social media to crowdsource ideas and redirect their Super Bowl advertising budget to provide money for implementation.  Nonetheless, there is a role for subject matter experts and maybe even the people in the local communities who know the most about the problem and may be affected by the problem (and solution.) 

Some contests, for example the Knight News Challenge and Case Foundation Make It Your Own, have handled this need for expertise by having a two-tiered process.  The crowd identifies the top contenders, not the winners and a panel of experts selects the winners.    The Brooklyn Museum of Art's Click Exhibition used two crowds - a general crowd and a crowd of curators (Allison Fine and I profiled this project in the chapter on crowdsourcing in our forthcoming book, The Networked Nonprofit)

It appears that Pepsi is partnering with some folks who have some experience so this may not be a popularity contest.

4.  A Balance of Social Good and Marketing:   Is Pepsi really committed to solving social problems in its communities or does it think that redirecting its SuperBowl advertising budget and using social media to promote its generosity can sell more soda?   We know that corporate greed is being replaced by generosity and we know there is potential synergy between financial performance and attention to community and social needs.

I'd love to see a theory of change for this contest.  Perhaps it exists.   The above diagram describes the theory of change for Prizes from a recent report by McKinsey   I hope that Pepsi will be transparent in sharing that if it has one.

Do these contests really have impact?  Do they really help nonprofits or distract from their work?  Or is this just marketing?

Some responses: 

Charitable Contests Remash

Charities Cry Foul on Chase Facebook Charitable Giving Contest

The Chase Community Giving contest on Facebook is one of the biggest online contests thus far, open to more than  500,000 charities.  As of this writing, 1,027,398 people joined Chase’s fan page to cast votes for their favorite charities.   The top 100 "eligible" vote getters, announced a few days ago, received $25,000. They are going to participate in the next round, "The Big Idea" where the 100 charities share their big idea for changing the world and get votes.    The winner gets $1 million and five finalists will receive $100,000.

The top 100 included a mix of nonprofits with an operating budget of under $10 million with programs in designated Chase corporate responsibility areas: education, healthcare, housing, the environment, combating hunger, arts and culture, human services and animal welfare.  (Very interesting to see the American Cancer Society on the list as its budget - according to a 2005 annual report linked on their Guidestar Profile is well over $10 million)

Several groups who were in the top 100 (before Chase removed the vote tallies), were not on the final list, apparently disqualified.  Here's what Stephanie Strom, New York Times reported:

JPMorgan Chase & Company is coming under fire for the way it conducted an online contest to award millions of dollars to 100 charities.

At least three nonprofit groups — Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the Marijuana Policy Project and an anti-abortion group, Justice for All— say they believe that Chase disqualified them over concerns about associating its name with their missions.

The groups say that until Chase made changes to the contest, they appeared to be among the top 100 vote-getters.

There was not a public leader board that lists the progress of contest participants and is considered a best practice.  It's unclear why Chase did not use a leaderboard, a contest best practice and way to make it transparent.  Instead, contest participants had to log in and look at other organization's vote tallies.  These were removed in the final days of the contest.

If you look at the contest official rules, in addition to the eligibility criteria, they've added these additional points to control who gets the winning money:

... or organizations otherwise not in alignment with Sponsor's corporate social responsibility guidelines. Additional reasons a Charity may be deemed ineligible include, but are not limited to, the Charity and/or its management being subject to any investigation for fraud, financial misconduct or other criminal activity. Any organization determined to be ineligible at any time will be disqualified. Sponsor retains the right at its sole discretion to determine eligibility and reserves the right to disqualify any Charity for any reason whatsoever.

If they wanted to have some control over who received the money, why not just award the money through tradition methods?  Or only allow a pre-selected group of organizations to participate?

Since 2007, when the Case Foundation launched its first America's Giving Challenge, social media-infused online contests to raise money for charities have gained popularity.  There have been many remixes of online charity contests since the Giving Challenge, so many that I can't quite remember all of them.  These contests are based on:

• Voting:  Organizations need to rally their supporters and stakeholders to vote them online and spread the word
• Donors or Dollars:  Organizations need to raise money and the organization with the most donors or dollars win.

The pool of applicants is either open to everyone, tiered, or starts with a group of charities hand-selected by the contest sponsor.

• Closed Pool of Contestants:  The contest sponsor hand picks the charities.  This is how Target ran its contest and more recently PayPal's FruitCake Challenge.  This way, the contest sponsor's dollars are donated to a known set of organizations that have been vetted based on corporate values, goals, or philanthropic strategy.
  

• Open Pool of Contestants:   Some contests have the crowd vote or donate - and the ones with the most votes or donors win.

One thing is for sure, if you're designing a contest, you need to think about how transparent and open you want it to be.  Or else you, the sponsor, might as Nathaniel Whittemore says, look like a jerk.

Dog Days of August: Slow Blogging, Dog Safety, and Other Reflections

Flickr Photo by Beth

 

We're in the middle of the dog days of summer when people go on vacations and it's hot outside. Life slows down.  It is always a sad time of year for me.  Five years ago today, I had to put down my black lab Sadie, at age 15, who was ailing due to cancer.   That's my favorite photo of her. (And, no the car was not on the road, we were parked and the window was open)

The American Red Cross is using the Dog Days of Summer to educate dog owners about pet safety during these days of summer.  There's information about heat safety, pet first aid, and disaster planning.  They are also running a contest:

The  Red Cross is also encouraging dog owners to cool off during these dog days by diving  into the American Red  Cross Pet Photo Pool.  Get your  camera ready and sniff out  these instructions to enter our Dog Days of Summer photo  contest.  Two pet owners will receive a  free copy of the Dog First Aid guide and DVD.

In his post, "Become August," Geoff Livingston talks about using this period to prepare for a busy fall marketing season: "Slow is a mindset, and while there may be vacations, there are also opportunities."    A slightly different take on the concept of slow.

At Blogher Unconference, Leslie Madsen Brooks (who works with university faculty to help them make their instruction more thoughtful and who is also a dog lover) put up a session called "Slow Blogging."   I was bumble beeing between that session and one on social change, but the idea was inspired by Nancy White's Slow Community. (For more on Slow Community, start here, then go here)

Slow blogging, like slow community, is inspired by the slow food movement. What we were really talking about is the need to take the opportunity to reflect and think more deeply which may require a slower writing. It isn't necessarily running with the flow or letting the flow of information run you.

I found this blog from 2006 called Slow Blogging Manifesto

Slow Blogging is a rejection of immediacy. It is an affirmation that not all things worth reading are written quickly, and that many thoughts are best served after being fully baked and worded in an even temperament. 

Personally, I straddle between the two - the constant moving forward through the fire hydrant of information and slowing down - being in the moment with one idea or concept or pattern I've observed.  It takes pulling back, consolidating, and discipline not to bounce.   In order to do that, I have to load up Mozart or other thinking music, and get into the flow.   Sometimes I can dive in deeply, and other times I'm not quite that successful.

I don't think there necessarily has to be a Chinese Wall between the two - moving forward (action) and reflection in blogging.   Is there a way to straddle the two in terms of your blogging - a "reflection in action."   It may be a little of what Tony Karrer is talking about -- social productivity.

How do you straddle between the constant flow of information at a fast pace and making time to digest and reflect on it?

 

What's Your Great Idea to Reinvent America? Rebooting America

At the 5th Annual Personal Democracy Forum this June we will be publishing "Rebooting America: Democracy in the 21st Century," an anthology of essays from leading thinkers and activists (see the complete list of invited essayists here.)  Their essays all respond to this challenge:

When the Framers met in Philadelphia in 1787, they bravely conjured a new form of self-government. But they couldn't have imagined a mass society with instantaneous, many-to-many communications or many of the other innovations of modernity. So, replacing that quill pen with a mouse, imagine that you have to power to redesign American democracy for the Internet Age. What would you do?

But the collection wouldn't be complete without reading your thoughts on this, too! Submit your essay, tell us how to make America better, stronger, more inclusive and participatory. Up to three winning essays will be included in the anthology.

Also, if you like someone's essay, vote it up, if you don't, vote it down, and we'll take your opinions into account. The book's editors, Allison Fine, Micah Sifry, Andrew Rasiej and Josh Levy, will be making the final decision.

Essays should run from 500 to 1500 words, and the deadline is May 1.

Check the site for more information about how to enter and get started.

 

And the Winner is .. Jaffe's Join the Conversation Book Giveaway and How To Do A Giveaway Contest on Your Blog

Congratulations to Chas Offutt, Social Media Evangelist for American Rivers

Joseph Jaffe offered bloggers a review copy of his boo, Join the Conversation: How to Engage Marketing-Weary Consumers with the Power of Community, Dialogue, and Partnership.   Since I had already had purchased a copy, I did a book giveaway.

• I got ten fantastic comments too hard to choose a winner in a subjective way.
• So, I used the random.org random number generator and 7 came up.
• Chas was the 7th comment.

If you didn't win or didn't sign up, don't worry.  I plan to do this regularly!

Robin Yap left a comment that he was leaving for Manila to teach social media to educational technology students, so I decided to part with my cherished copy of Dave Warlock's Classroom Blogging.  It's a first edition!  It was the first book I read on blogging.  It thought it might do some good in another part of the world rather than collecting dust on my bookshelf -- I've internalized my learning from the book.

My ultimate dream would be to send  Dave Warlock's Classroom Blogging over to the Sharing Foundation's fledging computer school.  Pictured above is Mam Sary, our head English teacher, who is also a computer geek.  He attended the Cambodian Blogging Summit and received the digital audio recorder to create language lessons for his students (offline podcasts!)   (The video blogging community also donated some video cameras for the school too ..)

Opened in 2006, the school offers computer classes every morning utilizing ten donated laptops and a few older desk tops. Students are picked by lottery and attend daily for six weeks to learn word processing and spread sheets, and see a bit of the internet on the school's one very slow connection, a cell phone.    If we win the America's Giving Challenge, we may be in a position to upgrade the Internet access and possibly, maybe eventually, have a student blogging or video blogging projects in the village or English conversation via skype.  Hey, a girl can dream can't she?  Computer classes are very popular, and these skills are a real help as students look towards future employment.