Beth's Blog: Nonprofits and Social Media

WiserEarth.org Goes Multi-lingual: Guest Post by Peggy Duvette, WiserEarth

Note from Beth: I've been fan of Wiser Earth ever since I had the opportunity to hear Peggy Duvette and Angus Parker discuss their approach almost a year ago.  I'm thrilled that Peggy Duvette, Executive Director, agreed to share a post about their new capacity to speak many languages and its offline events.  

WiserEarth.org, a nonprofit that offers social networking for the international sustainability movement, launched today in French, Portuguese, and Spanish beta versions. This effort was realized thanks to more than 10 months of work by a team of 43 volunteer translators based in Brazil, France, Mexico and the US.

French, Portuguese and Spanish speakers can now connect with like-minded people on WiserEarth, set up their own groups, and search easily for information on nonprofits and social change organizations all over the
world.

WiserEarth offers a free and ad-free network to a vibrant member base  of 37,000+ people from 231 countries, regions and territories. It is an innovative alternative to commercial social networking sites such as Facebook and Orkut, and contains over 2,000 member-created groups and 110,000 organizations in its directory.

The site was launched three years ago on Earth Day by environmentalist, writer and visionary, Paul Hawken. WiserEarth has stood the test of time and become a valuable resource for activists, social entrepreneurs, nonprofit leaders and changemakers working towards a just and sustainable world.

WiserEarth has also been connecting communities on the ground. In Paris, France, WiserEarth launched its first WiserTuesday gatherings, face-to-face meetups for people interested in social change, sustainability and
technology to meet, share ideas and experiences. WiserTuesdays have spread to London, UK and Monrovia, Liberia. From these WiserTuesday meetings spawned the creation of a Social Innovation Camp in Paris in June. This will be an unconference where social entrepreneurs, nonprofit leaders and individuals will share and discuss innovative technology moving us towards a just and sustainable world.

Peggy Duvette is the Executive Director of WiserEarth and Director of Natural Capital Institute (NCI).

The Cost of Free Technology for Nonprofits: Thoughts On Ning

Photo by Eurleif

I've been working in nonprofit technology since 1992. In those days, I was "circuit rider" where I traveled around New York State to work with very small local arts councils in rural areas. I was Jill of all trades, assisting with a wide range of technology needs, from training to installing local area networks.  (Yes, I used to crawl under desks and plug in wires.)

One of the projects I developed and implemented for NYFA in the late 1990s was called "KIT: Knowledge in Technology" where nonprofit arts organizations developed a strategic technology plan.   The first step was doing an assessment of existing hardware, software, and work processes.   I'd often walk into offices and see computers like those above on people's desks.  And even in those days, those computers were antiques.  But these donated computers were FREE!

Back then, my favorite question was: "What is the cost of a free computer?"  How much time are you wasting having to reboot and redo work because the computer crashed?  What's the cost of feeling so frustrated that want to bang cha cha on the keyboard?  What's the cost of being one click away from disaster?"

Almost twenty years later, with the price of computer hardware much lower,  we don't see ancient computers on nonprofit desktops quite as much.  But have seen grassroots groups and nonprofits turning to free, proprietary social media software services and getting burnt when the software company has to start charging or even worse goes out of business.

Last week, Ning, announced a complete end to free services for its users.   This includes many, many schools, community groups, and grassroots nonprofits that embraced the free service since it opened its doors in 2007 and will now be forced to pay, or relocate their communities, or say farewell.  We've been seeing the end of the era of free social media applications over the past few months.  Last November, Causes, a popular and free social networking fundraising application, ditched its Myspace widgets and Ideablob closed its doors.

So, if era of free 2.0 is coming to a close, should nonprofits start to think about the cost of free and take a different approach?  

In a post by TechCrunch, those who pay for premium services will be paying more, and those who are getting their social networks free of charge will be asked to pay or move their communities off the platform.  

Manny Hernandez, author of Ning for Dummies, nonprofit social media consultant, and organizer of two of the most successful nonprofit communities (Tudiabetes and Estudiabetes) on Ning, offered his two cents to the new CEO of Ning. He is concerned about the small nonprofits and grassroots groups that will not be able to stick with Ning because of cost.  Many of these groups are trying to make the world a better a place. 

He suggests that Ning rethink this decision and offer a special nonprofit donation program.

Ning has a fiduciary obligation to make the company profitable for the shareholders and you want to make sure the 98 employees remaining on staff can continue to keep their jobs for a long time. But I urge you to consider the impact your decision will have on the nonprofit space and ask you explore options comparable to initiatives like Google Grants, YouTube’s Nonprofit Program and the Salesforce Foundation so that the nonprofit groups that have been increasingly adopting Ning (while possibly buried in the long tail) will not be left to fend for themselves.

Start a Petition »

His post sparked a community plea to Ning to keep its service free for grassroots nonprofits and community groups and Amy Sample Ward also wrote about it.  Amy's concern is also for the many grassroots activists, community groups, and small nonprofits that can't afford to pay a fee and thus will be denied access.  There are over 500 signatures on a change.org petition to Ning requesting that they keep the service free for schools and nonprofits.

A recent article on Mashable, Ning: Failures, Lessons, and Six Alternatives takes a harsher view about the end of free, saying the free lunch is over and we need to start getting used to paying:

And just as we’ve grown used to paying for music through apps such as iTunes and getting cheap access to films online through Netflix, it’s about time we suck it up as consumers and start paying for the bandwidth we use, from web hosting to online storage to site creation and maintenance. As we all know, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

The article goes on to challenge online community builders to think about a community sustainability plan.

If you’re the creator of a social network, you should probably be passionate about the hobby, interest, community or business you decided to build a network around. And you should be attracting and enlisting equally passionate users as part of your community management plan. If you and your community can’t find a way to pay a modest monthly fee for the goods and services you use in your network, you might have one of two problems: You’re not passionate enough to moderate a community on your topic, or your topic isn’t inspiring your network to keep it afloat.

What does this mean for nonprofits?    For one thing, they have to be aware of the cost of free, especially with software that supports their vital relationships with donors and supporters.   In other words, don't put all your online relationships and donors in one free software basket and consider the alternatives before you adopt free technology.

Amy Sample Ward offers some good strategic advice to nonprofits:

• Evaluate your use of social media tools: do you encourage your supporters on other platforms to register on your website, ensuring you have their contact details?
• Evaluate your community: are you reaching a diverse community or operating in a silo?
• Evaluate your relationship with developers: are you using tools that allow you to surface suggestions, ideas, and useful functionality for development? Do you know what the plans are for the tools you are using?

Amy also talks about the potential for nonprofits to build a better marketplace:

It isn’t about having a crazy-liberal or Utopian version of the web.  It IS about adopting tools that we feel comfortable deploying to our communities and building on, knowing they won’t close or leave without notice.

What do you think?   Do nonprofits need to be more strategic in their choices about online community and fundraising software and understand the cost of free in their plans?   Can we build a better marketplace?  Or should we inspire and encourage software companies to adopt a philanthropic approach?

Can't Stand Facebook's New Privacy Policy? Commit Seppukoo

Facebook rolled out some privacy changes today and people are not happy.  Other users are just plain pissed about Facebook's privacy changes.   EFF gives the bottom line:

We at EFF are worried that today's changes will lead to Facebook users publishing to the world much more information about themselves than they ever intended.

It will be interesting to see if there is a mass revolt and people leave Facebook.   Here's a social networking application that might be useful to those who want to end it all on Facebook.  It's called Seppukoo a name that represents the samurai notion of a virtuous death.  You know, fall on a sword.

Just type in a few final words to share with your Facebook friends and deactivate your Facebook profile. At that point, your friends can continue to write good things about you on a Seppukoo memorial page. Users gain cache on the site if they get their friends to follow their lead.

How do you feel about Facebook's new privacy settings?  

Update:   See Lucy Bernholz's piece "Facebook Launches A Foundation.  Or Not"  Backlash Philanthropy.

United Way Social Networking Spring Fever

 
Lynn M. Tveskov (Photo from Lynn)
Manager, Community Impact Leadership
United Way of America

March comes in like a lion and goes out like lamb, especially true in New England.  This morning I got an email from Lynn M. Tveskov from the United Way of America letting me know that UWA has caught social networking spring fever!

She forwarded me this fabulous handout titled "How_to_Listen_to_your_Online_Community" written by Meghan Keaney who is the Director of Communications for the United Way of Massachusetts Bay & Merrimack Valley.  (Their blog is called "Speak United")  Meghan used the materials in the WeAreMedia Wiki (and my blog) and customized it for the United Way.  

The handout explains the process of listening and how the tools.   My favorite part is advice on how to respond and a story about how a negative comment was an opportunity.

When not to respond:

• If the blogger or commenter is talking about another United Way.
• You wouldn’t talk on behalf of another United Way to the media, don’t do it here either.
• If the blogger or commenter is clearly baiting, being antagonistic, or trying to incite a fight.
• You only have so much time! You don’t have to respond to every comment about United Way.
• Respond only, when you think it’s productive or important.

Hints on responding about United Way:

• Be transparent -- say that you work at a United Way.
• At the same time, stress that you’re speaking as an individual.
• Don’t pick fights or get pulled into them. They’re not productive.
• Don’t speak negatively about another organization or individual.
• Answer thoughtfully, ask questions, your goal is to learn and inform.
• Provide a link to relevant content on your website

A United Way Story

Here is an example of how responding can turn a negative comment into a learning experience:
Note what happens when the negative comment from “o2fishmore” is responded to by one of our partner agencies (gtarbox). Gtarbox is able to correct the inaccurate information and refocus the original poster on how the agency can help her. United Way then provided additional information about the investment and calling 2-1-1 for help.

Lynn pointed out a few stellar examples of United Ways using social media:

Finally, Lynn pointed out some examples of how United ways are using social media.

Facebook

United Way International 
United Way Campus and Youth Engagement group  (Mike Brooks)

YouTube

UWA Flash mob video (PSAS)
United Way Alternative Spring Break Videos

Detroit, Michigan - United Way for Southeastern Michigan has been using social media for years.  http://www.uwsem.org/ - especially blogs (you'll see links on their home page.)

Here's the individual blog (vs. the organizational blogs I’ve also provided) of a United Way CEO, Patrick Jinks.  He's been blogging for years (he's at a small United Way in Danville, VA):  http://unitedwayleadership.blogspot.com/

United Way of San Diego County, San Diego, CA - http://www.uwsd.org/  - on a Team of local United Ways that helped inform UWA's own social media strategy.

United Way Silicon Valley, San Jose, CA - http://www.uwsv.org/ - another California member of the team that helped UWA with their social media strategy.

United Way of Orange County, Irvine, CA, is on twitter:  http://twitter.com/UNITEDWAYOC

United Way of Central Ohio, Columbus, OH http://www.liveunitedcentralohio.org/ - looks to be a heavy user of flickr, including for their Alternative Spring Break:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/liveunitedcentralohio/

United Way of Greater New Haven, New Haven, CT - http://www.uwgnh.org/ - another member of that committee that helped UWA.  They are actively blogging, too:  http://uwgnhnews.blogspot.com/. 

Professional Networking: Just for Fun or Part of Your Job Or Combination? Tips for managing multi-memberships in social networks?

Source: Facebook vs LinkedIn Traffic

The illustration above shows the overlap between people who use LinkedIn and Facebook.  What initially caught my eye was the demographic (age analysis) of LinkedIn VS Facebook users.  We know that  professional relationships are moving from the Rolodex to the social networks.  LinkedIn is designed for specifically for business professional networking, while Facebook is a bit more casual.  Yet, I do professional networking on Facebook and I'm noticing a number of colleagues are too.

While the demographics of Facebook are younger compared to LinkedIn, the Compete analysis shows that Facebook users are maturing.   In June of 2007, nearly over 35% of Facebook traffic came the 18-24 year old segment, compared to around 22% in June 2008.

Meanwhile my colleagues in education and communities of practice (Browyn Stuckey, Jeffrey Keefer, and others) hosted an online conference about Managing Multi Memberships in Social Networks.  I had wanted to participate, but my crazy travel schedule quickly made that goal unrealistic.  So,  I'm learning third hand through looking at the materials.

They started with a survey to examine people's experience using social networks.   There are two terrific refleciton questions which caught my eye:

1.  How do you use social networks?

just for fun
part of my degree work
personal learning (optional)   
professional development (required)
part of my job

2.  Which phrases best describe how you feel when coping with multi membership in your online networks?

drowning, feeling like quitting something
roller coaster, sometimes fun to look forward to, sometimes just anxiously holding on
situation under control, have strategies to manage
guilty that I am not more active in all my communities

They used discussion thread to discuss the issue:

This brings me Tony Karrer who has several posts about networking on  LinkedIn (and Twitter and Facebook) and friending policies:

I used to heed the advice that you should only connect with people who you know pretty well. And that's the way I've operated. However, that never seemed to work all that well, and I think I've figure it out.

I listened to a podcast that featured Christian Mayaud in which he described PAN CAN FAN.

An individual's social network (online or offline) is divided into three groups:

• PANs = Potentially Active Network
• CANs = Currently Active Network
• FANs = Formerly Active Network

The "CAN" and "FAN" are people you know pretty well.  The "PAN" are people you may know superficially.

I now think of my LinkedIn direct connections as also containing PANs who I only know in a superficial way. I've changed where I'm willing to link to anyone who I feel may be a good person to know in the future based on their profile and possibly a limited messaging exchange. This is more in line with what people call a LinkedIn LION (LinkedIn Open Networker). I'm not sure I'm quite going as far as most LIONs who seem to link with everyone. But, I've certainly changed to be very open to linking even if I don't really "know" you.

This is a good way to think about your network and as Tony suggests you may not want to link to everyone.  And you may have different approaches on networks.  Not too long ago, Charlene Li wrote about professional networking tips including friending policies if you are using these tools to support or enhance a professional network.   It made me think that I have slightly different approaches on different spaces. 

Facebook:  I will immediately approve a friend request on Facebook if I recognize them or know or have recently met them.  "CAN or FAN" as Tony describes above.   But, if someone I don't immediately recognize requests to be friends - then I will ask them why they want to be friends - time permitting.  What has been happening lately - because I get so many request s - I end up ignoring them.    If someone sends a personal message with some context about why they want to be friends, then I will friend them.  This inspired me to put a friending policy on my limited profile.

Twitter: My updates are unlocked.  This is my "loosest" network. 

LinkedIn:   I treat LinkedIn as my rolodex and tend to friend people who I know or have met.  I tend to use LinkedIn quite to network through my contacts to find people I'm specifically looking for.  Tony's post is making reconsider that.

Other posts

• Is A Social Media Friend Really A Friend? by Mark Dykeman
• How I Think About My Social Networks by Scott Monty
• No, I'm Not Ignoring You by Scott Monty
• Social Media Etiquette by Chris Brogan
• Can Facebook Replace Face to Face by Social Citizen Blog

How do you use social networking for professional networking?  Is it a part of your job or optional?  Do you have different networking strategies across networks?  How do you manage your mulit-memberships without going crazy?  What are your tips?

Your organization's social networking strategy doesn't have to be like mastercard - you don't have to be everywhere!

This is a screen from Ivan Boothe's slideshow.  The cartoon is from Rob Cottingham's Noise to Signal Cartoons.  I'm going to riff on Ivan's advice, "You Don't Have To Be Everywhere" (like Mastercard)

After an organization has identified an audience, objective, and strategy,  a question that often comes up:

• What social networks should we establish our presence on?
• How many social networks should we participate on?

The first question is answered by Rob's wonderful cartoon that makes the point that there are different cultures and different types of users across social networks.   Perhaps you need to look existing secondary research on demographics and characteristics of users (see this post for some places to start finding free information).   You need to do some listening first - after setting up an individual profile, the search feature is your best friend or you may consider paid research services.

• Are there groups, Causes, or Fan Pages where people are talking about your organization your issue?  Who set them up?  
• Do other organizations that work on the same issues have a presence?

The answer to "which social networks?" I agree you don't have to be everywhere.  But, it isn't a black and white question in my mind.   My rule now is that I set up a presence on different sites and have email forwarded if people want to contact me, but I go deep in only a couple of places.  Those places are the ones that provide most value - where the people I need to connect with are. And of course you need to have a strategy for managing multi-memberships.

Remember there is overlap -- people belong to more than one social network.  So, while you may have a light presence on some, people in your network may be more deeply engaged on other networks and spread the word of your organization's cause.  (That is if you've built relationships and identified influencers).   I've seen this first hand  -- I don't engage deeply on MySpace - yet some of my donors for the Cambodian campaign who heard about on Facebook and shared it with their friends on MySpace.  Jonathan Colman mentioned this say multiplier effect from a recent Digg campaign.

There are also other some reasons for setting up presence across sites, but only engaging deeply on a few.  Brian Solis points this out in terms of branding.   Recently, I read about twitter squatters.(Remember domain name squatting? --when a ten year old reserved Toys R Us domain in the early 1990s and sold it back to them for a bike).   Anyway, I like the tool that lets you check out a bunch of social networks at once to see if your name has been taken.

How do you choose which social networks your organization will have a presence on?  How do you decide which ones you will make a commitment to participate regularly?

Social Networks for Social Change: Ivan Boothe Knows What He Is Talking About!

Using Social Networks for Social Change: Facebook, MySpace and More

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: fundraising advocacy)

I was lucky enough to meet Ivan Boothe at the first (or maybe second) Netsquared Conference back in 2005 and have been following his work for years.   Ivan Boothe helped start the Genocide Intervention Network in 2004, and was  responsible for communications, web development and social networking strategy.  He has since  started doing freelance work on his own at rootwork.org.  So he cautioned me that some of the information might not be entirely up to date that he shared on listserv including a pointer to his awesome slide show with audio.

Ivan is one of a small number of nonprofit early adopters in social media and social networks - he has a couple of years of experience under his belt - so his wisdom is priceless.  

He describes how the Genocide Intervention Network uses social networking and in this description you'll find a great example of the first step in social media, listening, if you venture onto social networks.

We use it to go where people are already organizing against genocide, and give them tools to do so effectively. For instance, when we first started organizing on Facebook in 2005, we found many existing groups on campuses working to end the genocide in Darfur. So our role wasn't to try to convince people to become active, but to give them effective tools, like our congressional scorecard and 1-800-GENOCIDE hotline, to take action on a regular basis. Our long-term goal is to build an anti-genocide constituency, and social networks are a key part of that because it allows our members to speak for themselves -- we can cultivate leadership among our members by encouraging them to talk to their friends and submit content (such as photos on Flickr or videos on YouTube). For concrete examples see the Slideshare presentation above.

Ivan says their organization's social networking initiatives have been successful in building the "brand" of an anti-genocide constituency. Ivan notes, "Social networking is a long-term approach and using traditional metrics of advocacy or fundraising it may not look like much. But over a long period of time social networking is actually critical in building an effective, educated political constituency."

The senior management of the organization was very supportive of their social networking efforts.  And as Ivan notes, "They were often looking for creative ways to integrate social networking approaches into existing campaigns."     Although he doesn't say,  I suspect this happened through ongoing discussions and developing small proof of concept experiments and reiterating and reflecting on successes and not so successful efforts.

What I think is really key as Ivan points out is the lack of a generational divide in getting buy-in from the organization's leadership.  The Genocide Intervention Network is an organization founded and driven by younger people. 

Many of the original members were in their 20s and familiar with some aspects of social networking. We had seen it working for other organizations, as well as political campaigns (such as Dean, Obama and MyGOP). The only limit to our interest in doing social networking is staff time. We do critically analyze the best approach to social networking, but we rarely doubt that there is some effective approach we can take.

So, what is the right fit to use a social networking strategy?  Ivan suggests:

 Social networking is a natural fit for an organization that wants more than an ATM of donors or a list of petition-signers, but active and engaged political organizers.

I'm so glad that Ivan is adding his presentation and wisdom to the WeAreMedia wiki!  Thanks Ivan.

From Social Media StarFish To Conversation Prism

Illustration by Brian Solis and Jess 3
(Click through to see the larger image)

Darren Barefoot created a visual called "social media starfish" in his book "Getting to First Base." It was a remix of  Scoble's white board.  Brian Solis has created the next reiteration - the conversation prism.  (Perhaps it  inspired this visualization of the Digg Community activity)
 

The conversation map is a living, breathing representation of Social Media and will evolve as services and conversation channels emerge, fuse, and dissipate.

I'm seeing a remix of the Social Media Game cards.  However, the existing "tool cards" have about 3/4 of the tools listed above - but people get so overwhelmed with choices.   The holy grail would be a grid that shows prism category, lists the tools, and column that describes possible applications or uses.   

My Slides from the Keynote from Making Media Connections

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Britt Bravo took some notes here (thanks Britt!).   WiredPR Works did an awesome job of notes too (thanks Barbara!)

The Cute Dog Theory: Slides From Funders Network Briefing

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Last night when I was putting this talk togther, I got a last minute bolt of inspiration from Ethan Zuckerman's talk at E-Tech called the cute cat theory.  It's call the cute dog theory.   Notes and links on the wiki. 

How will the youngest billionaire use his new found wealth for social causes?

The Forbes 400 list includes the youngest of all is 23-year-old Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who is quite possibly the world's youngest self-made billionaire ever.  I wonder if there is a Zuckerberg Foundation yet or how he will use some of his new found wealth to solve social issues.  (Peter Deitz wrote this up a few months ago.)  Need to research this further.  Anyone know?

Here's the monthly report from Compete on visits and visitors to social network sties.  For the big players in the space, February represented a slight decrease in traffic, but the year- over-year growth rates seem to indicate that social networking (as an industry) has yet to peak.   Will Facebook founder be on next year's Forbe's List of Richest Men?   Niche social networks taking off and innovative business models.

Giving Good Poke: Using Social Apps and Social Media for Social Causes at GSP next week!

I'm working on a brief presentation for next week at Graphing Social Patterns called "Giving Good Poke: Using Social Apps and Social Media for Social Causes."  So, I have been immersed in boiling down 50 days of socially-networked fundraising strategies and stories into a succinct and engaging presentation about the America's Giving Challenge.   I thought it might be easy peasy, but it is hard work.

Lately, I've been asking myself a question, "Why don't I just do the same old presentation ... and use the same slides?"  If you look at my slideshare collection, I have like 50 different slide shows ...  It can be torture to be creative all the time, but I get bored with myself if I tell the same stories all time.   The real reason is that I keep implementing new campaigns, trying new techniques and tools, and new projects. Presenting (and putting the stream of learning into a powerpoint) is an opportunity for some reflection and storytelling and learning after the fact.   

To be honest, I'm sort of scared, although the session last week with Laura Fitton (Pistachio) and her advice has helped reduce some stress.  Any advice to calm my nerves?

I didn't come up with the title, but considering I gave a talk at BlogHer last summer called "Getting It On(line) for a Cause: Raising Money" and I'm on a panel at SXSW called "Pimp My Nonprofit: How Nonprofits Are Using Web Tools To Kick Ass Online" it sort of fits.

If you are one of my Facebook friends, can you help me about by poking me and taking a screen capture of the "Poke Beth?" screen?  And if you could upload that in Flickr.   I'm trying to make a title slide and you can't poke yourself.   And, if you are a Facebook friend and your name is Beth - just ignore the pokes.

poke
Originally uploaded by vbora85.

Bora poked me and sent me this screencapture for the presentation.  Thanks so much!

Poking Beth
Originally uploaded by amysampleward.

Thanks Amy!  Been trying to figure out a good title visual for the presentation and realized that I could not poke myself and screen capture.

Nonprofits and Social Networks: Can Your Nonprofit Organization Benefit from No Presence?

TechSoup has just published the second article on a three-part series on Social Networks and Nonprofits.  The first article,  Should Your Organization Use Social Networking Sites? Signs that a social networking site might work — or not work — for you comes to you from the good folks at Idealware and was written by Brett Bonfield.   It lays out some the benefits, but also suggests situations where a social networking strategy is probably not right for your organization.  This thinking approach keeps us from fondling the hammer.

I wrote the second article called, "Determining  Your Social Networking Needs."  It is written for nonprofits newbies.  I cover the benefits, options for getting started, and describe what the work flow entails.  The third article, soon to be published, and also written by me, covers tips for using Social Networking sites and is based on research I did in November with nonprofit folks on Facebook.

Having a good editor is always a blessing because the back and forth and shaping process always help you think a bit more deeply about the topic.   The editor I worked with asked me a question, "Can you benefit from social networks if you don't have a presence?"  She was referring to sites like YouTube and Flickr, perhaps just the act of browsing content or what we might call "lurking" in online communities.

My initial reaction was no you can't benefit and that "no presence" should not be an option.   I put the question out on Twitter, and Chris Brogan responded, "Yes, you can benefit, but you don't give back."   Adam Nicoleson said, "Yes, I can benefit but I can't give anything back."  Amy Sample Ward, also pointed to the reciprocity.

Meanwhile, there was an article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy called "Giving Face Time to Charity" that talks about nonprofits, fundraising, and Facebook.   

Colleagues Jonathan Coleman from the Nature Conservancy and Carie Lewis from the Humane Society are also mentioned and quoted extensively.   Jonathan shares a story about how he discovered a Facebook group for his organization started by someone outside the organization and how he helps and supports that person.  A new role here to facilitate these Wired fundraisers.   Jonathan also describes how Causes can be like a collection area - that helps nonprofits reach new (younger) people - and they work at bringing them over to the web site where they can become fully engaged.

Some takeaways  ...

• Measuring the ROI by dollar amounts as the key metric needs to be balanced with using metrics like  increased conversions (email list sign ups), measurable word-of-mouth, or improvements in online buzz.
• There are intangible benefits that need to be considered and may not be quantified.
• Need to look at results over a longer-period horizon which why it makes sense to start with smaller successes from experiments versus those that need a longer time period to pay off.

One point the article touches one very lightly  is how the marketing person in an organization might convince their executive director or at least begin that discussion about why and how to invest in social media/networking strategies. 

Meanwhile, I came across the for-profit take on this -- a post by Jeremiah Owyang titled "Getting Your Digital Immigrant Executives To Understand the World of Digital Natives."  Owyang suggests:

A conversation starter with executives about the changes in communication, and if they have pictures of kids of their desk, that’s a good way to start the conversation. Ask you senior leaders how their kids communicate, if they don’t (perhaps they’re too busy running the company) ask them to take a closer look, and get back to you. My former CEO analyzed that his kids were using IM on PC, surfing the web, Text messaging on phone, school work on the couch next to them and the TV on in the background…and that was considered studying!

In the Chronicle article,  Alison Fine warns that charities should not make the mistake of thinking that the only reason to be active on Facebook is to raise money.  The article mentions a paper that Alison wrote for  the Case Foundation about how 15-to-25-year-olds are using social-networking sites to press for societal changes. Alison is quoted, "They think a better world comes from befriending people and talking about causes," using the same online tools they employ for entertainment and socializing."  (Tried tracking down the paper, but can't find it.)

Jeremiah Owyang's post was a summary from a free social media measurement seminar with Glenn Fannick of Dow Jones last week.  (I missed it live last week, but you can still go isten to the recording and see the slides).   Interesting to note that a question about nonprofits and social media was raised ..                                                              

Reflections on Social Networks and Nonprofits

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This presentation is from Jeremiah Owyang with the title "Opportunities of a Ready Made Platform: Your Facebook Strategy"  My absolute favorite phrase is "technologies come and go, but strategy sustains." I might modify it to include outcomes, strategy, and metrics sustain - for nonprofits.   There's lot of great stuff in here.   

I did the research on Facebook for an article I recently submitted to TechSoup on social networking strategies.  The research process was to conduct a series of "focus groups"  (sent out questions in private message), summarize the key themes, and set these up as a series of notes asking for feedback.   I was happy to read that both Ian Wilker and Beth Dunn went back to their blogs and thought a bit more about the questions and shared some deeper reflections.

Beth Dunn writes about the pressure that nonprofits may be feeling amid the social networking hype:

Nonprofits all around us are making decisions RIGHT NOW about how to engage in social networks, and many of us in the field have to fight a desperate feeling of running hard just to keep up - the overwhelming conviction that everybody else is winning friends, donors, hearts and minds through the savvy use of social networking sites, and that we are MISSING OUT.

She adds:

What is certainly a bad idea is rushing into things without a plan.

Or I might add - a logic model. Beth Dunn is working on a logic model.

Ian Wilker is thinking about best practices and social networking.  He suggests encouraging more than one staff person to have a presence, make sure you can get your content IN and OUT of the site easily and automatically.

In Owyang's presentation, he presents a scaffolded list of objectives:

Listening (setting up an individual profile and doing research)
Speaking  (groups)
Energizing (viral - using causes, changing the present)
Supporting (multi-staff on site)
Embracing (turning loose evangelists)

I'm curious nonprofit colleagues who are using social networking - which objective matches your objective?
  Are those objectives appropriate for nonprofits?  If not, how should nonprofit objectives be framed?

How Many Friends Exceed the Limits of SocNets?

Screenshot from Vicky Davis, Cool Cat Teacher Blog

I've been working an article for TechSoup about effective social networking tips.   I decided to carry out my research on Facebook.  First, I did a series of "focus groups" by messaging small groups of 6-8 people in my network and asking a couple of questions.  I asked 100 people and got about 60% response rate.

Next, I read through all those responses and did a pattern analysis ... and there were roughly seven themes.
(hmm .. the Seven Habits of Highly Effective Nonprofit SocNetworkers?)   For each theme, I wrote a summary and identified additional questions.  I put those write ups as notes and tagged people in Facebook.  (I also posted some here just to see the response) and I twittered it.   This generated some more insights, but more questions.

On the whole question of friending and friend policies, Vicky Davis and Judy O'Connell gave me the educator's perspective.

Vicky left a comment on Facebook:

I just wonder this, Beth. In school we tell everyone, "Never add a friend of a friend, only add people you know." and many of us are building our network in this way. Aren't kids who add friends of a friend learning valuable networking skills? It is important to remember this, but also that we are creating a vast disconnect between what we tell students and what is going to make them successful in the future!

In one of the places, I had mentioned having a friend policy and mentioned how some well-known bloggers handle it.    "It is probably a good idea to set a friend policy. The goal is not necessarily to collect the largest number of friends, but to build relationships. But there are different approaches. Well known blogger and social media guru, Robert Scoble adds all friends. Shel Israel prefers to establish a connection first."  (BTW, a huge big hat tip to Connie Reece who pointed me to the notes from her session on social networking at Blog Orlando.)

So, Vicky went over to friend Scoble and got the above error message.   That's making me think about
the Wall Journal article a few weeks back - "Is there a numerical cap on how many friends we can have?"  The article refers to the Dunbar number - 150 - the ceiling on the number of personal contacts a human has the capacity to maintain.  The article says that new research suggests that social networking sites will help humans surpass this limit.  Last word from Prof. Dunbar: .."isn't sold on the idea that social networks make his number outdated. The research, he says, "made us realize people don't know what these wretched things called relationships are -- and that helps explain why we're so bad at them."

Vicky goes onto say:

EAAAEW A Rat!

Educators need to stop jumping up on top of their chair and pulling up their pants leg like a mouse ran through the meeting every time someone talks about social networks!

They can be your friend! We've been using a social network for our Flat Classroom project with incredible results!  For goodness sakes, I'm using one for an elementary youth group at our church!

Be sure to read the comments, Vicky even got a comment by Scoble himself.

I also got poked by another Hey Jude who also left a thoughtful comment building on Vicky's points.  She went to blog about our exchange:

So here we had just one of our many dilemmas in education being effectively highlighted and discussed, right in a social networking space, accessible only amongst ‘friends’.

I'm also thinking about two of Chris Brogan's recent posts "Three Untapped Values of Social Networks" and Human Information Nodes and Routing and somehow makes me wonder about a student research project using socnet to do the research.

More to ponder here.

Social Networks Decision Trees: Continued

I picked up on a post by Elizabeth Dunn about decision trees for which type of social network - large network, nice audience network, or roll your own.  Kevin Gamble has more describing a limited test of two efforts - one on Facebook and one on elgg.

This is absolutely the right approach -- start with small test before investing further.

Kevin used the white label social networking solution Elgg (an open source sonet with facebook like functionality) to set up a community.   

So we embarked on getting some people to help us kick-the-tires on Elgg. We "invited" our advisory committees. People we knew well and that we had easy access. And we invited, and we invited, and we invited. We couldn't get even 50% of our advisory committee members to even try it. They never once logged-in. Mind you, they didn't even have to create an account. All they had to do was login using their existing identities. We also tried to work with some of our select, and mostly progressive communities to give it a try with zero uptake.

Meanwhile, here's what happened with his group on Facebook:

With almost no effort at all our groups exploded. We saw growth that we never could have imagined. I can't begin to tell you have easy it was to create functioning and engaged communities. It was so successful that I have considered closing down some of our old ways of reaching these people. I don't think we need them anymore.

Lesson Learned:

Building your own communities is hard work. It might be next to impossible. White label or big box? Our experience has been that you'll have far more success going to where the people are already assembled.

Social Networks Decision Trees

Elizabeth Dunn has an interesting post about how a mid-size nonprofit might make a decision about putting up a profile on a social networking site versus a white label social networking site.

Set up, Maintain, and Build A Community Around a MyFace Profile

1. Facebook and MySpace are good for reaching younger supporters
   AND
2. It’s likely that usage by oldsters will increase over time
   AND
3. It would be great to reach those younger, tech-savvy audiences we are currently not reaching
   AND
4. It’s clear that our organization should be fluent in the language, etiquette, and mores of Social Networks
   SO
5. Let’s consider developing some small, manageable project - suited to our mission, strategic plan, and budget - that might be obtainable by getting started on a big box social network.

Create your own branded Social Network

1. A custom social network might fulfill different needs and desires, such as better branding, more custom features, and improved data integration
   AND
2. We could improve our services to our current members
   AND
3. We could help introduce our more tech-resistant constituents to the language, etiquette, and mores of social networks by giving them a safe, familiar place to get started
   SO
4. Let’s see if building a custom social network fits our mission, our strategic plan,  and our budget.

Rich Reader over at NetSquared has some thoughts

Why not roll your own social network, include the OpenSocial API, and have applications, groups, widgets and portals to your site in any number of the “OpenSocial” platforms? Whether an existing member of your organization chooses to participate in any social network or not should not affect your decision to have a presence (group and/or application) in the social-networking space.

A key expressions on the lips of media people today is “create it once, and re-task it to many platforms and purposes”. So, while we can all agree with Ben Rattray about the paucity of tools, features, branding, and data integration in any of the social networks, we should also be considering how these attributes of our sites can be shared to the portals, groups and applications that we install on social networking sites. Ben’s observation that we should avoid letting our “roll-your-owns” become “silos” speaks to the need for openness and cross-network integration.

If we architect our profiles, groups, widgets, and applications to interact with our sites from the outset, then the incremental ROI on maintenance of this overhead will be tremendous.

I'd love to see a logic model for both approaches and then you'd have a way to decide.

 

The Flickr Hold A Sign Meme: Protesting Wendy's Frosty Attitude Towards Animals

I'm a sucker for black dogs that look like my old dog Sadie.  This photo is from the Humane Society's recent "Wendy That's Not Right" campaign.  This technique is the "hold a sign meme" where you ask your community to send photos to flickr of you (or your animal) holding a protest sign.  The flickr pool of photos is here.

I saw a campaign email (I'm on their list so I saw the email a fews ago, but I was too overwhelmed with email to do anything).  Today, I happened to see HSUS that staffer Carrie Lewis posted a note on her profile and it showed up on my friends feed on Facebook.  Hence repetition through different channels is probably a necessary as is tracking the results of different channels and interpretation.  (The text of the Facebook note is below in case you want to take action.)   Here's some points:

• This is a great example of multi-channel marketing with integrating social media along with other more "traditional" internet tools like email.   I'm assuming the messaging on Facebook is slightly different from that on other networks or via email.   The messaging on MySpace is a very different style.   How else is the message being distributed and how it is being tweaked for style and language for different channels?
• I love the Flickr Hold A Sign Meme - but so far haven't found a great application in Facebook that allows for easy cross posting.  Has anyone?  I wonder if the photos would also get spread on Facebook?
• Some of the photos are licensed with "all rights reserved" and it would make sense to promote the cc licensing so the photos could easily spread.
• I wonder how HSUS is cross-promoting or engaging with the dozen or so brand groups like the Wendy's Frosty Group on Facebook.
• I wonder what the ROI is of incorporating the social media strategies and how they are tracking this campaign.  I would love to see campaign map.

The Facebook Note

Tell Wendy's to have some compassion for animals! Let them know that we want them to stop using eggs (yes, they use them in their new breakfast menu) from caged hens which are crammed into spaces so small they can't even turn around.

It's so easy... use your digital camera or even your cell phone. You can create your photo message by doing one of the following:

1- taking a photo of yourself and adding text to it containing your message
2- having a friend take a photo of you holding up a sign with your message on it

It's been done both ways. To see the photos we've already received, check out our Flickr group:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/wendysvswendys

Once you've got your picture, you can either upload it directly to the Flickr group above or send it to us at [email protected].

Please make sure to include your name and where your from on your message. And please only send photos... if you'd like to just send Wendy's a message, you can write to them.

Thank you for caring about ALL animals!
-Carie Lewis
The Humane Society of the United States

 

Overlap of User Communities in Social Networking Sites

As the ability to aggregate your friends on various social networks happens via Open Social,  Compete asks “How do the user communities of the social graph overlap today?”  I was wondering this myself as I'm contemplating whether or not one needs to have a presence on one or more social networks as part of the marketing mix (assuming you've decided that a social network profile is appropriate for your organization).  It begs another question, "Who are the early adopter cross-over social networkers?"

Not sure if you can answer that question, but Read/Write Web gives a summary of Repleaf stats here.

Is Social Media Just for Young Folks?

Source: Karl Kapp presentation

Do you think that people on social networking and media are just teens and college students?

There is the well-known YouTube user, Geriatic 1927 who creates videos as a memoir of his WW2 days and has over 45,000 subscribers and 2 million views.  And there are a number of bloggers in their 80's, but perhaps the best and most well-known is Millie Garfield.   And, if they aren't blogging, they're reading, take for example the AARP Pet Pals Blog and the others identified in the comments here.

Saga, a social networking site for over 50 crowd launched last month according to this Guardian Article.

The site, which has been running in trial mode for four months, has more than 13,000 users so far - and the company hopes this will increase dramatically now it is officially open. "Older people aren't shy of using the internet - they have a verve for life that applies online as well as offline," said Paul Green, a Saga spokesman. "Thirteen thousand is just a drop in the ocean - in theory the membership is practically limitless. Social networking isn't going to be for everyone, but the feedback so far has knocked our socks off." 

One wonders if this site will catch on or go the way of Eons which is struggling.

Yes, the social networking site demographics are aging, but maybe as fast as pace as other segments.

Organizing Versus Mobilizing on Facebook and Other Social Networkings

Ivan Booth has an excellent post about outcomes for Social Networks - it's organizing, not mobilizing.

What it all comes down to is that we're focusing on organizing people into a permanent anti-genocide movement (and much of that happens in a decentralized, self-organized sort of way) rather than simply mobilizing people for a particular event or campaign and then sending them home. If you just need bodies at a rally, names on a petition or donations in your coffers, mobilizing through traditional means will work great. But if you need an active, educated and effective movement, organizing through social webs has the potential to create much more lasting change.

Now couple what Ivan is saying with Wendy Harmon's advice on to begin to collect and reflect on your social media experiments and measure them little by little, adapt some of Charlene Li's case studies for big brands and spice it up with metrics from Dave McClure linked to strategy and calculate with Frogloop's spreadsheet.  Bake for 60 minutes in a logic model.   

The Perils of Popularity

I like Rashmi's new slide show, especially the title.   It helped me clarify some fuzzy thoughts about social networking, pattern analysis, and information overload.    

Rashmi illustrates how social networks have and are evolving over the past five years from the perspective of an information architect/interaction designer/cognitive psychologist.    The general overview:

Friend of A Friend Model:  2002
Let's connect on LinkedIn so we can help each other with referrals.
I know you and you know her and i connect to you, I can be connected to her.
Rashmi called this "just a social graph"  (or just a social network)

Object-Based Social Networks: 2004
Think Flickr, delicious, digg, Slideshare.  Water cooler conversations around shared objects.  A tag stream of web resources, videos, powerpoint slides, news items, etc.   The ability to watch someone's tag stream and re-tag for personal meaning.  A community tag stream.  Viral sharing.

Facebook: 2007
"We own the social graph, you bring the objects."
The objects, the graph, the place
Can the social graph be independent of the objects and the place?
Will google set it free in 2007?

The rest of the slide show talks about four models for popularity.   The slide showing SlideShare's popularity metrics and goals sheds some light on metrics for social media.  The last section of the slide show offers ten lessons on social design - for interface designers. 

In thinking about the evolution of social networks and having been deeply steeped in Object-Based Social Networks like those on flickr and, of course, the NpTech Tag, I am wondering about methods for aggregating resources discovered via Facebook from friends.   How to make that social stream of objects the are flowing via Facebook more findable (at least for myself).   Also, how to focus the stream a bit more.

Fortune Magazine blog has a post last week called "Are We Moving Away from traditional social networking?"   It goes on to describe a panel discussion from the MIT Emerging Technology Conference that featured what Rashmi might describe as "object-based social networks."  That's why the article grabbed my attention.

Although neither Digg.com, StumbleUpon or NetVibe purports to be a social network, replacing a Facebook, each is a leader in new forms of social Internet use. NetVibes lets users pepper a personal dashboard with widgets. StumbledUpon is social search that lets users unearth sites that might be interesting to them. And with traffic that often rivals the New York Times Website, Digg lets users vote their favorite stories to the top of the site. All three were named among MIT Technology Review’s 35 innovators under the age of 35.

It also grabbed the attention of the All FaceBook Blog:

Much of what was discussed was Netvibes and how they are struggling with monetization solutions for widgets. What grabbed my attention was the article title. My response to the question: are we moving on from traditional social networking? Yes! Is social networking doomed? No.

 

The post goes on to suggest that when Google launches it platform, it will transform the act of web browsing/surfing into a social one .. what we experience on Facebook.

Once Google launches their platform, I have a feeling that we are going to see this social platform brought to the web. You browse the web but you are interconnected via an abstracted layer that keeps you interconnected with your contacts. The main goal of all these features is to make web browsing an increasingly shared experience.

So, will make it easier for us to find and retrieve information we need to do our work?  Will it make it easier for us to connect with the right people to get our work done?   Will be efficient?  Can our brain handle it?  Will being successful require a strategic approach to friendship?

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No Social Interactions

When I suggested to Nancy White that she set up a facebook profile for her dead dog tigger in an old photograph, she told me I needed a break.  Now, I found it:

NOSO is a real-world platform for temporary disengagement from social networking environments. The NOSO experience offers a unique opportunity to create NO Connections by scheduling NO Events with other NO Friends.

Hat tip, Katrin Verclas - NTEN Discuss listserv (yes I still read listservs)

How To Avoid Sounding Like A Monkey

Original photo by Mapes
Created in FD Flickr Tools

The title comes from Dave Winer's blog post "How To Avoid Sounding Like A Money," a reaction to the words "social graph" versus social network.  ReadWriteWeb has a summary of the conversation.  I like what Stephen Downes had to say:

So is it a 'social graph' or a 'social network'? Some of the recent work in the field has started to talk about the 'social graph'. But as Dave Winer - correctly - points out, the term means (basically) exactly the same thing as 'social network'. With the advantage that people have heard of it. More discussion of this at Nick Carr's website. Me - I'm on record as supporting the term 'Open Social Networks' to describe what we're doing.

Dave Winer also predicted that 2007 would be the year of the Social Network.