Community Organizer 2.0

Image courtesy of ExtraFunky

Almost a year ago, I wrote a blog post entitled “The Non-Profit Quarterly Report.” In this post, I argued that nonprofit organizations should offer online quarterly reports, and mimic the transparency exemplified by Jonathan Schwartz’ online quarterly reports. (Jonathan is the CEO of Sun Microsystems.) John Maeda, President of the Rhode Island School of Design and social media advocate, argues that “in many cases complete clarity should be a leader’s goal rather than complete transparency.”

If you combine the concepts of organizational clarity with transparency and inclusionary decision making, then you create a new type of organization:

The Open Source Organization

One organization has stepped up to the plate to show us how it’s done: PresenTense Group.

The PresenTense Group calls itself an “open source organization.”  Co-founder Ariel Beery defines an Open Source Organization as one that “enables all members to add to it, change it, modify it and improve it. Everyone benefits from the intellectual property of the organization’s members. The whole point is to make it as collaborative and idea-generated as possible.”

In mid-September, I received this email asking me to participate in a discussion of what PresenTense should be concerned about in the coming year:

There were three ways to participate in the discussion: I could have walked down the street to the Tagging Party, viewed the Party live via webcam, or clicked on the link and “tagged” the key ideas that I care about. This is an example one of the most inclusionary processes I can imagine, as well as superior utilization of technology for stakeholder inclusion and engagement.

This is just one example of how PresenTense adheres to its open source philosophy. Here are others:

• All projects begin with an open call for a steering committee. For example, an idea for a magazine section about “philanthropy and the Jewish world” grew into a new steering committee. Steering committees solicit information and input from others.

• Every aspect of programming is open sourced: each issue of PresenTense magazine, the PresenTense Institute, and the speakers.

• The yearly workplan itself is open sourced via PresenTense networks. PresenTense uses the input to create a general plan, asks for comments, and incorporates comments into the final workplan.

• PresenTense plans to offer further transparency by posting quarterly staff reports online, and asking for feedback and comments.

Technology is critical to being as inclusionary as possible when sharing and soliciting information. Whenever possible, PresenTense utilizes technology to include stakeholders. All educational seminars are “live tweeted,” and most are filmed and streamed live. According to Beery, “the main challenge is figuring out the the information technology issues related to open collaboration.”

And what arose from the Tagging Party and discussion? These ideas were fed into its blueprint for the year to come, which is available for viewing online  here. You can also read an article about their commitment to being an Open Source Organization here.

Transparency + Clarity + Inclusionary Decision-Making =

The Open Source Organization

When will nonprofits become open-sourced? What is the critical technology needed for open participation? What is preventing nonprofits from moving towards and open source organization? In the spirit of this post, I’m looking forward to your comments and a discussion of this concept – and incorporating your ideas back into the blog post!

Further food for thought:

Asking Questions about Transparency

Leaders Should Strive for Clarity, Not Just Transparency

About PresenTense: a grassroots social entrepreneurship venture founded in 2005 to develop and promote innovative and new ideas in the world and inspire the Jewish people. They accomplish this through educational programming, the PresenTense Magazine, and the PresenTense Institute.

Image courtesy of madnzany

Proving that social media can be used to raise significant funds for nonprofits is “the brass ring” that every nonprofit utilizing social media wants to reach. But it is quite an elusive brass ring! There are a number of challenges to overcome before social network fundraising is as easy (and fruitful) as email donation solicitation, offline donation appeals, or the “donate now” button on the website. On the other hand, social network fundraising is growing: both by adoption, use and acceptance. This post explores the existing challenges to acceptance and raising large amounts of funds using social networks – and brainstorming ideas to overcome the barriers.

Here are some thoughts about the leading challenges in social network fundraising:

Cultural: Social media is still primarily Social

Except for explicit business networking sites (Linkedin, Plaxo, association networks, and the like), social networking sites are still primarily used for…being social. Users are not generally thinking about these platforms as donation portals – yet. I think the social networker’s mindset is slowly changing as more organizations encourage their online fans to donate through social media platforms.

Where is the opportunity? Create real online relationships with stakeholders. By becoming an integral part of a fan’s social web, a donation request will be seen as an extension of the relationship. Nonprofits should identify and cultivate online influencers, and leverage the influencer networks during online campaigns.

Structural: How to Begin, How to Do It?

In these times struggling economic times, nonprofits are looking for new funding sources everywhere. Social networks are an obvious place to turn, but nonprofits aren’t sure how to begin.

In other words – how to do it? Do you create a small fundraising site that pushes people to share on their social networks? Do you run a fundraising campaign that is pushed on all of your relevant, engaged social networks? Do you create a campaign that is only run on one social network? I think the strategic effort involved in figuring this out is a barrier in and of itself. It’s not easy to plan any fundraising campaign, but the “new fundraising” on social networks has a lot of nonprofits wondering where to begin, and how to begin, and it’s a legitimate challenge they face. I don’t think there is any one answer – the approach depends on evaluating the organization’s campaign goals, current social media assets, and available resources.

Financial: Return on Investment

Hesitancy about the “return on investment” of a social media campaign is another concern. Organizations must devote staff, time, and financial resources to any online fundraising effort, and the return is still unproven, and without many benchmarks. We have some data about online donors: “engaged American donors,” the “wired wealthy,” and “social media power users who donate.” New research from Blackbaud shows that peer-to-peer social network fundraising in the past 12 months, using Facebook and Twitter, has generated $o.12 per impression, which offers a specific benchmark. However, social network fundraising is relatively new and untested, without long-term studies. The tools are constantly changing, and the success is wildly varied depending on the specifics of the organization, its social media implementation and use, and its online campaign. Taking this into account, organizations have to develop social network fundraising campaigns and strategies based on a realistic assessment of the return on engagement.

Challenges aside, I firmly believe online donations on social media platforms are the future.

• Social media offers incredible opportunities for nonprofits to reach out to the “borderless activist,” who is a source of new inspiration, energy and funds for every organization.
• More and more social media users want to get their information from blogs and social networks, and these sources are among the most trusted sources of organizational information.
• The viral nature of social networks means that strong social campaigns can spread more widely, and penetrate more markets, than traditional fundraising campaigns and events.
  
• Platform-based donations offer the perfect opportunity for transparency, which donors crave.

I’ve raised a few of the issues facing social network fundraising, and a few thoughts about how to address them. I’m sure there are a whole lot more. I’d like to open up this conversation and hear what you think are the current issues facing organizations raising funds through social media platforms – and the best means to overcome them.

I look forward to hearing what you have to say!

Additional Food for Thought: Social Networking for Fundraisers by Frank Barry and Jeff Patrick

Image courtesy of Paurian

This is the Case of the 4,000 Twitter Followers Who Don’t Care - and why 4,000 followers means nothing without engagement.

I recently took on a new client that wants to leverage its existing social media assets (Facebook Page/Fans, Twitter followers) to drive more visits to the website. This company has been building a social media presence for over a year, and is unhappy with the lack of website visits resulting from social media.

I was told that the Facebook Group was active with almost 500 fans, and that the Twitter account had over 4,000 followers.  I was also briefed that, though there was not a lot of online fan feedback, the Twitter account included some committed followers. The highest priority for the client was to figure out why social media was not driving more people to the website – and come up with a better strategy.

I took on this challenge, and want to share a few observations about why social media isn’t working for this client:

Case Observation #1:

The most important number isn’t the number of followers, it’s the number of engaged followers.

4,000 Twitter followers seems like a lot. But how many really care about your organization? How many are willing to act on its behalf?

I evaluated “the 4,000 followers” on Twitter and “almost 500 fans” of the Facebook Page. I used Twerpscan, Twittalyzer, Twazzup, and Tweetmeme to analyze the Twitter asset, and discovered:

• almost 400 of their Twitter followers were pure spammers
• no one cared what the client was tweeting, and…
  
• most of the retweets were from twitter profiles related to the company
• the company did not engage in conversation online, and rarely thanked retweeters
• there was absolutely no Twitter strategy
  

What I discovered was that, of the 4,000+ followers, only three were truly interested enough in what the organization was tweeting. Three.

Twitter utilizes the concept of social media karma: give and give and then others will give back. This company didn’t offer help, advice, support or anything else personal.  Obviously, Twitter did not drive people to the website – no one cared enough about the company to go there.

Of the 400+ Facebook fans, most didn’t care enough to “like” a Wall post. The ones that did comment or “like” a post were often friends of the CEO or employees. All the posted was to its Facebook Page was company stories or related news. Of the 400+ fans, only one was an (unrelated to the company) engaged fan! Facebook drove little traffic to the website, which again is not surprising.

Case Observation #2:

Be wary when the CEO or Executive Director isn’t using social media on behalf of the organization.

This CEO was absolutely unwilling to be personally involved in using social media for the company. This is indicative of a CEO that does not understand the basic principles of social media. It’s critical that everyone in the organization have some direct contact with social media. An Executive Director that isn’t directly responsible for some piece of the social media is missing important information by not connecting with stakeholders directly. Not every CEO has to be responsible, but he/she should be intimately involved with the social media activities, and understand the basic principles of social media.

This CEO was using social media to “drive numbers to the website,” which completely misunderstands the basic fundamentals of social media. They are:

Engage with people first, create relationships, then move them to act.

Case Observation #3:

Their social media sites offer no real value to fans and followers

The company hadn’t taken the time to figure out what people were interested in reading on their social sites. Since the organization was not actually creating individual relationships with its fans, then it had to offer compelling and relevant news and data.  However, it wasn’t giving followers information that mattered to the followers. Not surprisingly, no one wanted to visit the website to find out more.

Case Observation #4:

You need a strategy for each and every social media platform.

Their overall social media strategy consisted of posting news and information. This is an appropriate strategy for social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon and Digg, but not at all for social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Additionally, the company usually posted the same information on both Twitter and Facebook. Fans of both sites were not even receiving unique value or reward for following the company in two places.

It’s important to realize that no two communities are the same online. Each has its own rules, expectations, and needs. You need an engagement strategy for each one of these communities. The strategy should consider the qualities of each social media platform, the needs of followers, how to best engage, and what your organization can offer its followers in terms of both engagement and value.

It’s Elementary, My Dear Watson

Social media is a tool to help your company meet its goals. But it’s more than that: if you aren’t using these tools properly, then it doesn’t matter how many fans, followers, or linkedin connections you have. They won’t care enough to do anything for your organization or company.

This case illustrates that it’s not about the number of fans and followers. It’s about the engagement. Create a strategy that brings your organization engaged followers and real relationships.

4,000 followers means nothing without engagement. And it never will.

This is an in-depth analysis about how one organization used Facebook Events to tie online and offline organizing, and how it transformed the organization in the process. Sviva Israel utilizes community organizing techniques and social media to stimulate real world action and create environmental awareness. I don’t know of any other group that has mastered the art of the Facebook Event to this extent.  It is my pleasure to feature for this Blog Action Day Sviva Israel’s Eco Lights campaign.

Sviva Israel began as the dream of Carmi Wisemon, a veteran environmental activist, and his wife Tamar, a journalist and marketing director. They wanted to connect Jewish environmental education with youth, educators, and their families to lower environmental impact.

Soon after establishing their nonprofit, they created  the Facebook Group Israel, Judaism, and the Environment. Sviva Israel’s first big social media activity was a Facebook Event in December 2007 that quickly became known as “Eco Lights.”

Eco Lights is an online Facebook Event that combines the real-world activity of picking up trash with online lessons relating Judaism to the environment. During the campaign, participants pledge to pick up daily the number of pieces of trash that corresponds to the numbered day of Hannukah. For example, on the fourth day of Hannukah, Eco Lights participants would pick up four pieces of trash. Additionally during Hannukah, Eco Lights participants receive a daily newsletter with writings by worldwide Jewish leaders connecting Judaism and environmental awareness, which are also updated daily on the Event page.

Carmi summarizes the philosophy of Eco Lights

Participants most likely will pick up trash, but that is really something personal. Beyond the number of pieces of trash we are trying to change a mindset beyond Hannukah and beyond the eight days of the event. The eight days of sharing teachings and picking up after others is in order to get people to do those actions informally throughout the year individually and as groups.

During the first Eco Lights Event 116 event participants confirmed “yes,” and 50 said “maybe”. After the event, they asked everyone to join the Facebook Group, and sign up for their newsletter.

By 2008, Eco Lights had grown tremendously. Two organizations, Telavit and Eco-Jews of the Bay, joined the campaign and tripled the number of participants.  The Worldwide Council of Conservative Synagogues included all of the Eco Lights daily lessons on a Judaism and Environment CD, which they posted on their website. They also sent the CDs to Conservative Jewish congregations worldwide. During the campaign, approximately 2,500 people participated and/or received daily lessons. Many shared the campaign on Facebook and with friends.

In 2008, participation grew 855% (at a minimum). The event also created worldwide awareness of Sviva Israel, and the beginning of the organization’s real growth.

Key lessons that Sviva Israel has learned from the Eco Lights campaigns:

• You need a policy about Facebook Event “maybes” – these don’t exist in other social media spaces.
• It’s impossible to track an event message, which can be frustrating for the analytical.
• Don’t just run an event exclusively on Facebook, because it’s annoying to those people who do not belong to Facebook and still want to receive information.
  
• If you are running an event using social media, take it the whole way with a multi-channel approach.
• Social media is about community, so tap into the people who sign up – they may want to take a more active role in the event.
• It proved harder to get people to opt-in from the event to the Sviva Israel Facebook Group. Around 50% moved over.  It was much, much harder to get people to sign up for the regular newsletter. Creating a dedicated Eco Lights website will make a big difference in this issue.

How has this Facebook Event transformed Sviva Israel itself?

• They just hired a U.S staffer with an office in Boston to bring their on line and on site activities to the U.S. This is a development that started as a result of the Eco Lights campaign.
• They just won a Microsoft R&D (Israel) grant to develop a new online project. According to Tamar Wisemon,  “I think part of what convinced them was our proven success and expertise in social media on a small scale. It showed them that we have the creativity and drive to apply our visions on a larger scale.”
• Some of the organizations that partnered with Eco Lights have collaborated on other, larger projects of Sviva Israel.
• Potential funders know that Sviva Israel can do a lot with limited resources by thinking out-of-the-box, which is a key skill in today’s economy.
• Many of those involved have become key figures in Sviva Israel’s  growth both through volunteering and donations.

In 2009, Sviva predicts a growth of 150% for Eco Lights. They plan to develop a robust web page for the campaign, use twitter vigorously, tie in Flickr, and tap into sponsorships and more partners. They also want to create additional live, localized on-site events tied into the global online campaign.

That’s a lot of trash disposal, learning and change. Online environmental organizing translates to real change.

Sviva Israel does it right.

Today Sviva Israel is a worldwide environmental educational organization with great projects and initiatives. You can read more about their great work here.

At 09NTC with fellow NTEN member Rufina Fernandes of the NASSCOM Foundation

I love NTEN. Really. It’s one of the most incredible group of people and information I have ever been part of.  And they didn’t pay me to say that. (Disclosure: I’m a NTEN member who participates, that’s all. Really.)

NTEN is the Nonprofit Technology Network. It says technology but the most important word is Network. NTEN is a true network of nonprofit professionals, organizations, consultants and technology experts. If you work at a nonprofit organization, or with nonprofits, this is the network for you. Technology can be overwhelming for both “non-techies,” people who specialize in technology, and everyone else; we know there’s so much more to learn.  NTEN makes it easy to learn.

Whenever I begin working with a nonprofit organization, I ask the people I’m working with if they are familiar with NTEN. If they aren’t, I suggest they join because the benefit to the nonprofit is tremendous, foremost being the support to nonprofits struggling with technological questions. Here’s why I recommend NTEN:

NTEN listens and helps

It’s a really generous organization. NTEN offers monthly membership Q&A sessions, an online NTEN member community to search for individuals, and incredibly helpful staff.

Webinars Galore

They offer incredible tech webinars on subjects from the truly geeky to the truly social. Members can access archived webinars, free of charge.

A fabulous annual conference, the Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC)

This three-day conference is the place to meet and connect with your nonprofit colleagues, all kinds of technology service providers, and a range of consultants (like myself). The workshops are highly informative, and there is a plenty of time to network and connect. Last year, I attended sessions about podcasting, mobile fundraising, social media metrics, and amazing online campaigns, all of which I live-blogged. You can review some of the sessions I attended here. They are all tagged “NTC09″on this blog.

The 2010 NTC will be held April 8 – 10 in Atlanta, Georgia. NTEN has an open participation process for developing the conferences and workshop sessions. All of the session proposals are now up for public voting until October 16th. I am part of four different session proposals, which I wrote about in the prior post. (If you have a moment, please read the prior post and vote for my sessions.)

NTEN members rock!

They really do. Everyone that I have met through NTEN has been incredibly generous, and I continue to connect with them on Twitter, their blogs, Linkedin, and old-fashioned email. In fact, two people I met at last year’s NTEN conference collaborated with me to develop workshop sessions for this year’s conference. Others I met have offered knowledgeable advice, support and answers to questions of mine throughout the year.

These are some of the reasons that I think it’s important to be part of this community if you are a nonprofit. If you’ve joined NTEN, what do you get out of your membership?

If not, what’s stopping you from joining NTEN?

The 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference (10NTC) will be held April 8 – 10 in Atlanta, Georgia. It is the conference to meet colleagues, technology providers, nonprofits and nonprofit consultants. It’s run by the Nonprofit Technology Network, an incredible organization dedicated to sharing information about technology with the nonprofit community. I’m so excited about going the 2010 NTC to learn, meet, and discover. If you haven’t already attended an NTC, you are missing out on an amazing resource and opportunity.

The 10NTC proposed sessions are now open for public voting. The NTEN community was invited to submit workshop, panel and other session ideas for the conference. All of the session ideas are now available for public voting until October 16th. I am part of four different session proposals, and I’d love to be able to share them with you, in person, at 10NTC!

Voting for a session means scrolling over the stars at the bottom of the session description and rating the session by the number of stars to give it the rating you desire. If you are so moved, feel free to leave a comment in the session description about why you voted for this session. More information about the NTC voting process is available on their website here. Below are the session descriptions and links to voting for the sessions.

Integrating Social Media Into Organizational Culture

Amy Sample Ward and I both wrote this year about objections to social media that we’ve encountered. We developed this session to continue the conversation:

In this session we will discuss common objections to adopting social media, hear from experienced panelists, identify tools for collaboration, listening, and information sharing, and consider different organizational approaches to integrating social media successfully. We have invited nonprofit staff to share their stories and insights. This session is designed to leave plenty of time for questions and answers! Read more about this session and vote here.

Bringing Community Organizing Into Online Campaigns

Ivan Boothe and I are both former community organizers who now work with technology. We began talking about how the principles of traditional community organizing can really inform and strengthen online campaigns. We developed this workshop together, with a fun competitive twist:

What is the basis of community organizing and why is it important to online campaigns? Traditional community organizing informs a successful online campaign — and lays the groundwork for a sustainable, effective movement for social change. In this session, participants will get their hands dirty planning a social media campaign that integrates traditional organizing theory and practice.

During the workshop, we will present traditional community organizing principles and methods of campaign mapping. A nonprofit organization will follow by presenting its upcoming campaign and goals.  Attendees will divide into break-out sessions of 5-7 people to design the online campaign. The groups will use both community organizing principles and social media tools to create a multi-faceted online social media campaign. Each group will present its campaign strategy and tactics to the entire workshop. Workshop leaders will offer feedback, and the nonprofit will select a winning strategy.

One important point: YOU decide which campaign you want to plan! Session designers  will invite nonprofit organizations attending NTC to nominate their upcoming campaign for a social media campaign jumpstart during this workshop. Online voting within the nonprofit-tech community will determine with nonprofit will present its campaign.

Read more about the session and vote here.

How to Create an Action Ready Facebook Page

A while ago, I wrote a blog post about How Facebook Pages Grow. Brenna Holmes followed it up with a guest post describing how the California State Parks Foundation’s Facebook Fan Page grew from 517 to 45,000 fans. We took these ideas and developed them further to offer this session:

This panel is all about making your nonprofit’s Facebook page action-ready! An action-ready page has the right pieces and strategies in place to attract passionate fans, engage them on Facebook so they want to spread the word, and motivate fans to take action OFF of Facebook to further your nonprofit’s mission. This intermediate-level workshop will explore the theory of how Facebook pages attract fans, and analyze specific cases of nonprofits that are successfully attracting, engaging, and motivating fans to take action off of Facebook. We will share practical and theoretical best practices that are applicable to any nonprofit organization. The workshop includes case studies and insights from at least three nonprofit campaigns. If you’re already on Facebook and managing a Facebook Page and want to optimize your results, or if you are about to launch a campaign that includes Facebook (and they ALL should) this is the session for you!

Read more about the session and vote here.

Technology and Social Change: A Dialogue About Grassroots Activism and the New Tools

Steve Backman developed this session and spoke with me about being a panelist for the session. It’s a great session, and slightly different than the one I developed with Ivan Boothe. Here’s the description:

Social media  activism is transforming grass roots activism…or is it? While new style and traditional organizers are learning a lot from each other today, gaps persist in language, culture, and understanding. A diverse, representative panel will begin the discussion with an exchange of perspectives, and then the discussion will open up as  a roundtable among those in the room. Questions to explore include:

• how do I assess the right mix of communications will best reach the change agents in my community.
• what works and what doesn’t in introducing new media into a traditional staff and volunteer environment.
• what can successful community organizers teach new media activists to make us all more effective?

Read more about the session and vote here.

There are a lot of other amazing sessions at 10NTC. You can read and review the whole lineup here, and vote for as many as you want.

I hope to see you there!

Image courtesy of ploforsky

Today, the New York Times published the article “MIT Taking Student Blogs to the Nth Degree,” an overview of student blogging at universities and colleges in America. It is astounding that MIT is willing to publish completely uncensored student blogging on its website. And inspiring. This represents, for me, the beginning of the uncensored corporate blog. Which is exactly what corporate and nonprofit blogging needs to be: open, honest, transparent and true.

I am a big advocate of uncensored corporate blogs. Most consumers don’t trust the traditional corporate blog. In fact, according to Forrester Research, only 16% of consumers trust corporate blogs. Why? Because we’re smarter than that. We know the bloggers are hand-picked to show the “sunny side” of the company – and not reveal the “real” experience of working at a company and producing a service or a product. Traditional corporate blogs are no better than website content written by a marketing communications team.

In the New York Time article both an MIT admissions officer and a dean of students admit that uncensored blogging is risky; students have written blog posts censuring housing policy, complaining that classes are boring and talking about the down side of student life. On the other hand, student blogs are overwhelmingly positive about the MIT experience and each of the blogs has created a community of followers interested in MIT. The payback for MIT is, I suspect, tremendous: a more informed incoming student body, a more informed admissions process, ability to reach and recruit high quality applicants, higher rate of current student satisfaction, and of course knowledge about MIT from the student’s perspective.

Open, uncensored blogging encourages customer and client loyalty in ways that corporate blogging will never achieve.

Sun Microsystems encourages all of its employees to blog, uncensored, without asking permission first.  Opera (the web browser and internet suite company) also encourages uncensored blogging in its policies.  Their policy of openness starts at the top, too. I follow the blog of Sun Microsystem’s CEO Jonathan Schwartz. I’ve written before about why his blog is inspiring in its transparency and willingness to discuss corporate direction, pitfalls and challenges.

I have heard the objections to uncensored stakeholder blogging and I think they’re just that – objections. At MIT, one student blogger expressed continual dissatisfaction with the resident housing system. It’s easy to take down a blog that makes the university look bad. It’s harder to admit that there might be a problem. MIT  maintained the student’s right to blog unfettered and allowed the housing system to offer an open rebuttal to her complaints on her blog. If MIT had shut down the blog, it would not have closed down her voice. That’s a fact about social media: she would have moved her complaints onto Twitter, others’ blogs, and possibly the sidewiki of MIT’s Housing web page, until she felt that her complaint was heard and addressed.

So here’s to open, uncensored blogging. Take a chance. Invite all employees, volunteers, and other relevant stakeholders to blog.

The benefits:

• Increased trust in your blog and company by the people you care most about – potential clients, stakeholders and customers
• More links pointing to your website, which help more people to find you
• Better understanding of the needs of your staff, company, clients and stakeholders.
• Improved staff performance – employees that blog are happier at work
• Engagement that leads to long-term loyalty

One last note- this isn’t just about blogging. It’s an important trend in corporate web communications. Companies like Best Buy and Zappos allow any verified employee to tweet – uncensored – as the employee. Zappos, in particular, is a customer-service oriented company that views corporate tweeting as an extension of customer service.

Is this the future of corporate blogging? Does your company have an open blogging policy? What do you think about uncensored employee – or even stakeholder – blogging? I would love to also know about nonprofit organizations that encourage open employee, or stakeholder blogging.

Please share your points of view here – I promise not to censor!

Update: another aspect to this blog post is using employees, and their personal brands, to extend your organization’s reach. For insight into how one company is doing this, read “Employee Personal Brands – Who Is Your Human?”

Additional Reference:

Breakdown: The Five Ways Companies Let Employees Participate in the Social Web , Jeremiah Owyang

Image courtesy of Brande Jackson

In nonprofit engagement, there are two sides of the social media conversation. On one side, organizations use social media to initiate conversations with existing donors, generate buzz and find new stakeholders. The other side of the conversation happens on the stakeholder end. Donors (and other stakeholders such as volunteers, members, participants) check out your organization online for more information, or to get involved more deeply. Most nonprofits approach social media strategy from just one side of what I call the “social media relationship.” Just as a nonprofit wants to publish its news online and converse with stakeholders, donors want to know more about and engage with nonprofit organizations online. A relatively new Harris Poll of nonprofit stakeholders offers insight into the stakeholder side of the social media relationship.

In March 2009, a Harris Poll of “engaged Americans” (defined as those who have volunteered, donated or advocated in the past year) revealed surprising results.

1. They are talking about your organization to others
61% of those adults polled have recommended a nonprofit they support to someone else. In particular, the Harris Poll results reveals that they are speaking to them about your mission (78%), achievements (53%), opportunities to donate (42%), and opportunities to volunteer (35%). They are be speaking because they care. They are also speaking about your organization because they are engaged.

2. They want to be more involved, and many don’t know how
A summary of the Poll results states that “nearly two-thirds of engaged adults would like to become more involved with the nonprofit or charity they support the most. And, while the most common reason for not actually doing more, cited by 51%, is lack of time, roughly one in ten simply don’t know where to begin.”

3. They want to follow the social media activities of your organization
64% of respondents stated that it is important for non-profits to use social media to communicate with supporters . 47% say they would be interested in keeping up with the non-profits they care about through social media. In other words, engaged Americans want nonprofits to communicate with them through social media and almost half want to actively follow your organization’s social media activities.

Engaged Americans want to keep up with nonprofits through social media because they want to be more involved.

When they are involved, engaged Americans take action as a result of using social media!

Astoundingly, 80% of engaged Americans have taken action “as a result of something they read in a nonprofit of charitable organization’s blog, RSS feed or social networking site.

That’s huge! The chart below illustrates how engaged Americans have taken action:

I’ve written down a few starter questions that might help you to engage stakeholders online. I’m sure there are more!

•    Is your nonprofit active in the same social networks as your donors?
•    Are your social media profiles displayed prominently throughout your website?
•    Does your e-newsletter include automatically hyperlink URLs to your  social media sites? Do you provide hyperlinks to take action?
•    Is there an easy way to donate online through both the website and other online social spaces?
•    Are there easy ways your stakeholders can help you achieve your mission online: signing an online petition, voting for an award, sending a letter to a legislator, signing up to volunteer
•    Is it easy to RSVP to an event online, and pass the event along?
•    Do you have “share” buttons next to the mission, achievements, and volunteer opportunities on your website or blog?
Which nonprofits are really giving engaged Americans opportunities to interact and share on the website and in their social spaces? Do you have other starter questions to add to this list?

Resources:
Over the Wire: That Newsletter is So 1999
Over the Wire: What’s a Nonprofit to Do?

Nonprofit organizations need to raise funds constantly. Fact. They also have programs, mission and special activities that must be funded. Fact. There’s all this trendy talk about leveraging social media to raise money – and the question I get asked most often is

When does social media lead to more money?

That’s not the right question. The right question is:

When does engagement lead to more money?

Annual reports do not create a relationship. Email updates do not create a relationship. Alerts do not create a relationship. These are all examples of one-way communication. Relationships are about two-way communication.

I’ve also seen a lot of nonprofit organizations using social media fail to create relationships using these tools. Automatically feeding blog posts through a twitter feed does not create a relationship. Using your organization’s official icon and not associating a person’s name (in either the description or title) to the twitter account cuts short the possibility of a relationship. Publishing a blog but not commenting on other blogs or responding to comments on your blog…does not create a relationship. Consistent Facebook wall posts that do not engage or ask questions…stop conversation.

These methods of using social media are, quite honestly, no better than the old newsletter and annual report. If you are going to commit time and energy to social media, pick one or two platforms that make sense for your organization and act as if you want to meet people and learn from them. They want to talk to you, and you should want to listen to them. That’s why your fans and followers online are following your organization, after all. So talk. Yes, publish your newsy updates, but ask questions and listen…learn…engage…and respond.

Engagement leads to donations – really, it does – but you have to put the time into creating the relationship first. Or re-creating the relationship with your stakeholders. Social media is a great tool for doing this, as social media tools are merely platforms for creating conversation.

When you are listening, responding, and engaging –

then asking for money to support this great relationship is a natural extension of the conversation.

Implementing a real social media strategy is not…free. Recently, I met with a nonprofit organization that is struggling to create a strong social media presence but hampered by the lack of designated funds for social media. It reminds me of the dilemma of technology: in order to be an efficient company, organizations must to invest in regular hardware and software upgrades. But how many nonprofits have the budget to do this, or the funders willing to contribute towards technology upgrades? Unfortunately, this is the reality that must be acknowledged:

We are still under the illusion that social media costs nothing.

And that’s wrong.

Website costs:

One sure cost will be expenses associated with making your website more “social.”  Some of these might include:

• website upgrade (more than once)
• embedding social media into the site itself
• creating conversational, social areas on the website itself (blog, membership forum, community reviews, etc.)

Staff Time:

Social media requires time and personal investment. Be sure to budget time for staff, volunteers, or paid consultants to work on your social media strategy. For reference, see a previous blog post discussing much time social media takes. When I asked my Twitter followers to tell me the “hidden costs of social media,” the overwhelming response was “staff time!”  The important thing is to remember to allow staff (many people, one person) dedicated time to monitor, respond, create and engage online using social media platforms. I know how hard this is to do, as a former nonprofit executive, but it’s impossible for someone to work effectively juggling their regular responsibilities and all the social media.

Blogging costs:

Your organization can certainly create a blog using any of the free blogging tools available. However, if you choose to add premium features or host the blog yourself, there are associated expenses. These include:

• upgrading to premium status (usually costs around $10 a year)
• self-hosting a blog (called website hosting fees) can be much higher
• create a custom template for the blog to compliment the website

Video costs:

If you want to include video in your social media strategy (YouTube, Vimeo, Blip.tv), then you must own a video camera. Depending on your organization, you might need a very good camera. If you are university, or a hospital, then you want the quality of your videos to be outstanding. If you are a grassroots organization, you don’t need a $3000 camera! If you will be livestreaming, or uploading large videos, then investigate the cost of increased upstream internet bandwidth, which you can buy from a cable service provider or your internet service provider relatively cheaply.

• video camera and microphone
• webcam
• increased bandwidth

Photo sharing costs:

If you will be uploading photos to a photo sharing site such as Flickr, Picasa, or Photobucket then your organization will need a high-quality camera that produces good images. I recommend budgeting money for a new camera every other year.

• digital Camera
• premium fee for unlimited digital storage on a photo sharing website (around $30/year).

Twitter costs:

You’re thinking, “hey, Twitter is free!” Yes it is free to tweet, but it is not if you have to pay for the associated hardware to do it. If you are planning events where your organization will want to “live tweet,” don’t forget the portable devices that allows you to do that. You may also need a portable wifi network for a space (such as an event space, or outdoor space where you might hold a press conference) that is connected to the outside world. It’s a “movable wifi domain” that provides internet access for all your twittering fans and live streaming needs. Here is an example of what one looks like and does. Associated Twitter or live streaming expenses:

• smartphone or a laptop that can search for wireless connections
• mobile wireless access hub, called a 3.5G cellular modem with a built-in wifi access point

Facebook:

Facebook Pages are free and easy to create. When you need to create a custom Facebook Page, or a Facebook Application as part of your social media strategy, you will need a programmer that is fluent in the Facebook program code, called FBML.

• Facebook programmer to develop custom Application, Facebook Page, or other custom code

Social Media Campaigns:

Your organization will probably create and implement a social media campaign. Campaigns ask your stakeholders to take action on your organization’s behalf. The expenses involved with campaigns are hard to budget ahead of time. Depending on organizational and campaign goals, you might develop a game in Second Life, a custom Facebook Application, a campaign micro-site, a voting platform…the possibilities are endless. I highly recommend setting aside some of the technology or campaign budget for social media campaign-related expenses.

Don’t let this list deter you from engaging in social media!

Social media has become a critical part of true stakeholder engagement and meeting your mission. When you do engage, be aware that there ARE “hidden” costs of this “free” social media.

What are the other costs associated with social media?

Do you have a social media budget?

How do you budget for it effectively?

Thanks to Eric Guth of Efrat Networks for hardware consultation.