Image courtesy of Wendi Gratz, Flickr Creative Commons

Note from Debra: Susan Perri (@wingrants) tweeted to me a few weeks ago that she was seeing a rise in self-promotional tweets on Twitter, and a lack of courtesy. I asked her to expand on what she was seeing, and what advice she might offer to those new to Twitter. Her advice may well make sense for all, whether you are new to Twitter, not yet using Twitter, or an old hand at Twitter. Twitter requires a two-way relationship to create engagement. In that spirit, Susan offers three basic Twitter etiquette tips.  What follows is Susan’s guest post:

Our social media experiences often boils down to one question: Do you want engagement? On Twitter, it’s going to require a two-way relationship, with communication that addresses questions and comments from your followers.

I should begin by acknowledging I do see lots of great folks sharing the compelling stories of their work, which is often interesting and sometimes even noble. I’m glad to hear those stories, and connect and engage. At its best, I believe this is what social media should be, and certainly these are my intentions for using my selected platforms and Twitter in particular. Lately though I’ve been noticing the sheer volume of self-promotion combined with a general lack of common courtesy I encounter on Twitter. Like any other social or community venue, not all folks have the same idea, which can lower the quality of the user experience for the rest of us. Just because you can self-promote on Twitter does not mean you should do solely that. While there are many ways to engage with others, some etiquette should apply. Fundraising blog Fundly and my fellow Twitterer Dave Boyce (@davidjboyce1) speaks about this issue via a great post titled “Spread the love with social media, but don’t forget to mind your manners.” In the post, Dave references the work of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. According to Carnegie, the best leaders improve relationships with every word and action on a daily basis, and this kindness is contagious.

Let’s have some more kindness, please! Our increasingly digital age need not corrode the basic tenets of social niceties. Perhaps I’m hopelessly old-fashioned, but here are the values I (still) believe in, and would urge us all to follow while making our way around the Twittersphere:

1. Walk Your Talk

I’m looking for the kinds of leaders on Twitter that Dale Carnegie wrote about, especially as they relate to my work.  In my particular line of work, I see a lot of Twitter users who promote themselves as nonprofit, communications and/or fundraising professionals. Some of them use self-aggrandizing synonyms for professional, like maven or guru or genius. Many with really large followings put themselves out there as specialists on engagement – donor engagement, social media engagement, building relationships and communities. Surprisingly, these folks have been the most challenging to connect with or get some return engagement back from. Here’s an example to the contrary. Social media whiz (my label, not his) Robert Caruso (@fondalo) really practices what he preaches. This guy has almost 24,000 followers, and he still finds it in his heart to respond to and acknowledge promptly each and every mention, DM, and personal shout out on Twitter. If you’re looking for a best practice for engagement and Netiquette Twitter style, check him out.

2. Remember Your Manners

Think about what your mother taught you. There are really basic, simple acts of kindness that don’t require anything of you but carry tremendous social return on investment. When someone follows you, give thanks. A simple “thank you” goes a long way. Consider following back if that user fits your criteria for doing so. When someone mentions you or references your work, acknowledge it. It’s the right thing to do, and it may just inspire them to do so again in the future.  Don’t be afraid to mention back. It generates goodwill. Irene Koehler (@IreneKoehler) has a great post about Twitter fails of this ilk titled “11 Sure-Fire Ways to Get Me to Unfollow You on Twitter.”

3. Don’t Be Too Full of Yourself

Fellow tweep Matthew Smith (@MatthewSm1th), well versed in social media and philanthropy, recently wrote about the difference between sharing information and “shameless self-promotion” via social media outlets. Self-promotion may be the most common reason for using social media, but I submit there is a balance between self-promotion and respectable engagement that need not be shameless. Let’s begin by the way we put ourselves  out there. Another Twitter connection, Ephraim Gopin (@fundraisinisfun), very smart about all things fundraising, recently ranted about the overuse of the self-administered “social media expert” label. Remember what I said earlier about “geniuses” and “gurus”? This practice of self-proclaimed mastery is indeed overdone, whatever the profession or service. For example, it’s enough call oneself savvy – you need not have a qualifier like “incredibly” or “super” or “amazingly” before it. Sometimes less really is more.

In this era where we are constantly creating new tools to connect, social media is an emerging and evolving platform for communication. Granted, we are learning as we go. We are increasingly interested with how we measure up, how many followers we can count, how much Klout we have. In the end, I think the old adage holds true – it’s quality, not quantity, and the same rules from your childhood playground still apply. Make friends, be nice, take turns, say please and thank you. Oh, yes, and have fun while you’re at it.

 Susan Perri is a grant writing specialist, philanthropic fundraiser & nonprofit social media strategist. She connects organizations with the resources they need to make a positive impact.

The Get HandsOn (GHO) campaign, a project of the Points of Light Institute and managed by HandsOn Network, is a three-part interactive service challenge to inspire people to become involved in community service that includes the games Tag, Follow the Leader, and Break the Record. The first challenge, the world’s largest game of virtual Tag, launched in November 2010. Over 7,000 people “tagged” friends to make a commitment to making a difference, and GHO offered donations and prizes for participation.

Follow the Leader, the second GHO challenge, launched in late January.  As with Tag, Follow the Leader (FTL) utilizes social media innovatively. The campaign site includes game dynamics (leaderboards, leader prizes), commenting and tagging (tagging, group project journals with commenting features), and community aspects (members, group projects, project forums). This challenge again leverages real world social ties and virtual ties that, most importantly, move people to action. The results are measurable: projects created (supported videos, photos, written blogs), number of individual commitments to an action, meetups about a project (number of meetups via meetup.com), and service stories (online journal entries). This game, only three weeks old, already has 93  volunteers committed to lead projects. Follow the Leader runs through the end of May.

This is no slacktivism – this is activism

Michael Nealis, Interactive Strategy Coordinator for HandsOn Network, answered my burning questions about Follow the Leader and Tag in the interview below.

How did the idea of the Get HandsOn campaign originate?
HandsOn Network worked with an outside marketing agency to develop the plan for a campaign that harnessed the power of social networks to inspire people to create positive change. We were interested in how online communities and the psychology of gaming and contest behavior might be leveraged for social good. The first phase, Tag, was designed to inspire people through commitments to service.  Follow the Leader is working to equip people with tools that can help put projects into action and make a difference.

What was the goal of Tag, and how is it different than Follow the Leader?
The goal of Tag was to identify service leaders across the nation, either by self-selection or by having a friend or colleague identify them as a service leader.  Tag was a lot more passive than Follow the Leader.

Follow the Leader builds on Tag by asking the people who have been identified as service leaders to lead volunteer projects in their communities. We’re asking a lot more of participants in Follow the Leader.

What did you learn from Tag?
One of the most interesting things that we learned from Tag was who drove the competition.  While there was a large body of participants, a very small group was responsible for almost a quarter of the activity during the campaign.  Service leaders engaged online in ways that were consistent with more general statistics about online behavior. We also learned that people don’t often self identify as service leaders even though they regularly exhibit all the behaviors we associate with one.

What is the primary focus of Follow the Leader? What are the primary goals?
From a player’s point of view, the goal is to be able to plug in to a community of people that are dedicated to service in order to support the individual’s own service.  There are also game aspects, including a prize structure including grants for players’ favorite charities and trips to Washington, DC, New Orleans, and Atlanta. We’ve also provided project playbooks, which are “how-to guides” for easy to implement, volunteer projects that anyone can organize.

The end result of FTL will be to increase and mobilize the number of Americans involved in volunteer service, to identify and connect with volunteer leaders within their communities, and to help those who want to get involved in volunteering implement impactful projects in their neighborhoods. We’re looking to channel the energy and excitement from Martin Luther King, Jr. Day into a longer term commitment to service.  We hope to bridge the gap between a one-day commitment to service and a more sustained commitment to service.

There are a lot of elements of social media throughout Follow the Leader—can you highlight a few?  What are you most excited about and why?
There are a lot of ways Follow the Leader incorporates social media: sharing commitments to service on Facebook and Twitter, community forums where people can share their commitments to service and get feedback from the community, and space for users to blog about their service commitments and include photos and video from their projects.

We’re most excited about the members’ journals.  We’re only three weeks into Follow the Leader, and we have some really great stories about people’s commitment to service—from initial planning steps to one person’s story about a nation-wide service vacation. We really love reading the different stories about how people are making service a part of their lives.

What is HandsOn Network trying to learn from Follow the Leader?
We’re hoping to learn more about how service leaders engage with one another and how we might be as helpful as possible in supporting their efforts.

What is the expected participation of Follow the Leader?
We don’t have a target number for participation in Follow the Leader, but we do have an expectation of what participation means.  We hope that people will make a service commitment, download one of the Project Playbooks to guide their own service projects, then share their photos, videos, and experience with their service projects.  We hope that by sharing their experience, others will be inspired not just to serve, but to lead others in service themselves.

How will you follow-up from Follow the Leader?
We’re having fun with the playful nature of the games and are looking to further explore inspiring service activity using the theme of games.  Additionally, we’re looking towards Tag version 2.0.  We’ll take the lessons learned from the overall Get HandsOn campaign and we’ll be using them to make a stronger support structure for individual-driven community service. Long term, we’d love Get HandsOn to result in a vibrant online community where service leaders exchange ideas and inspire each other to change the world.

Michael Nealis is the Interactive Strategy Coordinator for Get HandsOn.

He can be reached on twitter @MikeNealis.

In early August, NP Tech launched Guidestar Israel. It took almost five years to make GuideStar Israel a reality, and it is an incredible resource for Israeli nonprofit organization. The GuideStar project was established as an unique cooperative venture by the Ministry of Justice, JDC-Israel, and Yad Hanadiv with the objective of developing civil society in Israel.

NP Tech (established by JDC-Israel and Yad Hanadiv) is the operating organization behind GuideStar Israel. It provides services and activities designed to help social organizations make information and communications technology (ICT) more accessible to social organizations to reach their goals. NP Tech wants to create a “socio-technological market” in which different providers offer their products for social activity advancement, internet sites encourage social action and social organizations use these products in accordance to their needs.

I had the opportunity to ask Royi Biller, CEO of NP Tech, about why it was so important to bring GuideStar to Israel, how it could change the Israeli third sector, and upcoming NP Tech initiatives.

The interview is below (my questions are in orange):

What services does NP Tech provide?
1.    GuideStar Israel
2.    Software Donation Program: NPTech collaborates with TechSoup Global and software vendors on establishing low cost distribution channels for nonprofit organizations to acquire state of the art ICT tools to enhance their capabilities.
3.    Way2Know: an online knowledge base including videos, articles and blog posts around utilizing ICT tools for social purposes.
4.    Consultation services: NPTech assists nonprofit organizations analyze their technological needs, acquire the appropriate solutions and integrate them into their activities.

What are the technology needs of Israeli nonprofit organizations?

Our analysis and market research indicates that nonprofit organizations (at large) make use of the relatively simple tools the IT industry offers, especially with regards to organizational information systems. However, most nonprofit managers reported that they lack knowledge about the opportunities available to them, as well as available funding sources for such purposes. The role of CIO or CTO usually does not exist in most nonprofits, and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is commonly not budgeted or planned ahead routinely.

Another phenomenon identified is typical to the Israeli market – the language barrier; there are far less tools and applications available in Hebrew then there are in English, and when it comes to specific applications for nonprofit needs there may be zero solutions available in Hebrew. Nonprofit managers have expressed a need for support from a trusted partner to help decision making and adoption processes of ICT tools in their organizations.

How do these needs compare with worldwide trends?

Most of the findings are quite similar to the common challenges nonprofits face when trying to adopt technologies into their organizations. The only unique pattern was the language barrier and market size that are the main reasons for the shortage of Hebrew software tailored for nonprofit needs.

What is GuideStar Israel?

GuideStar Israel is intended to be the main information website resource about nonprofit organizations in Israel. The website currently features mostly official information regarding all NPOs in Israel from the Registrar of NPOs. It is gradually being updated with additional richer and more “colorful” information provided by the NPOs themselves. This combination creates the most comprehensive and qualitative database of civil social organizations in Israel.

Why is it important to have a GuideStar Israel and offer this database of nonprofits?

The goal in building this database is foremost to create public transparency regarding the conduct of nonprofit organizations in Israel. Anyone who has any interest in nonprofit organizations – donors, volunteers, suppliers and customers – may surf and find official information reported to the Registrar of NPOs regarding the conduct of each non-profit organization operating in Israel.

GuideStar itself operates from within and for the benefit of the third sector, out of the belief that public transparency is an important means for the development of this sector. We see great importance in providing “as is” information, without any judgment. We focus on providing surfers with maximum updated information, in a digital, accessible and convenient format for searching information about all active nonprofit organizations in Israel.

Just as important is the internet exposure offered to all nonprofit organizations operating in Israel, even to the smallest NPOs which have, thus far, not been able to exploit this medium. This exposure will encourage donors and volunteers, as well as cooperation between non-profit organizations with a view to reinforcing the third sector in Israel and making it more accessible for everyone.

How do you think GuideStar Israel will change nonprofit operations, organizations, or the way that Israelis (and others) perceive Israeli nonprofit organizations?

We expect that the readily available information provided by GuideStar will help nonprofit organizations become more effective by making data-driven decisions, comparative analysis and sharing knowledge. We believe the public perception of the Israeli third sector will become more positive once each and every user will be able to easily determine whether an organization is being run properly, and that the “rotten apples” would be easier to distinguish from the legitimate majority. We expect to see more fact-based discussions taking place regarding nonprofit activities.

I know that NP Tech is a TechSoup Global partner. What does that mean for Israeli NPOs?

We are in final stages of preparations for the launch of the software donation program in collaboration with TechSoup Global, which will enable eligible nonprofits to acquire state of the art software for a fraction of the cost. We intend to launch the program during the last quarter of 2010.

Royi Biller is the CEO of NP Tech. Royi initiated the establishment of NPTech during his work as a Program Officer for Technology and Knowledge at Yad Hanadiv (the Rothschild Foundation). Royi is well versed in technology project management, relying on vast experience from his military service as an intelligence officer, his work as a Decision Support Systems engineer in Intel and his position in Yad Hanadiv.

Photo by 28 Dreams

Back in May, Oceana hired Inbound Zombie to develop an email acquisiiton strategy and increase their Facebook fan base. They had close to 10,000 fans but felt that they weren’t utilizing Facebook Page to its fullest potential.

Going With The Flow

Soon after we started working together, BP effed up the Gulf Coast with an oil spill. This meant responding to discussions their constituents were having, rather than having conversations about how cute Sea Turtles are.

Strategy

With email acquisition as a primary goal, the Oceana Facebook team developed a strategy to engage with their Facebook Page connections with the following expectations in mind:

• Increased engagement would lead to increased acquisition.
• Creating lively discussions on their wall would allow connections to share Oceana with their friends.
• An increase in Page activity would also impact fan growth.

A long-term vision of building a vibrant community was an important component of this strategy.

Tactics

We did not want to push an email acquisition strategy with current Facebook Page connections and risk alienating them for good. So we proceeded with consistency and sensitivity.

During the sixty day campaign period, a number of tactics were employed with this strategy in mind:

• Embedded Facebook sharing into the petition process. The Stop The Drill Facebook Tab was customized so that the user was prompted to share the petition with their friends right after they signed the petition.
• Conducted a live chat on June 3rd – during President Obama’s appearance on Larry King. The Facebook’s wall and Twitter were the primary places supporters commented on Obama’ appearance. The discussion for this event received 72 posts.
• Actively updated fans on the latest Oceana blog posts and news regarding the oil spill.
• Posted thought-provoking questions for fans to respond to. For example, “How has the BP oil spill personally affected you?”
• Tagged and praised related organizations. This created greater exposure for Oceana – particularly on Pages that have many more fans. One June 30th, the National Wildlife Federation was tagged on the Page. That update received one of the highest feedback scores. 90 new fans also joined the Page on that day.
• Pulled select tweets from Jackie Savitz and posted them on the Facebook Page wall.
• Set up a private group for fans interested in taking a lead role in promoting the petition.
• Praised and acknowledged fans.

Results

• 5,002 emails acquired from Facebook
• 4,277 new Facebook Page connections (from 9,824 – 14,101) during this period – a 56% increase. This was due in part by the increased engagement on the Page as shown in this chart:
• Traffic from Facebook to Oceana’s website increased 764%

Assets

One of the biggest assets an organization has is the supporters. Oceana now needs to strategize on how to continue to develop the relationships they fostered during this campaign.

How could we have improved our results with Oceana?

In early 2009, we asked all members of TuDiabetes.org, a social network for people touched by diabetes, to share their diabetes poems as part of a contest we ran. It was called No-Sugar Added Poetry. In July 2010 the Diabetes Hands Foundation (the nonprofit that runs TuDiabetes) published a compilation with 39 of those poems, offering profound insight into the challenges, hopes, and fears of those living with diabetes through the power of their poetry. The end result was the No-Sugar Added Poetry book.

The compilation showcases what can be accomplished through crowdsourcing, putting people’s stories together as they live with a chronic condition and describe their experiences with diabetes through poetry. As Dr. Bill Polonsky, CEO of the Behavioral Diabetes Institute, writes in the foreword, these poems “speak to the emotional effort of trying to figure out how to fit the uninvited guest of diabetes into life.”

I was humbled to read the submissions from the participants. It was very difficult to choose from so many beautiful poems. The ones that we included in the book describe fairly well the stages of life with diabetes – from diagnosis all the way to acceptance.

We learned a lot of valuable lessons in the process:
•    Publishing is a crazy world. We found a great self-publishing company called SelfPublishing.com that made the most sense for us, striking the best balance between quality and cost. But, regardless of the solution you choose, publishing is a book is a LOT of work.

•    Once you print the book, the marketing and PR begins. We realized the message to different audiences would vary from people touched by diabetes to people who like poetry, for instance.

•    We’ve invited members on TuDiabetes to host book parties as a way to connect with others and raise diabetes awareness and get the book in the hands of people who may have not otherwise gotten it. We documented the first book party we did in Berkeley to show others how they could go about their own.

•    We held a daily giveaway of the book on Twitter, to get the word out about the book. People re-tweeting a message about the giveaway were entered for a chance to win a copy.

•    Getting your store set up and running may make the most sense financially: your organization retains the most money from the sale, compared to selling through Amazon.com, for instance. But don’t underestimate the costs associated with fulfillment.

•    E-Commerce… the “E” does not stand for “Easy.” From setting up the Diabetes Hands Foundation store through Volusion to getting a Virtual Merchant set up (they let you accept credit cards on your store and/or points of sale), it was a LOT of work. But we quickly saw more people paying with credit card than via PayPal.

The lessons continue to pour in and I hope to continue to share them so that other nonprofits may be able to learn from our successes and avoid our mistakes. In the meantime, we’d love to hear your thoughts about the book.

No-Sugar Added Poetry can be ordered at: www.bit.ly/askNSAP.

Manny Hernandez is a nonprofit executive, social media author and consultant and a diabetes advocate committed to connecting people touched by diabetes and raising diabetes awareness. He is the president of the Diabetes Hands Foundation (DHF), a 501(c)3 nonprofit that runs two social networks for people touched by diabetes: TuDiabetes.org (in English, started in March 2007) and EsTuDiabetes.org (in Spanish, started in August 2007). He has had LADA (Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adults) since 2002 and has used an insulin pump since 2005. He has also been a columnist for dLife.com since 2007, he wrote “Ning for Dummies” (published in April 2009) and collaborated on “Twitter For Marketing for Dummies” (published in the Fall of 2009).

Diabetes Hands Foundation is a nonprofit that connects people touched by diabetes and raises diabetes awareness.

The Jewish Agency for Israel was founded in 1929 and was the pre-Israel government before there was a state. Following the founding of the State of Israel, the Jewish Agency was mandated with aliyah, or the immigration of Jews from around the world to Israel, as well as Jewish Zionist education. Today its mission is to:

Inspire Jews throughout the world to connect with their people, heritage and land, and empower them to build a thriving Jewish future and a strong Israel.

A little over a year ago the Jewish Agency for Israel launched its social media presence. At the time, the decision was to communicate our message aggressively and to reach out to a new audience by using the latest portals. When social media accounts were opened, it was a no-brainer to create a Facebook Page, YouTube channel, and a Flickr stream. Twitter was the wild card in the batch. How could anything important be communicated in 140 characters, essentially a tweet? It seemed a bit ridiculous.

Quickly I immersed myself in a new language of RTs, hashtags, URL shorteners, and the entire twitterverse! Originally, my name was not listed on the Twitter account but there was a disconnect. It seemed artificial for an entire organization to have one voice. There are just so many voices, personalities, and more. How could an organization have a voice? How could it engage an audience? How would we ever be able to keep up with all the different conversations going on? It seemed unnatural. Soon I updated the profile and attached my name to the account; I was finally able to project my professional self on behalf of the organization. It helped people to see that there was a voice behind the organization. Followers began addressing me by name and knew that I would respond to their questions about aliyah or anything else. I also took my virtual connection with the audience and made it real by attending Tweetups. It not only helped me put a face to the tweet, but strengthened our online relationship. Maya Norton’s New Jew blog about Jewish philanthropy has commented several times about our social media:

“I’ve been monitoring the Jewish Agency for Israel’s social media decisions for several years and am impressed with their strategic choices. Smart moves for a historic institution…[Their social media is] much better than most organizations. Even if there are some glitches, it’s certainly on the right track.”

Our Facebook Page has over 7000 fans and we have great traffic on YouTube and Flickr, but it is the Jewish Agency Twitter feed that has left its mark. It has successfully strengthened our brand, connected a younger demographic, and helped a broader audience better understand our mission. We have received this feedback from social media professionals, Jewish professionals, lay leaders, as well as from the “tweeple” themselves. In May 2009 the JTA named us the 7th most influential Jewish organization and a year later we are in 3rd and 4th on WeFollow.com for Israel-related and Jewish-related Twitter accounts respectively.

I have often been asked why I think the Twitter has feed been so successful? Frankly, I understood Twitter as a medium versus Facebook or another social media portal. Moreover, I understood that we had an audience who was just as invested in the Jewish Agency brand as we are. I listened to what they had to say and responded. Whether it was a question about aliyah or a Masa Israel program (the umbrella organization for long-term experience programs in Israel), I always ensure that followers receive the information they need in a timely matter and keep them in the loop about the status. Follow-up on Twitter is so critical because it is very much a customer service tool. True, it also is used for marketing, outreach, and other needs, but customer service is the number one reason that people remain our followers and have such a positive view about it. Charlie Kalech, one of our followers, turned to me about a year ago for assistance with aliyah cases. In his words:

“Florence has put a human face on the Jewish Agency. When I was helping potential immigrants who did not know where else to turn to get answers, I could send Florence a direct message on Twitter and get a direct response cutting through the bureaucracy which had previously rendered no satisfactory response. The Jewish agency’s presence on Twitter has given people like this someone to talk to.”

Now when people say, “Twitter? I don’t get it.” I laugh and respond, “Don’t underestimate the power of a tweet.” What a difference a year makes…

Florence Broder is the Social Media Manager for the Jewish Agency for Israel. In her position she has successfully launched a Facebook fan page for the Jewish Agency in February which now has over 4000 members and also launched a Twitter feed which today has over 2200 followers.

Editor’s Note: When I met Estrella Rosenberg April 8 at the Nonprofit Technology Conference, she told me about the Foursquare 100×100 campaign to launch two days later. No one had used Foursquare in this way previously, and I immediately knew she was on to a breakthrough idea. I asked her to send me a writeup once it was over, and this is her guest post below.

When April 1st rolled around I had been investigating how non-profits use Foursquare and brainstorming how they could  use it for a couple of months. Although not a direct method of fundraising my thoughts were still along those lines…and then a question popped into my head. Could Foursquare be used for awareness and advocacy?

1 in 100 children are born with a heart defect. My two nonprofits Big Love Little Hearts and One Hundred Squared serve the Congenital Heart Defect (CHD) community. When was the 100th day of the year? It happened to be nine days later, April 10th. My next question was: “could I come up with a campaign in nine days, launch it and have it be successful?”  I had no idea but I’m not afraid of failure so I set out to create a Foursquare experiment.

The basic premise was this – we created a hashtag, #100X100, that stood for 1 in 100 on the 100th day of the year. I created a website, http://onehundredsquared.com to explain what it was, why it was important and to determine the actions we wanted supporters to take: spread awareness using the hashtag and call/write their representatives asking them to support the Congenital Heart Futures Act and Pulse-Ox screening of CHD to the National Newborn Screening Panel. We also created a Facebook fanpage and Twitter profile.

We recruited volunteers to commit to a guerrilla, grass-roots effort to use Foursquare to parlay our message. On the evening of April 9th a few dozen Big Love Little Hearts volunteers added the following as a “tip” to 600 Foursquare locations:  “1in100 children are born w/ a heart defect. Pulse-Ox screening saves lives – you can too! Check in with the hashtag #100X100.” We also embedded a link in the tip to the One Hundred Squared website. We chose what we thought would be the most checked-in locations on a Saturday: airports, Starbucks’, Target’s, gym’s, etc. in every major city.

One of the benefits of using Foursquare as an origin point is that most people who use it sync their check-ins to Twitter and Facebook. This meant that one person checking with #100X100 had the possibility of being viewed across three different platforms with three audiences. Talk about bang for your (time) buck!

Did it work? Better than I could have possibly imagined.  My goal was to see how social media worked for advocacy and awareness. However, something extraordinary happened: I began foursquaring/tweeting/facebooking about #100X100 at 12:01 am on April 10 and Big Love Little Hearts’ supporters followed.

At 7:30 am an angel who was following one of our followers on Twitter (but not us) noticed our hashtag. (She is an adult with a CHD who was not diagnosed at birth and who is alive today because she received lifesaving surgery.) Her passion for our work led her to call me and commit to donating $1 for every time someone used the #100X100 hashtag until midnight April 10th.

How much did we raise?  She gave me a cap of $25,000. I knew the moment she said it that as a not-quite ten month old organization we wouldn’t reach the cap. Much to my surprise our supporters were so engaged that we reached it by almost half.

At quarter to midnight the hashtag had been used 11,703 times across all three platforms. Our donor was so impressed that she committed all $25,000, which funded 12 surgeries in developing countries. Twelve lives saved in 24 hours.

That’s great (okay, FANTASTIC), but did it work for advocacy and awareness? YES! Less than two weeks after the 100th day of the year about 100 people from various CHD groups were to meet in Washington  for CHD Lobby Day. The One Hundred Squared website, as linked through Foursquare and the hashtag, asked people to contact their representatives. We wanted to plant a seed for anyone who used #100X100 on the 10th to call their Senator or Congressman and let them know that they supported measures that would greatly improve the lives of the 2 million people living with CHD in the states.

On the April 22 (CHD Lobby Day) we used the hashtag via Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare to remind our supporters to call their legislators. By noon more people had looked at the website than the entirety of April 10. I had seven appointments with Senators  & Congressman from Illinois that day. There wasn’t a single one I walked into where their aide didn’t inform me that constituents had been calling about this all day. People Lobby Day delegates from other states texted or called me to say the same. More than 500 people told me that they had contacted their representative, and 300 others contacted the Big Love office to do the same. 1800+ viewed the page and clicked through the link to find their representative. I cried with pride the entire day.

What was the benefit of using Foursquare as our social-media springboard? The tips we left are still there and will stay there perpetually. For several locations our tip is still the most recent. Did I mention that we have a link embedded in the tip?

A huge “thank you” to everyone who participated in #100X100 on April 10h and 22 – you made it such a success that the Big Love Little Hearts sister organization, 1 in 100, changed its name and expanded its mission. (Check back with http://onehundredsquared.com soon – or subscribe -for more details)!

One last nugget – all of this was FREE. We raised $25,000, saved 12 lives in the immediate and set the stage for millions of lives to be changed.

Estrella Rosenberg is the Founder and Director of Big Love Little Hearts, One Hundred Squared, Little Leo Foundation and The 4F Club. She writes about her love of non-profit work in her blog, Adventures In Philanthropy.

Big Love Little Hearts provides lifesaving surgery to children with congenital heart defects in developing countries. Almost one million children are born with a heart defect worldwide every year – half will need surgery to survive. Ninety percent will be born in countries where access to lifesaving measures is limited by economic status or lack of infrastructure. Follow them on Twitter. Follow One Hundred Squared on Twitter here.

Guest blogger Ed Nicholson at SXSW Interactive 2010

Ed Note: On February 16, I wrote a post entitled “Nonprofit Collaboration: Doesn’t It Make the Pie Bigger?” which elicited 27 comments, and started many discussions. Ed Nicholson, who manages corporate philanthropy for Tyson Foods,  commented on the post. He wrote “I predict you’re going to see some experiments in collaboration among funders toward encouraging more non-profit cooperation (I love your term “coopetition”). There are already some larger hunger relief funders (some of us competitors in the marketplace) having informal discussions about how we can work together to influence more efficiency and collaborative work among the non-profits we fund.” After that comment, I had to ask Ed to submit a guest post for this blog on the idea of collaboration and coopetition, from the funder’s perspective. This is his guest post:

A couple of weeks ago, I was intrigued by the lively discussion here about non-profit collaboration and “coopetition” (I love that term).

As someone who helps manage a corporate philanthropy budget, I’ll tell you it can be frustrating and confusing to be approached by requests from multiple non-profit organizations with the same missions and areas of operations. Which one to fund? Who’s doing the best work? Where are the redundancies and inefficiencies that are surely there? There’s a temptation (rarely acted upon) to tell all of them, “When you guys get this sorted out, come back and we’ll consider it.” In other words:  “Go collaborate, and make it easy for us decide who’s doing God’s work.”

Easy for us to say, right?

I’ll quickly grant that many in the for-profit sector probably have unrealistic expectations of non-profit organizations to be so mission-focused that all competitive activity is set aside.  After all, whether we’re doing it for money or love, all of us have rent to pay and organizational objectives to achieve.

But the fact is funders do notice organizations that have a collaborative spirit.  I believe those organizations will be rewarded.  Because now more than ever, the question: “How are we going to solve this problem?” is taking priority over:  “Which organization does best in this area?”

At Tyson Foods, we’re not a big funder in the grand scheme of things. We’ll never (to borrow a phrase from finance) “move the market” when it comes to influencing how grant recipients behave. However, we’re around some of the big guys on occasion, and I can tell you, there is talk about how influence—and funding—can be used to drive more collaboration and efficiency among non-profits. There’s even some discussion about how funders can collectively drive collaboration.

I’m going to suggest that your online community is a great place to start that collaboration. Online communities tend to tune out organizations that have an ego-centric approach. We could all benefit by spending less time talking about ourselves and more time talking amongst ourselves.

For whatever it’s worth, potential stakeholders who spend time in this space, especially those who “get it,” are going to be much more impressed by organizations that show a collaborative online presence than those who use social media channels as broadcast vehicles. As corporate and foundation funders themselves join online communities, they’ll take notice of organizations that add value and engage, rather than simply pump out their own messages. I know I take notice.

Would you ever retweet those who are competing for resources, or link to their blog posts?  Do you engage with those who aren’t potential donors or sponsors? Do you link to good things those outside your own organization (and not just your sponsors) are doing or saying? How do you add value to the community?

I have a recurring event on my Outlook calendar for 5pm each day: “Do something good for the community.” It reminds me to put up some bit of online content that’s purely for the good of the cause. It’s not an easy resolution to follow, and one I often neglect. But I know if I can do it, it will benefit my company as much as it does the community. That spotlight, focused outwardly, invariably reflects back favorably on us.

Ed Nicholson is director of community and public relations for Tyson Foods, Inc. He helps manage corporate philanthropic activity, and has directed Tyson’s involvement in hunger relief since it became the company’s philanthropic focus in 2000.

This is a guest post by Hannah Katsman. Hannah and Hadassah Levy gave a fabulous presentation at the Kishor social media conference on Tips and Tricks for Social Media Time Management, and I asked if she would write a guest piece for this blog.

In our talk to Jewish professional women on time management and social media, we wanted to address two contradictory concerns: when it comes to social media some people don’t know where to start, while others can’t seem to stop! The concept of social media, or just learning one new platform, can be overwhelming on top of an already hectic schedule. But once you do get the hang of it, social media may eat up time needed for other important work.

No one is an expert at every platform, and it’s essential to allow a generous amount of time for learning. But once you become comfortable, you can set aside time to update status and respond to contacts. Time spent on social media should be devoted to building relationships, making connections, and answering questions.

Social media like Facebook and Twitter can be compelling and even addictive. One attraction is anticipating a response to an email, comment or status message. This anticipation keeps our adrenalin up and prevents us from focusing on more productive work. While some important discussions take place in real time, when we sense the adrenalin going up it may be a signal that it’s time to turn off the software or website. The response will wait until we get back.

Tools are important.

If you find yourself repeating a particular task, chances are that someone has invented a way of automating it.

Women, especially mothers, are used to multi-tasking. Writing a grocery list while waiting for a doctor’s appointment is an effective use of time. But when we switch between windows and tasks on the computer, our minds take time to adjust. Answering an important email makes us feel like we accomplished something, but it costs us our concentration. Frequent responses to email and status messages makes us less productive, not more.

To minimize distractions and multi-tasking, I suggested a technique called Pomodoro. Spanish for tomato, the name recalls a standard kitchen timer. Pomodoros are uninterrupted 25-minute blocks of  time. Large tasks are broken down into a number of pomodoros. For a lengthy blog article you might need four. Smaller tasks, like replying to emails or updating Facebook, can be combined into one. Tasks that come up in the middle of a pomodoro get noted and added to a future one. At the end of the day, you have a written record to analyze how you spent your time.

Other speakers emphasized a point often mentioned by Debra: To get results from social media, you need a strategy. This is the best time-management tool of all. When you sit down at the computer, keep your goals in mind. Use the tactics and platforms that generate results for your business or non-profit, and drop the rest.

Hannah Katsman (pictured) was born in the US and moved to Israel nearly 20 years ago. She writes on parenting and life in Israel at A Mother in Israel. In her newest project, Cooking Manager, she helps home cooks save time and money in the kitchen. You can find her on Twitter at @mominisrael and her fan page, Facebook.com/CookingManager.

Hadassah Levy of Jewish Ideas Daily helped prepare the talk, and designed the Powerpoint presentation.

In early November, the Christmas SPIRIT Foundation (CSF) (which my association management company manages) accidentally discovered an industry competitor had created a copycat ripoff of our TweetUp4Troops effort to generate support for the Foundation’s Trees for Troops program.

The Background:

The Christmas SPIRIT Foundation, the 501(c)(3) charitable branch of the National Christmas Tree Association, advances the spirit of Christmas for kids, families and the environment.  For four years, the Foundation — with in-kind support from FedEx Freight — has implemented a hugely successful Trees for Troops program which touches the lives of military families by providing them a free, farm-grown Christmas tree.  The majority of trees go to troops with someone stationed overseas during the holidays. In its first four years, the Foundation has reached 50,082 military families around the world.  We trademarked Trees for Troops to protect the name. In 2007, we added Trees for Troops Weekends during which consumers could purchase a farm-grown tree and donate it to the Trees for Troops program.  (In three years, about 11,000 consumers have been involved in this effort.)

To engage more consumers in the program and to generate financial support for Trees for Troops, the Foundation created and organized TweetUp4Troops events to be held during Veterans Day Week (Nov 7-14). As part of the campaign, the Foundation created a TweetUp4Troops group site, web site and Twitter handle.

The Scam

At the beginning of November, a Foundation staffer accidentally typed in www.Tweetupfortroops.org and discovered that an artificial tree company had registered this domain name and directed people to its commercial Web site that is purely sales, a giant advertisement for artificial Christmas trees. The site’s creator has NOTHING to do with the Christmas SPIRIT Foundation and does NOTHING to support the Trees for Troops program.

The Christmas SPIRIT Foundation sees the fake tree industry’s action as a rouse designed to “capture and divert” people who support (or want to support) the Foundation and its Trees for Troops program. We don’t know how many potential sponsors accidentally typed “for” rather than “4″ and got the fake page rather than the real TweetUp4Troops site.

The Foundation was stunned that a company/industry would stoop so low as to try to deceive donors interested in supporting U.S. military families.

The first thing we did was check with legal regarding sending a cease and desist letter. (However, because of the crush of implementation for Trees for Troops and TweetUp4Troops, we did not send the letter.) We reached out to the Twitter community to seek advice on how to respond.  I wrote this blog post asking social media community to give me feedback and advice.  We were overwhelmed with the fabulous response from our social media community!

Following the community’s advice, the Christmas SPIRIT Foundation issued a news release.  In addition to sending it to the legacy media, we tweeted it to our social media community on Twitter and Facebook. Within minutes the word was spreading to hundreds, then thousands of people interested in social media, cause marketing, associations and non profits. Some re-tweeted. Others posted blogs about this case. Based on a quick analysis, the message was tweeted to more than 600,000 followers within 24 hours.

Follow-Up Questions and Answers

Q: Has there been an effect on donations positively or negatively? Can you compare or quantify that?
Since TweetUp4Troops is a new initiative, we have no baseline thus no real numbers or way to measure impact on results. The Foundation (and NCTA) has commissioned Harris Interactive to conduct a post-season consumer tracking poll annually.  We will have those results in mid-January.

Q: What lessons have you learned about brand management?
Monitor your brand across multiple channels. This means: implement regular monitoring of your brand to find anyone trying to hijack it. (Remember, we discovered the TweetUp4Troops brandjacking accidentally!) Use social media platforms to help your cause if it is hijacked. Get legal “protection” of your brand through copyright and trade mark/service mark registrations. Register multiple domain names and Social Media accounts.  You cannot consider all possibilities but look at as many as possible.

This has influenced our thinking for the 2010 program! As a result of both the brandjacking and lessons we learned from talking with the folks at Tweetsgiving, we’re likely to implement the 2010 program through our “master” (and legally protected) Trees for Troops sites. We are likely to move to legally register the name so we have greater protection in event of new attempts at brandjacking.

About Steve Drake

Steve Drake is president/owner of Drake & Company, an accredited association management company serving as headquarters and staff of 10 nonprofit organizations.  Drake’s expertise in cause marketing programs includes serving as the CEO of the Christmas SPIRIT Foundation and its award-winning Trees for Troops program.

For more information about Trees For Troops: read this November 2009 Ad Age column