Community Organizer 2.0

Why don’t more nonprofits collaborate, online and offline? Social media culture is all about sharing, giving back, and being unselfish. You get more in return. In this post, I offer three examples of nonprofits working in collaboration to expand the potential return. What do you think?

Social media is a public platform, where we utilize the “power of weak ties” to move people to action. How does a weak tie become stronger, more fully engaged? It’s when conversations move them from the public conversation places to private conversations. These private conversations are social media’s “back yard.” That is where the relationships are strengthened and built.

An interesting survey by Harris Poll shows that Engaged Americans (those who have volunteered, donated or advocated in the past year) want to be more involved in their nonprofit causes through social media. The survey also shows that they are already taking action as a result of social media engagement. How can nonprofits take advantage of this information?

Nonprofit organizations constantly need to raise funds, and many are turning to social media to raise funds online. Organizations ask, “when does social media lead to more money?” The real question to think about is, “when does engagement lead to more money.” Using social media to engage, listen and learn from stakeholders is the first requirement for a successful online fundraising strategy.

Wonder what it takes to create a dynamic and growing Facebook Fan Page? The California State Parks Foundation’s fan page grew from 517 fans to over 45,000 in a few short months. In this guest post, Brenna Holmes, of Adams Hussey and Associates, shares the multi-channel effort that created the Fan Page’s growth and how they worked to save the California state parks.

Want to know how a Flickr campaign originates, evolves and grows? In this interview with Georgina Goodlander, of the Luce Foundation Center for American Art, she explains the history of the innovative “Fill the Gap” campaign, its progress, and how it will evolve.

How do you raise funds for a project with an eBook? In this interview with Jasmin Tragas, who created the eBook Worldshapers, Extraordinary Women Making a Difference to raise funds for a microloan program in the Philippines. In this post, I interview Jasmin about her experience raising funds through the eBook, putting the project together, and lessons learned.

Social Media tips from Affilicon Israel 2009.

The ONE Sermon Campaign has all the elements of a successful social media campaign: easy to participate, continued offline and online engagement, potentially viral. This post explores why the ONE Sermon Campaign is a great model for nonprofit social media campaigns.

The NTEN National Technology Conference 2009 Session on Mapping Social Media to Metric offered to opportunity to lean how nonprofit organizations are listening, utilizing social media, measuring their efforts and adapting their efforts based on what they are learning. In this post, I captured the session’s conversations and lessons learned from the social media practitioners in the field.