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.

image courtesy of j_a_n

How can organizations best utilize the social bookmarking site Delicious? Though not the largest of the social bookmarking sites (it is 7th of the top 20), it is one of the easiest sites to mine for information. It is deliciously simple (pun intended!) to use, and there are over 180 tools, add-ons, and related resources to help you to take advantage of this platform. I can think of three broad ways organizations can use Delicious: for public/private information-gathering, intra company collaboration, and sharing news with stakeholders. I’m sure there are more! How do you use Delicious?

Information Gathering (public or private)

Use Delicious to gather relevant information: stay on top of the latest industry developments, competitor news, research new possibilities, and monitor tags of your own organization’s name. Use Delicious to search for these items or articles of interest to your organization. Remember, you can determine whether or not each bookmark will be seen publicly, and you decide if you want others to know what you are researching!

1. Follow Users:

Find and follow fellow industry professionals that upload bookmarks.  Select the “add a user to network” option in order to collect all of your favorite users’ bookmarks in one place.  Here is a screen shot of how to add a user to your network:

2. Follow Tags:

You can  “subscribe” to specific tags of interest in Delicious. This action sends all your subscriptions directly to your Delicious home page. Alternatively, you can also create an RSS (really simple syndication) feed to automatically update whenever new articles with the subscribed tag are bookmarked. You can also create an RSS feed of any user’s bookmarks.

As an example, I searched Delicious for all tagged information about the electric car, and subscribe to the RSS feed for all future articles tagged “electric car.”

Intra company Collaboration

Why not use Delicious for sharing information within the company? Create a custom organizational intranet for sharing bookmarks! No copying and sending the URLs by email, no re-posting to your company’s intranet. When everyone in the company is encouraged to share articles, the volume of intra company news sharing increases.

Two options for intra company news sharing:

1. Encourage employees to bookmark and share tags using one company password and user ID, but mark each bookmark as the “do not share!” All employees can log in to see the newest bookmarks, or subscribe to the company’s bookmarks.  Here is a sample screen shot:

2. Create individual employee accounts, and employees tag bookmarks with a set of agreed-upon tag names. To share the information, employees in the company subscribe to each other’s networks, bookmarks, and specifically-named identifying tags (e.g. conversationprogram221).

Sharing News with Stakeholders

Create a news feed on the website of bookmarked news about your organization. This displays a vibrant, crowdsourced “News” section of the website, or a scrolling news widget out of your Delicious bookmarks.  Here are two variations on this idea:

1. Whenever your organization is mentioned in the news, bookmark it to Delicious and tag it with your company’s name. Create an RSS feed for all Delicious tags with your company’s name. Place the RSS feed on the front page of the website or the sidebar of your blog. You could put the RSS feed in the “News” section of your website, but that’s not as fun!

2. Create a public RSS feed to your website of all tags relevant to stakeholders. For example, if your organization’s mission is advocacy for the electric car,  create RSS feeds for the tags “electric car,” “alternative energy automobile,” “automobile efficiency,” and other related tags.

Of course, don’t forget that bookmarks are public by default. This means that you are already sharing information with your stakeholders. Ask them to subscribe to your bookmarks! Tell them that this is the way your organization offers news to other Delicious users. And…don’t forget to mention your Delicious account on the website!

How does your organization use Delicious? Please share your stories with us in the comments section below!

I had coffee today with a friend of mine who spoke to me about his early work experiences. As a young lawyer, he was mentored by one a law partner who told him that “sometimes it doesn’t matter who takes credit for the work.” In today’s society, we want to be recognized for our hard work. However, in the new age of social media, it’s about working together to find solutions, and giving credit where credit is due.

It struck me that organizing is the same, and there are lessons for social network engagement as well. As an organizer, you should “never get in the photo, never speak for the group, and never take credit.” Why is this? Because a professional, outside organizer is NOT a member of the group being organized. He/she is the facilitator, coach, guide and supporter. The real work is done by leaders and members of the group. When one of the community groups I worked with won an important victory against the City’s garbage services, I was contacted by a member of the press. I told her that I would only speak as an anonymous background source, and gave her names of group members to contact for direct quotations. I was not in the news photo shot, nor mentioned in the paper. Naturally, my egotistical self wanted to say “hey– I supported them! I knocked on doors to recruit members! I advised the campaign!” The reality is that if I had taken credit, it wouldn’t have been the truth. The real members did the hard work. They put their names, reputation and energy out to the world. They also were the backbone of the organization.  If I had taken credit, that would have usurped the role of the organization’s leaders, minimalized their hard work and discredited the organization.

What does this have to do with social networking? Two things. First, as I’ve mentioned before, true engagement means dynamic, respectful conversation. If members of your online community forum discuss better ways to implement your program, and you make those implementation changes, then give them the credit. They thought of it. If I receive blog comments on this post that convince me that I’m absolutely wrong about this credo, then I’ll acknowledge this publicly. If I were to revise this post based on changes suggested by my readers without giving credit, then I’d actually be stealing ideas and ultimately diminishing my credibility with you, my readers.  A great example of dropping one’s ego at the keyboard is within the stream of comments generated by this blog post of Jeremiah Owyang. After Owyang posted about Gartner’s Generation Virtual research, there were 33 comments. Throughout the comment stream, he acknowledged valuable contributors to the discussion, and later revised his blog post based on comments received.

Secondly, the more people contributing, the better your organization will be. The idea of “the wisdom of crowds” by James Suroweicki argues that the aggregate wisdom of the crowds most often results in answers more accurate than one single person can create. The more people share ideas and contribute, the stronger and better defined the idea will become. The idea of wikis works just this way, and a great example is NTEN’s We Are Media Project . This project creates curricula for non-profits around social media. It includes some of the most interesting thinkers on social media and noon-profit today, and they are all contributing their “proprietary” ideas to create free information. My best estimate is that about 25 people are active on this wiki and about 50 more participate. And they’re GIVING IT AWAY. Why? Because they know that openness in collaboration can result in a much better product, or ideas, than any individual would create on his/her own. Google docs and other shareware are great tools to facilitate sharing ideas in document creation, and wikis do the same online. Openness during collaboration, and the interest in collaboration are two ways of checking your ego at the keyboard because others are doing the hard work as well. The rewards can be mind-boggling. Just think “wikipedia.” Another great link is Beth Kanter’s post about “working wikily” here.

Invite the public in, listen, and learn. Drop your ego at the keyboard. You’re in for a great ride.

: : : : : : : : : : :