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.

If there were an award for the most courageous, determined social media experimenter around, Manny Hernandez would win, hands down. He is also one of the busiest people I know. Manny founded and manages the Diabetes Hands Foundation (DHF), a nonprofit organization that connects people touched by diabetes and raises diabetes awareness.

The Diabetes Hands Foundation is among the rock stars of social media – it is nimble, experimental, and not afraid to fail. Mostly, they succeed - big time.

Manny, along with thousands of volunteers, has built DHF into an incredible community of care and activism around diabetes. All of their activities create community, and the organization keeps that at the forefront of every new initiative. It is truly a community-based organization.

The community primarily lives in its two active, successful (Ning-based) online communities for people with diabetes: TuDiabetes.org (English) with 17,450 members and EsTuDiabetes.org (Spanish) with 11,200 members. The strong community gives DHF the strength to be able to experiment with new tools and develop new applications. DHF developed an application called TuAnalyze, in which members of the TuDiabetes diabetes social network track, share and compare their diabetes data. DHF also co-developed and launched (in collaboration with the Joslin Diabetes Center) HealthSeeker, a Facebook game to help people with diabetes develop healthy lifestyle eating habits. Since its launch in June, HealthSeeker has grown to 1,553 monthly active users. Right after launching HealthSeeker, DHF published No Sugar Added in July, a collection of poetry entirely crowdsourced, with the theme of living with diabetes. You can read Manny’s guest post about how he developed No Sure Added here.

Now comes Big Blue Test: test your blood sugar level, exercise for 14 minutes, test yourself again.

Just in time for World Diabetes Day on November 14th, DHF is publicizing its Big Blue Test in a big way. DHF learned from last year’s campaign and it is entirely reconceived. Last year, DHF asked people to create their own landing pages and online spaces to discuss the Big Blue Test. “The range of implementations was too broad. It was complicated to analyze the data and it did not give the feeling of community,” says Manny. This year Big Blue Test looks and feels entirely different.

From the beginning, this year’s Big Blue Test was a collaborative project. Manny explains, “around the time we were brainstorming about this year’s Big Blue Test, diabetes advocate Riva Greenberg sent me and Roche a viral video and suggested a video collaboration between us and Roche. That inspired me to create a video that could really get some traction and go viral.” Roche supported and partnered with DHF in the development of all aspects of Big Blue Test. “Roche really gave us the creative freedom to develop this project, and Roche USA championed the idea of sponsoring the video and the Big Blue Test video donation challenge.” says Manny. The result is the video at the top of this page publicizing the Big Blue Test and a donation challenge.

DHF wanted to create a video sharing incentive, and also people to feel good about the incentive and have a short-term, measurable impact.DHF teamed up with Roche, Life for A Child, and Insulin for Life to create short-term impact:  For every view up to 100,000 views, Roche will donate $0.75, a cap of $75,000 to help children with diabetes in developing countries. The donation will be divided between Life For A Child (of the International Diabetes Federation) and Insulin for Life. Both organizations focuse on giving insulin and diabetes supplies to children in developing countries.

The video went live October 31st in English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and French, all translated by volunteers. To date, it has 83,801 views. To gain exposure, DHF reached out to influential twitter users and bloggers in the diabetes and nonprofit communities. “Most of the bloggers and twitter uses we reached out to either tweeted about it or blogged about it,” says Manny. The most effective means in getting it out has been through Twitter. They are tracking the hashtag #bigbluetest. In the past two weeks it has been tweeted about 3,500 times with that hashtag.

From the YouTube page, the call to action within the video of watching it and passing it along has been effective. To date, the largest sharing group is  35+ and female, and the top viewing countries are the US, Brazil, Canada, and Australia.  56% of the views are on YouTube itself, and 37% are views embedded on another website.

What has not worked at all?  “Asking celebrities to retweet it. That was a wrong assumption on my part.” Manny sent @messages to many celebrities asking if they would retweet the message and none of them has done so yet.

DHF also took advantage of the Ning platform to publicize the video challenge and test. Ning offers “takeover” functionality to change their Ning homepage. DHF essentially replaced the home pages of TuDiabetes.or and EsTuDiabetes.org with the Big Blue Test page. Members have to view this new homepage in order to enter the site. About 5% of all the video views come in this way.

I asked Manny what has been the most surprising part of the campaign. “The generosity has been just unbelievable. People watch it often. People take the time to watch it several times and tell others to do the same. The same thing on Twitter – several people have tweeted and re-tweeted it hundreds of times. Some have incorporated the #bigbluetest into every tweet. We haven’t seen yet the power of the influencers to generate a high number of video views, however. What we have seen is the power of the community pulling their weight behind this effort to do so.”

Manny sums up the success of the video challenge and the Big Blue Test to date:

“Believe the commitment of the people that are part of your community.”

That’s the secret behind the success of the Diabetes Hands Foundation as well.

Please watch the Big Blue Test video at the top of this page. Every view means a donation of diabetes products to children in developing countries. I also bet you won’t be able to get the catchy song out of your head.

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.

Today is Beth Kanter’s 53rd birthday. For her birthday, she is lecturing in a Power of Social Technology Class, starting a meme experiment, and raising money for one of her favorite causes, the Sharing Foundation. If you want to read more about how she’s celebrating today, check out her blog post.

I’d like to honor Beth’s birthday by writing about why I love to read Beth’s Blog:

1. Deep analysis of social media campaigns, trends, and uses.

Beth’s Blog is a a real treasure trove of analysis: from how orchestras can effectively utilize social media, to working in networks for social change, to thoughts on whether or not social media fundraising groundswells are opportunities or distractions. Her analysis always informs and inspires me. If I’m thinking about a social media-related issue, I’ll look at how Beth has approached it and consider that as a starting point for my analysis.

2. The case studies – how wonderful to have them!

Social media is such a brave new world out there. We are all trying new things, and some them succeed, while others…don’t succeed at all. Beth is always on the lookout for these campaigns. She has invited so many people to post about their social media efforts that her blog has become a virtual library of case studies. From the flickr email campaign to save seals, to online contests, to personal fundraising for cancer research, the case studies inform and teach others.

3. It’s the home page where nonprofit tech and social media intermingle and grow.

Seriously, Beth’s Blog was my home page for a long time. Why? Because I know that she is always on top of the latest nonprofit tech trends in social media, implications of social media for nonprofits, and other relevant news that nonprofit professionals need to learn and grow. If you are just getting into social media, start there. It’s deep, thoughtful, relevant, and always right on trend.

4. It’s a Teaching Tool.

I’m an academic at heart. I started a Ph.D. program in American History many years ago and left – but the love of research and inquiry has stayed with me. Beth’s blog is research-oriented. Beth uses her blog to teach, investigate, and inquire. She offers up her own experiments (crowdsourcing as a planning tool), is open about trying new tools (creating an iPhone app of her blog), and asks questions of her readers (how nonprofits are using social media). We learn through her inquiry and investigation.

5. It’s a Generous Blog.

Beth’s Blog IS a generous blog. Because it’s “Beth’s Blog,” she gets to say it all. But she doesn’t. She gives just as much. She offers case studies. Perspective. Analysis. Comments on other blogs. Responses to comments on her blog. Guest posts by nonprofit thought leaders (and others). Books. Ideas. And money. She donates to causes, and she’ll tell you why. When I read the blog, I’m constantly inspired by how much giving is integrated into its DNA.

Do you read Beth’s Blog? What are your reasons? Any I’ve left out?

If you want to wish Beth a happy 53rd birthday on twitter, and be part of her birthday experiment, please tweet: Happy birthday #beth53! Let’s send 53 Cambodian kids to school: http://bit.ly/beth53
Happy Birthday, Beth!

If you’re planning a social media campaign, how important is it to integrate bloggers before and during the campaign? I’m referring to social media campaigns launched on a platform(s) other than a blog platform.

People join causes because they know and trust either the organization itself, or someone associated with the cause. Translating this to our virtual lives, outside bloggers have the reach and trust to be that friend that recruits others to a cause or a campaign. I know this from my community organizing days: friends bring friends into a a cause or a campaign. The strongest advocates become the best recruiters.

Bloggers not only have reach within their community, but they amplify their reach through social bookmarking (Digg, StumpleUpon, etc), re-tweets, and of course leveraging their personal twitter networks. Also, bloggers tell compelling stories. From John Haydon: “Bloggers can have the biggest impact in online campaigns by telling a sincere, heartfelt story. They can also have a big impact by knowing who among their readers would also stand up and take action for particular causes.” During social media campaigns, bloggers are the grease that can push a campaign forward, help it gain momentum, and bring needed attention and value when it is faltering.

I believe that bloggers play an integral role in the success of the campaign, and I spent some time trying to find evidence of their contributions to online campaigns.

Opportunity International Australia: Micro Finance Trust Fund Camapaign

As an Australian ambassador for Opportunity International, Jasmin Tragas pledged to raise $10,000 to create a micro finance trust fund for female entrepreneurs in the Philippines. She created an online fundraising campaign, and blogger relations was integral to iy.  As part of the campaign, Jasmin created an eBook about female world shapers entitled “WorldShapers: Extraordinary Women Making a Difference.” Many of the women featured in the book wrote blog posts about the cause and championed the campaign. (Disclosure: I was one of the women featured in the eBook.) When I asked Jasmin to describe the role of bloggers in the campaign, she replied, “huge in terms of getting visibility. Not just bloggers writing about the campaign but also sharing in fun blog challenges. This raised the profile and brand. Blogging may not have helped right away but that it increased visibility over time. I was describing it to friends earlier today as a trickle effect.”

Visible Government: Beers for Canada

Beers for Canada was a social media campaign run by Visible Government to fund software to monitor government transparency. According to an interview with Alistair Croll on Beth’s Blog, the organizers pre-seeded the 3-day campaign by identifying and speaking with key bloggers and twitterers, who brought their voices to the campaign. Incredibly popular and respected bloggers (Tim O’Reily, Om Malik. Tara Hunt) also tweeted about the campaign.

Epic Change: Tweetsgiving 2008

Epic Change’s Tweetsgiving  2008 event was extremely successful in terms of the amount of tweets, publicity and funds raised to build a school in Tanzania. In Avi Kaplan’s Tweetgiving analysis, he writes that the campaign pre-seeded the event with a few bloggers, but not many. The blogger mentions began to roll in as the campaign gained momentum, resulting in over 100 press and blogger mentions. Deeper analysis revealed that 15% of the visits to the donation/Epic Change Tweetsgiving site came from blog posts and articles. Avi writes: “the press we received was so valuable to Epic Change and continues to benefit the organization, but in terms of raw traffic, it looks like word of mouth and twitter mentions were the main drivers.”

Epic Change: Tweetsgiving 2009

This year’s Tweetsgiving 2009 social media campaign (November 24 – 26) embraced and integrated bloggers. The Tweetsgiving website encourages participants to self-organize into groups; the “Blogger’s Group” is one of them. Organizers also pre-seeded the campaign by asking influencers within certain online communities to bring their own “flock of Turkeys” (my wording, not theirs) to the event, essentially turning these influencers into recruiters and campaign leaders. (Disclosure: I am a member of this group, called Wild Turkeys – their wording, not mine.) John Haydon (one of the campaign leaders) told me that “for Tweetsgiving, the main role bloggers have is encouraging their communities to participate.”

How important are bloggers to online campaigns? Very.

A trusted blogger is the Walter Cronkite of his/her community.

Walter Cronkite was “the most trusted man in America” for decades. If he would have told my parents to donate money to your cause, I’m sure they would have opened up their checkbook and written one right then. Use trusted bloggers to be your campaign’s Walter Cronkite.

Have any of you been involved in campaigns that use bloggers? How was the blogger element integral to the campaign’s success? Did you learn any great lessons or best practices you’d like to share here? I hope that this is the beginning of a list of campaigns that have used bloggers, and anecdotes about the effect of blogging on the outcomes. I’ll keep the list as a reference guide for others planning their next social media campaigns.  Look forward to the hearing about the campaigns!

Fill the Gap: Case 55B (July 09)

How do you truly involve the general public and ask them to engage, online with art?  If you are the Luce Foundation Center for American Art, you offer the public the ability to become “citizen curators.” The Luce Foundation Center occupies 20,400 square feet of the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s space.  It is an open study/storage facility displaying about thirty-three hundred objects from the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. In essence, it is visible storage for the museum. The Smithsonian American Art Museum lends work out, often for 12 months to other institutions, leaving gaps in the display units. The Luce Foundation Center is responsible for selecting the art that will fill the gaps.

What is the Luce Foundation Center doing? Crowdsourcing the art selection process, and opening it up to the public. Absolutely brilliant!

The Luce Foundation Center created a Flickr campaign to literally “Fill the Gap” in the gallery case. When there is a need to fill a gap, the Luce Center posts a photo on its Flickr site of a gallery case that has a “gap” in the art, includes the dimensions of the gap, and asks the public to search its online catalogue for ideas. Participants search for pieces on the Luce Center’s website – it has 41,000 cataloged pieces of art on its website – and suggest replacement pieces from the catalogue.

I thought this was such an innovative use of Flickr that I incorporated it into a previous blog post about arts organizations using Flickr creatively. I also contacted Georgina to learn more the campaign’s inspiration, how the Luce Center is utilizing the “Listen, Learn, Adapt” methodology during the campaign, and any advice she would give other institutions creating Flickr campaigns. She kindly answered all of the questions below:

Q. What is the relationship of the Luce Foundation Center to the Smithsonian American Art Museum?

A. The Luce Foundation Center is part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, displaying around 3,300 works from its collection. Luce Foundation Center staff members are responsible for almost all operations within the Center, including making recommendations for the artworks that replace those that leave. If an artwork leaves for less than 12 months, we do not replace it. We simply put up a sign that tells the visitor where the artwork is (on loan to another museum, on view elsewhere in the building, or in the conservation center for treatment). We are storage, after all. However, if an artwork leaves for more than 12 months we do replace it.

Q. What was the inspiration for Fill The Gap?

A. The last year or so has been very busy, with over 40 paintings and objects departing long-term for a variety of reasons. As a result, there are some gaps that we don’t have the time to give the attention that they deserve, or we have tried to find replacements and have been unable to come up with anything with which we are happy. The inspiration for the Flickr “Fill the Gap” project actually came from a talk given by Clay Shirky at the Smithsonian 2.0 conference in January 2009, in which he talked about how Flickr is a great tool to facilitate communities. I realized that this would be the perfect environment for us to solicit the public’s help in filling some of our long-standing gaps.

Q. What are the objectives of the campaign?

A. Our objective is to have the public select works to fill gaps in the Luce Foundation Center display, while also revealing a little of how the museum operates.

Q. What would you consider the biggest successes of the campaign and the biggest disappointments?

A. The biggest success is that we have had participants making excellent suggestions and that we have successfully filled three gaps since the project’s inception. The biggest disappointment is that there aren’t more people joining in, but considering that we are asking people to invest quite a bit of time and energy, this wasn’t too surprising.

Q. What have you learned and how will you incorporate those lessons into the campaign as it continues?

A. Our intern Jessica Hass is working on a low-tech version that will be in the physical museum and will invite visitors to “vote” for their favorite out of around 20-30 possible replacements. We will then post the winning (and approved) object to the Flickr site.

Hopefully the project will evolve to offer different types of participation. Those that don’t have a lot of time might vote for an object based on a pool selected by us, but those that want to dig deeper would start from scratch with the entire museum collection to choose from. I definitely anticipate further modifications to both the online and on-site versions as we explore different ideas and gather feedback accordingly. No project is ever static in the Luce Foundation Center!

Q. Do you have advice for an organization using Flickr as a campaign  platform?

A. If you plan to solicit user content and comments, you need to assign at least one person to monitor and respond to these. People using social media tools like Flickr expect quick responses!

Georgina Goodlander is the Manager of the Luce Foundation Center at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.  She manages all aspects of the Luce Foundation Center, from staff, visitor services, and public programs to interpretation and new media. Georgina and her staff are pictured in this photo, below.

Tierney Sneeringer, Bridget Callahan, Edward Bray, and Georgina Goodlander

What do you think about Fill the Gap? How has this campaign inspired you? What will you do with Flickr creatively?

Inspired to create a free resource for women who want to change the world through the web, Jasmin Tragas has just published the free eBook Worldshapers.

This is a story about the power of weak ties and one woman determined to make a difference. I met Jasmin Tragas online, and we have never met in person. She began to follow me on Twitter, we naturally shared ideas. I soon discovered her real passion is the crossroads of social media, women’s economic opportunities, and nonprofits – all of which interest me.  After a few months, Jasmin asked if she could profile me in an eBook that she was creating about the power of women to change the world through the social web. From a weak tie to an eBook…that’s the power of social media.

Jasmin believes in the power of social media to change the world. Her dream is to create a Trust Bank in the Philippines for a group of 15-30 women, where they will be given micro loans and training to grow their businesses in order to work their way out of poverty. In her role as a volunteer Opportunity Ambassador, she has pledged to raise $10,000 for Opportunity International Australia towards the Trust Bank in the Philippines. The obvious step for her was to utilize social media to raise those funds.

Inspired by the power of social media, she created WorldShapers, Extraordinary Women Making a Difference, a free eBook featuring the stories of 16 women using the web to make a difference. Jasmin writes, ” I created the eBook was to provide a free resource about women using the web for positive change. At the same time, I wanted to see if I could use this as an opportunity to raise funds for the microloan fund.” At the end of the book, she suggests that the readers can also change the world;  donate to Opportunity International, or any other worthy organization.

I am honored to be among the 16 women selected for the book. I asked Jasmin why she initiated the Worldshapers project, if it has raised her target amount, and the “lessons learned” from producing and distributing an eBook.

Why did you decide to create Worldshapers?

“There are some amazing women around the world who use the web as part of their work with nonprofits and communities. I thought it would be wonderful for their stories to be shared in a free eBook so that people could be encouraged by their example. Social media gives us the ability to create inspiring projects like this – so why not? I also wanted to promote and raise funds for a microfinance project.”

Why did you choose Opportunity International?

“Their microfinance program provides jobs for people living in poverty, mostly women. Their program also provides training, develops relationships in the community and helps women to work their way out of poverty – a long term, sustainable approach to poverty – not just charity.”

What is your experience of raising funds through this eBook?

“Sometimes you receive a donation from someone who lives on the other side of the world, someone you have never met, or a work colleague you have only ever chatted with online and you think ‘wow! How awesome that this person just contributed $20.’ You feel a real sense of us making a difference TOGETHER.”

It seems counter-intuitive to produce a free book to raise money. Has it worked?

“Although I could have asked for a small donation for each download, I decided I wanted to keep it free so these stories could be shared around the world. My instincts told me that people wouldn’t donate after downloading the book, about $200 was donated during this ‘semi-campaign’. I also put a link to my Chipin account in the eBook. I’m happy with the outcome – 1600 copies of the eBook downloaded raising $1300 – over 10% of my goal – but I’m still learning about fundraising using social media and wonder how much I could have raised if I charged for downloads.”

Which promotional efforts for the eBook have been successful? What has not worked?

“I try to keep things interesting, interactive and even a little challenging. In trying to raise money previously for Opportunity, I thought that a competition would be great, but it didn’t work as well as I hoped. It really helps when an influential blogger tweets about your project – a great way to create publicity and I’m grateful when it happens.”

What are the fundraising goals and how much have you raised?

“My goal is to raise AUD$10,000  by the end of this month, for a two year microfinance program. Currently $4,000 has been generously donated. Two companies made donations towards the eBook project (Incentive House and Seek Volunteer) so I was able to raise $1100 that way.  If I can raise half of my goal I can still partner with another Opportunity ambassador to create the Trust Group. But ultimately, I would love to see people around the world coming together to help raise the funds online. ” (To date, she has reached 50% of her goal.)

What would you do differently?

“I’m not sure I would do anything differently, even the events that didn’t work so well were wonderful experiences to be part of. I’ve met some lovely people along the way too. The most successful project was a blogging project – 13 bloggers wrote a blog post and Incentive House Donated $100 for each post. $1300 was raised in a matter of days!”

“Creating an eBook was a really rewarding experience and I would consider doing it again. Next time, perhaps I would ask for donations, in which case I think perhaps the content really needs to be more than just informative and inspirational. I think I would also need people with social media influence to help promote and endorse the book.”

Anything else you want to mention?

“Raising funds and creating awareness for Opportunity International Australia about microfinance has been such a great journey. I’m also very thankful for people like Gavin Heaton, Des Walsh and Matt Moore who provided social media advice at times.”

June 22 Update: Servant of Chaos has just created and uploaded a great slide show about Jasmin’s efforts to raise funds for her cause. The slide show details the many (and there are MANY) different social media platforms she has used and highlights her efforts on each.

Jasmin Tragas is a mother of three who works as a creative marketing and communications consultant for IBM in Melbourne, Australia. She writes a weblog about her experiences using social media for good, and another weblog about her role as a volunteer Ambassador with Opportunity International.

If you want to donate to this great cause, donate here.  Just a $4 donation (one cup of coffee) will make a huge difference.  Together, we can leverage social media to create economic opportunity.

The power of social media: we all want to harness it, and we are all looking for the magic formula for success. Success, of course, would be creating a campaign that moves people to act, is easily passed along, and brings members to your cause or organization. The ONE Sermon Campaign (part of ONE, the antipoverty organization co-founded by Bono) is a fine example of superb campaign planning. This campaign caught my eye and then proceeded to amaze.

What is it? It is simple and brilliant: “a call for the best, original sermons on the advocacy work we can all do to alleviate the brutal suffering caused by global poverty and preventable disease.” Simple, right?

1. A simple call to action. The first thing ONE asks you to do is ACT.

The campaign first asks leaders to write a sermon about what people can do to alleviate poverty and disease.

This is the key to the whole campaign: engaging religious leaders. Congregational leaders have an a thought podium, a willing and interested group of followers, and a speaking schedule. ONE Sermon Campaign utilizes faith-based organizing principles to move people to talk about ONE, participate in ONE campaigns and become activists.

2. Continue the campaign offline.

There are two calls to action offline: the message that the lay leaders deliver through the sermon about what individuals can do to alleviate poverty and disease, and calls to action throughout the year using a ONE Sermon Campaign’s “Action Pack.”

“Participants that send us their inspired message will receive a ONE Sabbath Action Pack, resourcing them and their local congregations with next steps to act with ONE.” In other words, leader will receive additional resources that will sustain this campaign… which will sustain ONE in people’s thoughts after the initial sermon.

3. Drive campaign participants to the campaign site. The third element involves site visitors and, ideally, congregants: “Read, watch listen to the sermons and other faith writings ONE members have already shared below.” This adds a second “touch point” for the campaign: in the house of worship and on the website. That’s two chances to engage a potential stakeholder.

4. Encourage participants to engage in the campaign on the website. ONE has added elements of opinion-sharing and voting to the campaign website: site visitors can cast votes of approval for as many sermons as they wish to support, both across and within religions. A leader might encourage congregants to visit the site and vote for his/her sermon. Here is a sample sermon that was uploaded, and has thus far received 12 votes:

From the sidebar of the Sermon Challenge blog site visitors can choose to view sermons by religious faith, and also peruse the list of the top vote-getters.

5. Time-sensitive. The campaign lasts only for the month of May. One month – enough time to give one sermon, engage people, and follow-up afterwords while the campaign is still fresh.

Here is how I imagine it playing out: lay and professional leaders write a sermon, submit sermons on site, and ask their congregants to visit the site and vote for sermons (or just read some of the other sermons uploaded). Since the campaign lasts only one month, congregants aren’t burdened with the idea of remembering to visit the site multiple times.

Because ONE captures the information of every person who submits a sermon…

…ONE would probably send each submitter an Action Pack, and follow up personally. The follow-up call would include (I imagine) offering help with the Action Pack implementation, engaging the leader in conversation, and recruiting him/her to the ONE Sabbath campaign (or another ONE campaign).

This campaign is simple and sweet: easy to participate (write a sermon), easy to upload (fill out a form), potentially viral (ask congregants to visit the site and vote, pass this idea along), and  it captures the information of people who are are already engaged and ready to act. ONE is now able to utilize these leaders for other campaigns and actions.

If the leaders and congregants are engaged they will continue to support, act, donate, and tell others about their involvement (and belief) in ONE.

What a powerful campaign strategy. I hope it works.