London Net Tuesday January - Resolutions for Learning

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on January 5, 2009
in events
. 0 Comments

Tomorrow night is the January Net Tuesday event and I really hope to see you there!

Join us for Net Tuesday London, this month: Resolutions for Learning!

January’s event will ask questions like: How do you manage your learning? How do you connect with others to ask questions, share ideas and try new things? Where do you go to connect with other online who are learning about or interested in the same things you are? The first of the year is resolution time, so this will be a chance to make resolutions about your learning, and get quality feedback about how to make them happen!

Agenda:
5:30-6:00 - Networking
6:00-6:15 - Welcome and Introduction
6:15-7:00 - Learning discussion groups & idea sharing
7:00-7:20 - Collaborative learning grid & wrap up
7:20+ - Networking

We’ll have representatives from LASA’s Knowledgebank, KnowHow NonProfit, School of Everything, and more on hand to help you brainstorm and discover ways to connect online regardless of what your learning resolutions include for 2009 - from new media tools to new business models and everywhere in between. Come with your ideas for what you’d like to learn or how others can learn online!

To RSVP, connect with the group, and learn more about London Net Tuesday, visit our Meetup group!

Birthday Cause Wrapped Up

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on January 4, 2009
in fundraising and reports
. 6 Comments

My 26th birthday came and went already and what I’m most excited about (other than the weekend trip we took to Bruges) is the money I was able to pull together from generous friends for Free Geek!  As you can see from the screenshot below, I exceeded my goal and Free Geek will be seeing nearly $350 coming its way!

THANK YOU to all of you who donated and supported my Birthday Cause; it means SO much to me!

I first talked about the Birthday Cause application on Facebook in December when I set it up for my birthday.  In addition to the Thank You, I wanted to share some thoughts about the Birthday Cause application and my experience using it for my birthday fundraiser.

It’s super EASY

It came to me, always. When conducting a campaign at your organization, you’ve probably experienced that you get a better return (whether it’s donations, volunteers, sign-ups, or whatever else) when you reach out to people often with direct opportunities.  Causes’ Birthday Cause application does just that when you set it up.

It emailed me two weeks before my birthday to let me know that I could use the application, and once I had it set up, it emailed me every day with direct links to help me make the most of the tool.  Birthday Cause “Tip of the Day” emails included actions for setting my status, emailing contacts, personalized asking, setting notifications and more.  Here are some examples:

Setting your Status:

Dear Amy,

Just 11 days left until your Birthday!

Congratulations on having raised $234 from 9 donors. Great work! If you haven’t already, take a look at your birthday cause page to see if they left you any birthday greetings, and stop by your promotion page to thank them.

Tip of the Day: Setting Your Status
Every time you change your status, all of your friends can see the update. We’ve created a set of status messages for you to chose from that link directly to your Birthday Cause. Choosing a new one each day is an easy way to make sure your friends know about your birthday cause. To change your status just go here: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/birthdays/29850/status?m=7835d9b4

Keep up the good work,
The Causes Team

Birthday Cause Page:

Dear Amy,

Just 12 days left until your Birthday!

Congratulations on having raised $182 from 7 donors. Great work! If you haven’t already, take a look at your birthday cause page to see if they left you any birthday greetings, and stop by your promotion page to thank them.

Tip of the Day: Your Birthday Cause Page
Your quote is the most important thing on your birthday cause page. Its what your friends will see when they go to the page, and what will help them decide if they want to donate or not. Spend some time making it look nice, and explaining why your birthday cause is important to you. To edit your quote, click ‘Edit Birthday Cause’ from your cause page, or click on this link: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/birthdays/29850/edit?m=7835d9b4

Keep up the good work,
The Causes Team

Inviting Friends:

Dear Amy,

Just 1 days left until your Birthday!

Congratulations on having raised $312 from 12 donors. Great work! If you haven’t already, take a look at your birthday cause page to see if they left you any birthday greetings.

Tip of the Day: Invite More Friends
You can now send more Birthday Requests through Facebook. This is one of the most effective ways to let people know about your Birthday Cause. Invite More Friends

Keep up the good work,
The Causes Team

Email:

Dear Amy,

Just 10 days left until your Birthday!

Congratulations on having raised $286 from 11 donors. Great work! If you haven’t already, take a look at your birthday cause page to see if they left you any birthday greetings, and stop by your promotion page to thank them.

Tip of the Day: Email
Email is an effective way to get in touch with large numbers of your friends and let them know about your birthday cause.

We have set up an easy way for you to email all of your friends with the Causes application. You can do this up to two times, at any time up to and including the day of your birthday. To do so now, click on this link: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/birthdays/29850/email?m=7835d9b4

Thanks,
Amy

Keep up the good work,
The Causes Team

One to One Requests:

Dear Amy,

Just 8 days left until your Birthday!

Congratulations on having raised $312 from 12 donors. Great work! If you haven’t already, take a look at your birthday cause page to see if they left you any birthday greetings, and stop by your promotion page to thank them.

Tip of the Day: One to One Requests
People are most responsive to one-to-one requests. If you have some friends that you are comfortable enough with to ask specifically to donate, doing so is the most effective thing you can do to raise money for your Birthday Cause.

You can make these requests by posting to the walls of these friends from your Birthday Cause promotion page. You can get to that page by clicking ‘Promote your Birthday Cause’ from your cause page or clicking this link: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/birthdays/29850/promote?m=7835d9b4

Keep up the good work,
The Causes Team

Notifications:

Dear Amy,

Just 9 days left until your Birthday!

Congratulations on having raised $286 from 11 donors. Great work! If you haven’t already, take a look at your birthday cause page to see if they left you any birthday greetings, and stop by your promotion page to thank them.

Tip of the Day: Notifications
Notifying your friends about your birthday cause is a good way to spread the word. We allow you to send up to three notifications to your friends about your birthday cause. You can even queue up notifications to be sent automatically the day before your birthday and on your birthday. To send notifications, click on this link: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/birthdays/29850/notify?m=7835d9b4

Keep up the good work,
The Causes Team

The direct links (most are hidden in the above examples as they were hyperlinked text into my account) helped me jump straight to where I needed to be to let my friends know about my cause.  Not only did it make getting the word out about the cause easy, but it helped me stay on top of the donations so I could properly thank my donors!  This is a huge bonus point for the Birthday Cause application because publicly thanking supporters is one of the biggest keys to keeping up the momentum of your fundraising appeal (because not only to donors feel appreciated, but also more inclined to tell their friends about the opportunity - plus, it’s another public mentioning of your campaign!).  Here’s what the email looks like when someone donates:

Lori Faye has donated $26 to your birthday cause! You have now raised $26 from 1 friend and need 9 more to meet your goal.

Thank Your Friends For Donating

Thanks,
The Causes Team

The emails has a direct link to my Birthday Cause page where I can read Lori’s message and thank her.

I was worried when I first set up the application that it would end up being more work to maintain than I had in the midst of holiday season.  Instead, I didn’t feel like I was doing any work at all and yet saw the donations streaming in!

It’s actually FUN

It let me connect with my friends, all over. Facebook is a tool I use to stay connected to my friends and family all over the world.  Regardless of where I’m travelling or currently based, I know everyone is just a click or two away.  That’s why it was such a great opportunity to celebrate my birthday INSIDE Birthday Causes because I’m now a continent away from most of my friends and family.  Connecting with friends as they donated was such a thrill, with people contributing to the Birthday Cause from all over the globe.  I was always excited to get an email from Causes and could never even guess who it would be from each time.

It’s designed to WORK

I really like when things just work.  Like I said, I wasn’t sure how much time I would have with the holidays and our planned travels.  It didn’t matter though, because the application did everything I would have needed it to do. Of course, everything could always work a little better, right?  Here are some of my suggestions to Causes to improve the Birthday Cause application:

  • #1.  I was always unsure whether it would send a request/invite to people who had already donated and that made me less inclined to send out messages repeatedly
  • #2.  I wish that I could have personalized the groups more specifically - if I said I wanted the application to automatically alert my friends at certain intervals, I wanted to also say which friends at which intervals instead of the option being the same for all of it
  • #3.  I know that the Birthday Cause is supposed to help you raise money for a cause of your choice, but I wish I could have had other options beyond giving money - Free Geek is a dynamic organization and I would have liked to encourage people to donate money, but also to pledge to volunteer, register their donated computer parts towards the Birthday Cause, and so on with all of it counting towards my goal
  • #4.  If people donated close together chronologically, the application would only alert me to the most recent donation, so some times I didn’t realize people had donated  to thank them in a timely way
  • #5.  I would have preferred it if my Thank You messages to my donors could have shown up on the Birthday Cause page as well as on their profiles, the same way the application creates posts to my profile when they donate and leave a message

I think it’s a great way to celebrate your birthday and support your favorite organization at the same time.  Learn more about Causes here and how you can use the Birthday Cause application for your special day!

Happy Birthday, Beth!

My good friend Beth Kanter’s birthday is coming up quickly and guess what, she is using Birthday Causes to raise funds!  If you want to wish Beth a happy birthday, you can donate to her Birthday Cause to help support The Sharing Foundation.  Learn more and support Beth here.

Great reads from December 14th through January 2nd

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on January 2, 2009
in roundup
. 0 Comments

These are my links for December 14th through January 2nd:

5-Part Social Media Process

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on January 2, 2009
in strategy
. 16 Comments

There are a TON of lists out there that identify the top _# of things to do for really anything you want to explore (whether it’s building a model or building an organization).  I’ve been thinking about these lists in terms of adopting social media tools and think that most of the lists are hitting on the same exact things.  So, why recreate the wheel over and over when the core theory is the same?

Here’s my list that I think hits at the core of all the other lists for social media strategy.

5-Part Social Media Strategy Process

Audience

Identify the audience or community you want to engage. This includes thinking about who you are already communicating with and how, as well as what groups you want to start communicating with who you currently aren’t including.  Who you want to talk to, listen to, and create a community with is the foundation for everything else you do with social media tools because it is what ultimately decides the success or failure of your other decisions—if you base your timing, tools, and process around those you want to be a part of your work, then you’ll be a lot more successful than if you pick tools you like when it’s convenient for you without considering the community you want to use them.

Resources

Identify the resources currently available within your organization. Resources include staff knowledge and comfort with different tools, experience levels of staff working with supports, volunteers, and the public, staff with time available, staff with appropriate job duties to include social media, available budget for training or workshops, etc.  Often, we forget that because the actual application/software/tool may be free, really using it is not.  What we put into our social media engagement is what we get out of it, like everything else in life.  If you only have an hour a week to post to a blog, then it is unreasonable to expect a lively conversation and community emerging from it, at least not very quickly.  By evaluating what resources you already have on hand in the organization, you are much more prepared to fully examine your options.  And remember, sometimes you assumptions about social media use and your staff can be way off!  There is something out there for all of us, and more and more people around the world are engaging online, so don’t assume that it’s only your college intern who knows how to use these tools!

Success

Identify what success will look like. This is really helpful in order to evaluate the appropriate tools for your work.  If you want to create a space for volunteers and potential volunteers to share their knowledge and experiences with each other you are going to need very different tools than if you want to create a space for volunteers and potential volunteers to share that information with you.  It’s also important to remember that social media is a changing space, with tools and applications, even functionality, evolving every day.  So, your definition of success has to be flexible to the changing times and the changing needs of your audience.

Technology

Identify what technologies are most appropriate. Now that you know who you want to communicate with, who and what you have to work with in your organization, and where you want to go with the relationships, you can identify some tools to start exploring.  There are lots of blogs, directories, and lists available online to help you get started picking tools that match your goals.  One great way to help guide you in the process of identifying and selecting the most appropriate technologies is to ask your community!  What are they using now?  How would they like to engage with your organization?  Explain what success looks like to you and ask how they would go about getting there!

Evaluation

Identify what measures of success can be used.  You know who and what, and you identified where you want to go, but before you dive in you also need to establish how you can measure and monitor activity from day 1 onward.  This includes things you are probably looking at already like the number of visitors to your website and subscribers of your emails; but, it also includes metrics based on the funcationality of the tools you choose and how you identified success.  If you are using a forum, then measuring the number of replies to post (or, if your forum allows voting, then the positive feedback on posts) could be appropriate, as well as the ratio of people signed up vs posting vs replying, etc.  It’s incredibly important for the success of your work to evaluate how things are going throughout.  If something isn’t working to the degree you had hoped, it’s okay!  Identify that issue, and correct it with either an alteration to the current tool or set up, or by shifting the group to a different, more approriate tool.  Just be sure to openly communicate your evaluations, ask for feedback (”Do you see what we see?”), and explain any changes well ahead of time.

So, get going!

Of course, the hardest part isn’t getting to day 1, but all that comes after day 1.  Creating a successful startegy for using social media isn’t completely new - you are creating strategies for your communications, fundraising, outreach, volunteer recruitment, and more.  What’s great about so many social media tools is that all of those other areas can be integrated into your work/presence online!

What part of the 5-step process above was the hardest part for your organization to tackle? Which was the easiest?  Is the process missing anything - what would you add?

Change.org Rings in New Year with More Ways to Make Change

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on January 2, 2009
in socialchange and webtools
. 4 Comments

Today, Change.org launches 7 new community areas.  The new blogs which include:

This brings the total number of cause areas featured in Change.org up to 19!  I’m really excited about the new additions but am most excited about Change.org’s realignment process which started last summer and is continuing to take shape.

Change.org integrated all nonprofit pages and actions into affiliated cause areas so that investigating an area of interest to you is much easier, and taking actions to support the cause (whether that’s supporting an organization working in the field, pledging to make a change or take action, or donating money or time) are available to you when you visit your cause area to read news, and so on.  I think it helps empower individuals to get more involved in a meaningful way (instead of leaving the site because there are too many other things going on, they can zoom in on the one area they are interested in).

How do you use Change.org?  What do you think of the platform, the cause areas, or the actions?  How would you change it or which cause areas would you add next?

NTEN Webinar: Social Media Building Blocks

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on December 23, 2008
in events
. 0 Comments

NTEN & TechSoup have teamed up to deliver a series of webinars on storytelling and social media - and I’m the presenter for the first one!

First, what’s a web-inar?

Wikipedia says:

A webinar is a neologism to describe a specific type of web conference. It is typically one-way,[1] from the speaker to the audience with limited audience interaction, such as in a webcast. A webinar can be collaborative[1] and include polling and question & answer sessions to allow full participation between the audience and the presenter. In some cases, the presenter may speak over a standard telephone line, pointing out information being presented on screen and the audience can respond over their own telephones…

Social Media Building Blocks

Is sharing really caring?  Well, it can at least boost your internal staff knowledge and your positioning as a resource in the community!

In this webinar we’ll discuss the fundamentals of sharing information with social media tools.  You don’t have to know how to do this already to take part—this is for those just starting out!  We’ll cover social bookmarking, tagging, RSS and more, plus the tools you can start using for free to do it all.

More Information and Register Now!

How you can join

I will be posting my slides on SlideShare and this blog after the event to continue the conversation started during the webinar.  I’m really looking forward to it and have already started putting together some slides and ideas.

If you have questions you want answered, ideas you want to discuss, or tools you want included, just let me know!

Click here for more information about the webinar and to register!

My Birthday Cause: Free Geek!

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on December 16, 2008
in case studies and fundraising
. 1 Comment

I have a birthday coming up and over the weekend I received an email from Causes, the social change application in Facebook.  Here’s what it said:

Happy (Almost) Birthday!

Thanks to Facebook, in two weeks all of your friends will see that it’s your birthday. Instead of just writing on your wall, or giving you something you don’t need, what if they had a chance to help a cause you believe in? Whether you want to raise money for clean water in Ethiopia, vaccinations for children in Haiti, or a safe home for a puppy in Mississipi, with a Birthday Cause your friends can give in honor of your special day.

Select your Birthday Cause today: Get Started - Learn More

Have a very happy birthday,
The Causes Team

Since we moved over here just 3 months ago, I knew that my birthday wasn’t going to be spent with all my friends from home (we are going to travel a bit though, so it’ll still be a fun day!).  No birthday party meant no one buying presents.  I wouldn’t have wanted the gifts anyway, but know that people like to give them, just as much as I do for their special days.  So, I figured this would help friends celebrate my birthday with me, but help out a worthy organization, at the same time!

I clicked through and created my birthday cause in support of Free Geek! (I’ve talked about Free Geek before and why I think they are a great organization.)

The process was simple, straightforward, easy, and most importantly, empowering.  Causes has done a great job to put the tools in the user’s hands to personalize their message, pick a cause/organization that they care about, and choose the avenues for publicizing their cause that fit their community (I didn’t want to email every person right away but just those using Causes, for example, and didn’t want to email people as often automatically as I new I would email people personally, etc.).

After I finished personalizing my Birthday Cause and alerting friends about it, I was able to place a widget on my profile so people could see it when they visited my page.  I just want to point out, this was the easiest application process I’ve ever seen: it did everything for me and I just chose what, when and where.  Even putting the widget on my page was done for me, I just clicked where I wanted it to sit!

When friends donate to the Birthday Cause, they are able to write a message that appears on my Facebook Wall.  It’s great because they get recognized as donors immediately, I get to have a birthday greeting from them, and others see the donations coming in and click through themselves to check it out.

I receive notifications by email when friends donate, and can click through from the emails to thank them, send out messages, and more.  The Causes application has really done it right with the Birthday Cause process.

The first person who tried to donate, my friend Rose Vines (a wonderfully kind, and incredibly smart woman), experienced an issue with the site and it wouldn’t let her donate - the worst situation for potential donors!  She let me know what happened and I immediately emailed the Causes team at the email address in their help section.  I received two emails from Dave: 1. just after sending in the message about the issue, he let me know they were aware of the problem and were working on it 2. the next day he emailed again to say the problem was fixed and everything should be up and running.  Though, in just that little time, I’d already had 7 successful donations and one of them was from Rose!

The next time you have a birthday, if you use Facebook, I’d encourage you to try out the Facebook Causes’ Birthday Cause application and have fun raising funds in celebration of your birthday and the great work of one of your favorite organizations!

Thanks to all those who have helped me raise much-needed support (whether it is funds or not) for Free Geek - I really appreciate it all!  And thanks again to Causes for the great application!

If you’d like to support Free Geek and wish me a happy birthday - check out my Birthday Cause!

Why I gave $20.09

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on December 13, 2008
in socialmedia
. 0 Comments

Social Actions is a nonprofit initiative that helps you find and share opportunities to change the world.  I have been working closely with the team for quite a while now because I think that versatile connections online are the only way for independent platforms to really be successful. Peter Deitz is the man behind Social Actions and here’s is how the $20.09 fundraising campaign started:

For the last 2.5 years, I have been working extremely hard to build an organization from scratch that makes it really easy for people to find and share opportunities to make a difference.

The organization, now called Social Actions, has experienced a tremendous boost in the last twelve months. I started 2008 in Cape Town, South Africa with the simple goal of working fulltime on Social Actions by July 1st.

To reach that goal, I pulled together a talented team, attracted some financial resources, and logged thousands of virtual and real world miles spreading my vision for the micro-philanthropy sector.

Remarkably, my efforts have paid off. Social Actions is now an initiative with six team members, 34 organizational partners, 100s of supporters, and a substantial list of accomplishments to its name.

Last week, from my home office in Montreal, Canada, I wrote up 9 ambitious goals for 2009.

Social Actions can meet and exceed all 9 goals, but we need roughly $12k / month to make it happen.

My team is actively pursuing foundation grants, event sponsorships, individual monthly donations and consulting services. Our efforts in these income-generating areas should start to prove themselves by February or March of 2009.

In the meantime, we are asking for individual one-time donations to cover our costs through 02/02/2009. Between now and then, we estimate our financial expenses at $20,009.

So, I gave $20.09 and you can, too! After donating, Peter emailed me to ask if I would provide a statement about why I donated to support Social Actions.  Here’s what I said:

“Social Actions is a place where I find ways to contribute to the global process of making this world better. It’s the place where I have a say in how we can make a platform and a tool that helps more people find ways to change the world, too. I’m happy to be part of the extended Social Actions family; but I’m most happy to be a supporter and a user. Go Social Actions!”

You can see what others have said about their donations to support Social Actions on the SA site here.

You can read more about the 9 goals for Social Actions in 2009 here, which include scale, translate, report, change, measure, standardize, collaborate, lead, and inspire.

Use the widget below to donate to support Social Actions in 2009, or click on the ’share’ link in the lower right corner to put the widget on your blog, website, etc.

Thanks!

Great reads from December 12th through December 13th

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on December 13, 2008
in roundup
. 2 Comments

These are my links for December 12th through December 13th:

Predictions for 2009

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on December 12, 2008
in issues and socialmedia
. 11 Comments

It’s the time of year when people start placing their bets on where we’re going next.  Developers, consultants, experts and users all like to weigh in with their predictions for 2009’s big developments, innovations and attempts for the coming year.

Yesterday, at Make Your Mark’s Social Media Afternoon, I was asked what my predictions were.  And I realized
1. I hadn’t thought about it much
2. I hadn’t blogged about it

So, here are my 2009 Predictions for the Social Web

Mashups

Mashups are great. I love them! But I think 2009 will see a more refined world of mashups take over.

We have seen plenty of mashups where a website is able to push together a mapping tool, some public data, and user-created content like comments.  I think these mashups are tremendously helpful to organizations working to make real change in their communities, allowing them to more dynamically tell their story and make their case in a compelling way to supporters, funders, and the community at large.  Mashups in this sense aren’t going anywhere, especially as platforms are built to help create them with less technical knowledge and in less time.

The mashups that will come out in 2009 are going to be ones that create hybrid spaces in between the different tools we are already using.  Mashups of applications and spaces, not just information.  We are going to see tools developed that provide a space to interact with your contacts and content in new ways.  Like FriendFeed, but to the next level - where you aren’t creating new contacts or content or spaces; but they all exist already and are ported to the in-between spaces for you and with you as you move.

Community Movement

Tools for individuals are great, but what we’ve seen in 2008 is that the tools that individuals like the most and use the most are the ones that create the most dynamic communities. Tools like Twitter, FriendFeed and social networking.

As new tools develop, whether they are the mashups above, or new tools altogether, they are going to be driven by needs of already-formed communities and not individuals.  We have lots and lots of tools at our disposal as individuals on the web.  We can do what we need to do.  What comes next is tools that accelerate and are created by the needs of communities we already work in and have created online.

This includes organizational communities, in the sense that your organization has created a space for supporters to connect with you (on your blog, Twitter, forums, wiki, whatever), as well as the network of contacts and content I have chosen to follow, subscribe to, or otherwise connect with.

Reality

Regardless of my predictions or anyone else’s, 2009 is going to be a very exciting year. The ‘networked president’ takes office in the US, many countries around the world are facing incredible financial insecurity, terrorism is plaguing many communities, and many of our ’same old problems’ continue to exist. Innovations online will certainly be tempered by those facts and the developments we see in our social media tools will need to help us continue to connect and discuss the issues we are dealing with around the world.

What are your predictions for 2009? What do you think is going to change the web next year? What was your favorite innovation from 2008?