Blog Redesign: A collaborative approach

Published in collaboration and issues. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , .

I’m really excited to [finally] announce that I’m going to be redesigning this blog/website. And, I hope it will come as no surprise to any of you when I say that I’m hoping to make it an open process!

Why

This website has been a great place for me to post ideas and share lessons learned, store content from presentations, and share resources. But, it was always something I had as the last bullet on the to-do list to update the CSS, to change the theme, generally “make it better.” As much as I have enjoyed all that we have been able to do together in this space, I’m much more excited about what we could do together in a more organized, easy to use space.

Right now, this blog could really be categorized as a blog. But I’d like it to be seen for what it is: there are tons of presentation resources (slides, notes, videos, etc.), books/publications, and other resources. But what’s really important to me, is that there are A WHOLE HECK OF A LOT of conversations here: there are around 500 posts and over 6,700 comments! I want to ensure that what you all are saying gets a lot more visibility.

Who

As I’ve been meaning to revamp the site for a couple years now, I knew that getting to done on this project would take more than myself! I put out on Twitter that I was looking for someone to help me redesign the site and connected with Matt Chevy:

I’m excited to be working with Amy and it’s clear that she’s established an outstanding community here. When she initially mentioned to me that she wanted to involve all of YOU in this process, I immediately bought in. In the world of online marketing and Social Media we talk about engagement and community involvement, and we hope to really emphasize this by encouraging and requesting your thoughts, suggestions and feedback from beginning to end. I couldn’t be more excited to get started; I’m thrilled to have connected with Amy, and I look forward to interacting with all of you!

Matt’s going to be doing the heavy lifting on the back end. But I can’t do a redesign without you, the readers!

How

So, how’s this open process going to work? Well, first of all, I’d love to hear what is most useful or valuable to you, why you keep reading and commenting, what you wish there was more of (or less of!) and any other feedback you have about doing a redesign of this site.

Next week, I’m going to be asking for lots of feedback and ideas in a series of posts. Today’s post is mostly an announcement and a heads up; next week there will be three posts asking for your ideas and preferences. That information will help Matt and I ensure that the redesign delivers on just what you want, need, and already like!

I’m really excited to update and upgrade this space and so thrilled to be working with a designer willing to work with me in this collaborative approach, keeping all of you in the process! Really hope you’ll join me next week to share your ideas.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave a comment here or email me any time.

—–

More about Matt:

Matt Cheuvront is the founder of MATTCHEVY – a Chicago-based online marketing consultancy and web design firm. With a background in advertising, marketing, e-commerce, and PR, Matt has a passion for the online medium and works with small businesses, non-profit organizations, entrepreneurs, and bloggers in improving and establishing their overall web presence.

Published on July 29, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 1 Comment

Great reads from around the web on July 29th

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I come across so many great conversations, ideas, and resources all over the web every day. Here are some of the most interesting things I’ve found recently (as of July 29th). You can join the conversations in the comments, or click through to the original posts to find what others are saying.

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

  • How Women Use the Web [REPORT] – "In the “Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet (Internet)” report, comScore concludes that women are the digital mainstream, a group of savvy Internet explorers who are more engaged than their male counterparts, and are the primary drivers of online and group buying."
  • Why Do You Participate in Twitter Chats? | Community Organizer 2.0 – "Why do people participate in Twitter chats? I’ve been thinking about that question a lot. I posed the question “what Twitter chats do you participate in and why?” on Twitter and Facebook. What came back was pretty consistent: people participate to get information, ideas, contribute to a community, and meet new people."
  • Fire Your Marketing Manager and Hire A Community Manager – David Armano – The Conversation – Harvard Business Review – "Okay, maybe that's going too far. I don't really recommend firing your marketing manager. I do however believe that most companies will eventually need to hire or contract with a community manager, if they haven't already. A recent BusinessWeek article called "Twitter Twitter Little Star," describes social media as a booming industry which has caught the attention of corporations everywhere, and suggests the role of a "social media director" and what that person should do. I'd like to dig a bit deeper into what this core function, necessary to create to what's becoming known as social engagement. I'll call the role the community manager."
  • Q&A: A West Point for Community Organizing – Walking Distance – GOOD – "Since its first boot camp in 2006 the New Organizing Institute has trained more than 700 organizers across the country in leveraging online tools to generate offline action. It’s the nation’s leading progressive advocacy and campaign training program and it’s quietly and forcefully redefining the way campaigns are run and social change happens. Judith Freeman, one of the organization’s founders, worked on the new media strategy for the Obama campaign and is using those same tactics to train leaders from organizations like the NAACP and the Red Cross. We spoke to Ms. Freeman about what community organizing looks like in the 21st century."
  • Where does Social Media belong on the Org Chart? — Global Neighbourhoods – When everyone wants a bit of the social media juice, having a strategy and usage policy become even more important. Interested to hear how organizations are dealing with this issue!
  • The Nonprofit Social Media Decision Guide | Idealware – "Social media can be useful to your organization… but how useful? For what? What tangible results are people seeing from it? Created in partnership with the New Organizing Institute, the Decision Guide walks you through a step-by-step process to decide what social media channels make sense for your organization via a workbook, guide, and the results of more than six months of research. And through the included Consultant Directory, you can find a professional to help define and implement your strategy."
Published on July 29, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

Monthly Chats about Community Building: Are you with me?

Published in community and events. 13 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Last month, I moderated the June #4Change chat with the topic of “community building”. There were some excellent ideas and tips, and generally great conversation. The problem for me with the chat was twofold:

1. Twitter fail. It has become a regular occurrence for our monthly #4change chats to find Twitter not even working. This has meant some chats haven’t happened, some have stopped early or operated on a very slow conversation, and others (like last month’s chat) have moved off twitter and onto another platform all together. What this says to me is that the chats aren’t successful because of Twitter, but because of the people engaged.

2. One time. The #4change chats are once a month events that have taken place over the last year.  Each month there’s a new topic. We’ve covered some really interesting areas and engaged with a diverse network. We also have a great core of participants that contribute to every chat (you know who you are, rockstars!). The problem for me is that I’m far more invested and interested in certain topics than others (naturally) and I don’t have an outlet to discuss regularly in the same way. In the last chat, there was a lot of mention and enthusiasm for a monthly chat specifically on community building. And I’m here to say I’ll make it happen – if you’re with me!

Launching Monthly Community Builder Chats

Next Steps:

I can’t do this without you :) So, I’d love to hear from you about how we can design this together to be most successful, and then we can get started!

Please take just a few minutes to share your responses to the questions below in the comments.

I’m asking that you use the comments (instead of a survey or something) because I want responses to be public (if you want a response to be private for any reason, you can always email me) and provide opportunity for discussion and response.

  • Why do you want to participate in a chat about community building, community management, and community driven projects?
  • What kind of chat is most valuable to you: presenter w/ q/a, moderated chat but no “presenter,” open conversation space?
  • Is once a month good?
  • Where should these conversations take place? (Twitter despite the fails? CoverItLive? Other platforms?)
  • Anything else you want to add!

I’m really looking forward to your responses and hoping that we can launch the first monthly chat in August! Thanks for all your contributions and ideas in advance :)

Published on July 28, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 13 Comments

Community-Driven Social Impact: Presentation & Workshop at Amplified Leicester

Published in community and presentation. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

This morning I had the great pleasure and honor to present at Amplified Leicester about Community-Driven Social Impact, and run a short strategy-building workshop.

Amplified Leicester is managed by the Institute of Creative Technologies, De Montfort University in partnership with the DMU Centre for Social Action and Phoenix Square Digital Media Centre. The project is commissioned and supported by NESTA, an independent body with a mission to make the UK more innovative.

Amplified Leicester is a city-wide experiment designed to grow the innovation capacity of Leicester by networking key connectors across the city’s disparate and diverse communities in an incentivised participatory project enabled by social media.

Project objectives:
• To develop a transferable model for amplifying a diverse city’s grassroots innovation capacity through connecting diverse communities through key individuals
• To provide practical examples of how collaborative technologies can be exploited in a city context

The group is in an interesting position, preparing to move from the incubated group that it has been thus far to a more open group meeting less often (moving from every other week to once a month) in collaboration with CreativeCoffee. They are also hoping to learn from and document their experiences to share as a model with the larger global community looking to do something similar. Be sure to watch their space for more!

Presentation

Community-Driven Social Impact for Amplified Leicester

There were two key elements that emerged in group discussion that I think are really important to note: A community-driven approach relies on two assumptions.

  • That you know your community. You can communicate with, build programs or content together, and operate in collaboration with a community that you don’t know. Who are they, what do they do, where do they do it, what do they like, what do they have in common with you, and what would they be interested in doing together?
  • That you and your community trust each other.  Even if you know who your community is, chances are that you won’t get very far trying to work/build/collaborate together if the community doesn’t trust you. And (don’t forget this bit) if you don’t trust the community. This point underlies all of the best practices and organizational culture required for successful community-driven social impact work.

Workshop

I facilitated a modified version of the Social by Social game, created to focus on the 4 strategic points highlighted int he presentation: Who’s the community, where’s the sweet spot, what tools could help, which roles are needed.  Ideally, you’d run this workshop with your team, organization, community group, etc. But, in this case, as participants represented all different groups, I asked them to think about each question from their own perspective and then share with the table some of their ideas to spark conversation.

Get the game pieces here:

You Examples

Are you working on a community-driven project or looking to start one? What questions do you have? What lessons can you share? Or, if you’re underway, tell us about your project!

Published on July 28, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 1 Comment

Designing Programs to Build Community: Case Study with Charity Technology Trust

Published in case studies and resources. 12 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

This afternoon I had the pleasure and honor of spending a few hours with members of the Charity Technology Trust/Charity Technology Exchange team, part of the TechSoup Global network, exploring their options for creating programs or services to build and foster community throughout their network. Below you can find notes and ideas from today’s session – would love to hear your thoughts and feedback!

Background:

CTX services over 8,000 charity and community organizations in the UK and wants to nurture that network of organizations by providing more than just software and services, but also opportunities to build community.

Key Questions:

The session was designed to be a conversation – with an avid note taker (me). For many organizations with a small number of staff, it’s a luxury to have time to sit, talk, and think aloud together. I wanted this session to be a chance to relax, think big and critically, and pull out ideas from everyone. I came with a list of questions that I used to steer the conversation to ensure not only were we focused, but also that each question pushed us closer to our goal of identifying opportunities for community-focused programs or services.

  1. Who is the community? This conversation should naturally define segments or groups, as well as the attributes that define those members.
  2. What services already exist? This is both locally and globally. Ideally, the conversation with map the various services to the segments or groups who already/could benefit.
  3. What’s the sweet spot? The sweet spot is the middle or cross section between what you (the organization) want to do and what the community (or member organizations) want to do. The overlap is the area where you should focus your capacity.
  4. What capacity/resources are in place? This means everything from physical resources to knowledge and staff to the entire network.  Reinventing the wheel is usually not a very successful option.
  5. What roles or resources are needed? Now that we have talked about who the community is and what it wants, as well as our goals and current resources, we have probably also identified opportunities for engagement – it may be ideas for specific groups or the whole network and it may be supporting an effort another group is already spearheading or starting something new. Whatever it is, we need to identify the people/roles and resources needed to make it successful.
  6. Next steps. Phew – after a long conversation and work session like this, it was exiting to talk next steps!

So how did it really go? Here’s a brief recap:

Who is the community?

We had a very valuable conversation about members of the different parts of the CTX community, and the segments that emerged included readers/consumers, activists, donor partners, participants/contributors, and others. One important note was that all groups include organizational staff and “free agents” which means there are various motivations and perspectives in every group.

Part of our conversation about who the community was and how it was broken down into groups also included some dedicated brain time about some of the words we were using. We created a separate area of the white board where we could collect words we used in conversation that were actually indicitative of much more – words that were clues to what CTX wanted in a community space, attributes of a “terms of service” type agreement for a community, and words that even would later become keys to identifying the next steps and appropriate technology options. These words included things like: open, mutuality, learning, not “techie,” not about CTX, knowledge sharing and storytelling (and more).

What already exists?

When it comes to the kind of community engagement and knowledge sharing that CTX wants to catalyze, looking at the field of what exists covers some dynamic ground. For example, there are others creating or sharing content specifically about tech, like ComputerWorld, UKRiders and CharityWebForum. There are organizations creating content like NAVCA, NCVO, LASA with the Knowledgebase, and KnowHow NonProfit. There’s also non-branded content (non-nonprofit or non-tech) as well as non-UK specific groups and resources. As CTX operates through partnerships with donor partners, all those donors have their own resources and content about tools and services.  Lastly, there are lots of 1-time or regular events that surface ideas and case studies and generate content that could be really useful to pull in or capture.

But what is missing from everything that exists? In CTX’s eyes it is the engagement, aggregation, or the weaving of people and ideas, questions and answers. That’s the key.

What’s the sweet spot?

The sweet spot is the place where what your community wants and what you want overlap. In the case of CTX, the sweet spot had key words like:

  • open
  • connecting people in a way that recognizes/respects many hats and real context
  • aggregating conversations in a way that lets CTX and users analyze the data (know you’re not the only one asking a question, measure interest in ideas, etc.)
  • peer to peer
  • positively incorporates promotion and visibility
  • questions answered
  • storytelling, not tech forum q/a but explanation of why and how
  • rich content that’s unique
  • inspirational and empowering both in knowledge and engagement

What’s in place now?

There’s a drupal/civicrm system in place and a community space that was a beta trial (that is closing down), plus knowledge/experience on the team of using tools like facebook, twitter and wiki platforms. Relationships with most all of the groups listed in “what already exists” which is huge. Essential to success is the fact that there is about .5 FTE in place already with the potential to have interns or other contractors already in place dedicate time.

An important realization that emerged from the conversation, though, was that something in place now is a work flow and organizational culture that doesn’t match where they want to be. This lead directly to the last question:

What’s needed?

The CTX team members in the meeting asked some great questions about the way others have created community spaces before and what helped them be successful. The cultural shift that they see necessary for their situation is one that puts the community space (whatever form it takes) into the work flow of staff – for example when staff field questions from organizations who received a particular donation, they could post the question and the answer or resource in a public place.

Experience and knowledge about best practices and how to successfully build community was something the CTX team felt was obvious but not something they had. This lead into a conversation about choosing tools and guiding creation of a space – is that something they decide or do they find a community builder and leave them to the decisions? A similar chicken-or-the-egg conundrum was the conflict of creating one central space vs creating a presence across the social web, where a community builder would concentrate on pulling people in vs pulling together content across the network respectively.  Is aggregation the goal and thus the desire to pull content together into one place or is action the key and getting people talking wherever they are?

Next steps

Everyone loves next steps – it’s my favorite part of any meeting! Part of the next steps are writing up these thoughts and notes to we can continue to think and talk about it. We are also going to explore a few options including The Groupery, Wagn (in use like connectipedia), and others.

I’ll be sure to keep you posted as things develop!

—–

I really hope that sharing these notes is helpful for anyone else looking to explore options and strategic planning for community-focused programs or products. Let me know if it is, and what you’re working on – or why it isn’t and what you’ve found that works better!

Published on July 21, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 12 Comments

Great reads from around the web on July 19th

Published in roundup. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

I come across so many great conversations, ideas, and resources all over the web every day. Here are some of the most interesting things I’ve found recently (as of July 19th). You can join the conversations in the comments, or click through to the original posts to find what others are saying.

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

  • Blood and Milk » Blog Archive » Ushahidi, Twitter, and the future of foreign aid – Alanna's post is a great example of the power of networks, social media, and open systems. As she notes, her example has luck but it is an example of a growing model of a changing world. What do you think?
  • Net2 Think Tank Round-up: Age Segmentation in Social Networking | NetSquared – "For this month's Net2 Think Tank, we asked you to share your thoughts and best practices for using social media with or for a particular age group. We are hoping to understand what tools or practices appeal to different age groups online and how organizations can best target their efforts to those audiences. This round-up is a summary of the responses we received from the community and it will hopefully serve to help you re-think the ways that you're targeting your limited audience." Add your thoughts or blog posts in the comments!
  • Marketing for Nonprofits: Want to Build Community Online? Become a Bridge Builder. – "Marketing online, in particular, is much more than putting up a static website to announce your gala or ask people to volunteer. It's about having a CONVERSATION with people who care about your work and can help you reach your goals. OK, you've heard this before. But the real question is, HOW do you become a community manager and/or how do you find the right person for the job? What is the skill set you should be looking for?"
  • Social Spaces – I'm really excited to see Social Spaces, a project fueled by a friend a colleague, take off! Social Spaces is project which studies positive community projects and aims to test if these types of projects can be stimulated elsewhere through spreading ideas and practices. It is currently focused on 5 main areas: Hand Made – Portraits of Emergent New Culture, Traveling Pantry, Community of Practice, Organizational Workshops, and Research. Check it out!
  • Don't focus on technology, focus on behavior — SocialFish – This presentation by Paul Adams, Senior User Experience Researcher at Google, reposted on the SocialFish blog, nails home a point I feel like I talk about it every day: it's not about the technology, it's about the people! Great slides.
Published on July 19, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 2 Comments

Community-Driven Social Impact: Presentation & Game

Published in presentation and socialbysocial. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Today I had the great pleasure and honor of presenting at the National Conference on Service and Volunteering. I had a 90-minute workshop which was broken into two parts: a bit of presentation, and a bit of game time. The presentation focused on 4 strategic steps, 3 sets of best practices, and a few case studies for creating programs, services, content, and campaigns in a community-driven process.

Presentation:

Community-Driven Social Impact

Resource links:

  • http://amysampleward.org/2010/05/07/guest-post-on-online-community-report-sustainable-community-building/
  • http://amysampleward.org/2009/08/06/online-community-building-gardening-vs-landscaping/
  • http://netsquared.org/camps
  • http://350.org
  • http://connectipedia.org
  • http://socialbysocial.com

Game:

To play the game with your organization, team or community group, use the documents below to share the grid and other pages to print and cut out the playing cards. The Grid is used as follows:

  1. Who is your community? Share everything you can think of!
  2. What’s the sweet spot? This is the intersection or overlap of the community’s goals and your organization’s goals. What are you going to work on together?
  3. What tools could help? This is where you’ll use the tool cards. Use 10 as the limit when you add up the numbers on the cards – those correspond to the equivalent capacity needed to support the use of the tool.
  4. What roles are needed? This is where you’ll use the role cards. Remember that these are only some of the roles that may be appropriate for your project.
CDSI Game – Grid

View more documents from Amy Sample Ward.
CDSI Game – Tools

View more documents from Amy Sample Ward.
CDSI Game – Roles

View more documents from Amy Sample Ward.
Published on June 29, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 5 Comments

Interview: Kedar Iyer, PickyPolly

Published in interview. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , .

I recently had the opportunity to connect with Kedar to learn about a new project to help users measure and manage their consumption, in effect encouraging them to control their environmental impact.  I found the project so interesting that I wanted to share it with you here in an interview, covering some key questions from Kedar.  There’s also a chance for you to provide your feedback, ideas, and even contribute!

—–

Kedar is an activist of sustainable living and collaborative creation. He is involved with BarCamp events, TwtrTales, a twitter based story writing project and Picky Polly. His learnings come from experiences that span an education in electronics and telecommunications, multi-cultural professional engagements in software development and communications, a business administration student life in pretty Paris and experiments in implementing technological solutions for social challenges.

Since turning vegetarian over a year ago due to self consciousness about the unsustainable nature of meat production, he has been trying to think of solutions that could better engage people to change their current habits for collective good.

Where did the idea for Picky Polly come from?

Since moving to Dubai over 3 years ago, I’ve observed that this city is the epitome of excessive consumption. UAE residents also have one of the largest ecological footprints on our planet. Using this behavior among residents as inspiration I felt compelled to do something about it.

Taking the lead from other measurement tools like the Google Power Meter that helps people take control of their energy usage and alter behavior, I felt mobile devices could act as an even more powerful tool in providing information and changing they way we shopped and used things in addition to household energy consumption.

Thus came along the idea of a personal ecological footprint measurement tool that helps people make better choices and transform lifestyles, Picky Polly.

What’s your goal for the new tool?

As a society we have largely stopped being picky about things we consume. But as co-inhabitants of this single planet we need to take more control and responsibility for the types of lives we lead. This consciousness and reason to change for our collective sustainability can only come from the awareness of our individual impact due to over consumption. Picky Polly aims to deliver that information for every item used by us and also help transform us by learning from our peers’ behaviors.

What’s different about Picky Polly from other “consumption + competition” tools people may have used before on facebook or elsewhere?

Numerous websites and mobile applications currently exist to help us get a rough idea of our ecological footprints by asking us questions to approximate our lifestyle patterns e.g. number of people in a household, distance driven in a month, miles flown in a year, vegetarian/ non-vegetarian, etc. These are good measuring tools in raising awareness about the ecological disaster that lies ahead, but they do not sufficiently motivate me to alter my behavior with using plastic bags at the corner store or buying a cup of coffee on my way into work or eating a burger from a popular fast-food chain. These are the kinds of purchases or behaviors, if changed will result in significantly larger social change.

I have not yet come across a robust and handy mobile solution that takes all the disparate pieces of information available to help people track their current impact and alter it based on self improvement, peer reviews and expert recommendations.

Picky Polly is simply an open and collaborative technological tool, firstly providing people a better way to measure themselves and secondly to provide relevant and contextual feedback (with incentives/ rewards) to alter their lifestyle patterns/ choices.

What are the implications of such a tool on our production-heavy consumption-driven society?

There are numerous way this tool can improve the way the consumption cycle of our society change. It is meant to work it’s way from the conscious measurement of people’s behavior.

  1. Social Change: Better inform people to make the right choices
  2. Information Transparency: Better labeling of products and inquiry into resource usage, labor use, toxics, health, etc
  3. Government policy: Rewarding citizens for their behavioral changes and better regulating toxic products.
  4. New product development: Helping businesses learn from changes in social behavior and better adapt products/ packaging to people’s sustainable needs.
  5. Community production: Encouraging entrepreneurs to find community solutions to meet the localized needs.

These are just some ways, that come my mind, Picky Polly can assist the different parties mentioned from its measurements of local lifestyle patterns.

What help could you use at this stage?

I am no expert in the field of sustainable living, rather a passionate fellow citizen of this world who could use help and collaboration from

  • the Netsquared community in the form of feedback on the idea,
  • experts in understanding the footprint life cycle consumables,
  • game designers to help design compelling social incentives,
  • 3. mobile application developers to build a robust prototype.

Additionally, I’m aware that such a project requires reasonable commitment of time from the above people and hence any financially support from a believer in the idea for the creation of a working prototype is also most welcome.

PS: Financers will of course be rewarded a stake in the eventually funded entity. :)

What else are you working on?

I’m also involved in TwtrTales, a project that would like to leverage the creative potential of twitter users in writing collaborative stories. This project has many similarities with Picky Polly, like co-creator credits, collaboration between participants and peer reviews which I’m learning more about as I go along.

How can readers get involved or follow your work?

I have recently started a Tumblog at www.pickypolly.com to document efforts by others providing practical information on sustainable living and to include podcasts with individuals and organizations that help make better everyday choices.

Additionally, I’m can be reached on Twitter, would also love to converse with you over email at kedar dot iyer at gmail.com or connect on LinkedIn.

Published on June 28, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 1 Comment

Interview: Kivi Leroux Miller, The Nonprofit Marketing Guide

Published in interview and marketing. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , .

I’ve followed Kivi’s work for years and am happy to call her a colleague and friend. She’s a go-to resource for nonprofit marketing and her new book is called The Nonprofit Marketing Guide (get your copy here).  I’m thrilled to have the chance to share an interview with her here and encourage you to add your questions in the comments! This interview is part of her virtual book tour; check out the full calendar of events.

—–

Kivi Leroux Miller helps small nonprofits and communications departments of one make a big impression with smart, savvy communications and marketing. She’s a blogger, trainer, coach, and consultant. Her new book, “The Nonprofit Marketing Guide: High-Impact, Low-Cost Ways to Build Support for Your Good Cause,” is part survival guide and part nitty-gritty how-to handbook for nonprofit communicators.

What’s your story; how did you get started with nonprofit marketing?
Ever since college (which is going on 20 years ago), I don’t think more than a couple of months have gone by where I wasn’t serving on a nonprofit board, funding nonprofits as a grantmaker, or working for nonprofits as staff or as a consultant. When I moved from California to Washington DC in 1998 to be with my then-boyfriend, now-husband, I decided to start my own consulting company, which originally focused on writing for environmental groups, thus EcoScribe Communications was born. In 2007 I started to transition away from consulting for a few clients at a time to more writing, online training, and public speaking, which lets me connect with thousands of nonprofits every year. I love it!

What kind of organizations have you worked with?
My degree is in environmental science, so I started with environmental groups and then branched out to other progressive causes like animal welfare and HIV/AIDS support organizations. I’ve always preferred to work with smaller organizations because I felt like my impact was always greater there. Now that I’m doing online training, I’ve had small nonprofits in all 50 U.S. states, in nearly every Canadian province/territory, and more than two dozen other countries participate in webinars. They represent every kind of nonprofit you can think of!

What’s the difference between online and offline marketing – or is there one?
I think they are more alike than many people think — at least the people who get tied up focusing on the tools, rather than what they are trying to do with the tools. Good nonprofit marketing is all about knowing who is on the other side of the conversation and talking with them about your cause in ways that are meaningful for them, regardless of whether that conversation is taking place in person or over email or social media.

What are the biggest obstacles organizations face when it comes to successful marketing?
If you put aside basic resource issues of time and money, I think fear is actually one of the biggest obstacles. Nonprofits seem to be more acutely concerned than small businesses, for example, about what someone might think or what someone might say about this or that, and it makes them too cautious and conservative in their marketing. It’s like they just want to quietly blend in, when what they really need to do with their marketing is stand out! I talk about several ways to deal with that kind of fear in the book.

We know storytelling is important for grant applications and fundraising appeals, how is it most useful in marketing?
Stories are the best way to bring to life for people what it is you do. So many nonprofits have long lists of programs and services that are laden with jargon, and after you read them, you still don’t really understand what happens day in and day out. Stories provide the examples and the context for what nonprofits are doing. They are essential from a marketing perspective, because they are so much easier to remember and to pass on to others than straight facts and figures. They also usually contain an emotional punch that grabs you and sticks with you. The staying power of stories is really underestimated.

In your book, you use the term “Attitude of Gratitude” – just what does that mean?
It means that you embed being thankful into your everyday approach to your work. It’s easy for all of us, in both our personal lives and in our professional lives, to take others for granted. We all get too busy; we all start to expect more from the people who are good to us than we really deserve to (yes, I’m speaking from experience!).

On a practical level, having an attitude of gratitude means putting higher priority on getting your fundraising thank you letters out to your donors than on producing a newsletter that goes to your entire list. It also means reciprocating the generosity of others, which you can do with something as simple as a retweet.

With so many options for tools, products, and channels today, how do organizations keep marketing to a reasonable budget (while still making a big splash)?
Online marketing is so affordable that managing the time budget is actually a bigger challenge than managing the money budget. It all goes back to focusing on specific groups of people who you need to reach and selecting the tools that make is easiest to connect with them. The book is full of cost-saving and time-saving tips because all of the groups I work with have very limited quantities of both!

How can readers learn more about your work, your book, and follow the conversation?
NonprofitMarketingGuide.com is the home base. From there, I write a weekly e-newsletter and I  blog a couple of times a week. You can also find me on our Facebook Page and I’m kivilm on Twitter and Slideshare.

The book is available at Amazon.com and other online booksellers.

Published on June 24, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 4 Comments

Case Study in Free Agent Fundraising @AbolishCancer

Published in case studies and fundraising. 14 Comments Tags: , , , , .

I often talk about individuals when I’m discussing the way social media can be used to support organizations. Why? Because social media may be about networks, communities, and collaboration; but it is only possible because of the dynamic and powerful tools individuals are using. Social networks are built from all the content individuals share.  Collaborative tools are valuable because of the options for bringing individuals working on a project into a shared space.

Is you’re organization looking to support free agent fundraisers and the changemakers who are passionate about your cause, want to support your work, but do it their way? One thing you can do right now to help is create a Supporter Toolkit on your website with logos, ready to use content and mission statement, links to all your social media profiles/presences, and anything else that would be helpful for someone looking to fundraise or campaign for you.

Case Study

I recently connected with Darah Bonham, the driver behind @abolishcancer. A free agent changemaker having success fundraising with Twitter. I want to share that story!

In Darah’s words:

I basically started the site in November as a combination of social media interests and helping others in their fight vs cancer.  I thought that the Twitter feed @abolishcancer, which is the entire org, except for the blog, would be strictly focused on developing a following that had one thing in common- to fight cancer.  The premise was that if I could sponsors of my site for a day, we would donate $1 for every new follower we received that day.  The sponsor would be committed to pay the charity at the conclusion of the day.  The end result would be more followers for us, great PR for the sponsor (and a good deed) and $ and awareness through tweet to the cancer charity.
Originally we recommended that all the donations from the sponsorships would go towards American Cancer Society.  I had a girl from Ireland agree as my first sponsor in November and we earned 65 new followers. She made the donation the next day and we were off.  Although, it was fairly slow in sponsorships early going.  I had several hundred followers and was following a thousand or so and getting a sponsor about every two weeks or so with an average of $50 new followers each time.  Not bad, but nothing fantastic.
Then @THON came along.  THON is the largest student run philanthropic organization and is run by students at PSU.  I stumbled across some of their senior leaders and began to form a relationship through our tweets.  In January I asked the typical “looking for a sponsor” tweet and a junior from Penn State @PatHowley agreed to sponsor on that Friday.  I told him that the average was $50 new followers and we were set.  Around noon that Friday I noticed my followers going up at a steady pace, about 150 or so, then it happened… the followers started to go off the radar.  I couldn’t figure it out.  I started looking at the mentions and noticed that Kim Kardashian had retweeted it.  With over 1 million followers, that’s all it took.  By the end of the day I had 1.734 new followers which = $1,734 owed by Pat to THON ( who we agreed the money would go to ahead of time) from a bus boy trying to make ends meet.  The story had an even better ending as Pat was able to leverage the publicity from the event and raise a total of $8,000 to donate.
Since, we have let the sponsor choose whoever they would like as a cancer charity.  We have been fortunate that a nectar company in California, @Delprado, has now done 3 sponsorships One for @VTRelay for $1,400, one for 5 yr old boy & mom with cancer $3,200 and one for @Shannonleetweetd’s @RallyForKids $3,600.  In all total we have raised over $11,000 by simply tweeting and getting followers.  I have never touched a dollar of the donations and make nothing.  My value is the collection of followers for a common cause.
I have been fascinated with how a message can go viral and have learned some interesting tricks as to how to make a message get retweeted.  Obviously, with celebrities tweeting about your message, the odds improve. George Lopez, Shannon Tweed, Russell Crowe, Alyssa Milano, Larry King, and others have tweeted and in some cases followed our work.  I trully beleive that a community can be formed and connected through something like Twitter and they can be a force to be reckoned with.
My goal is to get 1 million followers, but more importantly to get a sponsor for each day of the year while support ing a new charity each day.  The key, of course, is that I need sponsors for each of these days.  These are somewhat slow to come by but my justification is this…for $5,000 or less (unless Ashton Kutcher OR President Obama tweet about it) a sponsor will help out a cancer charity and will get at least that many tweets about their sponsorship.  5,000 NEW followers to abolishcancer would = at least 5,000 tweets about the cancer charity and the sponsor b/c people have to go out and get NEW followers, existing followers don’t count.  Hopefully businesses will see the value in this and start stepping up more.
At any rate, it has been very fun, educational, and heartfelt with the response and results we have gotten.  I only hope we can continue to sustain it.  In the meantime I get lots of pleasure (and sadness) by retweeting about people’s needs, successes, and plights as it relates to cancer.  Awareness is as important as the $ itself.
As my tag line says, for which I believe, “Power of the People, through Twitter, to help @abolishcancer“
If you want to learn more or get involved, connect on Twitter at http://twitter.com/abolishcancer
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Looking forward to conversation about this story – what are your questions? Ideas? Reactions? Do you have an example to share, too?
Published on June 18, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 14 Comments