Monthly Archive for August, 2008

Digging Deeper in Global Giving’s Green-ness

Published in fundraising. 10 Comments Tags: , .

I blogged recently about Global Giving Green, but wanted to dig a bit deeper to find out more about this ‘greenness.’

The original announcement from GG said, “GlobalGiving Green is a brand new way for you to help solve that dilemma. Using a unique scientific evaluation system, we’ve carefully pre-screened initiatives that offer win-win solutions — helping people while protecting the planet.”  But, I wanted to find out what green projects looked like, how users would know if a project was green or not, and how the ‘green-ness’ of the site/projects effected me as a possible-donor.  So, I investigated…

How Green projects are identified:
When you are looking at a list of projects, like Green Technology, you will notice a green leaf above the project title.  Clicking on the leaf shows you attributes of the project that qualified it as a green effort.  Additionally, you can click for more details and see the numbers/grades for each green category to help further inform your donation choices.

How do you know if the project is green?
If you are on the Global Giving Green website, then you know the projects are all green.  If you are on the standard Global Giving site, though, I can’t figure out how to find projects that are green—making me think the sites are not talking to each other, meaning the ‘green’ information can only be found by visiting the GGG site.

Effect of green-ness:
I am a very green-aware consumer, community member, and supporter, so it isn’t surprising to me that when I visit the GGG site I am happy to browse through the information on the leaf icons and compare projects based on the areas I think are most important.  What I think Global Giving did right, was to offer as much information as people like me would want, but hide it a bit so every visitors can decide if they want to learn more or not.  The icon appear for everyone, but you can use it access much more if you are ready for it.  All in all, the openness and awareness of green information really encourages me to support more projects that I may have otherwise because I really do feel that I get to help out a project and help save the planet!

What are your thoughts when you visit the Global Giving Green site?  Do you feel more inclined to donate to a project knowing that it is “green” and having access to the green information?

Published on August 29, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 10 Comments

Blog Action Day 08: Focusing on poverty

Published in community and events. 2 Comments Tags: , .

I plan to participate on October 15th in the Blog Action Day 2008 and hope that you will, too!

"Blog Action Day is an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day. Our aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion."

Blogging, as I have talked about many times in the past, is really about conversations and I think the idea behind Blog Action Day is the perfect example of that.  By encouraging as many people to focus on the same issue for one day we can ignite ideas, conversations, and even actions to help fight poverty and the issues related to it.

I’m excited to participate and hope to blog about some great examples of social media use by poverty-focused organizations as well as the missions and work of those groups.  So, join me for Blog Action Day this year and help further the reach of the conversation!

Published on August 28, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 2 Comments

Funding for Innovation: Digital Media and Learning Competition

Published in fundraising. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

The Digital Media and Learning Competition from MacArthur Foundation & HASTAC has just opened for applications.  Last year was the first round of the competition and saw $2 million awarded to 17 projects.  This year, another $2 million will be given away to learning entrepreneurs, educators, innovators, and communicators.

Applications are closed at October 15.  Check out the Guidelines, and submit your project!

Published on August 28, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

Make your messaging fun!

Published in case studies, marketing and storytelling. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Originally posted on the Net Squared blog.

Sending out yet another email to your members can be painful sometimes when you really want to say the same thing you’ve already tried to tell them countless times. We’ve all been there, either on the sending or receiving end of those messages. But, making something fun that delivers the message means you get to make something new and interesting, your members get to enjoy what you’ve created and the message is in there without any more of the boring blah blah blah. But, how do you do that?

Earth Day Networks’ Lesson in Making the Message Fun

Lesson learned: engage your members first, and actions (both service and donations) will come more naturally.

EDN sent out an email message announcing the new ecological footprint calculator. It doesn’t talk about any other programs nor does it ask for anything other than checking out the tool. (To see the original email, see file below.) With five links back, the messages says:

Earth Day Network has just released its newest tool to combat climate change: The new, updated, and much more fun Ecological Footprint Calculator.

In this new tool created by Global Footprint Network, you can create a three-dimensional avatar of your choosing, and tour your virtual neighborhood. Then you will be asked a series of questions about your food consumption, energy use, favorite mode of transportation, type of residence, recycling commitment, and spending habits. You can even choose to take a long version or a short version of the quiz!

The Footprint Calculator will tell you how many “planets” would be necessary to sustain human life- if everyone lived just like you, and how many acres of land and tons of carbon necessary to sustain your lifestyle. You can even revisit your quiz to see where she “went wrong”, and find out how to reduce your carbon footprint.

If you are a teacher or professor, encourage your students to take the quiz and experiment with the answers. An interesting, engaging and highly educational way to teach sustainability and inspire change.

The message isn’t the most important part of the package, though it is important (and anyone who has tried to write copy for an email announcement knows how true that is). What is important to consider here is what you can do when you click through to the calculator. In a Second Life-like way, visitors create a virtual-self (choose hair, skin, and clothes colors) that walks through a virtual land. As the virtual-self walks down the street, questions pop up asking about consumption, travel and housing. The answers determine what kinds of structures are built up and factor into the carbon footprint calculation. I’ve never had so much fun facing the reality of carbon usage!

After answering all of the questions and determining a score, visitors are provided with a few options, including editing the footprint questions, exploring scenarios to change the footprint in real-life, learning more, taking action, and joining the network. These are all great options for further engaging a now more-knowledgeable visitor, and further building a relationship based not only on the organization’s mission/work, but on what he or she can get out of the relationship with the organization that further supports that mission/work (more of the changing the world business!). Engaging with new (and return) visitors first is the key to building a lasting relationship with members/funders online.

Check out the Earth Day Network’s Footprint Calculator!

What unique techniques have you or your organization used in sending out a message in a new way? Is there an organization you think does this well?

Leave a comment on the Net Squared blog, too!

Published on August 27, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

Organizations putting blogs to good use

Published in blogging and case studies. 8 Comments Tags: , , .

Posted first on the Net Squared blog

The number of people blogging is still growing (just check Technorati for numbers), but the number of organizations starting blogs is rising, too. After enough staff members and volunteers touted the usefulness of blogs for conversation, news, and general transparency, it seems organizations are looking to give blogs a chance. Organizations of all sizes and sectors are utilizing this community building tool. Here are some examples of how far and wide blogs are being used to reach out to the community.

ARK Adventure

The ARK Adventure is a small organization working to facilitate random acts of kindness and passion in the communities of members/participants.The ARK Adventure Blog provides a space for the organization’s directors/staff to share ideas and ignite conversation about social change and community involvement.

African American Environmentalist Association

AAEA is dedicated to protecting the environment, enhancing human, animal and plant ecologies, promoting the efficient use of natural resources and increasing African American participation in the environmental movement. The AAEnironmental Blog is a great example of a successful organizational blog. It doesn’t get a high number of comments, but it does get some and is providing thoughtful, timely, and important pieces of news, information and commentary to the community. It also makes terrific use of the side bar panel to provide more information, relevant links (like to the organization’s main website), and actions for readers.

Dining for Women

Dining for Women empowers women living in extreme poverty by funding programs fostering good health, education, and economic self-sufficiency and cultivates educational dinner circles inspiring individuals to make a difference through the power of collective giving. The DFW Blog covers big questions like sustainable program funding, as well as personal and fun stories like trips and meetups. Members have a valuable contribution to make to this volunteer-driven organization by participating in the blog; you can see this by reading comments to questions posed regarding the organization itself.

PolicyLink

The EquityBlog is a project of PolicyLink to help nurture and inspire the nation’s equity movement. It does a good job of providing relevant and fresh content in an engaging way, as well as provide additional resource links for visitors. Keeping the recent comments list at the top of the page encourages visitors to participate right away.

Meyer Memorial Trust

Meyer Memorial Trust is a private foundation serving Oregon and southwest Washington providing general purpose and strategic funding for over 25 years. MMT uses a few different blogs to engage different constiuents and provide tailored pockets of information. Most notably, the MMT Main Blog, which covers organizational updates and sector-wide news, engages nonprofits and other foundations alike in an open and conversational way—just check out the responses to the blog entry discussing what the name ‘non-profit’ means to the sector.

Does your organization have a blog? Who maintains/contributes to it? How does it fit in with other communications, fundraising, or campaign work?

Published on August 25, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 8 Comments

New Google AdWords-Style Widget Recommends “Related Ways to Take Action”

Published in socialchange. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

Note: Social Actions is asking people to Digg this launch announcement.  Please take less than 30 seconds to vote for this article on Digg.

Social Actions is proud to announce the launch of a revolutionary widget that recommends to readers of your blog or website related ways to take action.  The widget automatically identifies the keywords on any page and lists social change campaigns related to the stuff you’re writing about. These campaigns are gathered from social action platforms like Kiva, DonorsChoose, Change.org, GlobalGiving, Care2, Idealist.org, and fourteen others.

Find out what actions would be recommended for your blog or favorite website >>

Because the new widget pulls actions from 20 social action platforms, it can recommend actions based on a wide variety of content.  Whether you’re writing about your local community, pop culture, or green living – you can expect to surprise your readers with related ways to make a difference.

Read the rest of the article and Digg it it here.

Published on August 20, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 2 Comments

Digital Makeover Update: SYFAB’s first steps

Published in case studies and socialmedia. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .

I just posted an update on the Digital Makeover project to the Net Squared site.  I’ve blogged about the Digital Makeover Project from Simon Fairway before (you can read those posts here and here) ad think the steps being taken are really interesting, and a great learning showcase for other organizations.

South Yorkshire Funding Advice Bureau is a voluntary organisation and registered charity set up to help voluntary and community organisations get the resources they need and was selected as the featured organization in the Digital Makeover project because of the organization’s openness to technology and change, and the capacity and culture to adopt new approaches. You can read more about the organization and the assessed overview here.

The first steps of the digital makeover, lead by Simon Fairway of Juvi Media and Danny Antrobus from SYFAB, have been to start a blog, a news website, and install Google Analytics.  You can review Simon’s posts to the Net Squared community about the Digital Makeover steps.  Here are some of my key questions, read more about the strategy ideas on the Net Squared blog here!

Blog

Key Questions: How is the new blog going to affect website traffic and SIFT (SYFAB’s interactive guide to fundraising)?  What are the goals for the blog’s affect on these two areas? How do you hope visitors will interact with the site and with each other?  Read more

News Site

Key Questions: What are the goals and differences in purpose for the news site vs the blog?  How can each be identified by visitors so that they can pick whether the blog or the news site is where they want to be?  Why don’t think link prominently to each other? How do you hope visitors will interact with the site and with each other?  Read more

Google Analytics

Key Questions: This is the fun stuff!  Are you using Google Analytics (or the blog software’s built-in analytics) for the website, blog, and news blog?  You should be!  Which pages or posts get the most visitors?  Which get the most comments?  Which do the most people find via a search engine?  Which statistics are most useful to SYFAB in identifying whether the website/blog/news site is reaching its goals?  Read more

Next Step

A quick next step that aligns with the above areas is to set up free Google Alerts about the organization name and industry. Creating alerts on ‘SYFAB’ and ‘South Yorkshire Funding Advice Bureau’ will let SYFAB staff know who is talking about the organization (whether it is resources, the website, the blog, the news site, or more) and where that conversation is taking place.  Staff can then highlight these links or news stories on the blogs or check out the other site to add information to the conversation.  It’s also useful to create alerts about the services or industry, like ‘funding advice’ or ‘fundraising in uk.’  This will let you identify other blogs, news articles, or websites discussing the same topic, so SYFAB can get involved (whether by commenting on that site, linking to it, or blogging about it).

Read more strategy ideas on the Net Squared blog post.

What experiences has your organization had using Google Analytics or Google Alerts?  What advice do you have for SYFAB while it under goes this Digital Makeover?

Published on August 19, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 2 Comments

Now Blogging for Net Squared

Published in blogging and otherblogs. 6 Comments Tags: , .

I wanted to take a quick moment to let everyone know that I’ll be contributing some posts regularly on the Net Squared community blog. I think the nptech community has something special Net Squared and am excited to say that I’m now going to be a solid part of it! I’ll be posting there twice a week, with insights, case studies, and how-tos that I come across to help you all as you continue to adopt and evaluate technology for nonprofits.

Since I will be moving to London, UK, in just a few weeks, I’m really looking forward to sharing all that I learn about the similarities and differences between the US and UK as far as technology use and innovation by nonprofit organizations goes and hope that you all will be part of those conversations!

You can look for posts from me starting this week! I hope to hear from you all as we examine together what works and what is happening in this ever-changing environment we work in.

Thanks!

Are there organizations using technology, case studies, or tools in particular that you want me to cover? Just let me know and I’ll do my best to cover it!

Published on August 18, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 6 Comments

Breaking the news: I’m moving to London!

Published in Uncategorized. 8 Comments Tags: .

Today is the one-month-left mark for our time in the US, so I figured it was a perfect moment to stop and let everyone in on the plans: London, here we come!

Why London?
Max, that cute guy in the picture with the dog, (also known as my partner/husband/corroborator) is headed back to school in London this Fall, and I’m super excited about the opportunity to become part of the UK nptech community. We move in one month and are pretty excited. We are surrounded by lists and reminder notes scribbled on scraps of paper, all in anticipation of forgetting many things. :)

What changes?
I don’t plan on too much changing, well, aside from a boom in Indian food consumption! This blog will keep on going, pretty much the way it does now (though I apologize for the decrease in posts lately, blame it on the list-making). There will be more commentary on UK-organizations, tools, or case studies, but I think it will provide a great opportunity to have a conversation about what is the same/different and how organizations are making social media work for them across borders. I’m really looking forward to learning a great deal, and sharing it all with you!

What to do?
I am still investigating options for where to work. I am very excited to be part of an effort to build out the nptech community on and offline in the UK and am very excited to put my community building experiences to work over there. I will be speaking on Sept 25th at the London Fundraising Summit about online fundraising, so if you are going to be there (or are a Londoner), please let me know!

That’s the story! We have visited London before, and have a few friends who live there now. I’d certainly love any recommendations you have, whether they are for restaurants, events, insider-knowledge, or even jobs! :)

Photo by 13bobby

Published on August 11, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 8 Comments

Finding the peers you didn’t know you had

Published in community. 3 Comments Tags: , , .

I am a huge fan of all things shared-knowledge. I get excited, dive right in, and always feel like I learn so much regardless of how much I’m able to contribute (though I try to always put in all that I can). I hope, and believe, that many of you are the same way and thought I would make sure you all know about two awesome ways for sharing peer-to-peer knowledge, especially with peers you didn’t know you had!

Net Squared Community Blog: Net Squared “enables social benefit organizations to leverage the tools of the social web.” This is a great place to hear about what other organizations are doing, regardless of where they may be on the adoption timeline for different new media tools. I love the varied topics and people that post here, keeping me exposed to all sorts of fields. It is a community blog, so feel free to set up your free account with Net Squared and post to the blog as well!

NTEN Affinity Groups: NTEN is a membership organization of nonprofit technology professionals that “aspires to a world where all nonprofit organizations skillfully and confidently use technology to meet community needs and fulfill their missions.” You don’t have to be a member to join the affinity groups, though! There are many different topic areas covered and it’s a terrific way to find resources and contacts that can help answer questions or provide advice, especially for areas where you previously didn’t know quite who to ask. Check out the lists and join groups that match your interests!

Where do you find peer-to-peer help when you have a question or need advice? Do you prefer on or offline help; people you know already or people you may know via a network (like Net Squared or NTEN)?

Published on August 11, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 3 Comments