Monthly Archive for April, 2010

#1MillionShirts and the Power of the Network

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I can’t count how many times an organization, a campaigner or a consultant has asked for my opinion about “how can I make this go viral?”  My response is usually broken down into two parts: 1. what do you think viral means? 2. what are you actually trying to do (no campaign, no program, no service has the goal of simply being “viral”)?  This week a great example of someone who has an idea and wants it to go viral has emerged – and you have the opportunity to join the discussion!

Christopher Fabian has a great blog post up on the MobileActive blog about the way the #1MillionShirts idea emerged and grew via social media, especially Twitter, this week. The idea to gather 1 million t-shirts for Africa (yes, that general) was put out there, publicly, and the ball really started rolling – but not in support of the idea.

Development professionals, charity-minded folks, those interested in social media all responded.  There were uniformly negative tweets from everyone with any sense of the “African” context.  Mixed comments from those without.  The obligatory blog posts followed (at least 7 that I’ve counted) filled with personal experience on the issue, reasons it wouldn’t work, and sources for what had come before.  You can read the full blog post here.

What is so interesting about the #1MillionShirts case study is that it shows how social media has allowed us to experiment, learn, iterate and evolve in our technologies and our work at a previously unheard of speed. There’s no need to think your initial R&D phase would take a year – not when you have 48 hours of tweets, blog posts, and comments from people working in the development field from around the world weighing in on your idea, in real time and for free.  The power in the network is incredible.

Here’s where you come in:

You can join in a call with Jason Sadler of One Million Shirts, @talesfromthhood, @tmsruge, Christopher Fabian (@unickf) and Erica Kochi (@uniemk) of UNICEF, @penelopeinparis, Laura Seay (@texasinafrica), and anyone else who would like to join in to discuss this project, sustainable and responsible aid work, and the questions that the #1millionshirts project has raised.  The call is expected to be lively but respectful.  Please join!

Suggested agenda for a 1-hour call:

  • Introductions of roundtable participants
  • Overview of 1 Million Shirts (Jason)/Goals and plan
  • Comments from the aid community and response
  • Discussion and questions/comments from the audience (submitted through Ready Talk online)
  • Closing remarks, Jason and Panelists

The call will be Friday, April 30, at 12 pm EST – get the details.

Published on April 29, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

Great reads from around the web on April 28th

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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 April 28th). 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).

  • HopenSource – Thanks to @350 for the link – check out this great portal of hope and inspiration from Grist Magazine. "Show why Earth's not effed" and get inspired from the stories of those making change.
  • LearnPhilanthropy.net – Online venue for grantmaker education – "The Grantmaker Education Initiative is bringing people together to create a stronger, more rational, and less fragmented system for grantmaker learning than we have today — one that builds a new culture of professional development in the field, works better for the individual learners involved in philanthropy, and better for the many groups and organizations that provide learning programs and resources to them.<br />
    <br />
    LearnPhilanthropy.net is a simple online venue we’ve created to invite dialogue among those who are passionate about grantmaker education. We hope to establish a collaborative learning community — with plenty of space for ideas and wisdom of the field. We aim to work together to create a vision for meeting the education and learning needs of people in our field. We invite you to join us, take our survey, and we welcome your contributions."
  • Do Something: Helping Humanity With a Click of the Mouse | Fast Company – "Sending a text or clicking to vote may be the trendy way to help humankind. The question, says Nancy Lublin, is whether such so-called slacktivism really works. Name-calling is never nice — that much most of us learned in kindergarten. Go ahead and criticize the substance of an action or the content of a speech, but just calling a person a nasty name is like pulling hair. Unfortunately, a lot of it happens in the do-gooder sector–and lately, much of it has been directed at projects that could fall under the umbrella of a newish movement called "slacktivism.""
  • OPEN CALL: Do Nonprofits Make Films? We Say Yes! – netwitsthinktank.com – "What's the top thing you can do this year to engage your constituents? Both online and off? Quick, what springs to mind? Well I'm here to tell you that it should be video. If you are going to do one new thing in 2010 to help get the word out about your organization’s mission, it should be to create a video."
  • What You and Your Nonprofit Should Know About Facebook Changes – Beth's Blog – Facebook seems to be an ever-changing landscape whether it's features, privacy, security or functionality: something's always changing. Beth has a great post discussing some of the changes and how they impact your organization on facebook.
  • The State of Online Word of Mouth Marketing [STATS] – "In a session yesterday at Forrester’s Marketing Forum, Forrester analysts Josh Bernoff and Augie Ray presented research findings on peer influence and word of mouth marketing. Some of the statistics were surprising, and the presentation was rife with practical tips for marketers we thought worth sharing."
Published on April 28, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 2 Comments

Webinar: Social Media Listening Dashboard

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Yesterday, I had the fun opportunity to present a webinar session with Allen Gunn of Aspiration in part of the TechSoup Talks series.  I can’t believe we had to, and managed to, fit everything into just one hour, including questions/answers! There’s really so much to think about when getting started with social media and really, actively listening to the broader community that I’m happy, even if we only had an hour, that we had the chance to start conversations and hopefully provide enough resources for participants to go back to their teams, departments or organizations and start trying!

As social media tools like Twitter and Facebook become core components of nonprofit communication strategies, there is a corresponding need to assess how well programmatic messaging and organizational identity are propagating in those channels: “We Tweet; is anybody listening?”

In addition, nonprofits have an increasing need to know on what blogs, websites and other online venues they and their issues are being mentioned and discussed, both favorably and less favorably.

Our webinar defined the concept of a “social media listening dashboard”, describing how nonprofits can use free and low-cost services to track and stay notified about online communications that relate to their work and brand. We also discussed best practices for coordinating online communications  and specific how-to’s to provide participants with the information they need to get started in their online listening.

If you missed the webinar, that’s okay! Use these links to access the conversation:

Were you on the webinar and have a question that wasn’t answered?  Did you review the links above and have ideas to share, other tools to recommend, or questions you want to ask?  Leave a comment!

Published on April 23, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 8 Comments

Great reads from around the web on April 21st

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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 April 21st). 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).

  • Social Media’s Changing Landscape to Make A Profit – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – frogloop – I'm really looking forward to this conversation – what do you think? "Admit it – you don’t like when things that you are quite comfortable with suddenly change. As social networks try and become profitable they are experimenting with new ad models and trying to drive more traffic to increase ad revenue. Twitter’s beta advertising model via "Promoted Tweets" and Facebook’s new Fan Page “Like” button (which is replacing the “Become a Fan” button) is buzzing with critics’ opinions. Are these changes good for nonprofits bottom line too? The jury is out."
  • From Social Entrepreneurship to Social Interpreneurship — Social Edge – There's a great post and conversation starter from Peter Deitz up on the Social Edge blog talking from social interpreneurship. "What is social interpreneurship you ask? I’m not entirely sure, in light of its classified nature, but I would hazard a guess that it’s two parts Internet, five parts Interaction, and ten parts Interdependence. Flipping through the Skoll World Forum program and rerunning the highlights in my head, I see evidence of social interpreneurship at every turn." Join the converstaion!
  • Chris Brogan Talks Nonprofits and Trust Agents – netwitsthinktank.com – One of the basic best practices I am always talking about with organizations starting out with social media is to be a real person – not an "organization" online. Have real pictures and have real conversations. Here's a great video with Chris Brogan and next steps for being "real" online.
  • Advice & Resources for Your Online Organizing Career – Check out this great round up from the presenters at the "Online Organizing – Career Night event that includes lessons, insights, and even job opportunities!
  • Grizzard Communications Group – Free social media tools & the ‘experts’ who can’t answer “How?” – Eric has a great list of free social media tools to help you find content, monitor trends and much more! "In the last week, I attended both the NTEN Nonprofit Technology Conference and the AFP 2010 Conference. One problem that I saw in many social media sessions at both – and a problem that I see far too often at social media conferences, seminars, and How To sessions – is that speakers and panelists rarely provide tangible How To advice to people struggling to get started. They tell you you should do something, “Start up a Facebook Fan Page and start posting content interesting to your fans,” but regardless of how hard they are pushed, they rarely can say how to go about figuring out what content your fans find interesting or maybe even how to gain new fans."
  • 10 Take-Aways from SXSW for Nonprofits — Nonprofit Geekery – Happy that I came across Matt Koltermann's wrap up from SXSW. It was a few weeks late but better than never! My favorite take away from this list: 4. Make sure your website behaves like an approachable and likable person. "The annual SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, TX—which brings together tech geeks, social media peeps, and other online folk—wrapped-up yesterday after five intense and inspirational days. I attended a bunch of sessions focused on how nonprofits, in particular, can take advantage of technology to meet their mission—here’s a short-list of ten things that really stuck."
Published on April 21, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 2 Comments

From Ning to Causes to Ideablob: Why We Need a New Way of Building

Published in community and issues. 59 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Last November we saw a few alarming events taking place in this social media for social good sector: Causes left Myspace and Ideablob shut down, both without warning or community support.  In a guest post on the Tactical Philanthropy blog I started brainstorming about what was next.  Now, with the recent news from Ning that it plans to discontinue free service, I am revisiting those thoughts about “what’s really needed?” and asking myself if these events aren’t just disruptive to members and users, but also huge signs that we need a new way of building. Building networks, communities, connections, campaigns, and our work.

When I start thinking about this, I come back to three main issues with the current way we build:

1. Not All Communities Can Be Treated Equally

Grassroots, hyper-local, nonprofit, and educational communities cannot be expected to operate in the same way as commercial or sponsored communities, online or off.  These kinds of groups can’t even be expected to fall in the same kinds of rubrics for use or application of tools between each other as they are inherently unique, every time.

2. Payment Is More Than Purchase

I truly believe that when it comes to the financial requirements for tools and services in the nonprofit and larger public sector, payment is far more than a purchase, it is an investment.  We are willing to buy in to something if we can be part of shaping what it is, how we can use it, how we can improve it.

3. Investment Is More Than Money

If investment was required to get a tool, I believe many groups would be willing to participate in evaluations, provide feedback, submit user stories and help in the development of the tool.  All things that take time, which is valuable. But not money.  Many groups would much rather have an impact and involvement in the shaping of the tools they use than pay for something that others control.

So, how do we build this marketplace?

When I wrote about this back in November, I closed my post with an invitation.  I’d like to repost that invitation here and then add a next step.

Your invitation:  Join this conversation.  Tell me what the recent Causes/ideablob announcements means for our sector and for you.  And share your ideas with your friends and colleagues to further the breadth of the conversation.  The more voices the better!  Here are some places to start:

  • Evaluate your use of social media tools: do you encourage your supporters on other platforms to register on your website, ensuring you have their contact details?
  • Evaluate your community: are you reaching a diverse community or operating in a silo?
  • Evaluate your relationship with developers: are you using tools that allow you to surface suggestions, ideas, and useful functionality for development? Do you know what the plans are for the tools you are using?

I have already had creative, exciting conversations with others in this sector about how we could build a marketplace that:

  1. allows end users surface ideas for tools or new functionality for existing tools
  2. allows those ideas get support, gather feedback, get fleshed out by developers and users
  3. allows funders (whether they are foundations, organizations, VCs, companies, etc.) identify tools to fund
  4. allows developers to find work they know will be adopted and start working on tools with an active base of users
  5. maintains an expectation that these tools will continue to be available for the people, by the people.

It is the last point that I think is the most important. It isn’t about having a crazy-liberal or Utopian version of the web.  It IS about adopting tools that we feel comfortable deploying to our communities and building on, knowing they won’t close or leave without notice.

I am going to continue having this conversation, examining how a marketplace could work, and what these events mean for our sector. Please join me. Share your ideas and your experiences. Let me know how you wish we built things.  Let’s start at the vision of how we want it to work, and then build towards it.

Published on April 16, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 59 Comments

Ning saying no to free networks

Published in campaigns and community. 18 Comments Tags: , , , , .

As someone that has helped others to create, and has created many networks on the Ning platform, yesterday’s news that the company would be dropping 40% of it’s staff and dropping the free service was incredibly alarming.  The news from Jason Rosenthal, Ning’s CEO, stated:

My main conclusion is that we need to double down on our premium services business.  Our Premium Ning Networks like Friends or Enemies, Linkin Park, Shred or Die, Pickens Plan, and tens of thousands of others both drive 75% of our monthly US traffic, and those Network Creators need and will pay for many more services and features from us.

So, we are going to change our strategy to devote 100% of our resources to building the winning product to capture this big opportunity.  We will phase out our free service.  [Read the full letter here.]

Join the conversation taking place on Manny Hernandez’s blog about keeping the network free for nonprofit and educational use. You can also read the news post on TechCrunch and the comments there.

Please join me in signing this Change.org petition to keep Ning free for nonprofit and education use.

Why this matters to me:

What worries me most about the pay-only option, even if it isn’t a huge $ amount is that ANY $ amount can be enough to mean no access for many. Here are a few examples:

  1. Grassroots groups:  For many of the smaller, grassroots campaigns and groups that use Ning, there isn’t a one-and-only-one leader dynamic where there could be one person that would be paying. We are in the midst of change for community dynamics where people no longer need a director, a secretary and then a bunch of members. We can all be leaders and contributors to a network, a community, a movement. So the administrator on a group, at least groups I’m a part of, is not one person, but a long list of people. Responsibilities are shared and actually change fairly frequently depending on capacity and availability.
  2. Community groups: Very much like the dynamics at play in grassroots cause groups, community groups struggle with the same issues around administration and ownership.  I’ve helped local community groups set up Ning communities online as a way to start building resources, connections, and storytelling in a local geographic community.  And I see it working.  But I also don’t see many of them with the capacity to pay (who pays, how do we decicde, etc.)
  3. Educators: This is not a new issue for this group.  We all know that teachers and other educators use tools and supplies out of their pocket because they are determined to provide the best experience for their students and peers.  That’s why we see things like DonorsChoose emerge.  Making Ning a paid-for service could mean we see thousands of new donor requests asking for a year of service or something – totally not sustainable.

I really, really believe that Ning can deliver on their bottom line and focus on making money, as it sounds like they want to do, and still provide the service to educators and nonprofit groups for free.

I know there are lots of great examples out there like Basecamp and Huddle and many others that balance free and paid successfully.  Please share your ideas, your stories and your examples.  We really want to ensure this tool continues enabling communities, regardless of their budget.

If you haven’t already, please also sign the Change.org pledge here.

Published on April 16, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 18 Comments

Join me at OxfordJam

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Running in parallel to the Skoll World Forum, OxfordJam is a three-day event creating a space for the nurturing of social economy and social finance projects the world over. It is a conference in relief, where the focus is on the space and serendipity ‘in-between’. OxfordJam is your event, so come and shape it as you desire.

OxfordJam starts today and runs through Friday. There’s some programming already in place but it’s an event designed to move and mold with those in the room.  And they’re hoping to have some great minds there as the fringe event to Skoll.  I’ll be there all day Friday helping with the social media sessions. Really hope to see you there!

Follow along!

Nathanniel Whittemore discusses the OxfordJam approach to sessions in OxfordJam and the Birth of Event Ecosystems on Change.org.

Published on April 14, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

Great reads from around the web on April 12th

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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 April 12th). 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).

  • NTEN's Remake of "Bohemian Rhapsody" | NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network – "Because of the generous matching funds from Convio, large donations from thePort and Firefly Partners, and the support of nearly 200 nptechies, we were able to surpass our scholarship campaign goal and bring nearly 70 staffers from small nonprofits to the 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference. That was the meat, now here's the pudding: the NTEN community's remake of "Bohemian Rhapsody", Muppets style!" Be sure to watch close for cameos of myself and many others :)
  • Nonprofits Take Note: Donors are what they tweet | Social Citizens Blog – "As with many new technologies and developments, social media is being used in surprising and unintended ways to analyze and reveal unexpected data and trends. Twitter, Facebook and Google tools have already been used for market research, sales predictions and targeted advertising. Twitter, for example, has shown remarkable accuracy at forecasting box office success, even more accuracy than the currently used (and comparably complex) Hollywood Stock Exchange method. Now credit card companies are reportedly using foursquare and other location sharing platforms to predict divorce, and therefore financial troubles, by analyzing the places people are checking in frequently – the logic being that Home Depot and Bed, Bath & Beyond check-ins demonstrate stability in a way that frequent late night bar check-ins do not."
  • 'Online fundraising will change everything' – Third Sector – "Azadi Sheridan, the chair of the Institute of Fundraising's Technology Special Interest Group, tells David Ainsworth why donor 'churn and burn' won't work in the future. The big changes to fundraising in the coming years will spring from the power of the web, according to Azadi Sheridan, chair of the Institute of Fundraising’s Technology Special Interest Group. He says charities have been relatively slow to start using the internet to communicate with their supporters, but he believes they will catch up quickly."
  • Wild Apricot Blog : 5 Tech Tools for More Engaging Events – "Real-world events are the ultimate in social networking, and nothing beats face-to-face communication. But it can be challenging to connect with everyone you want to meet at a large event and even more difficult to follow up with the attendees afterwards. And what about those in your community who can’t travel to your meeting or conference, for financial or other practical reasons? How can you bring those people into the fold of your event, too?"
  • What can Google Buzz do for you? A study for non-profits | Think Social – "Two weeks ago, Mashable posted a how-to for non-profit organizations trying to use Google Buzz. We wanted more than four ways to use the new tool. Think Social writer and resident digital anthropologist Krystal D’Costa interviewed folks on the Google side and non-profit side for a closer look. (You can also read what Krystal’s previously written about Google Buzz.)"
Published on April 12, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 2 Comments

Building Stronger Online Communities Without Losing Your Sanity – 10NTC

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Here’s the dashboard the The Extraordinaries for the 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference session I’m doing with Manny Hernandez, Peggy Duvette and Christine Egger:

If you want to build a strong online community, getting the right platform in place is only half the battle, and it’s the easy half. In this peer-led discussion, we’ll share our experiences of online community building and build lists of best practices around recruiting new members and retaining them, increasing participation and moderating your community.

Published on April 10, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

The Networked Nonprofit – #10NTC

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This session with Beth Kanter and Allison Fine will be presented as a webinar and recorded as part of 10NTC Live.  10NTC Registrants can register for the free recording by entering the source code you received via email. Register Now!

Social networks and social media has busted out of the marketing communications and fundraising silos and changing the way nonprofits deliver programs, manage, and even govern.  This session will take a look about these trends and how nonprofits can equipment themselves to be networked nonprofits.

——

http://networkednonprofit.wikispaces.com

The writing process for the book:

  • Expository vs storytelling
  • Different brains – visual vs words
  • Helpful guide tone vs colorful and wordy
  • Hired an arbitrator to be the editor

There was one thing that we both had in common: chocolate.

What is the Networked Nonprofit?

Working through networks allows us to scale social change projects geographically and geometrically. When you do that, there’s an entity called the networked nonprofit.

BE:

  • understand networks
  • create social culture
  • listen, engage, and build relationships
  • trust through transparency
  • simplicity

Do:

  • work with crowds
  • learning loops
  • friending to funding
  • governing through networks

Three Themes from the Book:

1. Social Culture

Red Cross – started social media efforts shortly after Katrina when people weren’t saying very good things. Wendy was hired “to make the bloggers go away.” As she started putting into practice some great listening practices, she realized that listening was the gateway drug for social media.  Staff started to see the value in social media and it led to adoption of tools. Fast forward to 2009, Wendy led a process internally to create a social media guidelines and operational handbook. It’s evolving the social culture of the organization.

Step 1: overcoming the fear and opening up – can’t let fears keep you from moving forward.

Step 2: make learning in public less stressful, worst case scenarios and contingency plans.

Step 3: Reflection – where the greatest learning is

Momsrising uses joyful funerals for things that don’t work. The richest insights come when we are at the wake of a joyful funeral.

Step 4: Leaders experience personal use.

Codifying a Social Culture: Policy

Most important thing in a social media policy: be professional, kind, discreet, authentic. represent us well. remember that you can’t control it once you hit send.

Step 5: Testing the policies: refining, educating

Operational guidelines need to be specific and include examples!

2. Transparency

The gravitational pull of social media is from inside organization out. You can’t close yourself off from the world.  3 kinds of organizations: Fortress, Transactional, and Transparent.

Transparency is not the same as being in a glass house. Think about national archives, behind a glass case – there’s still a barrier even if it is see-through.  A better anology is a natural sponge. They are anchored to the ocean floor, they let in 20 thousand times their weight of water through them every day, and they hold the nutrients from the water. It’s about engaging, that’s why you can’t have a glass wall.

Radical transparency: all naked all the time. You can’t run organizations that way. We don’t know where the line is but the line is there.

3. Simplicity

charity:water – focus on what you do best and network the rest.

You have too much to do because you do too much.

4. Reflection

One small step: what is one small step that you can take to make a big different in your organization to become a networked nonprofit.

http://networkednonprofit.wikispaces.com

Published on April 9, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 2 Comments