The Social Media Response to the Disaster in Haiti

Published in fundraising, maps and mobile. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

I have a guest post up on the NTEN blog discussing some of the ways social media was put into action as soon as the earthquakes struck in Haiti:

When disaster strikes, we want information as soon as possible and we want to help just as quickly. How can we do that? Whether we look at mapping tools, fundraising, or missing person systems, the social media response to the January earthquakes in Haiti all leverage the powerful technology we can hold in our hands: our mobile phones. But the way we think about and turn to social media in a time of disaster is changing.

The disaster in Haiti is a perfect example of these changes: the impact of the Real-Time Web and the power of our phones.

Read the full post to learn more about mapping, mobile fundraising, volunteering and the Real-Time web impact:

The Social Media Response to the Disaster in Haiti

Published on February 18, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

Great reads from around the web on February 11th

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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 February 11th). 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).

  • Oxfam in Haiti – Google Maps – This is a great example of how you can use a tool like Google Maps to tell a story and provide easy access to information – great job Oxfam! "Oxfam is responding to the biggest earthquake for 200 years in Haiti. This map shows some of the sites where Oxfam is providing water and sanitation, as well as employment through the cash-for-work program. Oxfam has reached 100,000 people across multiple sites and is aiming to reach 500,000 total over the next six months."
  • Download the 2009 Data Ecosystem Survey Report | NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network – NTEN just released a report on the data ecosystem in nonprofit organizations – it's free for members, but $50 for non-NTEN members. "The data ecosystem is the collection of tools we use to manage all the ways we interact with donors, volunteers, activists, and supporters. We wanted to find out how happy organizations are with each of the tools they use, but also what tools make up their ecosystems, and how happy they are with those ecosystems as well."
  • 5 Ways to “Emerge” as a Nonprofit Leader | Rosetta Thurman – "Many young nonprofit professionals are waiting until they get the title of “Director” to lead. They are waiting until their older colleagues deem them “ready” to lead instead of emerging as leaders in the here and now. But what we have to understand is that this behavior doesn’t benefit our organizations nor the communities we seek to serve. What we have to understand is that we need as many young people as possible to emerge as nonprofit leaders, even if they don’t have a title. The future of the nonprofit sector depends on it."
  • 5 Real Challenges For Non-Profit Texting Campaigns – "Given the many aspects of texting, from technology to communications, non-profits need to consider SMS with their eyes wide open. Causes may even want to consider alternative mobile channels for communications and fundraising. Here are five things non-profits should consider before pursuing texting."
  • A Consumers Guide To Low-Cost Data Visualization Tools – Check out this great, free report from Idealware! "You've got data. How do you transform it into charts, graphs, and maps that will help your audience understand the data and move them to take action? This 30-page independent Idealware report provides an overview of the types of graphic formats that might work for you, and then compares eight low-cost tools that can help you create them."
  • Glasspockets – Check out this new resource from the Foundation Center:
    "With Glasspockets, the Foundation Center and its partners hope to:

    * Inspire private foundations to greater openness in their communications.
    * Increase understanding of best practices in foundation transparency and accountability in an online world.
    * Illustrate how institutional philanthropy is relevant to the critical issues of our time.
    * Highlight the many stories of philanthropy that show how private wealth is serving the public good.
    * Illuminate successes, failures, and ongoing experimentation so foundations can build on each other's ideas to increase impact."

Published on February 11, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 1 Comment

Interview: Marshall Kirkpatrick on the Real Time Web Report

Published in interview and reports. 8 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

The Real-Time Web and Its Future, a new report from ReadWriteWeb, focused on the changing ecosystem of the Web, one that runs in real-time.  “For the following report, we interviewed 50 companies, developers and executives building or leveraging real-time Web technology. We combined that research with insights gained from more than 300 industry leaders that participated in our Real-Time Web Summit in October 2009. The end result is an extensive, authoritative premium report: The Real-Time Web and its Future, edited by ReadWriteWeb lead writer Marshall Kirkpatrick.” I recently had the opportunity to connect with Marshall to discuss the report and the insights RWW discovered through the process of aggregating and distilling so much information from experts and Web users.

Review the Table of Contents and read the report introduction now, or learn more in the following interview.

First, what does the “real-time Web” really mean?

It means different things to different people, but the most literal meaning is probably this: real-time systems push information from a publisher to a subscriber (be they a human reader or a machine consuming information) as soon as it’s available, without the subscriber having to ask if there’s anything new.

Think of how Facebook notifies you that you have new messages without having to refresh the page, or the way your Instant Messaging client shows you new messages as soon as they are sent. The underlying technologies used in those kinds of circumstances are now being integrated into all kinds of other websites because real-time delivery of information changes the user experience radically and offers all kinds of benefits. It’s smoother for users, users and systems get to take action immediately on new information and it’s much more efficient, meaning that your technology can do more with less computing expense.

When did RWW start focusing on the real-time Web?

Probably middle of 2008. Like people generally do, we thought about the impact that Twitter and Facebook were making on the web. When we looked deeper though, we quickly found out that there is far, far more going on in the real-time web than those two services.

For the report, you interviewed 50 Web experts – what were some of the surprising things you heard?

I was surprised to learn how broad this field is. We talked to people working with public records extraction in real time, with designers building lightweight, real-time presentation sharing tools, Google engineers have some incredible ideas about ways they hope that their PubSubHubbub real-time protocol will be used – stuff like real-world sensor networks and contact info syncing. When I started those interviews, I knew there were broad possibilities but I had no idea how broad.

How has the real-time Web already impacted nonprofit organizations or those focused on social impact work?

One of the organizations I did an interview with was the American Red Cross. As they say, “at the Red Cross, the real-time web saves lives.” Real-time information delivery has changed the way that organization works in radical ways. It’s amazing. Disaster response work that used to take days now takes minutes, using a combination of Sharepoint, mobile devices and airplane surveillance. The Red Cross also pays very close attention to the rest of the real-time web, though. I was fascinated to find out that the team at HQ is full of fans of the Breaking News Online iPhone app.

What impacts are right around the corner?

Organizations that choose to do so are already able to run circles around the web using these real-time technologies. I expect that some will do so and many will not. It will be like the difference between organizations that developed an effective web or email presence early vs. those that did not. If organizations want to be relevant and effective, they will need to incorporate some elements of real-time information delivery into their work flow. Be that pushing real-time updates out to their websites and supporters, consuming updates on breaking news in their sector in real time, or collaborating remotely in real time. Using only the parts of the web that you must refresh for updates, when you remember to do so, be they email or web pages, will soon feel like putting your ear up to a tin can with a string connecting it to some other tin can far away. I don’t mean to say that everything will be real time and you must always live in that flow, but I do believe it’s fast becoming an essential form of engagement. Not just because everyone is doing it, either, but because it’s really very useful.

How can nonprofits or social impact groups take advantage of the real-time Web?

There are as many ways to take advantage of the real time web as there are to use the web in general. Here’s one of my favorite stories though. Some time back I was doing a workshop for nonprofit communications people and one of the attendees worked for a women’s advocacy organization. As a proof of concept, we took the RSS feed of the New York Times and filtered it for keywords related to her organization’s areas of interests, I think we used Yahoo Pipes to filter, it might have been FeedRinse.com, but that’s not hard to do in many different ways. Then we took the filtered RSS feed and we ran it through an RSS to SMS/IM alert service. I use Notify.me a lot but even faster than that now is an iPhone app called Nofitifcations. Or have your team’s geeks check out Superfeedr.com. So the idea was, this person could then watch the NYT feed automatically, get an SMS or IM alert whenever a relevant story was published and then she could call up her local newspaper or other press. “I don’t know if you’ve heard about this story breaking on a national level,” she could say, and or course they probably hadn’t because they don’t have robots watching for these things automatically, “but if you’d like to cover this topic on a local level, our Executive Director is an excellant source for information.” That journalist will love you for it. Do that enough times and your organization, no matter how small, will have a chance to grow its public profile substantially.

That’s just one idea. There are countless other ways that real-time information delivery can be leveraged by nonprofits. From live video to live updates to live collaboration, more and more experiences online are going on in real time.

How can we follow you and RWW as well as other leaders examining the real-time Web?

I’m at Marshallk.com, we’re at ReadWriteWeb.com, on Twitter I’m @marshallk and the whole ReadWriteWeb team is at http://twitter.com/rww/team

We’ve also assembled a list of real-time web industry thought leaders at http://twitter.com/rww/real-time-web

Review the Table of Contents and read the report introduction now, or buy the full report from ReadWriteWeb.

Published on February 10, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 8 Comments

Technology for Change Contest: Win a new computer from HP!

Published in challenge and events. 46 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Technology for Change

What’s your favorite example of technology helping people create positive change in the world? I think there are too many to count, really.  For example, simply review the hundreds of ideas listed in NetSquared’s Project Gallery and you’ll quickly see that people from around the world are hard at work leveraging all kinds of technologies to create positive change for communities tackling many different issues.

One example that I’ve blogged about before is the annual project from EpicChange: Tweetsgiving.  During the US Thanksgiving holiday, Tweetsgiving asked people around the world to use Twitter to share something they were grateful for and include the link to the Tweetsgiving site (where people could donate to help build a library, classroom and more for the benefiting school in Tanzania).  This year, the Tweetsgiving campaign also asked people to gather in person, offline and have gratitude parties, where people could also donate in person to the project.  You can see the numbers (from tweets, to dollars, to videos and more) on the EpicChange blog here.

Enter the Contest

As part of HP’s Create Change initiative, they want to initiate a dialogue on how technology and individuals create social change – and to do that, they have partnered with bloggers like me that think we know a few folks with ideas on that subject! (Looking at all of you readers, hint hint!)

HP is giving away a new computer and printer bundle to the winner selected in the contest – and we all have the added bonus of learning about ways others have leveraged technology and finding case studies that can help us in our work.  I’m really looking forward to hearing about the projects you find inspiring!

To participate in the contest, follow these easy steps:

1. Answer the same question that I discussed above:

What’s your favorite example of technology helping people create positive change in the world?

2.  Provide your answer in the comments below (if you’d like to blog your answer on your own site, simply leave a comment here with a link to your site to be sure it’s included)

3. You have until February 28th to submit a response to the question

On March 1, I will select a winner at random (all commenters who answer the question will be put into a hat and I’ll draw one at random).  The winner will be announced here in an update at the bottom of the blog post that day.

So, get your submission in and be in the running for a new computer and printer!

(To find out more about HP’s Create Change initiative, visit their website or Facebook page.)

UPDATE: Winner Announced

As promised, I took all those who commented on this post and chose one at random. Actually, I wrote everyone’s name on a slip of paper, put them in a measuring cup, and my husband chose the winner at random. I even took a picture!

So, congratulations to Ryan Long!  You’ve won the contest for a new computer and printer bundle from HP, and will be connected to process your winnings.  Thanks again for sharing your favorite example of technology for social impact: LiveMocha.com, a website where people can learn and teach languages from around the world.

Thanks to all those who submitting comments with your favorite examples of technology for change! I’ve learned about more projects and seen some of my favorites mentioned. I hope you all find more organizations or tools to use, learn from or support, too!

Published on February 9, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 46 Comments

New on SSIR: Effects of Joining the Conversation

Published in issues, otherblogs and socialmedia. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , .

My latest post is up on the Stanford Social Innovation Review opinion blog. You can read the post and join the conversation over there – it’s also copied below.

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It’s not a surprise to any of us that social media is changing the way our organizations work, not just communicate. The lessons in social media are especially important for organizations working with the public, whether it’s public service or opinion. The Hatcher Group, a Maryland-based public affairs and communications firm, released a great report this past Fall called New Media & Social Change: How Nonprofits are Using Web-based Technologies to Reach Their Goals (PDF). Despite the generic title, this is a report chock full of examples, best practices and data about the effects of joining the conversation online.

The 30 participating organizations in the report are members of the State Fiscal Analysis Initiative, a group of independent, nonprofits with a shared commitment to responsible budget and tax policies. As such, it’s easy to identify some of the goals these organizations have for using social media, including: engaging with and even influencing the general [voting] public, influencing news, engaging with and influencing politicians and legislation, and sharing data, information or viewpoints. Social media is a prominent social gathering place where these goals can definitely be met. Joining the conversation is incredibly important if these organizations expect to change policy and change minds.

Joining the conversation really means conversations.

It’s not just a phrase or some insider lingo, when I recommend organizations join the conversation, I mean just that! People are talking online and the best way to influence what they are saying or how they are thinking about issues is to talk with them. The survey found that blogging and blog outreach was the most popular social media choice.

  • 83 percent currently reach out to bloggers and the remaining 17 percent plan to in the future
  • more than 93 percent now monitor citations of their organization in the blogosphere

Many groups included in the report maintained blogs (either on their own site or elsewhere), but what the numbers above (and the effects listed below) indicate is that you don’t necessarily have to create your own blog to join the conversation. It’s already happening, so go there!

Being an active member of the conversation pays off.

  • 88 per-cent of the organizations said they had been cited in blogs as a result of their outreach efforts
  • 64 percent felt that they had successfully affected blog coverage of an issue.
  • 16 percent of the organizations were subsequently invited to submit guest-posts

Real-time is just as important.

Over half of the organizations surveyed reported that they do not use Twitter and do not intend to, with only 24% reporting use of the tool. This is a huge missed opportunity to influence public opinion, participate in the conversation, attract attention from journalists and policy makers, and more. Twitter is part of the real-time Web, meaning it enables people to communicate, share information, spread news, and distribute links in “real-time” as it happens. As more and more people join the micro-blogging platform Twitter, it becomes an even more relevant tool for organizations working on impacting legislation and connecting with voters. It’s true that with blogs, there’s a bit more time for responses to be prepared (and even approved internally) before posting. But, that should not stop organizations joining Twitter and empowering staff to leverage organizational talking points, resources and research to better information the conversations there.

One organization had particular success using Twitter to facilitate its state policy work. As the legislative session in the group’s state was winding down, things began moving at such a rapid pace that daily newspaper updates were not sufficient to inform and pro- mote its advocacy efforts.The organization found that following Twitter updates posted by reporters and advocates from the state- house was the fastest and easiest way to track legislative develop- ments.The group’s representatives were also able to update their Twitter profile to provide rapid-response statements.These short and timely statements sent out on Twitter caught the attention of local reporters, who then contacted the organization to solicit quotes for stories.

What do you think?

How has your organization joined the conversation online? Are there any tools or techniques in particular that have helped you find or contribute to the conversations taking place across the web?

(Download the full report in PDF: New Media & Social Change: How Nonprofits are Using Web-based Technologies to Reach Their Goals)

Published on February 4, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 1 Comment

Why does NTEN like Bohemian Rhapsody? For you!

Published in Uncategorized. 2 Comments

Last year, NTEN created a scholarship fund program to help support many more people attend the Nonprofit Technology Conference.  Donations were matched by Convio and with over $10,000 raised by the community, we had fun at the largest-attended NTC yet!  There was even more value for the buck though: NTEN Executive Director put her pride on the line, saying that if the $10K mark was met, she’d perform Put a Ring on It…and boy, did she!

This year, the whole gang is getting roped in!  NTEN is hoping to raise $10,000 from the nonprofit technology community again this year, and Convio is going to match those dollars to help get as many folks to #10NTC in Atlanta this April 8-10.  And what’ll happen to the NTEN staff if we hit $10K?  They’ll be doing their own rendition of the Muppets Bohemian Rhapsody!

So, please join me in helping make the NTEN staff have some fun and support attendees who otherwise wouldn’t be able to make it to Atlanta.  There are lots of ways to get involved:

  • Donate now!
  • Share the widget or this post on your blog, website, facebook or elsewhere
  • Tweet it! (Here’s a tweet you can use: Join me in hitting $10K for the #10NTC – the Muppets Bohemian Rhapsody may be involved :) http://nten.org/scholarships )

Here’s the widget!

Published on February 3, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 2 Comments

Interview: Colin Rhinesmith, CCTV Cambridge

Published in interview. 7 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to connect with Colin Rhinesmith, Community Media Coordinator at Cambridge Community Television (Cambridge, MA, USA) and Adjunct Lecturer for the Media and Culture Program at Bentley University.  Colin told me that they recently held a very popular social media workshop for seniors at Cambridge Community Television (@cctvcambridge) but that it is a topic that would benefit from more coverage – so, I asked if I could interview him!  You can learn more about the workshop and the issues seniors face with social media in the interview below.

How did Cambridge Community Television get involved with social media and social media trainings?

At CCTV we strongly believe that providing the tools to create media enhances citizens’ ability to participate in civic life. Since 1988, CCTV has provided Cambridge residents with access to media production equipment, training, facilities, and cable television channels to accomplish this goal. In 1996, CCTV opened computerCENTRAL, a state-of-the art community technology center, to extend our mission by providing our community with access to computers and the Internet.

Social media is a perfect compliment to our public access television channels. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other online tools extend our community into virtual spaces where our members can make and share media. The physical location of CCTV, as community media and technology center, provides Cambridge residents with additional opportunities to build community through face-to-face interaction; something social media can’t replicate in quite the same way.

CCTV first got involved with social media in 2005 when we switched our website’s content management system over to Drupal. Since then, CCTV members have used our website to set-up accounts, start a blog, and share their community-based, non-commercial media with residents in Cambridge and beyond. As a result, we have grown a vibrant and diverse online community.

In late 2005, Steve Garfield and Ravi Jain taught our first videoblogging workshop, Blogosphere: Video Blogs 101. Here is a fun video from a class they taught here at CCTV the following year. The social media classes have been a great addition to our training program ever since. More recently, we have expanded our offerings to include specialized workshops for seniors, nonprofit organizations, city departments and agencies. The response has been overwhelming. The extraordinary interest in social media training has allowed us to use our mission to serve a new information need in our community.

How did the social media training for seniors program develop?

CCTV has offered computer and Internet access to seniors in Cambridge for many years. As an example, we offer special hours for seniors in computerCENTRAL every Monday from 10AM – 12PM. We are also located up the street from the Cambridge Senior Center. The social media training for seniors program began late last year through a partnership with the Agassiz Baldwin Community. Members of the organization asked us to provide a workshop for their seniors. We saw this as a great opportunity for us to expand our social media trainings to an underserved population of our community.

When it comes to seniors using social media, at least in your experience, what are their goals?

Seniors want to know what’s going on. They hear about Twitter and Facebook, but many seniors don’t know what these tools are and how they work. They know their families are using them, and they see social media as a chance to connect more with their friends and families. Seniors also see social media as a way to connect more to the world around them.

What are their struggles?

Many of the seniors I’ve worked with are not sure how to get started with social media. It’s important for seniors to trust and feel comfortable with the tools before using them. Many seniors also prefer to use social media with people they already know. Some seniors don’t understand why a person would use social media to connect to people they don’t know. Lack of experience using computers and the Internet is also another struggle for many seniors.

Have you found, or has Cambridge Community Television developed, any valuable resources targeted directly at seniors moving online?

We had a difficult time finding social media training materials that were relevant to seniors in our community. Through Twitter, we connected to David Wilcox of Social Reporter who recommended that we take a look at the UK-based Digital Unite to find social media training materials for the “Over 50s”. David’s recommendation turned out to be an incredibly useful resource (Thanks, David!).

DU’s Learning Zone offers guides with PDF downloads on a wide range of social media topics, including information about how seniors can share photos and video, get started with social networks and blogs and learn more about web tools and security.

As we continue to offer more social media trainings for seniors, we hope to contribute our own Creative Commons licensed materials that other community-based individuals and nonprofit organizations can use in their work. People who are interested in getting involved can join our Technology Resources for Nonprofits group on our website.

How can interested readers contribute to your work and that of others assisting seniors in moving online (and doing so in a way that meets their goals and recognizes their fears)?

CCTV is excited to join other community-based organizations that provide social media training to seniors. However, we are still looking for successful training program examples that other individuals and organizations have offered to seniors that we can use and learn from here in Cambridge. Creative Commons licensed training materials would be particularly beneficial.

How can people follow you and Cambridge Community Television?

Connect to CCTV on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. You can also follow us on Friendfeed.

If you are interested in supporting community voices in media, please consider connecting to CCTV in person or through our social media platforms listed above. If you live in Cambridge, please stop by our community media and technology center at 675 Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square to say hello and learn how you can make media for your community.

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I’m happy to share this interview with Colin on the blog and hope to hear from you about issues, case studies, or resources you’ve found in working with seniors in social media.

Published on February 3, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 7 Comments

Great reads from around the web on February 3rd

Published in roundup. 0 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 February 3rd). 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).

  • Net2 Think Tank: Online Fundraising Lessons Learned | NetSquared – "The Facebook application Causes recently announced it hit the $20 Million mark in donations. The America's Giving Challenge from Case Foundation spurred $2.1 Million in donations for charities this past winter. But, despite these numbers, for most organizations and causes raising money via social media is still a hard thing to do. There are different rules and new opportunities with online fundraising and every platform or application comes with a different community and varying functionality. So, what have you learned from trying your hand at online fundraising? This month's Net2 Think Tank asks you to share a lesson learned from online fundraising."
  • Social Enterprise | GreenXchange: Crowdsourcing Social Innovation – Marcia Stepanek discusses the newly launched collaborative effort amongst diverse companies to create an open area for innovators and innovation. "Launched last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, GreenXchange (GX) is a new Web-based knowledge exchange that is being spearheaded by 10 companies and social enterprises, including Nike, Best Buy, and Creative Commons, the San Francisco nonprofit that works to expand the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. Its seven other backers include Yahoo!, IDEO, Mountain Equipment Co-op, salesforce.com, 2degrees, the Outdoor Industry Association, and nGenera, a corporate strategy think tank."
  • 10 must-read Facebook resources for non-profits – Ross McCulloch – Ross has a great collection of resources about using Facebook, including Pages vs Groups, adding paypal, examples and case studies. Whether you are already using Facebook for your organization or not, this is a good place to go to learn more about how to use the social networking platform to it's fullest.
  • Seth's Blog: Random rules for ideas worth spreading – Seth Godin shares a list of rules for those times you develop an idea worth spreading. My favorite rule: "Seek out apostles, not partners. People who benefit from spreading your idea, not people who need to own it." Have you found any of these to be true in your own idea sharing and development? Which are best/worst?
  • 350.org: giving new meaning to “new organizing” | Working Wikily – This is a great case study about community organizing from the 350.org campaign. "A lightbulb went on in my head while I was listening to the PdF webinar last week that laid bare the machinery that made it possible for 350.org to achieve the most widespread day of political action in history back on October 24th. We’re still in the midst of examining the various threats that traditional “membership organizations” are facing and the story of 350’s success is one of the best illustrations I’ve seen yet of the new model. In the words of 350 organizer Phil Aroneanu, “It’s about concerned citizens who are looking for a meaningful way to engage. It doesn’t make sense to ask them to click once and that’s it. That’s not a believable theory of change. Building those [local] leaders is the secret to the way that we organize.”"
Published on February 3, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

The other side of the figures: Causes reaches $20 Million in Donations

Published in fundraising and issues. 14 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Earlier this week, an announcement on the Causes Application blog broke the news that over $20 Million has been donated since May 2007 via donors using the social networking application.

There’s been quite a lot of talk in the last year about the opportunities for fundraising online, generally, as well as the best practices for organizations leveraging social media for campaigns (as well as the idea to use free tools to raise money in hard economic times).  There’s also been a bit of controversy around the Causes application specifically, due to it’s decision to abandon the MySpace platform and offer it’s application/services only to the Facebook community. (You can read more about the MySpace/Facebook move here, here, and here.)

Here is the graph of donations on Causes since it launched in May 2007:

Some of the additional data provided from Causes in their announcement, includes:

  • 400,000 people have made at least one donation
  • $25 median donation amount
  • 35,000 causes have received at least one donation
  • $2.1 million raised by 2009 America’s Giving Challenge participants
  • $4.5 million raised through the Birthday Wish feature

Despite the initial awe and excitement around a number like $20 Million, I want to take a moment to think about the other side of the data.  There certainly is more to the story and I hope you’ll share your perspectives as well.

Social networks are still for engagement, not money

Fact: Of the hundreds of thousands of organizations registered as possible beneficiaries in the Causes application (Washington Post data), only 20 organizations, including the Nature Conservancy, Doctors Without Borders and St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, have raised over $100,000 using Causes.

Context: Organizations can’t assume that applications like Causes or simply the use of social networking sites like Facebook will translate into new revenue streams supporting the organization.  Yes, of course, I would advocate that organizations who are eligible ensure that they can be listed as beneficiaries of causes on Facebook (visit the FAQ here) but doing so is an enough of an action to replace your other funding work.

Fact: Causes Birthday Wishes (make a donation campaign for a charity of your choice tied to your birthday) accounted for a third of all donations in the past 6 months.

Context: Birthday Wishes are campaigns started by enthusiastic supporters.  You may not know them, and you may have never heard of them.  But you need to get to know them fast!  Be sure that you are connecting with the passionate volunteers going out and raising money for you: thank them, support them, encourage them.  And be sure to share invitations for the fundraiser and those that donate to his or her campaign to join your organization outside of facebook (on your enewsletter, your action alerts, an offline event, or something else to keep them on your list).

Fact: 400,000 users have contributed to a cause at least once.

Context: That’s a lot of people. How many fans does your organization’s Fan Page have, or how many members are in your facebook Group?  Probably not 400,000.  How many of your fans or group members are in your database, though? The most difficult part to applications like Causes is that you don’t get the data.  With so many people donating to causes, maybe only once, it’s crucial for the benefiting organizations to reach out and encourage donors to connect with the organization directly – that way they may find out more about your work, help you and take action, or even donate again.

Skewing the numbers?

Lastly, I can’t find any data to shed light on my question but I would love to understand if the numbers Causes is touting reflect only the funds raised on facebook, since they stopped allowing the users on MySpace to access the service.  I think it would be unethical and obviously skewing their own data.  I’m incredibly frustrated at the lack of transparency from Causes, especially around this issue.

What do you think?

Would love to hear your experiences, any lessons learned or best practices, and ideas.

—–
Update:

Luise asked to see the comparison of growth of facebook users during the same growth period of Causes donations so I whipped up a simple chart:

Published on January 29, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 14 Comments

Wordpress Extras: My Favorites

Published in blogging. 4 Comments Tags: , , , .

A recent comment from Ichi (working on social media for good in Japan w/ SocialCompany.org) asked after the tools I was using on this blog to bring in comments via Twitter. He suggested I post about the plugins I use so others could check them out – and that’s just what I’m doing!

There are my three most-used Wordpress plugins:

Postalicious (Get this plugin)

Postalicious is a WordPress plugin that automatically posts your delicious, ma.gnolia, Google Reader, Reddit or Yahoo Pipes bookmarks to your blog. The exact details of how your bookmarks are posted are very customizable and are designed to meet your specific needs.

I use this plugin to create my Great Reads posts – it lets me find blog posts, stories, news and anything else online that I think is interesting to the readers of this blog and tag it with Delicious, adding my notes about the link in the field in the Delicious bookmark.  It checks for my saved items, and once I have five things it posts it for me!  I really love it :)

Twitoaster (Get this plugin)

Automatically retrieve Twitter Replies and/or Twitter Retweets to your Blog’s Posts. These Twitter mentions are handled like Posts Comments, using WP built-in comment system.

I like this tool because it brings in conversation from Twitter to the comment stream for the relating posts.  What I wish was improved was the tracking to pull in the full conversation, and not just retweets, etc.

Tweetmeme (Get this plugin)

The TweetMeme retweet button easily allows your blog to be retweeted. The button also provides a current count of how many times your story has been retweeted throughout twitter.

I like this plugin because it puts an easy-to use button at the top of posts for people to tweet out a link to the post if they want to share – it even pre-writes the tweet for you with the link!

What are your favorite add-ons, extensions, or plugins for blogs?

Published on January 29, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 4 Comments