Tag Archive for 'campaigns'

Great reads from around the web on January 15th

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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 January 15th). 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).

  • Digital Media and Learning Competition: Applications now open! | NetSquared, an initiative of TechSoupGlobal.org – "The 3rd Digital Media and Learning Competition, from the MacArthur Foundation, is now accepting applications. In partnering with the White House, National Lab Day, and videogame makers Sony and EA, the Digital media and Learning Competitions has prizes up to $200,000 and is open to all kinds of innovative projects (including games) that make use of digital media for education and social change. Submissions close January 22, 2010."
  • » Your Mobile Giving by State – Wendy Harman at the American Red Cross has posted a map and data about the funds donated via texting "Haiti" to 90999 to support the victims in the Haiti earthquake crisis. It's really interesting as far as mobile fundraising, but also just that the ARC are able to gather, analyze and share data like this in close to real time. Thanks for all that you are doing, ARC!
  • 7 Things I learned From #Beth53 Fundraiser and PoST Class – Beth's Blog: How Nonprofit Organizations Can Use Social Media to Power Social Networks for Change – Beth shares some great lessons from the fundraising campaign she recently ran for her birthday. "This post harvests what I learned and what I still don't know about the birthday campaign strategy and measurement as well as guest teaching a graduate school class." My favorite lesson? 5.) Design for People To Self Organize!
  • After Copenhagen: Turning Activism Into Impact – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – frogloop – There's a great guest post up today from Michael Silberman on the Frogloop blog: "Going to the U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen (COP15) was the closest I've come to a good strong punch in the gut — the type that makes you question much of what you once believed to be true. But it was also one of the best wake-up calls I could have asked for.

    …That means setting aside our shiny online tools and tactics long enough to ensure that we're using them to deliver real impact."

  • 1 vote can equal $1 million « Nonprofit Communications: Duck Call Blog – "Today is the first day people can vote in the final round of the Chase Community Giving contest on Facebook. Between now and January 22, people who add the application can vote up to five times for five individual charities. Much has been written criticizing the contest and the initial selection of 100 charities who already received $25,000 and are now vying for the grand prize of $1,000,000. But, despite the controversy in the first round of results, I think there are some positive lessons that can be learned for nonprofits of all sizes."
Published on January 15, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 3 Comments

Great reads from around the web on January 13th

Published in roundup. 5 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 January 13th). 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).

  • Transformative Collaboration « Alison & Associates – Alison Rapping has a terrific, comprehensive blog post today all about jump starting collaborations. It's a must-read! "Collaboration. It was the hottest “buzz word” of the last decade — And if you ask ten people to describe it, you could get ten very different answers. Collaborations are going to be a driving force in building stronger relationships and stronger communities. In the new decade we are in the “perfect collaboration storm:” energy around our “community visions”, enormous critical community needs, myriad of new nonprofit organizations, and desire for greater impact. This can only happen if we work together. Our community is whole and interconnected; we can’t create a powerful vision in silos."
  • Zoetica: Connecting Organizations with Their Networks – Congrats to Beth Kanter, Geoff Livingston and Kami Watson Huyse on the launch of their new adventure: Zoetica! "Zoetica serves nonprofits and socially conscious companies with top-tier, word-of-mouth communication services. A social enterprise, Zoetica provides superior communication consulting, training, and strategy to help mindful organizations affect social change."
  • GreatNonprofits: Find non-profits and charities to review, donate, or volunteer. – "GreatNonprofits and Guidestar want to hear about the great nonprofits providing job training or job placement in your communities. Tell us about YOUR experience – how are these organizations having an impact? Which ones are great? Which ones need improvement? Participate in this campaign to recognize the top-rated nonprofits developing your community through job training or job placement." Deadline: January 31, 2010
  • Surprise! Only 5% of Websites Have a Twitter or Facebook Link – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – frogloop – "Factual, an “open data repository” analyzed 4 million websites via data from Common Crawl, a non-profit group designed to crawl the web and provide data for anyone to use." Check out the stats highlighted by Allyson Kapin in this short but interesting post!
  • Nominees for the Osocio’s Best Campaign of 2009 announced – Osocio, Social Advertising and Non-profit Campaigns – "Osocio is happy to announce a list of ten nominees for the Osocio’s Best Campaign of 2009 award. Osocio has started selecting best campaigns featured on our blog, because we want to put the most creative and innovative social ads into spotlights. So that non-profit organizations can learn and benefit from these best practices. This is the Top 10 list of the best social campaigns featured on Osocio in 2009. One of these campaigns will become the Osocio’s Best Campaign of 2009."
Published on January 13, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 5 Comments

Twitter Lists for Nonprofits

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Lauren Cochrane has a great post today with ideas for lists organizations could create with Twitter’s new List function.  If you haven’t heard about Lists yet, you’re not behind! They have only been rolled out to around half of the users so far.  You can read more about Lists on the Twitter Blog here.

Lauren outlines 7 Lists that organizations may find useful, including:

  1. Your organisation’s chapters and campaigns.
  2. Related international organisations and campaigns.
  3. Organisations that are somewhat related to your organisation.
  4. Celebrities, politicians and others with a high profile.
  5. Media.
  6. Volunteers.
  7. Retweeters and people who have contacted you.

As I added to Lauren’s post in the comments, I think there’s a lot of opportunity for organizations to leverage the List functionality for boosting visibility of their work and finding new supporters.  Think about the way Facebook Fan pages work, the way we see when others add a Fan page and we may join as well, and so on.  This kind of visibility work taps people’s desire to be cause-related in self identity.

Here’s my idea for an organizational visibility campaign using Lists:

Create a list for Supporters. (Make sure it’s a public list, and link to it from your website and elsewhere.) Encourage people who want to be included on that list to publicly @reply to you and say why they support you. Then, add them to the list.

So, they’ve already publicly promoted you to their whole followers list and as a member of the list can feel a bit more connected with the organization (to retweet messages in the future, help promote campaigns or other projects, etc.).

What do you think?

Would love to hear if you have other ideas about using Lists for organizations. Do you already have the Lists function enabled on your account – have you used it yet?

Published on October 30, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 10 Comments

Net2 Think Tank: Lessons from the Campaign

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Originally posted on the NetSquared blog.

Earlier this month, the world watched as America elected a new president who came from a campaign rich with social media.  The campaigns had much more money and resources than all the nonprofit organizations that I know, but were really succeeding with free, or nearly-free, tools.  The question this month focused on lessons for nonprofits:

What was the best example or lesson learned about leveraging social media from the political campaigns this year?  We saw candidates speaking to citizens through various mechanisms, but we also know that candidates have a lot more money than most of our nonprofit organizations (even if the tools are free, staffing and strategy development isn’t).  What social media tools, tricks, and strategies were employed that could be used successfully with nonprofits?

Answers poured in from all over the web.  Here’s what Net2ThinkTank responders thought were some of the best ideas for nonprofits:

Holly Ross, at NTEN, explained Obama’s success with leveraging the under 30 voters thanks to talking to them in the communication styles they prefer – social media:

In this election, Obama rode a tidal wave of youth vote to the presidency, with 66% of voters under 30 casting their ballot for the Democrat. What the campaign realized, early and often, is that the under-thirty crowd communicates differently from the rest of us.  As Allison Fine writes in Momentum, this group is “… likely to engage in two-way conversation with staff, volunteers, and clients, rather than in one-way broadcasts, the style of communication most often used by organizations now.”

Joitske Hulsebosch, of Lasagna and Chips, reminds us that “you have to go out and be where your people are online,” but has a good reminder for us that it is more than just good tools that make campaigns and projects great:

Social media can help and support you when you have a strong service or product, but can also amplify weak services or product. At times I have the impression that is forgotten and that people think a web2.0 tool will automatically give you a good reputation. Take the example of a weblog: a weblog can also worsen your reputation because your work and ideas will be exposed.

Tim Brauhn explains that it wasn’t until the Obama campaign that his organization, and others, was able to really see the benefit of social media.  He also points out a simple lesson that, “It was always a very simply ask, “Please help us do good things. Donate $5 before midnight.” It worked, and it worked like a charm, too.”

Brian Reich, of Thinking About Media, says that the best lesson is yet to come:

I was personally disappointed that the Obama campaign didn’t do more with its big database, its command of social media and new technologies, and its giant war-chest to dig deeper into serious issues and give voters – struggling to find some little bit of serious discussion amid all the mud-slinging – the real facts they needed to make a choice in this election.  They basically ran a substance-light, play-it-safe, don’t-make-any-mistakes kind of campaign.

The MixedMedia blog picked up on the DIY message of the Obama campaign.

I have a hunch that more people made more use of Barack Obama’s imagery – and made it their own – that at any time in history. At the same time, more people independently produced more images, videos, songs, raps, apps and sites to promote Barack Obama’s candidacy *in their own voice* than at any other time.I think this is powerful – politically, socially, and culturally.

Shari Ilsen, of Great Nonprofits, points to Obama’s innovative uses of social media as the biggest lesson for nonprofits.

He took technology that had been around for a while and used it in a new way. He applied web 2.0 to a realm that had never met it before, and in so doing he changed the face of modern politics. What’s scary about what Obama did is the risk he took- putting large amounts of resources into an untried strategy. But his success reminds us all that anything new, exciting, and ultimately worth it requires risk.

I want to close this with a challenge from Brian Reich and hope that you will weigh in with your answers and ideas!

So, NetSquared, rather than looking back at the Election for lessons that nonprofits can use, I would challenge you to look ahead and help the Obama Administration brainstorm what is possible for using technology and the internet to improve our Democracy and bring nonprofits more directly in contact with the Administration as they start to tackle tough issues.

Share your ideas and responses on the NetSquared blog here.

Published on November 24, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

Successful Campaigns: Ideas from Chain Reaction

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I wanted to share with you some of the awesome advice that came out of the Campaigning for Social Change session today at Chain Reaction 2008.  Jonathan Ellis, Director of Policy at the Refugee Council, shared what he has experienced as the key attributes of a successful campaign for social change.

1. Make a positive connection: we often make a connection with people but the message depresses them.  Successful campaigns get people activated and energized.  The way to do that is to create a message that clearly defines the problem AND solution.

2. The elevator test: 15 seconds [in an elevator] to pitch your issue/campaign to the leader, politician, funder or whomever.  Using that message from number 1 above, the problem and solution needs to be able to be articulated in just 15 seconds.  (Yes, your campaign and issues needs more than 15 seconds, we know.  The elevator test is the core of the message.)

3. Work out who has the power: Who are you directing the campaign at?  How really has the power to realise the change you seek?  Campaigns are often launched at the wrong audience.  They have a great message, a great plan, a worthy cause – but are talking to the wrong people.  Is the president really the one to convince?

4. Use the right campaign tools:  It’s like being a general on the eve of battle and looking at all the troops before you: Research, lobbying, media, supporters, allies, etc.  Not every one needs to be used all the time.  But the right groups at the right times in the right ways.  Keep in mind that alliances and partnerships aren’t bad, especially when they are unconventional.  For example, Oxfam working with workers’ unions for the campaign around asylum seekers.

5. Plan for success:  What happens if/when you succeed?  Plan to be successful and plan where you are going once you get there (because you aren’t finished!).

6. Never stop campaigning: Things can be fickle!  Say you get a law passed that provides allotment of funds for the community services you campaigned for.  Then, two years later, those funds are reallocated.  Where are you?  Where is your campaign?  Are you still working, still activating your members, still participating in the arena in an influential way?

7. Your choice of message:  Campaign messages that are successful are those that motivate the audience with power, not the organizers.  Often, when we are building a campaign, it’s easy to identify what motivates us and what calls us to action, but that’s not necessarily the best motivating message for the audience you are reaching out to.  For example, a campaign about empty property that is directed at home owners with a message that compares the numbers of homeless people and the empty properties isn’t as effective as one that talks about the fact that empty housing devalues surrounding homes.

8. Enthusiasm:  it’s self-explanatory but often more difficult than you’d think.  I’m sure you can think of a time when you’ve talked to a campaigner who just doesn’t have his or her heart in it.  It makes a big difference if you’re enthusiastic, both about the campaign and the issue, or not.

9. Enjoy your campaign:  again, it’s self-explanatory but often overlooked.  Be passionate and enjoy it.

Lastly, be sure to include at the center of your campaign those who are/will be effected.  No one else can tell the story of a homeless person living on the street and dealing with health issues than someone who is.  No one can talk about the issues in public schools as well as those who are in them every day.  Give those you want to help the microphone, the spotlight, and let them tell their own story.

What are the key attributes to successful campaigns you’ve been a part of?  Has your organization used any of the above points?

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

Obama’s Social Media Campaign

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Originally posted on the NetSquared blog.

We have seen it and heard about it time and again, but the Obama campaign is capitalizing on social media use and setting some great examples for nonprofits and other social change campaigns looking to try something new.  Without any candidate endorsement, we can look at the success the Obama camp has had and try it out in our own work!

Newest in the playbook: iPhone app

On the official Barak Obama website ,supporters can now download and use the Obama iPhone application.  As the site explains, the features include:

  • Call Friends: A great volunteering tool that lets you make a difference any time you want by talking to people you already know. Your contacts are prioritized by key battleground states, and you can make calls and organize results all in one place.
  • Call Stats: See nationwide Obama ‘08 Call Friends totals and find out how your call totals compare to leading callers.
  • Get Involved: Do more. Find and contact your local Obama for America HQ.
  • Receive Updates: Receive the latest news and announcements via text messages or email.
  • News: Browse complete coverage of national and local campaign news.
  • Local Events: Find local events, share by email and get maps and directions.
  • Media: Browse videos and photos from the campaign
  • Issues: Get clear facts about Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s plan for essential issues facing Americans.

What does this mean?  They are putting all of the campaigning tools in the hands of supporters, and not just giving them the options but putting them right onto the screen where it is one touch away from an action.  Volunteer support has never been easier!

More Social Media Tools

The Obama campaign is taking advantage of  much more than the iPhone.  It is using a wiki to organize volunteers, Twitter to keep followers in the loop play-by-play, Facebook apps to show support, and even a branded social network to connect supporters.  An important part of successful social media use that the campaign is really capitalizing on is meeting your supporters where they already are, where they are already talking about you or making up their minds to support you are not.

In Other Words

There has been a lot of coverage about the Obama campaign’s smart use of social media from all corners of the web.  To read more, check out these links:

Have any of Obama’s social media tactics caught your eye?  Are there any lessons you’ve learned or tricks you plan to try at your organization?

Published on October 14, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments