Tag Archive for 'causes'

New on SSIR: How Our Tools Define “Community”

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

This is my latest post on the Stanford Social Innovation Review opinion blog.
Read the original post and conversation here.

—–

I’ve talked about issues and ideas over the last year about the use of certain tools or platforms in the social technology for social impact sector, from Causes to Ideablob to Ning.  These conversations have moved through a version of the stages of grief: outrage, doubt, fear, wonder.  We’re now, as a community, emerging into a great place and ready to figure out what we do now.  How do we create a better way of building?

Through these discussions, I find myself creating the never-ending pro and con list, or if-then clauses.  Yes, we know where we want to go (kind of); but we are also very much here right now.  Looking at our tools, I can’t help be stop for a minute to examine what they are doing to define our communities and what “community” even means.

Here are four of the biggest examples I see as to how some of the most popular tools at our disposal for “community building” online are actually not community-centric tools at all.

Numbers do not equal Activity

Many tools—whether it’s a page, a group, or a network—focus on numbers.  The number of fans on your facebook page is one of the core features on the landing page, the number of Ning network members is the same, and again with Twitter, etc. I can’t think of a tool that doesn’t put that number right in front of you.  But, I could have a million in my “community” without a single one of them “doing” anything.  Sheer numbers don’t mean activity.  And activity is what makes a community grow and thrive.

Opportunity for Community Builders:

Use the functionality options you are given (even if extremely limited) to put activity (even activity numbers if you have to) at the forefront.

“Market” does not equal “Community”

The reliance on advertising is becoming more and more visible throughout the social media space, most recently in Ning’s move to require all network creators to pay with the exception of educators (with an emphasis on using ads to offset payments). As digital citizens we are not against advertising and promotions online, per se, but have come to accept them as part of the space where we live, work, and hang out (just like offline).  But, offline, we can create community spaces that are free from advertising.  Many of the tools popular right now don’t provide that option (obviously unless you want to pay for it).  But, your community may want to feel like it’s a community – not a market.

Opportunity for Community Builders:

Look for tools that provide the options your community wants when it comes to ads or other non-community content. (Don’t be afraid to just ask them what they want!)

Owners do not equal Leaders

Pretty much every tool requires someone to “host” it or own it: to be the first administrator, to set it up, to pay for it, etc. But there are very few communities online, at least that I’ve experienced, where that person is one of the “community leaders.”  Most all communities have various roles that members self-select or grow into.  These roles may include welcomers, trainers, supporters, creators, moderators, and leaders. By it’s very nature, a community does not have an owner—all the members are owners.  Many tools create opportunity for the owner to stand in the spotlight, without much attention going to the other, more appropriate, roles.

Opportunity for Community Builders:

Look for ways to spotlight, recognize, and thank the community members who are taking an active role to lead and support the community who aren’t automatically spotlighted in the “owner” profile.

1 Community does not equal All Communities

The inherent problem with adopting many tools is that the options, functionality, and flexibility are limited. But, not all communities function, need the same options, or even want to operate online in the same way as others.  This also points to one of the big issues in strategic development: it isn’t just about knowing where your audience is, but know what they want to do – those may not always match up and it may be the case that a catalyst (you?) can step in to help provide the space where they can do what they want.

Opportunity for Community Builders:

If you see a tool/network not being used by your community the way it has done with others, don’t assume that people aren’t getting it or need training or help – maybe the tool just isn’t right for the community’s goals. Strive to be a catalyst (a spark that creates but doesn’t own) for finding and creating appropriate spaces with the appropriate tools.

Many of our current tools require us to operate as spider networks, with a traditional hierarchy and distribution of responsibility (aka power), instead of starfish communities where we can be share and distribute responsibility, and develop in an agile, organic way.  A spider network may be appropriate for some groups and communities.  But, is it right for yours? What are your tools deciding about your community?  What have you done to redefine “community” for your network?

(For more on the metaphor used above, visit The Spider and The Starfish.)

Published on May 7, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 6 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

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

Guest Post on Tactical Philanthropy: Causes, MySpace and ideablob

Published in community, issues and otherblogs. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Sean Stannard-Stockton has just posted my guest post on the Tactical Philanthropy blog.  You can read it and the comments on the blog here, it’s copied below.

“In recent days, Causes has left MySpace and IdeaBlob has shutdown. To some, these events were unimportant. In reaction to the Causes announcement, Economist bureau chief Matthew Bishop tweeted “Who knew it was on MySpace?” to which New York Times reporter Stephanie Strom tweeted back “No kidding.”

But to many people active in online social action communities, these events had deeper meaning. This is a guest post from Amy Sample Ward, NetSquared’s Global Community Development Manager.”

—–

There’s something in the wind, other than in-coming winter, that has my attention.  It’s something I can only wrap my mind around by talking to others and hope that this is a chance to further a very important conversation.

First, let’s start at the beginning:

Causes Leaves MySpace

Two weeks ago, Causes, the application that lets individuals and organizations campaign and fundraise, removed itself and all Causes-related content/data from MySpace.  (Read more about Causes leaving MySpace here.)

This separation came with no public announcement, either before the move or when it happened, except for a very short email sent a couple days beforehand to account administrators as a warning.  The message explained that Causes would be focusing on only providing service to the Facebook platform, encouraging any MySpace users that wanted to continue using the application to migrate, too.

and then…

ideablob Shuts Down

By now, you may have heard about the very abrupt closedown of ideablob, a competition and promotion platform for entrepreneurs.    Late last week, registered users, interested supporters and social changemakers participating in a funding competition were all greeted with the message below when visiting the ideablob website:

ideablobclose

Users (whether they were people with a project in the competition, those that had voted to support an idea, or were general registered users of the site) received no notice that the closure was coming, or even when it happened. The only bread crumbs to find were some business reports about Advanta declaring bankruptcy, like this one, that don’t even mention ideablob.

Here’s a bit of John Brennan‘s story (an ideablob member who was competition in the competition) from his comment on my original blog post:

“It’s upsetting that companies like this aren’t actually thinking or caring about the real people and ideas they are effecting. This week our idea was up for the sprint and in the top 3. Why did they even start the competition when they already were going through bankruptcy talks?”

and so…

The Conversation

What’s this mean to you as an activist, supporter, volunteer, changemaker, entrepreneur, innovator or *insert preferred title* online? Well, it means a lot.  We can see (and learn a valuable lesson about) the way current ecosystem of social media works in regards to transparency, data, and community.  To unpack this, let’s narrow in on each:

Transparency
The lack of communication about the actual decision, but more so in the lack of communication about the development, direction and intention of Causes and ideablob indicates that transparency isn’t a part of the package.  There are many who approach the online landscape with very different views than their offline business decisions.  For example, if ideablob or Causes were a product offline, and you were a funder, an investor, or a consumer/user of ideablob or Causes as offline products providing no integral communication, you would probably not have ever considered participating/consuming.   Just because you aren’t meeting offline, in real-time, in the same room with your supporters and the competitors in the ideablob competition, does not mean likewise that you do not need to know if the platform will even be around for your competition to finish.

The transparency issue is a steep mountain to climb with social media.  Unless you knew that ideablob was part of Advanta, and you were reading the business sections of the papers last week, you wouldn’t have had any idea ideablob was even considering discontinuing.  But, transparency is even more than this, and really is a part of the Data and Community, too.

Data
We can count our Twitter followers or how many people have commented on our blog post, or could have counted the number of supporters on Causes or voters on ideablob, but that doesn’t mean we connect with them.  Now that Causes removed itself, it’s content, and any related data from MySpace, organizations cannot connect with their supporters who were using Causes.  ideablob particpants are locked out from seeing any comments or feedback on their ideas.  The fact that access to data, whether it’s supporters’ email addresses, tracking actions taken, or anything else, is instantly gone should be a big alert bell to those working in a “networked” way via social media to grow their community. To connect with supporters, organizations and individuals working on projects will need to be sure that data gets back to them.

How are you encouraging your supporters all over the web to connect with you directly?  For example, when you post a message (whether it’s on Twitter, Facebook, or even Change.org) telling your supporters that you’re ramping up for some big news, a new project or something else, include a link where they can sign up with you to be on the email/announcement list.  When supporters sign a petition or take action on your organization’s behalf in social media platforms, include “thank you” and “learn more” links wherever possible that link to ways to connect directly with your organization, ensuring the contact information is in your database, not just Facebook’s.

Community
In the Causes move, the issues around community are very clearly focused on the different demographic groups represented on MySpace and Facebook.  With ideablob, it isn’t so much that groups are being separated/segregated, but entirely shut off.  These events raise many questions and flags about diversity, opportunity, and even corporate decision-making.  Communities on both platforms were clearly not part of the development and communications process, yet they were actively using the platform (for example, a grant from ideablob helped Epic Change implement a technology lab in a school in Tanzania).

What is the difference between a community actively using a platform and one actively involved in the evolution of the platform?  If a platform were to disappear, would the community be able to continue on?  Perhaps so if it had been active in the development and direction (or, perhaps that would indicate that the platform would be more unlikely to disappear or at least not without notice)?

What’s Next

I don’t necessarily want to call for the communities on MySpace or on ideablob to call for the return of the tools. We can see by the issues raised above that the platforms weren’t necessarily operating in the best ethos anyway.  But, I do want an arena for the communities to describe what they do want and be an integral part of the process to building and sustaining whatever that is.

How can this work? I can’t speak for others working in the “innovation sector,” but at NetSquared we can’t emphasize enough that our Community is what drives us – whether’s it’s online or offline.  Community feedback shapes everything from our goals to our website and everything in between.  We are able to work as a small team on the organization side because of the passionate, collaborative, dedicated Community.

For example, you can follow the website redesign process via the blog where the feedback and directives for the redesign, the people who stepped up to implement, and the step-by-step process have all been open and Community centered.  This isn’t about creating a new splash page, this is involving the users in the design of the Gallery where their Projects are housed, showcased and voted on; involving bloggers in the design of the collaborative sharing space they contribute to already; involving Community members in telling us both the bad stuff and the good stuff, so we can work to make it everything they want.  As another example, the Net Tuesday network is now up 56+ groups meeting every month around the world—a global network of events, bringing the NetSquared Community together offline—and growing in an entirely organic way.

That doesn’t mean NetSquared’s perfect, by any measure, but it does mean that a quick abandonment isn’t in store.  That also doesn’t mean that NetSquared is the *only* or the *best* place for absolutely everyone to find what they are looking for.  It is, though, one example of trying to make it work.

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?
Published on November 16, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

New on SSIR: Letting Technology Lead

Published in community and issues. 25 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

My latest post for the Stanford Social Innovation Review is up and I hope you’ll dive into the conversation with me!

A recent event has brought up some huge red flags for me around data, around communities, around social impact, inclusion and even more.  It’s a case of letting technology lead (or, rather, the people behind the technology) instead of the communities on the other end.  This event focuses on Causes, an application for supporting and fundraising for organizations by individuals, groups and even the organizations themselves.

First, let me explain what happened yesterday.  Administrators of Causes accounts on MySpace received a notice via email stating, “Thank you for the work you’ve done on Causes on MySpace.  Do to the lack of activity on MySpace, we’ve decided to focus our efforts on the Causes Application on Facebook.”  (To read the full message, click here.)  The message indicated that all Causes-related pages and content on MySpace would be taken down at the end of the week.

This may not seem too terribly interesting or scary, but let’s take a closer look.

What it Means to Individuals

I blogged earlier this year about research that indicates very strongly we’ve replicated our offline social barriers and segmentation in our online social networking platforms.  (Visit danah boyd’s website for more information and research on this topic.) Different communities have aligned and adopted different social networks, social media tools, communications platforms, etc. The tools we use often reflect the communities we are in, whether those communities are geographic, ethnic, or otherwise.

I consistently advocate that organizations go where their community is—because that community is already connected and people are already talking about you, your services or your sector.  Why? Because individuals network together online and the biggest influencers are our closest friends in our network.  When a friend starts a campaign, supports or fundraises for an organization or cause publicly on a social networking platform, they broadcast that action and encourage their friends to do the same.

Causes leaving MySpace means that no users there (though, there certainly seem to be A LOT of users) will be able to continue promoting the causes, organizations or sectors that they care about via a process that’s already been established, adopted, and networked.  I’ve even talked before about how I believe Millennials are using alignment and promotion of social impact areas (whether it’s a sector, like Human Rights; or a nonprofit, like Planned Parenthood; etc.) as a form of self expression and identification.  Applications like Causes also enable individuals to give voices to your work that you don’t have to control or manage – campaigns that benefit you because your supporters believe and appreciate the work you are doing.  (Check out a great post from Ivan Boothe of Rootwork on this topic.)

In a big way, removing the Causes application from MySpace will mean many people don’t have the “space” to bare their badges of support, to leverage a networked dashboard of lapel pins that align them and define them.

What it Means to Communities

Causes’ About statement says, “The goal of all this is what we call “equal opportunity activism.” We’re trying to level the playing field by empowering individuals to change the world.”

The debate around social media and the Internet in general as a leveling force is still heated from all sides.  Yes you can claim that anyone has the power to blog, but that’s really only the people who have access to the tools and the time and the empowerment.  The access debate aside, the removal of Causes from MySpace where there are active communities of supporters means “equal opportunity activism” is defined by only certain communities (as we know that social networking platforms have very different demographic user groups).

It also skews the idea that organizations can focus energy where their communities already are.  Though, with MySpace, organizations have different opportunities for creating profiles and interacting with supporters than on Facebook.

Looking Ahead

Causes has yet to post anything about this on their blog and the MySpace option is still prominently displayed next to Facebook at the top of the site. Obviously, there are many questions users, administrators and communities would like answered.  For example, what will happen to the content, the communications, the information?  Will organizations or administrators still be able to connect with or communicate with their list of supporters? And so on.

But there are many other, larger, questions this example raises for me:

  • Is this an indication that communities will have to take the lead of technologies (and the people behind them)?
  • How can communities communicate and demand technologies take the lead from them?
  • How are organizations building community online in a way that safe guards them from third-parties (maintaining the connections to supporters on MySpace that were gained via Causes by inviting users to register directly with the organization as well, etc.)?
  • What will be the requirement in an open data or open web for applications serving communities?
  • How do we, as public thinkers about this “stuff,” help guide organizations in navigating these questions and others?

What do you think?

I can’t wait to hear what you think! Are you using Causes on MySpace, are you using it on Facebook? Do you have ideas or feelings about the questions above? What other questions do you want answered?

Share your thoughts in a blog post of your own, in the comments below, or on the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog.

Published on November 6, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 25 Comments

Birthday Cause Wrapped Up

Published in fundraising and reports. 6 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

My 26th birthday came and went already and what I’m most excited about (other than the weekend trip we took to Bruges) is the money I was able to pull together from generous friends for Free Geek!  As you can see from the screenshot below, I exceeded my goal and Free Geek will be seeing nearly $350 coming its way!

THANK YOU to all of you who donated and supported my Birthday Cause; it means SO much to me!

I first talked about the Birthday Cause application on Facebook in December when I set it up for my birthday.  In addition to the Thank You, I wanted to share some thoughts about the Birthday Cause application and my experience using it for my birthday fundraiser.

It’s super EASY

It came to me, always. When conducting a campaign at your organization, you’ve probably experienced that you get a better return (whether it’s donations, volunteers, sign-ups, or whatever else) when you reach out to people often with direct opportunities.  Causes’ Birthday Cause application does just that when you set it up.

It emailed me two weeks before my birthday to let me know that I could use the application, and once I had it set up, it emailed me every day with direct links to help me make the most of the tool.  Birthday Cause “Tip of the Day” emails included actions for setting my status, emailing contacts, personalized asking, setting notifications and more.  Here are some examples:

Setting your Status:

Dear Amy,

Just 11 days left until your Birthday!

Congratulations on having raised $234 from 9 donors. Great work! If you haven’t already, take a look at your birthday cause page to see if they left you any birthday greetings, and stop by your promotion page to thank them.

Tip of the Day: Setting Your Status
Every time you change your status, all of your friends can see the update. We’ve created a set of status messages for you to chose from that link directly to your Birthday Cause. Choosing a new one each day is an easy way to make sure your friends know about your birthday cause. To change your status just go here: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/birthdays/29850/status?m=7835d9b4

Keep up the good work,
The Causes Team

Birthday Cause Page:

Dear Amy,

Just 12 days left until your Birthday!

Congratulations on having raised $182 from 7 donors. Great work! If you haven’t already, take a look at your birthday cause page to see if they left you any birthday greetings, and stop by your promotion page to thank them.

Tip of the Day: Your Birthday Cause Page
Your quote is the most important thing on your birthday cause page. Its what your friends will see when they go to the page, and what will help them decide if they want to donate or not. Spend some time making it look nice, and explaining why your birthday cause is important to you. To edit your quote, click ‘Edit Birthday Cause’ from your cause page, or click on this link: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/birthdays/29850/edit?m=7835d9b4

Keep up the good work,
The Causes Team

Inviting Friends:

Dear Amy,

Just 1 days left until your Birthday!

Congratulations on having raised $312 from 12 donors. Great work! If you haven’t already, take a look at your birthday cause page to see if they left you any birthday greetings.

Tip of the Day: Invite More Friends
You can now send more Birthday Requests through Facebook. This is one of the most effective ways to let people know about your Birthday Cause. Invite More Friends

Keep up the good work,
The Causes Team

Email:

Dear Amy,

Just 10 days left until your Birthday!

Congratulations on having raised $286 from 11 donors. Great work! If you haven’t already, take a look at your birthday cause page to see if they left you any birthday greetings, and stop by your promotion page to thank them.

Tip of the Day: Email
Email is an effective way to get in touch with large numbers of your friends and let them know about your birthday cause.

We have set up an easy way for you to email all of your friends with the Causes application. You can do this up to two times, at any time up to and including the day of your birthday. To do so now, click on this link: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/birthdays/29850/email?m=7835d9b4

Thanks,
Amy

Keep up the good work,
The Causes Team

One to One Requests:

Dear Amy,

Just 8 days left until your Birthday!

Congratulations on having raised $312 from 12 donors. Great work! If you haven’t already, take a look at your birthday cause page to see if they left you any birthday greetings, and stop by your promotion page to thank them.

Tip of the Day: One to One Requests
People are most responsive to one-to-one requests. If you have some friends that you are comfortable enough with to ask specifically to donate, doing so is the most effective thing you can do to raise money for your Birthday Cause.

You can make these requests by posting to the walls of these friends from your Birthday Cause promotion page. You can get to that page by clicking ‘Promote your Birthday Cause’ from your cause page or clicking this link: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/birthdays/29850/promote?m=7835d9b4

Keep up the good work,
The Causes Team

Notifications:

Dear Amy,

Just 9 days left until your Birthday!

Congratulations on having raised $286 from 11 donors. Great work! If you haven’t already, take a look at your birthday cause page to see if they left you any birthday greetings, and stop by your promotion page to thank them.

Tip of the Day: Notifications
Notifying your friends about your birthday cause is a good way to spread the word. We allow you to send up to three notifications to your friends about your birthday cause. You can even queue up notifications to be sent automatically the day before your birthday and on your birthday. To send notifications, click on this link: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/birthdays/29850/notify?m=7835d9b4

Keep up the good work,
The Causes Team

The direct links (most are hidden in the above examples as they were hyperlinked text into my account) helped me jump straight to where I needed to be to let my friends know about my cause.  Not only did it make getting the word out about the cause easy, but it helped me stay on top of the donations so I could properly thank my donors!  This is a huge bonus point for the Birthday Cause application because publicly thanking supporters is one of the biggest keys to keeping up the momentum of your fundraising appeal (because not only to donors feel appreciated, but also more inclined to tell their friends about the opportunity – plus, it’s another public mentioning of your campaign!).  Here’s what the email looks like when someone donates:

Lori Faye has donated $26 to your birthday cause! You have now raised $26 from 1 friend and need 9 more to meet your goal.

Thank Your Friends For Donating

Thanks,
The Causes Team

The emails has a direct link to my Birthday Cause page where I can read Lori’s message and thank her.

I was worried when I first set up the application that it would end up being more work to maintain than I had in the midst of holiday season.  Instead, I didn’t feel like I was doing any work at all and yet saw the donations streaming in!

It’s actually FUN

It let me connect with my friends, all over. Facebook is a tool I use to stay connected to my friends and family all over the world.  Regardless of where I’m travelling or currently based, I know everyone is just a click or two away.  That’s why it was such a great opportunity to celebrate my birthday INSIDE Birthday Causes because I’m now a continent away from most of my friends and family.  Connecting with friends as they donated was such a thrill, with people contributing to the Birthday Cause from all over the globe.  I was always excited to get an email from Causes and could never even guess who it would be from each time.

It’s designed to WORK

I really like when things just work.  Like I said, I wasn’t sure how much time I would have with the holidays and our planned travels.  It didn’t matter though, because the application did everything I would have needed it to do. Of course, everything could always work a little better, right?  Here are some of my suggestions to Causes to improve the Birthday Cause application:

  • #1.  I was always unsure whether it would send a request/invite to people who had already donated and that made me less inclined to send out messages repeatedly
  • #2.  I wish that I could have personalized the groups more specifically – if I said I wanted the application to automatically alert my friends at certain intervals, I wanted to also say which friends at which intervals instead of the option being the same for all of it
  • #3.  I know that the Birthday Cause is supposed to help you raise money for a cause of your choice, but I wish I could have had other options beyond giving money – Free Geek is a dynamic organization and I would have liked to encourage people to donate money, but also to pledge to volunteer, register their donated computer parts towards the Birthday Cause, and so on with all of it counting towards my goal
  • #4.  If people donated close together chronologically, the application would only alert me to the most recent donation, so some times I didn’t realize people had donated  to thank them in a timely way
  • #5.  I would have preferred it if my Thank You messages to my donors could have shown up on the Birthday Cause page as well as on their profiles, the same way the application creates posts to my profile when they donate and leave a message

I think it’s a great way to celebrate your birthday and support your favorite organization at the same time.  Learn more about Causes here and how you can use the Birthday Cause application for your special day!

Happy Birthday, Beth!

My good friend Beth Kanter’s birthday is coming up quickly and guess what, she is using Birthday Causes to raise funds!  If you want to wish Beth a happy birthday, you can donate to her Birthday Cause to help support The Sharing Foundation.  Learn more and support Beth here.

Published on January 4, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 6 Comments

My Birthday Cause: Free Geek!

Published in case studies and fundraising. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

I have a birthday coming up and over the weekend I received an email from Causes, the social change application in Facebook.  Here’s what it said:

Happy (Almost) Birthday!

Thanks to Facebook, in two weeks all of your friends will see that it’s your birthday. Instead of just writing on your wall, or giving you something you don’t need, what if they had a chance to help a cause you believe in? Whether you want to raise money for clean water in Ethiopia, vaccinations for children in Haiti, or a safe home for a puppy in Mississipi, with a Birthday Cause your friends can give in honor of your special day.

Select your Birthday Cause today: Get Started – Learn More

Have a very happy birthday,
The Causes Team

Since we moved over here just 3 months ago, I knew that my birthday wasn’t going to be spent with all my friends from home (we are going to travel a bit though, so it’ll still be a fun day!).  No birthday party meant no one buying presents.  I wouldn’t have wanted the gifts anyway, but know that people like to give them, just as much as I do for their special days.  So, I figured this would help friends celebrate my birthday with me, but help out a worthy organization, at the same time!

I clicked through and created my birthday cause in support of Free Geek! (I’ve talked about Free Geek before and why I think they are a great organization.)

The process was simple, straightforward, easy, and most importantly, empowering.  Causes has done a great job to put the tools in the user’s hands to personalize their message, pick a cause/organization that they care about, and choose the avenues for publicizing their cause that fit their community (I didn’t want to email every person right away but just those using Causes, for example, and didn’t want to email people as often automatically as I new I would email people personally, etc.).

After I finished personalizing my Birthday Cause and alerting friends about it, I was able to place a widget on my profile so people could see it when they visited my page.  I just want to point out, this was the easiest application process I’ve ever seen: it did everything for me and I just chose what, when and where.  Even putting the widget on my page was done for me, I just clicked where I wanted it to sit!

When friends donate to the Birthday Cause, they are able to write a message that appears on my Facebook Wall.  It’s great because they get recognized as donors immediately, I get to have a birthday greeting from them, and others see the donations coming in and click through themselves to check it out.

I receive notifications by email when friends donate, and can click through from the emails to thank them, send out messages, and more.  The Causes application has really done it right with the Birthday Cause process.

The first person who tried to donate, my friend Rose Vines (a wonderfully kind, and incredibly smart woman), experienced an issue with the site and it wouldn’t let her donate – the worst situation for potential donors!  She let me know what happened and I immediately emailed the Causes team at the email address in their help section.  I received two emails from Dave: 1. just after sending in the message about the issue, he let me know they were aware of the problem and were working on it 2. the next day he emailed again to say the problem was fixed and everything should be up and running.  Though, in just that little time, I’d already had 7 successful donations and one of them was from Rose!

The next time you have a birthday, if you use Facebook, I’d encourage you to try out the Facebook Causes’ Birthday Cause application and have fun raising funds in celebration of your birthday and the great work of one of your favorite organizations!

Thanks to all those who have helped me raise much-needed support (whether it is funds or not) for Free Geek – I really appreciate it all!  And thanks again to Causes for the great application!

If you’d like to support Free Geek and wish me a happy birthday – check out my Birthday Cause!

Published on December 16, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

Thoughts on Millennials and political action

Published in issues and socialmedia. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

About a year ago, I sat down to write two white papers on issues I had rumbling around in my head that involved the changing roles, as I saw it, of nonprofit organizations and foundations as well as the changing relationship between those organizations and citizens.  Trust me that had I finished writing those, you would have been privy as they would have been up on the blog.  Needless to say, my brain was taken over by work as is the problem that always comes up, and they remain strings of thoughts in text files on my computer.

Today, I finally made a little time to read through Social Citizens from Allison Fine and The Case Foundation.  It tore apart all of the other things I was thinking about today and threw me back into the subject of those white papers from last year.  It was wonderful!  So, I took it as a sign that I needed to get some of those thoughts out to you all this time around.  Keep in mind that these are my thoughts and I would love a chance (read: the time) to expand on them fully, so I apologize for the brevity.  Also, these ideas do not only sprout from this recent publication, obviously, but are inspired through many reports and from my own experiences as a Millenial.

Changing Role of Nonprofits and Foundations

Because so much of the organizing and activism, and thus information and opinion, around issues is done in networks of friends and family, the problem with access to both sides of the story and the opportunity for an independent and unique opinion grows.  As views are shaped by those closest to the individual, there is much less of a chance for a network-created cause or action to include full dialogue of an issue.

Nonprofits and foundations will continue to be tied to causes, changes, actions, and groups that form in social networks and elsewhere on the web.  The role these organizations have in the relationship will change to incorporate the need for access to the big picture.

Nonprofits and foundations will become sources for information and reliable reporting.  They will be the places that personalized campaigns link to for the background and continued data on an issue.  As the fundraising and momentum building moves more and more into the hands of supporters across the web and around the world, the relationship with the aligned organizations changes to reallocate responsibilities.  As information, data, and reporting providers, these organizations will work to ensure that the multitude of unique campaigns taking place simultaneously by supporters provide an opportunity for those networks and potential interested citizens to learn more (and act more).

Changing Expectations of Government and Corporations

Millenials feel political change by individuals is impossible and that political actions like voting and participating in the political arena as it currently exists do not have the impact they want.  This doesn’t mean that young voters aren’t turning out, as we see from the numbers in 2004 and so far in the primaries that the youth vote is taking a big upswing.  But, young voters view their action closer to a symbolic step than a concrete motion.

Millenials are also very concerned about and aware of the cause-related work that corporations are involved in, choosing to support (or purchase from) organizations that are environmentally conscious, giving back to the community, and/or contributing to changing social problems.  Young people report, as it says in the report, having more confidence in corporations than they do in the government.

This could mean that instead of groups of citizens urging politicians and policymakers to make changes around issues or specific legislation, that citizens instead turn to corporations who are aligned with those issues and support them in pressuring the government.  Standing behind more than just a product, but trusting in the clout of a corporation to swing policymakers.

To go further, this could even have implications for key supporters to have a ‘role’ (of some sort) in the leadership of the corporation.  This would complete the circle of accountability between the corporation and the supporters who have chosen to be loyal to the organization because of the issue alignment.

Changing Identity

In previous generations, personal identify was defined by career/job title and field.  You were an engineer or a teacher or a scientist.  That meant something when you said it to a new acquaintance and similarly created automatic circles of colleagues even if you hadn’t met personally.

Now, as taking action for Millenials has become incredibly important and easy via the social communities and world of the web, who you are is no longer defined by the college major you graduated with.  Not only are people of my generation projected to change career fields, not just employers, many times over compared to past generations, but we have come of age in a time when learning is no longer a hierarchical or institutional activity.

The power to do something is in our hands and accessed any time we want online.  This means, Millenials will be identified with their issue-alignment and causes.  The personalized widgets for fundraising campaigns, challenges, and international issues now speak to who we are.  We find friends through the interconnected profile links of campaigns to save Darfur or cancer awareness.  My online actions and challenges are met by people from all backgrounds, job titles, and locations – but we are all working to protect the environment, or raise air quality standards, or stop human trafficking.

The way I expect not just my friends and family, but also my employers and politicians to identify me and communicate with me is also effected by the way I am defined by issues and not simply where I live or where I work.

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I know that is just the tip of the iceberg for three incredibly large areas, but I was going to burst if I didn’t get at least that much out of my head.  I would really, really love to hear what you think and keep this conversation going.  As the way individuals ‘live’ online is already drastically changing the way nonprofits do their work.

Published on May 22, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

America’s Giving Challenge: Importance of discussion

Published in fundraising and otherblogs. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

I received an email from Beth Kanter about my decision to join her in championing the cause for the Sharing Foundation, which helps children in Cambodia receive the education and support they need. Beth asked:

What is the workflow for an effective cause ..? Suppose your
organization wanted to work with an intern to manage the cause with you. What’s on the to do list? How should the staff person manage the intern?

My initial response was two fold:

1. Build discussion

This is achieved by creating posts and questions on the Cause page so that when people click through from a blog or an invitation to join the cause, they are able to see people engaged and learn more immediately, without having to do the research themselves if they are unfamiliar with the organization. Identifying the most active participants in the cause and asking them to post a question, or better yet, asking them to respond to a question posted by the intern would be a good first step to getting conversations started on the Cause page.

2. Link to discussion

This is simply a matter of finding blogs and websites posting about and inviting others to the Cause, then putting links to them on the Cause page and thanking them for their shared support. This cross referencing will add to the information/education on the organization and therefore more people supporting it, while at the same time creating an opportunity for more participants in the conversation.

What do you think? Is conversation, the opportunity to ask or see other’s questions and answers about the work of an organization, something that positively influences your participation and support?

Also, today is Earl Kanter‘s (86th) birthday and Beth is encouraging all of us to donate $10 to our Sharing Foundation cause to celebrate. You can join the Cause now, too!

Published on December 23, 2007 by Amy Sample Ward. 2 Comments