Tag Archive for 'report'

Great reads from around the web on July 29th

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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 July 29th). 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).

  • How Women Use the Web [REPORT] – "In the “Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet (Internet)” report, comScore concludes that women are the digital mainstream, a group of savvy Internet explorers who are more engaged than their male counterparts, and are the primary drivers of online and group buying."
  • Why Do You Participate in Twitter Chats? | Community Organizer 2.0 – "Why do people participate in Twitter chats? I’ve been thinking about that question a lot. I posed the question “what Twitter chats do you participate in and why?” on Twitter and Facebook. What came back was pretty consistent: people participate to get information, ideas, contribute to a community, and meet new people."
  • Fire Your Marketing Manager and Hire A Community Manager – David Armano – The Conversation – Harvard Business Review – "Okay, maybe that's going too far. I don't really recommend firing your marketing manager. I do however believe that most companies will eventually need to hire or contract with a community manager, if they haven't already. A recent BusinessWeek article called "Twitter Twitter Little Star," describes social media as a booming industry which has caught the attention of corporations everywhere, and suggests the role of a "social media director" and what that person should do. I'd like to dig a bit deeper into what this core function, necessary to create to what's becoming known as social engagement. I'll call the role the community manager."
  • Q&A: A West Point for Community Organizing – Walking Distance – GOOD – "Since its first boot camp in 2006 the New Organizing Institute has trained more than 700 organizers across the country in leveraging online tools to generate offline action. It’s the nation’s leading progressive advocacy and campaign training program and it’s quietly and forcefully redefining the way campaigns are run and social change happens. Judith Freeman, one of the organization’s founders, worked on the new media strategy for the Obama campaign and is using those same tactics to train leaders from organizations like the NAACP and the Red Cross. We spoke to Ms. Freeman about what community organizing looks like in the 21st century."
  • Where does Social Media belong on the Org Chart? — Global Neighbourhoods – When everyone wants a bit of the social media juice, having a strategy and usage policy become even more important. Interested to hear how organizations are dealing with this issue!
  • The Nonprofit Social Media Decision Guide | Idealware – "Social media can be useful to your organization… but how useful? For what? What tangible results are people seeing from it? Created in partnership with the New Organizing Institute, the Decision Guide walks you through a step-by-step process to decide what social media channels make sense for your organization via a workbook, guide, and the results of more than six months of research. And through the included Consultant Directory, you can find a professional to help define and implement your strategy."
Published on July 29, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

Great reads from around the web on May 28th

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I come across so many great conversations, ideas, and resources all over the web every day. Here are some of the most interesting things I’ve found recently (as of May 28th). You can join the conversations in the comments, or click through to the original posts to find what others are saying.

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

  • YouTube Goes Fully Social And Challenges Facebook | Community Organizer 2.0 – "Today, YouTube announced that every single YouTube channel now comes equipped with a moderator feature. It’s an incredibly exciting step to see YouTube becoming fully social. The moderator feature allows any channel to ask for ideas, questions, or suggestions from the community..right from your YouTube channel. Users may vote the crowdsourced ideas up or down. By integrating Google moderator, YouTube has brought real time engagement features into play and made it 100% more engaging."
  • Explaining racial differences in attitudes towards government use of social media | Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project – "Last week a reporter from the New York Times read our recent Government Online report and emailed me with a question—how did I explain the disparity between African-Americans' and Hispanics' views of the importance of government social media versus whites? Did I think it had anything to do with minorities being more trusting of the government during the Obama era? Since my reply got pared down due to space constraints, I’m reproducing my response to his query in full below."
  • The new JustGiving Facebook app is here « JustGiving blog – JustGiving has a new facebook application out! It launches alongside the current JustGiving application for Facebook which was launched in 2007, which has seen over a half million users – and over 139,000 active in the past month – and over 9500 fans. The JustGiving team is always great about sharing stories, lessons, and insights – so I'll be watching to see how this new tool goes!
  • Wild Apricot Blog : Make Your Own Infographic – "Infographics are to data what storytelling is to an annual report: a more engaging way to help bring attention and understanding to your nonprofit’s cause. Yesterday we looked at an interesting infographic that suggested a new way to view your volunteers. Today, let’s look at infographics in general – and resources to help your nonprofit get started on making your own."
  • Minnesota Open Idea: Crowdsourcing Contest For Social Change Done Right | Beth’s Blog – "The Minnesota Open Idea is an example of an online social good contest that works. It combines expert judging with popular vote, online strategy with good old fashion off line organizing, links objectives to a theory of change, and incorporates a fun and engaging way for people to learn about and take action on a timely community problem. In this interview, Jennifer Ford Reedy, VP for Strategy and Knowledge Management, at the Minnesota Community Foundation shares the how they designed this online social good contest for success."
Published on May 28, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

Great reads from around the web on May 17th

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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 May 17th). 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).

  • HOW TO: Turn Slacktivists into Activists with Social Media – "Throughout the non-profit world, organizations struggle with social media’s impact on the volunteer and donor cycle. The rise of “slacktivism” — doing good without having to do much at all — challenges organizations to rethink the way they cultivate their core volunteers and donors. There are some important social media strategies for transforming those one-click “slacktivists” into fully engaged activists. Here are five tips from some of the best in the non-profit business."
  • In Effort to Boost Reliability, Wikipedia Looks to Experts – Digits – WSJ – "Wikipedia is teaming with universities in a bid to entice professors and their students to beef up its coverage of complicated public-policy topics — part of a move by the online encyclopedia to strengthen editing and fill in gaps in its articles. The Wikimedia Foundation, which finances and oversees the nonprofit site, received a $1.2 million grant from the Stanton Foundation to work with academic experts on Wikipedia articles related to public policy, which could include everything from political theory to legislative history and issues such as health reform and science. The goal is to get professors — and, in turn, their students — involved in producing more articles on public policy and improving the quality of the articles that already exist."
  • The Next Generation of American Giving – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – frogloop – Here is a great guest post from Jocelyn Harmon on the Care2 Frogloop blog: "“Our donors are aging-out.” “We need to attract younger donors.” “We need to be on Facebook.” These are some of the common refrains I hear from nonprofits. It seems that everyone is trying to bring younger donors into the fold. But what does younger mean? Does it mean connecting with the Baby Boomers, creating a gateway to the Millenials, or both? And, how do you do it? Should you buy a list of 50 – 60 year olds, or should someone on your staff become savvier with email marketing and social media? A new study, by Convio, Edge Research and Sea Change Strategies, The Next Generation of American Giving: A study on the contrasting charitable habits of Generation Y, Generation X, Baby Boomers and Matures, answers these questions, and more. See an overview of the findings below."
  • ChatRoulette : Web Ecology Project – "This paper represents an initial study of ChatRoulette.com, conducted between February 6th and 7th, 2010 by researchers in attendance at Web Ecology Camp III in Brooklyn, NY. We sampled 201 ChatRoulette sessions, noting characteristics such as group size and gender. We also conducted 30 brief interviews with users to inquire about their age, location, and frequency of ChatRoulette use."
  • Twitter tactics – Louder.org.uk campaigning resources and info – "Twitter is growing at gigantic rate, experiencing 1,500% growth in the last year (for more stats see The State and Future of Twitter 2010). For those who are not converts it does seem to be the latest in a line of social media tools that everyone thinks you should be using. But what is in it for campaigners trying to bring about social change? Below sets out three main ways in which campaigners have already been using Twitter in their work to get you thinking and there are also three great examples to illustrate. Please add any experiences or thoughts of your own."
Published on May 17, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 4 Comments

New on SSIR: Give Permission to Peer Influence

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My latest post is up on the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog.  You can read the post and join the conversation on the SSIR blog here, or read the copied post below.

—–

A new report from the team at Forrester came out last week: Tapping The Entire Online Peer Influence Pyramid.  It comes at the same time that I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the importance of community builders/managers/leaders or organizational voices to give permission back to the community members.  The evaluation and recognition of peer influence, something that is not only prevalent but inherent in social media, is something that help empower and sustain your communities AND increase your staff capacity.  Let’s discuss!

First, let’s talk about permission.

As organizations or community builders active online, working to practice and create quality engagement, we are often trying to guide, collect or herd conversations and interactions into spaces that we have created or monitor closely. When I say “give permission,” in this post, I’m really saying that you should balance the herding and collecting of the community with the encouragement and empowerment for the community to go wherever it wants with your message or information.

Giving permission to the community is really just recognizing that conversations already take place in spaces online where you don’t have a presence, a fan page, or a profile. That people talk about your services or programs, issues or sector wherever they are and you may never know about it, know them, or be part of the conversation.

Giving permission to the community to have conversations without you requires trust. You have to trust that the community will take your communications or mission forward. You have to trust that the community will monitor or respond to comments or issues in a way that matches the way you would (that you’ve modeled the behavior the way you want it repeated).

The conversations and connections that are taking place elsewhere, whether it’s on or offline, don’t have to remain a mystery to you, though.  Give permission for your community to report back – and provide the mechanisms to do so.  Create places for or explicitly ask for feedback, not just about what you do and how you do it (which you probably already do) but also what your community is doing, learning, hearing, seeing, interested in and so on. This way you can build active two-way communications that help you stay informed but also empower the community members to be part of team.

Now, what about peer influence?

I’ve talked before about how to map your community and the messages within it.  What’s so great about the chart from Forrester at the top of this post is that it shows you a great way to view segments of your database in an influential way. You don’t simply have to say there are people that respond to action alerts and those that don’t… I may not sign your petition, but what if I’m forwarding it on? What if you could send powerful invitations to spread the word or rally behind a cause or action to a select group of people instead of creating mass mailings to everyone you know?  Think of the difference: your communications become more strategic, more streamlined, and more efficient by recognizing those in your list that fall into the different peer influence categories!

Giving permission to peer influence

All of this is really to say: you can create a multiple win for your organization and your community by giving permission to broadcast and influence on your behalf.  It sounds simple, but there are always infastructre requirements behind everything.  In order to give permission and leverage the peer influencers in your community, you need:

  • to create a dashboard, toolbox, or any other catchy name where influencers can grab images, videos, files or messages that are ready to be broadcast
  • to create opportunities for influencers to be unique or valuable with their participation
  • to monitor how your influence tools are used (“share with a friend” or RT or so on) to see what content is best or most successfully shared and if there are new influencers emerging
  • to provide recognition or spotlight for those that are taking your message into their networks and creating impact
  • to help your staff, team or organization to understand the value in distributing the communications and influence of your work, and help them leverage the network  in similar ways across all departments and campaigns

What do you think?

How has your organization seen peer influence or community leaders emerge in social media? How have you created ways to give value back to those driving your message to their own communities? (Think about all of this in terms of campaigns, fundraising, events and more!)

Join the conversation on the SSIR blog or share your ideas in the comments below.

Published on March 9, 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

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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

New on SSIR: Effects of Joining the Conversation

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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

Nonprofit Marketing Report: Organizations Failing to Connect

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Nancy Schwartz, president of Nancy Schwartz & Company and blogger at Getting Attention, has just finished analyzing data from a nonprofit marketing survey of more than 900 nonprofit leaders, revealing that they are doing a poor job connecting with their audience and community.  Nancy explains:

“Nonprofit marketers say their key messages are failing to connect with the people who need to hear them and that is a serious problem.  The way nonprofits talk about themselves to the public is a core competency critical to any organization’s success. The bad news is that most nonprofits admittedly are doing a very poor job, despite a great deal of effort. The good news is that fixing the problem is highly do-able and promises vastly greater success than they are experiencing now.”

The survey results included:

Most Nonprofit Messages Don’t Connect Strongly with Key Audiences:
Eighty-four percent of 915 nonprofit leaders who completed the survey last month said their messages connect with their target audiences only somewhat or not at all. Respondents represented organizations of all size, issue focus and geographical location.

Behind the Disconnect—86% of Nonprofits Characterize Their Messages as Difficult to Remember:
Most nonprofits report that their messaging suffers from lack of inspiration (73%) and poor targeting to audience wants and needs (70%), and is difficult to remember (86%). Few communicators laud their messaging for its strengths: Only 13% of organizations characterize messaging as cogent while 8% describe their messaging as potent.

Here are some comments from survey participants explaining why their messages fail to connect:

  • “Our messages need to be more succinct to communicate how effective we really are.”
  • “We don’t move our base to action.”
  • “We have individual elements that are OK solo, but no unified path.”
  • “Our messages aren’t hard-hitting or targeted enough. So they fall flat.”
  • “We need to shape messages that are simple enough for staff to remember and feel comfortable in repeating it to others.”
  • “Too much jargon. I can’t even understand what we’re saying.”

Inconsistency Reigns, Leaving Confusion and Annoyance in Its Path:
Less than 50% of nonprofits report consistent use of their positioning (organizational tagline, positioning statement and talking points). That means that even though most organizations have taken the effort to craft messages, those messages aren’t used consistently across channels (website, direct mail, email), audiences or programs.

More information and complete survey results, plus specific recommendations on how nonprofits can start to immediately improve key messaging, are available at:

http://nancyschwartz.com/articles/index.php/messaging-crisis-for-nonprofits/

Published on January 26, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 7 Comments

Great reads from around the web on December 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 December 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).

  • FT.com / Weekend columnists / Tim Harford – Perhaps microfinance isn’t such a big deal after all – "Last December, I showed some unwitting prescience by worrying about a backlash against microfinance, the practice of providing small loans – or perhaps savings products or insurance – to poor people. I fretted that there was little compelling evidence that it worked. A year later, the evidence is arriving and the backlash has begun. The Boston Globe published an article in September, subtitled, “Billions of dollars and a Nobel Prize later, it looks like ‘microlending’ doesn’t actually do much to fight poverty.” " – I'm interested to hear what you all think about this issue, especially now during the 'giving season.'
  • Open Source Is Dead! Long Live Open Source! | NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network – "That's right, I said it. Promise to read the rest of this before you send me hate mail, though. What I mean is that open source, as we knew it, is dead. For the last decade, what we've been talking about when we say "open source" is "open code" — a set of zeroes and ones that we can configure to our heart's desire."
  • Net2 Think Tank Round-Up: Best of 2009 | NetSquared, an initiative of TechSoupGlobal.org – Check out the diverse submissions to the December Net2 Think Tank that simply asked for the best blog posts of 2009! I'm sure there are some resources, conversations and pointers in here that are new to everyone.
  • What Matters Now eBook – Get the ebook now for free! "We want to shake things up. More than seventy extraordinary authors and thinkers contributed to this ebook. It's designed to make you sit up and think, to change your new year's resolutions, to foster some difficult conversations with your team."
  • Orchestras and Social Media Survey: Key Findings and Full Report | Dutch Perspective by Marc van Bree – "In short, the survey found that social media activities, familiarity and usage seem to be widespread among orchestras. Managers find social media important and organizations are generally enthusiastic. However, the efforts are far from organized and strategic. It seems many orchestras are dipping their feet in the social media pool, but do not have the policies, budgets, and metrics in place to effectively use the tools at their disposal, even if they do recognize the need for checks and balances."
Published on December 15, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 15 Comments

Great reads from around the web on December 8th

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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 December 8th). 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).

  • 2009 Year-End Fundraising Guide – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – frogloop – “Is your nonprofit sending out 8-10 online fundraising appeals this holiday season? According to Mark Rovner and Alia McKee of Sea Change Strategies who led the recent webinar Procrastinator’s Guide to Year-End Fundraising with Kathryn Powers of Conservation International and moderated by Eric Rardin of Care2 and Rebecca Higman of Network of Good, this tactic has been helping organizations raise a lot of money. Nonprofits can expect 60% of their donations to come in between Christmas and New Year’s.”
  • Public ‘want to know how money is spent’ – Third Sector – “More than half of the general public would donate more money to charity if they knew exactly how it was spent, a new survey of 2,000 people indicates. The research was carried out for donation website See the Difference, which will be launched next year. The data shows that 51 per cent of people would give more if they knew how their money was spent and 40 per cent would do so if they could actually see the difference their money was making.”
  • Facebook Will Be Google-able (If Your Profile is Set to Public) – “At Google’s event today announcing a number of fantastic new features, including real-time search, a new partnership was announced: real-time search of public Facebook status updates. A Google/Twitter partnership was announced months ago but we assumed that Facebook wouldn’t be allowing Google to index many details of its site because the two are fast becoming big rivals. Thus today’s announcement is a very big surprise.”
  • Does Directgov Deliver? – “Directgov (www.direct.gov.uk) is the Government’s official website for the general public. This discussion paper analyses how well Directgov delivers on its promise to consumers to ‘provide information and online services for the public all in one place’. The analysis is approached from a user’s perspective, and highlights the types of problems consumers frequently encounter with the service. It is intended to promote a debate, and at the end of each chapter, suggestions are made for rethinking key areas so that they can deliver more effective online public services. We want to hear your thoughts and ideas on this discussion paper so please add your comments in the ‘Your feedback’ section that appears on each page. The paper will be open to comment til the end of January 2010.”
  • 20 Questions To Start a Social Media Discussion | Brand Elevation Through Social Media and Social Business | Altitude Branding – “Let’s make something clear: you can be the person that starts asking the questions and initiating the conversations that move social media forward. You. Sitting right there. Yes, you. I don’t care if you’re the marketing assistant, the PR coordinator, the customer service manager, the HR director, or the mailroom clerk. What it takes is the intent to be part of the progress, the bravery to start an open conversation, the maturity and patience to not make it personal, and the investment in the outcomes to take it a step further.”
Published on December 8, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments