The picture here is a screen shot of a friend’s tweet and, whether I agree or not with her specific statement, I think it perfectly captures the frustration our communities feel when we, as organizations, don’t recognize our impact on creating and sustaining slacktivism instead of changing our world. More on that below…

Activism and Information

When talking about slacktivism, I think we need to start by talking about information. Regardless of the era (this isn’t a new phenomena), the emphasis and effort focused on spreading information and raising awareness has always resulted in people doing what organizations ask, even if it’s considered slacktivism. Previously, learning, spreading information, and raising awareness were very passive actions. But, with the raise of social media, we can further confuse the information stage of campaigning or change efforts with the action action.

What’s is so different today?

• citizen journalism vs institutions
• real time vs publishing
• a global-community view vs contacts only geographically close to us

Social media is a tool. It isn’t a tactic or a strategy. Whether you are urging supporters to make change or chronicling the revolution in your state, it is still a tool. But, because social media allows for engagement and personalization of information, it’s very easy and common for organizations to be satisfied with asking for and measuring the information stage.

Modern Slacktivism

Let’s step back for just a second and look at how our modern slacktivism came into this information = activism dynamic. Just as social media was really taking off, people and organizations were caught up in a huge focus on new ways to gain brand recognition. The 90s were filled with advocates calling for nonprofits to recognize that they could be just like companies in messaging, recognition and branding. Visibility and information were the keys.

How many people had a plastic bracelet from one organization or another? (If you’re reading this, did you?)

How many people here worked for an organization that created their own? I did! And we were an organization with a staff of 3 and board of 12…yeah.

Why’d we do it? To get into people’s lives; to start working up the touch points towards fundraising asks; to be part of how people associated themselves.

We’ve moved now from a plastic bracelet to a fan page. There’s nothing “wrong” with a fan page. But, as organizations or campaigners there IS something wrong if we praise likes and count followers instead of seeing these people as primed for real action and building opportunities for all those fans to actually engage in something meaningful.

Turning Fans into Changemakers

So, how do we really move likes into action?

As organizations, if we want to move our communities away from slacktivism and into real action, we need to recognize the large part we play. For all the negative talk about slacktivism, people are failing to recognize that there is actually a huge response coming from the community. People are taking the actions we are asking them to take – we are the ones giving them slacker-actions! Instead of crafting a compelling message and asking people to “like” it, we should see all of our “fans” as community members who have raised their hand saying “please give me something worthwhile to do!” and give them opportunities to start making real change.

We are so caught up in social media as a concept, a topic, a cause in itself that we forget to move people up the engagement ladder. We forget to connect to people period.

Focus on shared goals

Regardless of what our organization does, we have a certain set of goals. Our community, similarly, has goals. But they aren’t the same. They probably shouldn’t be the same! There are aspects of our work that the community doesn’t really care about or at least doesn’t care to be involved with. And the same is true for all that the community wants – some parts of it we just don’t want to get involved in. For example, maybe our community is rallying behind a specific politician, and we are working towards a piece of legislation. We aren’t going to join with each other on these specific goals – but bettering our state, well that’s the sweet spot. The sweet spot is where our goals overlap. And it’s the place where we can invest our time and our energy knowing that we are all rooting for the same end. Identifying the sweet spot is an integral part of community mapping and engagement planning. Knowing the areas that you and your community both care about can turn your campaigns, your communication and your engagement efforts into successful community-driven work.

Change your metrics

What we are measuring obviously impact what we focus on. (I gave a webinar on DIY Community Engagement Metrics recently if you’d like to check out the slides and templates.) When the only things we are tracking are the number of fans on a facebook page, or the number of email addresses in our database, we set ourselves up to endorse and call for slacktivism. Instead, look at your goals and build metrics that actually track your progress. Yes, the number of fans on facebook still counts, but it is just one column; For example, you could also track the number of community-generated posts to the page wall vs staff posts, the number of comments from the community vs staff, the kinds of content that generates the most response, and the level of engagement (whether it’s just likes, comments, or outside action).

Share leadership

If we aren’t building shared responsibility for the outcomes of our work into our campaigns and our email messages and everything in between then we are setting ourselves up for a lot of work and maybe also a bit of disappointment. Letting community members step up into leadership positions provides an opportunity in itself to move out of the binds of slacktivism and start more valuable engagement.

Let the community lead

As the organization/institution, you can provide the map, the gas, and even the car, but the community needs to be the driver. That will ensure passion and impact can go into steering, knowledge can help guide the way, and if no one wants to drive you have a pretty clear answer to adoption! The minute you step in as the organization to start driving, you take away the opportunity to go somewhere you’re community wants to go, to engage with the community in an important and formative way, and reinforce that the work is yours to design and implement.

Changing Landscape

Two quick examples of how things are changing:

First, the ladder of engagement (refer to the slides if you want to have a visual on the steps here). Let’s take for example the fact that the American Red Cross raised $34 million dollars from the text to donate campaign after the earthquakes last year in Haiti. I want to point out two aspects of the way the engagement ladder doesn’t necessarily work as one step to the next:

• On one side, that’s a lot of people that went from bystanders to donors. But how many of them are being encouraged to continue moving up and how many of them were even bystanders of ARC vs the news of the earthquake?
• On the other, how many people in this room are aware of ARC? You don’t have to respond but consider how many of you may have donated. It isn’t about whether you gave money or not, because I imagine you may have instead retweeted or shared a link or post on facebook.

I think that the engagement ladder needs to change to not show a raising level of engagement but instead operate more as a map, showing where someone may have entered from and where they can go next. They might start out as a creator but still have low engagement (not something that really matches our traditional engagement ladder view) and never get to the donation stage, for example.

Secondly, the 90-9-1 rule.  I’ve been discussing it with colleagues in different topic areas recently and most people I talk to, especially that are community managers, have found there are far more people contributing consistently, and the ratios have changed to be few that are 1-time, many that are never and consistently, and then a new section for those that rise above into more visible or leadership roles.

Slides

Reading

• http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/145/do-something-helping-humanity-with-a-click-of-the-mouse.html?partner=homepage_newsletter
• http://www.socialcitizens.org/blog/cutting-slacktivists-some-slack
• http://mashable.com/2010/05/13/slacktivists-activists-social-media
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/12/clicktivism-ruining-leftist-activism
• http://csi.gsb.stanford.edu/slacktivism
• http://www.frogloop.com/care2blog/2010/10/25/can-a-revolution-be-tweeted.html
• http://exchange.causes.com/2010/10/firing-back-from-the-frontlines-of-online-activism/
• http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell

Discussion

• What was the last “slacktivist” action you took; Why did you take it?
• What was communicated to you explicitly or implicitly about the purpose and impact of the actio?
• If you were part of the organization, what would you do to engage people (you!) to take more action now?

Check out the interview below to learn more about how My Colorado Project is empowering local change!

How did My Colorado Project come about, how did it get started?

My Colorado Project is a website that highlights the attributes and interests of a new generation of givers. Rather than try to get younger donors to fit into our existing programs, we’ve built a site that encourages young people to do what they’re best at – connect online, build networks of like-minded people, and make philanthropy fun. Based on the “giving circle” concept, we’re giving donors a new way to personalize their giving and support their favorite causes.

My Colorado Project started out as a project of our current CEO Alyssa Kopf who was frustrated with the popular perception that young people don’t give.

“Working as a professional fundraiser, I knew that I was giving and my friends were giving but our common donor tracking systems weren’t capturing how the diversity of our interests and frequent smaller donations added up to a sizeable amount over the course of a year. My Colorado is our attempt to build a new fundraising model for peer-driven giving and create new tools for planning and tracking your philanthropic footprint.”

Alyssa and I talk about the creation of My Colorado Project often and my perception was that she took it kind of personally as a young person and as a nonprofit professional that she and her peers weren’t on the radar screens of their favorite organizations. I don’t think that anything really great gets done without having a serious personal interest and now we’re ready to give a significant asset to young people all over Colorado.

How do you define e-philanthropy and how does MCP align with that vision?

We hope that MCP will better illustrate the difference between transactional and transformational e-philanthropy.  We believe that the latter offers a more sustainable giving experience and that MCP can help young donors along the road to becoming thoughtful, strategic, and happy philanthropists.  The bulk of the online giving tools currently available focus on the transaction.  Hey, we need that, no doubt, but when you focus only on the transaction and on making donations more efficient you miss something even greater! We want young donors and nonprofits alike to know that there is a richer, more fulfilling, and more financially rewarding experience that they can have.  Not only can you provide financial support, but you can tie your cause to your self-identity and transform not only your community, but yourself.

If you do your generational research you’ll find an awful lot of evidence to suggest that this is how younger donors want to get involved. My Colorado Project builds on that interest and offers a very personal and meaningful way to be introduced to giving and develop as a philanthropist.

What was the process, costs, and development of MCP like?

The greatest obstacle for me as the manager of the project is to create a website which meets the user-experience standards of the average Millennial. Do you know how hard that is?! We Millennials (I stand accused with a b-day of 1980) are a fickle bunch and our expectations are high. We’re used to cruising around multi-million dollar websites that have teams of designers, copy editors, and testers.

My Colorado Project has had to make the most of every dollar invested in the project. Every Nonprofit Pro reading this is going to laugh at my feeble attempt at pity!

But we have one thing working in our corner. We have 7 skilled and wicked smart nonprofit Pros who know our community, know our sector, and know philanthropy. We’ve been doing it for 25 years and have proven that our accessible, inclusive, and incremental model adds value.

We’re fortunate to have been able to present this idea to funders who have given us a great start and we recently struck up a relationship that we’re very proud of with one of Denver’s most innovative nonprofits, the Open Media Foundation. They are helping us build the next phase of development  and we hope that our relationship will extend above and beyond that relationship and into entertaining and valuable content development.

My Colorado is completely replicable and we hope that we can share it with other communities.

Can you share some examples of how groups have used the platform so far?

It has been super enjoyable to see both our nonprofit members and passionate individuals use My Colorado Project in its Beta stages.

First are those I call the Ambassadors. About a year or so ago Community Shares started using different terminology to describe our volunteers.  We wanted to refresh how our most committed supporters think of themselves.  Not only are ambassadors treasured donors and drivers of a mission, but in this age of social media they have also become the most important spokespeople and storytellers a nonprofit can have.

Fundraising 101 tells us that the most impassioned and successful messages are the stories that come right from the mouths of people who have shared a significant life experience with that organization. Many giving circles are started by a single individual with an extraordinary attachment to a cause or organization in particular.  They tell their stories, recruit their friends, and use use mainstream social media tools to expand their cause. The cause becomes part of their personal brand and they wear it with pride.

If they are really savvy, they ask for help from the organizations to build trust, and keep the giving circle growing.

One of the giving circles I like is the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network Denver.  They’ve used their giving circle to bring in current and past board members to establish a foundation of donor support that they can count on year in and year out. This is a great first step for an organization which is largely staffed by the board of directors themselves.

“Annie’s Amazing Animals” is another inspiring effort.  Annie, who is 8 years old, posted a video asking for donations to her favorite nonprofits instead of gifts! She far exceeded her giving goals and posted a video thank you to her supporters.

My Colorado allows donors to start giving circles and support up to four different nonprofits with as little as $5 a month. The purpose of this is to give donors flexibility to be themselves and support multiple causes. I like to think of some of them as “nonprofit mutual funds.”

One of my favorite moments was when Robert Egger, the founder of DC Central Kitchen and V3, came to visit us a while back and his advice to me was to “keep it local and make sure it translates offline.” I have my notes from that meeting on the bulletin board above my desk.

There are very few things that are as empowering as the internet. I’ve noticed my own personal tendency to want to take projects that were originally small in scale and offer them to the entire world!  But, I think that social media will see a slight correction after its astronomical rise and more and more people will try to fill in the local gaps that really big national websites have missed.  I think My Colorado Project will be attractive because it is small and community based.

What were you most surprised about with the process and adoption – what were you least surprised about?

After this next phase of development is over in February – monthly contests – we’ll take a break from development for a second to focus more on the promotion of the project. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am by the adoption of the program with so little marketing on our part. We’ve really only just begun the extended roll-out phase and already we have thousands of new dollars circulating through the community. We’re a long way from our potential but it is a rewarding start.

What was the role of community in building this platform and now in the further improvements and development?

We’re very conscious of building a Colorado asset with the input and needs of the Colorado community in mind.  Community Shares is first and foremost an organization committed to the 100+ member nonprofits we serve.  Our role in the community is unique in that we interact regularly with local funders and associations, thousands of individual donors and employees, more than 150 businesses, and our 100+ nonprofits and those they serve.

In addition to our staff’s ability to be in 20 places at once, we also did our homework before embarking on such an ambitious goal. As a part of Community Shares’ capacity building program we sponsored a study and subsequent toolkit for Colorado nonprofits titled, Engaging Tomorrow’s Donors Today, which surveyed over 700 donors on generational differences in giving and analyzed the role of social media and e-philanthropy in a rapidly changing sector.

We’re entering the fun part now where we get to more widely market My Colorado Project, but our My Colorado 25 – our first group of giving leaders – and more than 100 nonprofits stand at the ready to tell us what they think and what they want. The time to stand aside and let the comments roll in is near!

What’s on the list for next developments?

The Personal Philanthropy Plan is next. The first phase of that robust effort will be a monthly contest which will use creative and thought-provoking questions to help Coloradans have fun and think more about the values and interests they are most interested in pursuing from a philanthropic perspective.  After that we’ll begin building a more robust plan that each participant can fill out to set goals and put a plan into place to become more strategic and focused in their approach.  Wow – that doesn’t sound like fun! But it will be! It will be, I promise that it will be super fun!

The neat part about My Colorado is that there is always another cause and another organization to hear from and learn about. Always another donor perspective and content to view. The showcase for our community’s nonprofits is going to be more vibrant than ever before.

How can people join or follow your work?

Community Shares and My Colorado Project are both really easy to follow and learn about. If you want to know more about My Colorado Project, please visit the website and take a test drive by forming a giving circle. Whether you’re from this great state, have relatives or friends here, visit occasionally for recreation, or have just been here to catch a connecting flight we hope you’ll support our grassroots initiative. If you’d like to form a giving circle but don’t see your desired beneficiary, you can suggest any 501 c3 as a beneficiary of your giving personal circle.

• @mycoloradoproj
• www.mycoloradoproject.org
• @csharescolorado
• www.cshares.org
• Community Shares FB