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New on SSIR: Organizations and Individuals Fundraising in Social Media

Published in events, fundraising and presentation. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

I have a new post up on the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog and I’d love to hear your thoughts!  You can read the full post and comment on the SSIR blog or be part of the conversation below.

Last month, I presented at the NCVO Foresight seminar: Changing ICT – what does it mean for your charity with a focus on the future of online revenue generation for nonprofit organizations.  What’s most interesting to me within the nonprofits-in-social-space is the difference between organization-driven and individual-driven fundraising (and other promotion) campaigns.  Social media is a space where the individual reigns, relationships are required, and conversations are public.  That’s not exactly the way business normally goes down offline.  And it has real impact on the way organizations fundraise.

Online, the process and attributes that succeed are traits you’d normally associate with an individual: authenticity, relationships, conversations, etc. Organizations should recognize the need for being “real” online and can honor that by, for example, putting in the profile information of organizational presences who is actually speaking from that account, sharing information, resources and links that aren’t only associated with the organization, and responding to people online to have conversations in public (even put a smiley face in there while you’re at it!).  When it comes to fundraising and the options available to individuals to campaign on your behalf online, think of the differences this way:

Offline: you would never have someone that has never met any staff of the organization, or even know where the organization is located, become so excited about the work it’s doing that he or she creates an annual campaign to raise funds on the organizations behalf and then goes through with it each year.

Online: that is already happening with people who use applications like Causes in facebook, which encourages users to fundraise each year on their birthday via their Birthday Cause tool (individuals select an organization, ask their facebook friends to give donations instead of presents, and the funds get distributed to the organization).

Offline: you would probably not have someone who’s had no physical connection with your organization be so excited about your work that they design and produce their own fliers about your work and then canvass their local community to raise awareness or your programs.

Online: that’s exactly what people are doing when they become a fan of your organization on facebook (adding your icon to their profile), add your twibon to their Twitter avatar (a little logo that is placed over the user’s picture), or even when sharing links or messages about your organization (even ones that you didn’t create) with their social networks.

So, how do you respond?

Like I said at the beginning, it’s important for organizations to move into the social media space using the processes that are accepted and successful, with the focus on being transparent and real, and so on.  Some key questions to ask yourself include:

  • If people are supporting you by directly connecting with you on different social media platforms, what are you doing to encourage them to connect with you in a space where you have access to the data? (You can’t access your friends on facebook if the platform is down for maintenance, let alone if it goes down permanently!)
  • If people are fundraising for you online, do you know about it? (Start looking for it!)
  • If people are fundraising for you online, are you saying ‘thank you’ to the fundraisers and to the donors?
  • If people are giving to you online on different social media platforms, are you encouraging them to connect with you directly so you can encourage them to give again later?
  • How are you showing your gratitude for the hard work of your supporters (“volunteer” means something very different online!) online?

What do you think?

In this very different space for organizations, how has your organization adapted to the online culture and opportunities?  Do you have any tips or examples from your social media presences or campaigns to share?

You can review the slides from my whole presentation, as well as all of the speaker notes, here.

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Visit the SSIR blog to comment, or leave your thoughts below!

Published on January 8, 2010 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

Back to School, Back Online

Published in otherblogs and reports. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

This post originally written September 8, 2009.  Posted on Stanford Social Innovation Review’s Opinion blog.  Visit the original post here.

It’s back-to-school time for many countries and that means a switch from summer programs, outdoor community events, and many youth campaigns.  New research out today from nfpSynergy shows that organizations who serve youth may want to be going online to reach them.

The Research

nfpSynergy, a leading nonprofit sector think-tank and research consultancy in the UK, “tracks a representative sample of over 1000 11-25 year olds throughout mainland Britain twice-yearly, gaining insights into their views and habits, both social and charity-related” in its Youth Engagement Monitor.  The newest report, out today, focused on the use of social networking platforms by young people who are/aren’t also involved with charities.  (Read the full press release here or download the Social Media data slides here.) Some of the results include:

  • Facebook is by far the most popular social networking site amongst young people – used by over 7 in 10 (72%) of all 11-25 year olds; rising to 80% of 17-25 year olds, those of college/university age – and to 83% of those who are currently at, or who have already been to, university.
  • Amongst 11-25 year olds, Facebook is trailed by Bebo (28%), MySpace (25%), Twitter (12%), MSN (9%), YouTube (2%) and “other” (4%)
  • Those involved regularly with charities are far more likely to use such social media than those who are not, with four fifths (79%) of those claiming regular charitable involvement using Facebook, compared with just 69% of those claiming no involvement
  • Bebo is the only major networking site to be more popular amongst 11-16 year olds (35%) than amongst 17-25 year olds (24%)
  • Female respondents reported a significantly higher usage across all the top 4 networking sites

Despite this, less than half (48%) of the 187 charities that were surveyed as part of nfpSynergy’s Virtual Promise (2008) report said that their organization used social networking websites.

What It Means

First, what the research does not mean: Don’t jump into Facebook immediately!  It’s easy for organizations, especially ones with small staff sizes and lots, and lots on the growing “to do” lists to see stats or research like this and automatically say, “Okay, then we should be on Facebook and it’ll solve all of our youth engagement problems.” Or, maybe not that statement exactly, but close to it.  This data does confirm many thing we already knew: that most young people are using social networking platforms of one kind or another, that females are more likely to use networking tools than males, etc.  It also shows that those young people who are engaged or involved with charities are also those using social networking tools. But, it does not say that they want to engage with charities in social networking platforms or, if they do, how they want that connection to start and continue.

So, if your organization serves or engages with youth and you want to think about moving into social networking spaces, here are a few pointers to help you get started!

No running in the halls!

There’s no point rushing into things, so give yourself the time to think strategically about how you want to use social networking platforms in your organization’s work and how it best fits with what you are doing now and the goals you want to achieve.  If you are thinking of using Facebook, for example, you will want to consider whether you want to create an individual account, or Fan page, or a group; each platform has it’s own options for how organizations could be represented and each option has different ways that other users would be able to interact.  You also want to consider which young people you want to connect with: as noted above, different ages may use different platforms; there’s lots of research also discussing the different regions or nationalities using each platform, as well as socioeconomic groups (check out Danah Boyd’s recent dissertation on the way teenagers use social networks!).

Secrets, secrets are no fun!

Regardless of which platform/s you decide to use, remember to be authentic and transparent. No one likes secrets!  Young people you are trying to connect with online (anyone, really) will judge you by your profile information: does it say who you are, which individuals at the organization may be speaking on behalf of the organization via the account? does it give your contact information outside of the social network (website, email, blog, or address)?  how about information – if you provide mental health services, for example, post information about how to get help if you need it, or how to help a friend, and so on. All this will help to make your profile more reliable and trustworthy, as well as put information out into a social space where youth could come across it without necessarily looking for your organization specifically.

Going to Johnny’s party?

The parties, the dances, the school events, they all helped shape many of the memories from being school-aged.  There’s no reason to leave them out of your plan for connecting with young people in social networks!  Create opportunities and events that bring people together online and offline – these activities can help move people up the ladder of engagement, get them volunteering or advocating for your organization, using your services or helping promote them.  Plus, social networking is all about connecting with friends, new and old; if your organization is a catalyst for community by connecting those who are affected or interested in the causes you work on, it will be easier to round up participation for your campaigns (on or offline) and find more supporters to help push your mission and work forward.  So, throw a party or two, and have fun!

What do you think? Are you an organization that works with young people, and are you using social networking sites to connect with them? What lessons or examples do you want to share?

Comment here, or visit the original post at SSIR here.

Published on September 19, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

New on SSIR: First and Foremost Know Your Community

Published in issues and otherblogs. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

My newest post is now up on the Stanford Social Innovation Review.  You can read the post and participation in the conversation on the SSIR blog here!

The piece is reposted below:

Have we replicated our offline social dynamics and barriers online? I believe we have, and so does Danah Boyd.  As profiled in the New York Observer, Danah talked to the data uncovered in her four years of research on new media use in a presentation at the Personal Democracy Forum.  If we truly are reproducing our offline social divides online, then it’s further proof that the central part of your social media strategy needs to be focused on your audience.

“MySpace has become the ghetto of the digital landscape,” Ms. Boyd explained to the crowd. And many of us in these social environments, she said, “have gotten into the habit of crossing the street like we always do to avoid the riff-raff.” – NYO

You’ve probably heard of Facebook; you may even have set up a group or a fan page there for your organization.  But did you do that because you heard of Facebook in the news, or from a friend? Did you choose Facebook because you evaluated your existing community as well as the audience you wanted to bring into your community, and they were already using Facebook?  Did you consider MySpace? or Orkut? or Bebo? Maybe you’ve never heard of those platforms, but for some large demographics they are the hot spots online, not Facebook.

Let’s step back a minute and consider why a nonprofit or social benefit group wants to include social networking as part of a social media strategy.  Why would your organization want to have a presence on a social network?

  • Go where the community already is!  Don’t expect the community to come to you, or even find you, online. Instead, go where they have already set up shop.
  • Make your calls to action part of the routine!  Creating calls to action that match the community and can be accomplished, or promoted, in the same space will increase the overall participation you can garner.
  • Join the community!  Don’t just come to the party and start asking questions or push calls to action; instead, actually join the community, answer questions, share links or information (even ones that aren’t related to your work but you may just know!), and be a genuine part of the ecosystem.

“The fact that digital migration is revealing the same social patterns as urban white flight should send warning signals to all of us,” she said. “It should scare the hell out of us.” – NYO

Choosing the platform or platforms to concentrate your efforts online is crucial.  You may hear about Facebook, but if your audience is on MySpace, it doesn’t matter how much time and energy you put in.  They won’t be there to find you.  When evaluating your community, some of the most influential items to consider regarding social networks include:

  • Age: Facebook users can skew older than MySpace; many organizations in the UK have had great success joining the ecosystem on Bebo to extend the opportunity for teens to reach out for social services in a private way.
  • Actions: What kinds of “actions” do you want your community members to be able to do? Each platform offer unique functionality and it may not match what your community members want to do with/for you.
  • Data: Is your work reliant on certain data (whether for eligibility, age, etc.) that you will need validate, or at least advertise? Each platform displays profile information in different ways and you will need to check your settings and profile customization to ensure you are disclosing what you need, and offering opportunities to connect outside of the public messages.
  • Goals: What are your goals for the inclusion of social networking in your social media strategy?  Be sure you don’t get caught up only on functionality that’s new and cool; remember why you’re there.

Danah’s research shines a bright light on an issue many activists and organizations have been concerned about ever since the media hype around Facebook VS MySpace rose as a loud voice in the conversation about social media use.  The issues our social service agencies and social benefit organizations are dealing with offline, in local communities, are showing up online.  It’s imperative that we recognize the social divides permeating online social networks and carefully consider how we craft our online strategies to truly reach and serve our communities.

What do you think? Has your organization had experience reaching your core constituents in an online social network? How did you identify the best place to concentrate your efforts?  What lessons have you learned?

You can download Danah’s dissertation here.

Published on July 1, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 3 Comments

SSIR Post: Swine Flu or Why Local Organizations Matter

Published in otherblogs. 5 Comments Tags: , , , .

I have a new blog post up on the Stanford Social Innovation Review opinion blog.  Check it out here!

The “Swine Flu” scare was fun, wasn’t it?  No, it really wasn’t; but it did give most of the world a chance to react in real-time to what could have been much worse. In a recent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, David Brooks compared the global response vs localized response to the outbreak. I think this comparison, and context, is a great example of why local (read: non-global) organizations are still key in social change work, and why we need to be building stronger networks for data and information sharing.

Power to the People
Brooks shows that if the world had a global approach to outbreaks like Swine Flu, then the decision-making and directive power would be in a really bumped up World Health Organization-like group. This umbrella organization would require time for consideration and input from its members and wouldn’t necessarily be in-tune with the communities or cultures actually touched by the issues.

Let’s consider this example in comparison to a generic sector, focusing on a global issue, like the environmental & climate sector working on climate change. Creating a huge umbrella organization is just not going to happen realistically for any sector, at least one with the governing and implementing power suggested above. Instead, we want to keep the power to address issues in the hands of organizations spread around the world. It is impossible for one organization to know the stories, issues, culture and decision-making information of all locations. It’s hard enough to master one geography!

Speak the Local Language
As Brooks points out, people like to look to someone like them, especially in times of crisis. Local organizations provide this local face. We can speak the local language, understand the local culture.

In the climate change example, this means that we can brand, communicate, and distribute information, calls to action, and important opportunities for engagement in a way that encourages response locally. The missing link, though, is that the underlying opportunity (whether it is a petition to sign, an online or offline event, or anything else) needs to be networked across all the organization. The effect of having all organizations gather signatures on the same petition versus hundreds creating and distributing their own petitions for the same issue is huge.

Innovate and Reiterate
Lastly, one enormous organization could only respond to the Swine Flu outbreak or something similar with safe, tested protocols. But those are often not efficient or necessary. With distributed power through local organizations, medical teams, and governments, the response to the Swine Flu outbreak was something involving much more innovation and experimentation.

This, again, holds true for organizations working on social change issues. New messages, campaigns, and strategies can be tested, deployed, and analyzed in separate groups. What makes this more powerful? Leveraging a networked system so that when a new campaign works, or better yet – doesn’t work, that information can be shared in real time with all of the other organizations. This means the “what works” can get implemented faster in other places and the “what doesn’t” can be cut out of the loop without more wasted capacity.

Great, Now What?
So, what do we need to make this happen? There are tools like Zanby that allow organizations to link together to share calls to action across networks. This is a great start. But, we also need to be building out collaboration platforms that allow for organizations to link in with each other, share data and calls to action, but also feedback lessons learned—a way to combine experiential and hard data across the whole network.

What do you think?  What kind of tools would we need to accomplish this? What push backs or culture shocks to working in this way would need to be overcome?  Where would you start?

Visit the SSIR opinion blog here.

Published on May 5, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 5 Comments

SSIR: Nonprofit Advantage for Future of Twitter and Search

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

My newest post is up on the Stanford Social Innovation Review Opinion blog.  Here’s an excerpt:

The ability to search online has changed our lives. It’s true. To Google something is a verb that you can look up in the dictionary now. What has it done?

  • Because of search, it no longer matters how many pages there are on the Web, because search can find what you are looking for.
  • Because of search, it no longer matters how many blog posts I write, because search can find the relevant ones for me or my readers.
  • Because of search, it no longer matters how many photos we post online or where we post them, because search can filter out our tags and codes.
  • Because of search, it no longer matters whether you are a blogger or a company, because search will sift the most active conversations to the top.

We are so used to searching online now that we can’t get away from it, rather, we don’t want to browse the web without it. Instead of going to Google.com to search the Web, we have search tools (often powered by Google) in our browsers, on our website and on our blogs, and everywhere else really.

Enter Twitter.

Twitter has created the most up-to-the minute archive of conversations around the world.  And guess what many of those conversations include: links.  We can see, through using Twitter Search, the public timeline, or Trending, what topics are popular, what links are being shared, and more.  These are things you can’t necessarily find in a Google search.  So it’s no wonder that there are preliminary talks between the two companies.

So, what’s the advantage for nonprofits?

There’s a reason that SEO (search engine optimization) consultants are so busy with work—lots and lots of companies and organizations of all sizes want to increase their standing in the millions of search results returned when you look up their key words in a search. But with Twitter, it isn’t static.  It’s constantly, right now, with every second, changing. Because it’s all conversation.

Nonprofits are already on Twitter and are joining every day as more and more organizations recognize opportunities to use the tool to connect with their communities online in real-time and leverage the communication tool to expand their campaigns and communications. As search continues to become more dynamic for Twitter users and integrated more and more into the process of finding and contributing to conversations as well as finding information and resources, nonprofits are in a terrific position to greatly influence the community.

For example…  [Read the full post here.]

What do you think? Have you found people, organizations, or resources via Twitter that you couldn’t find otherwise? Would love to hear what you think!

You can add your comments and thoughts here or on the SSIR blog.

Published on April 8, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 2 Comments

Dissecting the Network Approach on the SSIR blog

Published in case studies, networking and socialchange. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

I have a new post up on the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog and wanted to share it here as well because I think it could start some interesting conversation.  You can read it and comment on it over at SSIR as well.

Many organizations have been saying the same thing about using the Internet for many years now, “we need someone to make us a Web site!” No, you really don’t. At least, you don’t need to think of your online “presence” as being a stand-alone website. Let’s dissect a networked approach to an online presence and see what the core dynamics are.

we20

“Our leaders, face a huge task this year. The G20 is a group of 20 leaders including Obama, Brown, Lula and Sarkozy. The G20 are tasked with reforming our failed economies and mapping out our future.

These G20 leaders meet in London on 2 April. 20 world leaders. 20 people together making plans that will affect our future.

we20 is your opportunity to have your own G20 meeting. 20 people together creating plans for your future.”

we20 wants to inspire people, online, to get together, offline, to talk about ideas to improve our lives and our world. They don’t have a website, yet. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be spreading their message and mobilizing people into action both on and offline.

The Key Elements:

  • Spreading the word online: this doesn’t require a website when there are countless social technologies to leverage.
  • Mobilizing people to get together offline: we are social creatures, but we don’t always know the people we want to get together with; but thanks to social technologies it is much easier to find and make these new connections.
  • Don’t wait for a website: often organizations wait between 3 – 18 months to get a website live; a project like we20 doesn’t have that kind of time and you shouldn’t assume you do either.

we20 has a time-sensitive campaign (though, who’s isn’t?), with people who are excited and energized to do something right after hearing about the idea. It would be a big mistake to let all those supporters trail off, their energy wain, and have the only action provided be to wait for that website to go up with more information…later. Instead, take advantage of tools you and others who could be interested in the campaign are already using. Put your message out there right away and let the momentum build.

The Networked Approach:
The networked approach to online campaigns is really a cycle, like most other strategies you’ll come across. You move from step one, through all four, and the fourth leads right back to the first. Here are the four steps to creating a networked approach to a campaign, using we20 as our example.

  • Make your group of friends public: When starting something like we20, it’s really just a group of friends and colleagues that start talking about an idea and get enthusiastic about it. You want it to take off and believe it really will. Those early conversations about how, where, what, and all the other gooey details should be made public if possible. In this case, we20 started a Facebook group to keep everyone together and communicate with each other. But, by making it a public group like this, they also enabled others to find and join them, as well as to help shape the answers to those gooey but important questions.
  • Make your message moveable: Be sure to put solid content out there for people new to the campaign. Even though there are still many aspects of we20 still to be configured, when you visit the Facebook group, for example, you are still able to find clear, direct messaging about what the group is focused on. This doesn’t just let people understand and join, but it also allows them to copy and paste – the greatest messaging option individuals have! By putting clear, concise messages out there, you enable supporters to move the message around the web for you.
  • Make your movement actionable: Sharing your message isn’t action enough for many people who really want to jump in.  Even if it was, the message should have an actionable opportunity for those who receive the message further down the line but want to do more than pass it on.  we20 has done an excellent job of presenting an actionable movement. It isn’t simply about raising awareness, or causing a stir; we20 is asking people to have their own we20 meetings and share their ideas. The action (the individual meetings/gatherings) is simple and clear to understand, but also flexible enough that anyone could bend it to their specific situations: some friends in a bar, a lunch club using it as a theme, and so on.
  • Make your actions public: If you’ve inspired people to join you and invite others to join, and to take action, providing a way for those same people to share their actions publicly will take you back to the first step, in making the group public. As more actions become visible, more people will join the movement and subsequently share their actions as well. It’s always a cycle. In the case of we20, they have put their introduction video up on YouTube, defining a very obvious place for others to put up videos either as a response or a report from their own we20 meeting and the ideas that came out of it. Though, people could participate in other ways as well since we20 has a networked presence, meaning Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn. This means that new participants can close the loop for learning about the movement to actually sharing ideas via the platform or process they prefer.

Though, there will be a we20 website, eventually. For now, that networked approach is letting them start and build and move forward anyway. The we20 group sums this up quite nicely, “We are expecting to launch http://www.we20.org soon but please don’t let us slow you down. Please start organising your meetings now.” Exactly: don’t let the lack of a traditional website hinder the movement; use the tools we are all already using to learn about and spread the movement, organize with your friends and colleagues, and share your ideas back to the movement.

What do you think? Has your organization or your group of friends used a networked approach to start a campaign? Have you relied on a main website instead? What have been the best examples of networked approaches to campaigns that you’ve seen?

Visit the SSIR blog to add to this conversation!

Published on March 5, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

New Post at SSIR: Becoming a Hot Spot with Quality Content

Published in otherblogs. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Originally posted at SSIR – why not leave a comment over there!

We are still working to get nonprofit organizations online and to move websites from ‘electronic brochures’ to a more modern presence, but the main bulk of organizations are there though struggling to get to the next level. They have a website that’s more than a carbon copy of an event handout, they have members who want to subscribe to something and funders who expect them to be resources to the sector. How do they meet those expectations?

Quality content drives traffic, increases value and in turn can increase the number or engagement of members, visitors, potential donors. So, how do they create the quality content, then?

  1. Hear It: There are a lot of ways to listen to your members and your field. Subscribe to RSS feeds from organizations working in the same field, funders, members’ blogs, etc. Listen for topics of interest, questions that come up and conversations that are ongoing for tips as to what people are looking for more information about. You can use Twitter to listen to your community as well and pinpoint conversations that are important to focus on. Don’t feel bad about asking, either, because your community is probably waiting for an opportunity to tell you what they want/need.
  2. Write It:  Blogs are expected to be updated often but everyone has experienced the strain of either too much work to do or nothing to write about. If you are listening to your community, your list of topics should be more than you have time to cover. If you have too much other work pulling at your time, enlist another team member or two to share the blogging responsibilities. The best thing to do, especially when starting out, is to create a blog schedule so you can work it into your larger work schedule and not push it down the list.  But, blogs aren’t the only things that should stay fresh—your website should stay up-to-date and pertinent as well!
  3. Aggregate It: An easy way of ensuring that your website has new information is to create a page, or parts of pages that are fed by content from an RSS feed. This could be a feed from a Del.icio.us tag that you and your organization uses, or it could be from a news website, a funder’s site, or a sector-specific site. Pulling information in from other places on the web means there is more information available for your website visitors and with less work by you or strain on your time.
  4. Share It: Be sure that you are allowing people to subscribe to your information, on your website and your blog, with RSS. Just because your website is the (if you’re doing everything right) go-to spot for news, information, and resources in your field, doesn’t mean people want to visit your URL to get that information. More and more people are using RSS and will expect to be able to use it with your website, too. Be sure to include your information in other outlets as well, so people who may not know it’s there can find out: include links and highlights in your e-newsletter, alert people to new content via any social media outlets you use (such as Twitter, Facebook, other blogs, etc.).

Read the rest of the post at Stanford Social Innovation Review’s Opinion Blog here.

Published on December 9, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

Who’s driving the web?

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I just posted over on the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog on People-Powered Content: It’s Driving the Web and Could Drive Your Community! Head over to the SSIR blog to read the full post and comment!

From every corner of the Web, we can see how Web sites, campaigns, news and even fundraising is shifting from organizations and corporations at the wheel to individuals taking the driver’s seat.  Is it good?  It most certainly is!

We are seeing it more and more often.  Organizations like The Nature Conservancy have created ways for supporters to contribute photos of nature via the Flickr group and the 2008 Photography contest.  Engaging long-time supporters who enjoy taking pictures and letting nature photo enthusiasts become supporters through appealing to what they are already interested in.

News organizations have wrapped their arms around the citizen-created content wave as well.  Uses of comments on news stories online are abundant.  Citizen journalism like community-based news sites and iReport are inspiring more and more citizen journalist participation every day.  Even citizen-inspried content like Spot.Us invites individuals to jump in.

The citizen-created content isn’t just for news and photos, though.  Ushahidi, a platform that enables citizens to use SMS text messages to report incidents of violence in crisis zones to be mapped online, has just released another deployment of it’s engine—this time for the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The Twitter Vote Report, allowed voters to send messages via Twitter (either through SMS text messages or a web browser) with information about wait times or even fraud at polling places, to be mapped online.  Both platforms let citizens share important information with others in their specific geographic location, as well as with the world, creating a more connected and transparent process.

Even President-Elect Obama is channeling the citizen-driven voice.  On his website, Change.gov, citizens of both the US and the world are invited to share ideas, recommendations and priorities about policies and issues.  Inviting anyone to participate.

It’s clear that the citizen-powered web is here.  But, what about nonprofit organizations working hard to make a difference in the community and world at large—how do they ignite citizens and supporters?

For ways your organization can identify what your community wants to do for you, read on at SSIR!

Published on November 11, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

Social Media: the means vs the ends

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I have another post up on the Stanford Social Innovation Review opinion blog and I’d love to hear your opinion!

Let’s assume social media is the means to an end. That ‘end’ is going to be different depending on whether you are using it as an organization or an individual, for conversations or for advertising, for profit or for community building, for fun or for policies. So, when social media meet ups, in person or online, and communities form, is it mostly around the means (specific tools, advocating for adoption, etc.) or the end (people using social media in general for the same purpose or cause)?

So, asked again: Do we come together around social media because of affinity towards specific platforms, tools, or programs or because of similarities in usage of those platforms, tools, or programs?

…

Does it then, really matter if social media communities and conversations are focused on either the means or the ends?  It isn’t as if we are discussing war, right? The uses, developments, and constant permutations of social media are so diverse and evolving so quickly – is it enough to help each other just keep pace?

You can read on and share your answer on the SSIR blog post here!

Published on October 8, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 2 Comments