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Tags: adoption, bookmarks, casestudies, climatechange, cop15, facebook, fundraising, global, green, list, politics, postalicious, resources, socialmedia, strategy, women, womenwhotech, youth.
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 10th). 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).
- URGENT: Facebook Pages are changing | facebook | social-advice- Advice for charities – More information about changes coming to Facebook – this time it's more changes in the way Fan Pages function. A great read if you have a fan page for your organization as these changes are said to go into effect in early 2010.
- Debating the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference – "Over 1,000 young people from 100 different countries will gather online to debate climate change. This is the largest single ongoing panel of discussions outside of the conference itself and the range of young people involved gives it an unmatched reach. This unique project will allow young people from vastly different countries to get involved in probably the single greatest challenge the world faces. Israelis will get together with Iranians, Americans with Afghanis, Sudanese with Singaporeans and they'll discuss what to do about climate change."
- Click For a Cause | Conduit – Conduit's Gives 2010 project offers $3.6 Million for 100 Nonprofit Organizations! "Since 2005, hundreds of thousands of web publishers have used the free Conduit Platform to increase engagement, grow web traffic, and drive revenue. We are now putting that experience to work with Click for a Cause to help struggling non-profits to engage and energize their communities in order to increase participation and ignite fundraising efforts during this difficult economic time."
- Social Media Today | If the Army Can Put Its Doctrine Up On a Wiki, You've Got No Excuse – "A few weeks ago I had the privilege of watching an astounding event – a room full of Soldiers typing Army doctrine onto a wiki so that Soldiers in the field could make changes as they were discovering new and better tactics in the midst of fighting a war." This is a great case study for anyone looking for support in those hard buy-in conversations…
- George Weiner: Will You Marry Me? What Not-For-Profits get Wrong on the Web – "The "Will you marry me?" (WYMM) syndrome turns every online messaging opportunity into a nail begging to be hit with the donation hammer. I can point to dozens of orgs that create sites that are essentially fundraising brochures with donation buttons and paragraphs about the history of the organization. There are also not-for-profits that take the WYMM mistake beyond web sites and into their social media strategies, advertising opportunities, newsletters and partnerships."
- Women, Social Media and Influence (cont’d) « A. Fine Blog – If you haven't seen the two recent posts from Allison Fine about women and social media, you should join in the conversation! She's posed some very interesting questions and shared some of her ideas – but most importantly there are lots of comments that are just as critical, thought-provoking and interesting! Do join in!
The 2009 GreatNonprofits Youth Thrive Awards will recognize the top-rated youth-focused nonprofits. In the month of September, the small, medium, and large organizations with the most positive reviews will be featured on GreatNonprofits and Guidestar.
The contest asks clients, donors, volunteers, and board members to write reviews of these nonprofits. All reviews will be automatically visible on GuideStar.org.
“Reviews show the real human impact of a nonprofits and raise the visibility and credibility of those organizations,” says GreatNonprofits CEO Perla Ni. “This will help highly-rated nonprofits attract more support and volunteers.”
Nonprofits with the most positive reviews in their category will be announced as winners and receive media coverage as well as promotion on GuideStar.org. Awards will be given out of 9 categories (6 geographic US regions and 3 budget size – small, medium and large).
Contest Deadline: September 30th.
About GreatNonprofits
“GreatNonprofits is a tool that allows you to find, review, and talk about great — and perhaps not yet great — nonprofits. You already know that reviews by other people who have gone to a restaurant or tried out a doctor are the best way to find out about the quality of those services. If you have direct experience with a nonprofit, GreatNonprofits makes it easier for you to share your knowledge so that other people can discover the great nonprofits that are out there.”
(Content pulled from GN press release. For more news like this from GreatNonprofits visit: http://greatnonprofits.org/)
Recently, Bebo hosted an all-day event for members of the No to Knives and Crime Coalition, as well as others working in the sector of positive youth engagement in London and beyond. I want to share my slides and notes here for those who attended as well as for all those out there who didn’t 
My presentation concentrated on a few case studies where certain technologies were the appropriate tools for engagement and aided work to connect, empower, and educate youth communities.
There are really just so many great examples for this topic. If you are looking for more examples about social media and communications technologies applied to youth empowerment, here are some additional links/groups to check out:
After the case studies, I focused in on two aspects of the strategy building that are most important:
The Audience – if you do your research (even if you are “sure” you already know), you can identify your audience, those you already talk to and those you don’t. You can figure out how best to communicate, and how (both the medium and the words). You can see more about this in the slides above.
The Goals – yes, we all want to, in this case, fight knife crime; but that’s not our goal. Take the time to identify your goals focused on living in and inviting youth to co-create a community without knife crime. There is more about goals in the slides above.
If you would like to view the presentation above with the speaker notes included, click here.
What do you think? Has your organization tackled issues in the youth community and used new technologies to support your work? Share your story – we’d love to hear it!
I’m preparing a talk for next week and thought I’d open up the proposal to all of you! After all, I definitely believe that the community is far smarter than me – and really appreciate any and all ideas you have to share!
Next week I will be speaking at and event Bebo is facilitating for members of Number 10 Downing St, local Councils, civic departments (police, etc.), social agencies and nonprofits, and so on focused on creating an integrated No to Knives campaign. This campaign is targeting youth at-risk of knife crime in the UK and plans to have a large portion of the messaging and calls to action embedded within social media tools/platforms used by local youth.
There are a few other speakers who will be presenting their ideas or personal case studies for this kind of campaigning.
I will be speaking last: tying together the previous speeches, and highlighting key case studies that show how young people have been empowered to shape the future they are a part of.
If you have case studies, either from the organization you are a part of or that you have come across outside of your organization’s work, please do share them! I have a growing list already but am looking to cover some unique and compelling stories for this integral speaking opportunity to influence a major campaign.
Please note: I will credit any and all contributions, of course. I will also share my speech and slides next week after the event.
Thanks in advance for your ideas and contributions!
The Digital Media and Learning Competition from MacArthur Foundation & HASTAC has just opened for applications. Last year was the first round of the competition and saw $2 million awarded to 17 projects. This year, another $2 million will be given away to learning entrepreneurs, educators, innovators, and communicators.
Applications are closed at October 15. Check out the Guidelines, and submit your project!
