Today’s a special day for nonprofits. It started at midnight on the Pacific, when over 200 nonprofits flipped the switch and started racing to see which of them will be one of the three organizations to raise the most donations and win a share of $30,000. They only have 24 hours, when the switch is turned off at midnight tonight.

To get to this point, Twive and Receive nonprofits worked their tails off for weeks building a community and strategizing fundraising tactics. Their goal is to help supporters understand and memorize the simple call-to-action: donate to us on June 14^th.

The Importance of a Strong Community

Building a community takes time and effort. Ideally, you want to get to the point where supporters quickly respond to your calls.

Since the Twive contest kicked off a couple months ago, these nonprofits got to work. They did keyword searches on Twitter to talk to people they have something in common with, began engaging people on Facebook with conversation topics, and pinning images on Pinterest to get the sharing going.

Today, they have people Tweeting links to their fundraising page, supporters strutting the Twibbon and most importantly, donors making their donation. This can only be done with the backing of a strong online community.

The Importance of a Strong Strategy

There isn’t a cookie cutter fundraising strategy that works for every nonprofit across the board. Here’s a collection of what some Twive and Receive participants have done to promote their fundraiser:

The Importance of Doing Good

At the end of the day, these communities win because nonprofits that offer important services benefited. A great side effect is that people are going to feel good about their actions.

If you want to help make an impact, find your favorite cause or city and support them with a donation today on TwiveAndReceive.org. You have until midnight to help that nonprofit be a step closer towards winning an additional cash prize. You’ll be proud of yourself, trust me.

Ifdy Perez is the community manager at Razoo, an online fundraising platform that empowers individuals and nonprofits to meet their fundraising goals through online giving campaigns. She’s also editor of Inspiring Generosity, a blog that gives nonprofits helpful resources on online community management and social media tools.

A simple commitment

One key to the spreadable and shareable success of the IAVA campaign is that the ask is clear but very simple: to go silent for one minute at 12:01 pm today in honor those who have given their life in service, and their families. The timing coincides with the President’s remarks in Arlington, but one minute of silence can be pledged at any time, really.

The simple call to action also lends itself to participation by many, including government officials. Here’s an example of a Senator showing his support for veterans through participation in the #gosilent pledge:

Tracking silence

IAVA’s #gosilent campaign is a terrific example of social campaigning because it uses tools and tactics that make it easy for the organization to track, measure, and evaluate success – in real time and after the campaign is over. For starters, using a hashtag that is clear to understand (#gsfvt “go silent for veterans today” would be really confusing!), obviously tied to the campaign, and reflective of the call to action means it is likely people will use it and engage. Plus, there are many tools to track the usage of hashtags and even archive them or annotate them, making both the tracking and the reporting much more streamlined.

IAVA also set up a microsite for the campaign, in this case it is a specially-designed sub-section of their main website that is branded and focused on the #GoSilent pledge. It shows a pledge counter, providing a sense of collective participation as soon as you visit the site, and asks you to take the pledge:

You are then prompted to fill out some basic information. I think it is incredibly smart that they include the drop down menu for Veteran Status. This will help them segment and personalize messages in the future based on service involvement, or civilian status.

The thank you page provides direct links to encourage sharing immediately, making it easy for someone to spread the link and hashtag to their networks. You will also note that the pledge counter has increased just in the 30 seconds or so that it took to fill out the form on the previous screen. For many people, when they give money or make a pledge online, they want to see that thermometer increase, or the dial move, or the counter jump ahead. IAVA has done a great job ensuring a live count is active on the site for visitors to see their number add to the total.

Sharing across platforms – Twitter

IAVA have made it clear from the thank you page that they are concentrating their efforts on Facebook and Twitter where they have a large community and many people and many different organizations will also be promoting Memorial Day activities. Here’s an example of the Twitter stream following #gosilent where you can see a message from IAVA, someone sharing a video of Taps filmed in Arlington Cemetery, someone dedicating their moment of silence to classmates, and tweets in direct reply to each other giving thanks for service. The #gosilent hashtag is not just a stream of people posting a templated message or retweeting a call to action from IAVA, but is truly a coming together of people remembering and honoring veterans – exactly as the campaign would want it to be.

Sharing across platforms – Facebook

On Facebook, IAVA updated their cover photo and profile photo to align with the campaign for today and combined make a great example of using the Timeline profile features:

There are a few key features I want to point: First, since the Facebook Page guidelines specifically say you cannot include URLs, they’ve used a great work around by making their profile photo the hashtag. Most people, at least those that would be participating on social tools, would recognize the number sign and phrase as a hashtag and use it in their posts, or search for it to see posts from others. Another terrific decision they made was to include the carrot “>” with a call to action “Sign the Pledge with IAVA”. We’ve been conditioned that when we see a carrot and a call to action online that we can click there to be directed to the next step. However, since it is a Facebook photo, when you click on it, the photo opens in a preview viewer and you can see further information and the link to the microsite in the photo description to the right. Both of these actions make it clear and easy for people to learn more and take action while still playing by the rules of Facebook.

Sharing across platforms – Instagram and Foursquare

IAVA didn’t confine their own use of social tools to Facebook and Twitter, as their supporters would be using other tools, too. The key to true cross-channel engagement like the #gosilent campaign is to link your accounts or use common profile names so that supporters can easily find you. In this case, they were also able to use the campaign hashtag to find participants and have them tag their content anywhere so it was tied into the campaign.

Here we can see a photo taken to accompany a FourSquare check in:

You can also see examples of Instagram photos being shared on Instagram with the #gosilent hashtag:

Instagram photos being shared on Twitter with the #gosilent hashtag:

And even Instram photos being shared on the IAVA Facebook page (note the number of shares and likes in just an hour!):

I’m really excited by the way that IAVA used social media today to celebrate Memorial Day by connecting their supporters, growing their supporter base, serving their mission, and helping so many people be part of something simultaneously local wherever they were and in the nation’s capital. I think it’s a terrific example of the way we can coordinator content and actions across channels to help spread a message or a campaign.

Sharing across platforms – Email and mobile

Whenever I’m checking out or even participating in a campaign across social channels, I always watch for an email to see how the organization has planned to use the email address I gave them when I donated, pledged, or otherwise signed up, to engage with me again right away. IAVA’s #gosilent campaign did send an email to thank me for pledging, and even though it is a text-only email, they make sure to hyperlink text to direct people to share on Facebook and Twitter. Additionally, they use this email to provide ways for people to share back with IAVA how they are going silent and remembering those that have served – the email even offers that people can simply email their stories or photos right to IAVA directly, providing a way for those that don’t want to share or are not using social media to still participate.

Additionally, the email offers a mobile short code that people can use to sign up for a text message reminder before the 12:01 moment of silence. Again, I think this is an excellent example of getting sign-ups in your database, helping people follow through on the call to action, and moving on your mission. I am curious to know how they follow up with the mobile subscribers or invite them into future campaigns via their phones.

What did you do to celebrate Memorial Day today? Did you #gosilent?

I knew it was hitting many more people than the average news story when I saw tweets, facebook posts, and other online comments coming from people in my community and network that I rarely see participating online. And just as quickly as people responded with outrage against Komen, the conversation changed to be about the women who would continue to need support and the services that help them. Breast Cancer has impacted my family, like many others, and I grew up participating in Komen’s Race for the Cure in Portland every year with my mom. Komen’s announcement changed people’s minds and it didn’t matter that they later said PP affiliate could apply for funding (whether or not they are granted will be seen then) because the “break up” was final for many.

Jumping into action, Allison Fine, Beth Kanter, Stephanie Rudat, Lisa Colton, and Lucy Bernholz starting moving beyond the updates and long conversation threads and towards a collective call to action. You can read the summary of how the free agent community came together to self-organize and create a public action as well as a full report of the lessons learned and reflections on the #TakeBackThePink campaign in this public google doc.

10 Lessons from Community-Driven Organizing

After the #TakeBackThePink twitter campaign during the Super Bowl, Beth prompted all of us to share lessons and reflections in a google doc to be captured and shared. Here are the lessons we pulled out as a group:

1. We could not plan for an event like this, however as individuals who are  unencumbered by organizational rules or policies, and that we have our own large networks of people to bring to an effort, and that we are comfortable working in a dynamic, flat, environment, we reacted very quickly and nimbly to events as they unfolded and provided avenues for action for other people angry at Komen. A core group of the organizers are fluent with a variety of social media platforms including Twitter, Pinterest (a fun opportunity to take it out for a social change spin, thought Beth!) and Facebook, plus Stephanie’s graphic design expertise. As one participant recalls, “There was an immediate sense of relatedness amongst the group conjoined by leaders.  We all saw something in the uproar and possibility for ourselves and those we care about.”
2. #takebackthepink was a particularly resonant phrase with our group because it represented the opportunity to begin to separate Komen from the color pink. As Lucy would tweet later, “Pink is a color not an org.” A fundamental part of our effort was to reestablish the primacy of women’s health over the branding concerns of a single organization. We believe we created an opportunity for a large number of people to participate in this process, and the momentum to continue the discussion moving forward.
3. There were two moments of tension during the week between a centralized approach and a network approach. The first time, the effort split in two; with one group focused on fundraising and another on advocacy and awareness. The second, a faction chose to opt out of the Super Bowl effort. Both times it was brought up that it was no longer about recouping money to PP (as that was already achieved in the first 48 hours) but was about redirecting people’s emotional responses, keeping people connected to causes and organizations even if they weren’t Komen, and demonstrating the importance of knowing what the orgs do that you support.
4. There was a flow of people in and out of the effort depending on their interest and availability. A public thread rather than the private email thread would have been more in keeping with our interest in and value of transparency. We chose the email vehicle believing that the element of surprise would be important to our efforts. It turned out not to be the case.
5. Finding the messaging middle ground in a fast changing environment was very challenging. Take Back the Pink was seen by some as Komen bashing and by others as “too nice.” We did our best to find a positive place for Super Bowl Sunday: there are a lot of organizations and way to support breast health, here are options in addition to Komen. It was harder to communicate than, “Screw Komen, fund Planned Parenthood” and it’s unclear how successful we were in explaining the shift and making the message clear.
6. We could have done a better job of looking for other hashtags in real-time and piggy-backed on them in order to weave together different conversations.
7. We developed and shone a spotlight on nonprofits and transparency, an unusual element to a discussion of pro-choice and women’s health issues.
8. Defining success in a very fluid situation was also very challenging. If fifty people retweeted with our hashtag was that success? Five hundred people? Five thousand people? An interesting model to use for comparison is Occupy Wall Street. Rather than using numeric outputs as goals, perhaps our effort, simply being and spreading, was successful. We are still wrestling with this question, although perhaps one answer is that if a single person learned about a new resource or organization that was success. Having the single largest media event of the year on the immediate horizon made for a great leverage point.
9. It would have been great to have advocacy organizations sign on as participants and partners in this event, however, when we did bump up against organizations they were unable to move fast enough with their approval processes to fully participate. This will continue to hamper the ability of organizations to work with “free agents” like us who need to meet an opportunity like this with speed, agility and a lack of concern for traditional message controls. Perhaps organizations can more fully participate in the next phase of development of the Facebook page.
10. This group is open to continuing the Facebook page and the conversation about general breast health and the array of organizations and resources available to women.  Clearly, there is a void in the digital space for being a resource to those who want to learn, contribute, volunteer, receive services but don’t know of all of the options or how to vet. Our capacity is stretched, though, we all participated in this effort as volunteers.

Observations & Reflections

Additionally, I want to pull out a few things I keep reflecting back on from the campaign and the organizing process that I think are influential to how we plan for and execute actions as community members and how we support them as organizations.

How do you evaluate and recognize “critical mass” of a free agent community? As Allison points out in her reflection post, after she created the Causes campaign and witnessed the response, she knew there was enough interest and people to do something bigger. But how did she know? How does your organization evaluate, on the fly in real-time, what critical mass is around a piece of news, an issue, a campaign, or even just an idea? How do you then say “this is it” and move to the next stage? In this case, I think critical mass was established by having more than just two or three, but actually five, six, even seven or eight people willing to jump in to help – and help by organizing and thinking and planning, not just sharing the message or plan once it was created. For organizations working on evaluating critical mass in real-time, it may be different as you would also factor in staff capacity to support the organizers from the community.

In a crisis, there are two versions of reaction: one against the perpetrator (in this case it was Komen, “how could they?”), the other in support of the victims (PP at first, and then quickly women in general). It is hard to switch the focus of a campaign after it is launched, so it’s important that you frame the story, your calls to action, and the actions themselves consistently. It was discussed openly and repeatedly on email chains and Facebook threads whether the focus was against Komen or in support of PP or even in support of women’s health. It was agreed every time that the focus was really on women’s health and redirecting people’s outrage, emotion, and attention so that instead of giving up on Komen and all breast cancer or women’s health issues, people would continue to participate, donate, and support organizations working on these issues. That’s why the resources on the TakeBackThePink wiki point to nonprofit and donor directories so people can research all the organizations working on breast cancer and women’s health, for example.

To organize and operate nimbly, you need to leave a crumb trail for others to join and follow you. This is incredibly important. It was necessary that the group collaborating on email and across multiple comment threads on Facebook create a cohesive place to refer new people when they jumped in, and a place for people to follow if they had to jump out. To the lesson above about the flow of participants in and out of the group, creating some central places to point people would support the people consistently reaching out to engage people as well as those who did not want to be involved but wanted to share the plans with others. To that end, I helped quickly create a shared google doc so that the messaging, calls to action, and other important links could be docked and shared easily. I also created a customized bit.ly link for the google doc so that sharing the information and inviting people to participate would be easy to do. Furthermore, it wasn’t just the google doc of messaging and information that was helpful, but that in the doc and on Beth’s wiki we provided direct links to the Twitter search for #takebackthepink and places to engage like the Facebook page, Allison’s Causes space, and Deanna’s Tumblr. Creating shortcuts like this by aggregating all the related links or resources together helped both the “main organizers” and all those coming in and out of the thread.

What do you think?

What other lessons or observations do you have from this campaign or others? What have you tried or experimented with? Would love to learn from you!

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Whether it’s political or personal, global or local, funded or a grassroots effort, organizations and communities are campaigning for change in many ways, all of the time. Unfortunately, there are times when we lose focus on our ultimate goals for change and instead fixate on the campaign itself or let a concept for engagement overshadow our real calls to action. When we do that, we can compromise the relationship we have with our supporters and donors, and limit our capacity for building momentum towards action and a movement for our cause. But, it doesn’t have to be that way!

Start with Metrics

When building a campaign and exploring your options for the structure, actions and engagement pieces, look first at your organizational metrics. What do you measure every day, week, month, year? What do you point to when funders, donors, board members and the community ask if you are making a difference? How do you evaluate your programs and services? Those metrics and goals are the best resources for identifying the focus and the calls to action for your campaign.

For example, if you are an organization working on public education policy changes, you probably recognize teachers as a core demographic to your work – both in supporting the changes you propose as well as helping identify the changes that can and should be made. Maybe you want to run a campaign for awareness around one of your proposals and want to showcase teachers in the process. Asking supporters to take an apple to their teacher may sound like a fun call to action – it engages students and parents in any grade level, is a simple and straightforward ask, and has teachers at the center. But how does it help you move closer to your goal?

Instead, what if you asked students to finish the sentence “My teacher deserves an apple because…” Whether people respond with pictures, video, or text you have engaged them at the same degree as you would have with the apple, but you also have all of those responses that you can aggregate and share back in real time, bubbling up the energy of all those participating and following along. You also have media of various kinds that you can use in messaging, calls to action, and in the advocacy for your work in front of teachers, administrators and ultimately policymakers.

Revisit your Story

What’s your organization’s story? You have one. It’s the story you tell in a grant application, on your website, in an elevator, and to a room of volunteers getting ready to help you with a project or event. As much as your goals and metrics will help you identify the actions your campaign can focus on, your story helps you identify where the campaign fits in your work and how to position it to the community and the world at large. How are you using your story to engage people around the campaign specifically and your work as a whole?

For example, using that same organization from the example above, perhaps our story is that the community has all the resources teachers and schools need to be successful, if only there was more coordination and access to those resources when they were needed. As such, a campaign that reinforces that story by asking for people to register resources in their business, home, or local community instead of just donate.

Campaigns in Action

I want to use two real campaigns to reinforce these two points. First, is the Kiss Malaria Goodbye campaign:

Metrics – It’s easy to see what the ask is. But it’s hard to see from the perspective of someone coming across the campaign website how responding to that call to action will make a difference. And ultimately, we take action to be part of something as we already have plenty of opportunities to take and share video, photo and messages with our friends or the world at large. The action of sharing a kiss doesn’t seem to align with the actions needed to get rid of Malaria.

Story – The action is aligned with the story of “kiss Malaria goodbye” but that is, ultimately, just a slogan. The story here is of how 1 child dies of Malaria in Africa every 45 seconds. Perhaps the campaign could have been anchored in that fact and asked people to make a 45 second or less video to get involved.

The next example, is 350.org and their Days of Action:

Metrics – The campaigns 350 runs are centered on numbers: both the number 350 (ppm) as well as the sheer scale of participants that can be involved in a collective action. Both are powerful. They reinforce the call for legislative action to bring the levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere back down to 350 ppm in everything they do by encouraging participants to use the number in their messages and to take/post images and videos of the actions organized in major cities and tiny villages around the world.

Story – 350.org’s story is that our changing climate and toxic levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere are affecting everyone on earth. As such, their messages and calls to action are geared at showcasing diversity and participation from all corners of the planet.

Your Opportunity

Your supporters take action because they share your vision – or at least a piece of it – and want to join you in making change. Don’t let your call to action diminish the potential you and your community have for changing the world!

Photo credit: Flickr leehaywood

Are you fueling with love?

Regardless of what work you are doing – campaigning for political change, providing services to your local community, educating others, or anything else – would it look different, would it feel different, would it operate differently if love was the central message?

To Mama With Love

I’m incredibly inspired to participate in this year’s To Mama With Love campaign from Epic Change. My mother taught me many things, and I feel like with every year she teaches me more – whether she knows it or not. She’s taught me a lot about love, relationships, and our interactions with the world; and she’s also taught me about things that many may not think have anything to do with love, but they do.

The biggest lesson: Everyone has something to give.

I can’t think of a lesson, an outlook on life, and a guiding principle for my work that is more about love than this one. When working with communities, trying to enable change, looking for opportunities to spark collaboration, love seems like a strange thing to think about for many people. When you approach any of those activities, any of the work we do in this sector, with the idea that truly everyone has something to contribute, the way you speak, the way you interact, and the way you lead changes – and changes into something powerful and contagious.

I see this lesson in the work of 350.org. I see this lesson in the local councils of London trying to open up their data and their leadership. I see this work in public maps like Open Green Map. I see it in so many places, and it’s working. We are starting a movement that has love at the very foundation. And that’s what gives me hope that we will be successful.

Join me in sharing the love

I’ve created a heartspace for my mother and for some of the things she’s taught me:

But To Mama With Love isn’t just about my mama, it’s about 4 special women making great impact around the world. This year, TMWL is raising funds that will support the work of 4 passionate women who truly believe that everyone has something to give:

“Mama Lucy” Kamptoni sold chickens in her Tanzanian village & turned her income into a primary school that now serves over 400 children. Her students consistently score at the top of over 120 schools in the Arusha district of Tanzania. Mama Lucy is an Epic Change fellow, and has been an invited speaker at the European Summit for Global Transformation.

Recently named one of TIME’s 100 most influential people and Newsweek’s 150 Women Who Shake the World, Suraya Pakzad is an outspoken Afghan activist on behalf of the rights of women and girls. She originally founded the Voice of Women Organization (VWO) to educate girls in Kabul in secret schools under the Taliban, and has since expanded to support and assist underprivileged women and children throughout Afghanistan.

At 19, New Jersey native Maggie Doyne used her life savings from babysitting to start Kopila Valley children’s home in Nepal, which has grown to a home for over 40 children, and a school serving over 200 students. Now, at just 23 years old, Maggie’s work has been featured in the New York Times, and her remarkable story has earned her the DoSomething & CosmoGirl awards.

Renu Shah Bagaria is the founder of Koseli, a center for children in Kathmandu, Nepal, who, due to their economic circumstances and the country’s recent civil war, live in the city’s streets and slums. Koseli, which means “gift”, provides education, food and tender loving care for over 75 young students, and, in the evenings, hosts an adult education program for local women.

And now I hope you’ll join me!

To Mama With Love is an open, community campaign. There are many ways that you can contribute:

• What has your mother taught you? Please share the stories, insights, and lessons on the heartspace wall.
• If you can, please consider donating so that we can raise funds in honor of our mothers to support these inspiring women making great impact around the world.
• Build your own heartspace, share the campaign, and share your love!

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To Mama With Love is a collaborative online art project that honors moms across the globe and raises funds to invest in remarkable women who are transforming our world. Scheduled for May 3-8, 2011, the site invites participants to create socially shareable “heartspaces” that include words, videos, photos & investments in honor of mamas they love. Learn more!

While they’ve used the public humiliation of their own staff as a theme in the past, this year NTEN is celebrating the collective awesome of the NTEN community. Which means, many of us in the community offered up ourselves or our favorite things to help the cause! For example, I’ve got two things in the auction: a 2-hour community building consultation session, and my very own gluten free and vegan carrot cake recipe!

You can bid on nearly 100 items in the first silent auction, getting something great for yourself, and supporting the campaign at the same time.

Here’s how you can participate:

1. Create an account at our auction site. You must use our link to register: http://allthis.com/rR1BK. (The system will send you a confirmation email you must respond to before you can log in for the first time. It went into my spam filter, FYI.)
2. When you see an offer you want to bid on, click the “I want this button” in the upper right hand corner of the item. You should also choose to “Follow” any items on which you bid.
3. Each day, all auction items will be updated with the latest bids, so keep an eye out to see if you’ve been out-bid.
4. Bidding closes at 5pm Pacific on February 11. We’ll contact winners and arrange for payment then.

Sharing auction items with your friends is easy via the handy Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and e-mail integrations built right into each listing. And you don’t have to be an NTEN member or attend the NTC to make a bid and support our campaign!

You can also support the 2011 NTC Scholarship Campaign by donating an item to the auction. It’s not too late! Just submit your item to us.

So, please go create your account now. Then you can view all the items donated to the 2011 NTC campaign.

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If you’ve been on facebook at all in December this year, you may have seen something happening to all your friends – their pictures changing to their favorite cartoon characters! You may or may not have seen a message from those same friends encouraging you and everyone else to do it, too, as a way of increasing awareness of child abuse. It caught my eye and I couldn’t help but wonder what it was all about, what was the story behind the story.

According to ABC news:

According to the trend-tracking website Know Your Meme, the cartoon fad started with Facebook users in Greece and Cyprus in mid-November.
The site said the original message was in Greek and translated to “From the 16th to the 20th of November, we shall change our profile pictures to our favourite cartoon characters. The purpose of this game is to remove all photos of human for a few days from Facebook.”

What struck me about this original message was the lack of connection to a cause. According to Mashable,

The origins of this campaign remain a mystery, as it doesn’t seem to be affiliated with any official organization. And not that you need to limit child abuse awareness to a certain time of year, but, at least in the U.S., National Child Abuse Prevention Month isn’t until April. Some Facebook commenters have also pointed out the perhaps misdirected effort, posting messages skeptical of any tangible outcomes.

This is when I really started paying attention. There has to be something going on that’s getting everyone excited enough to search for a cartoon character and change their picture. I also started noticing that of my friends on facebook, it was a pretty even spread between people that worked in the nonprofit sector and those that didn’t. I posted in a facebook group for social media and nonprofit folks the following message:

I’ve been pretty perplexed by the cartooning of facebook and after seeing news posts about how it is not child abuse awareness month or week and so forth, and the posts about how the call to change profile pics to a cartoon started in greece made me wonder if perhaps for the meme to continue/catch fire in the english translation if people felt obligated to make up an advocacy-related reason for people to play along…

A fellow group member and colleague, Tom Watson, replied that, “I’ve seen perhaps two dozens links to child abuse organizations swapped in the last couple of days – and it was fun. Sure, it’s slacktivism but what the hey….it was fun.”

And another friend, Stacey Monk, noted, “I couldn’t resist an opportunity to swap my mug with the shmoo. And I got to learn why I love him so much – iturns out, according to wikipedia, he’s a “classic allegory of greed and corruption tarnishing all that’s good and innocent in the world” – so I studied up on shmoo which made it all worthwhile http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shmoo”

So, I think I “get it” as far as what catches hold on facebook – something easily shareable, easy to accomplish, and fun/enjoyable. But, what still really stands out for me, is the addition of the cause-advocacy appeal once the meme hit the English translation.

Do we need slacktivism to justify fun behavior online? Are we so accustomed to easy-to-accomplish campaigns that we assume every “call to action” is/needs to be associated with a cause? What does this mean for the Child Abuse Awareness Month activities in April – when a specific organization or campaign tries to call on us “for real” this time?

What do you think? Did you change your picture – why or why not? What’s your reaction to campaigns like this?

As Beth shared in your post:

“I love my iPhone,but I don’t want to support a company that is so nonprofit unfriendly.   Since none of these in-App donation challenges apply to the Android – as soon as my contract is up, I’m getting an Android.     But, since I have a few more months on my contract,  I’ve left a comment on this post asking Apple to reconsider its policy.  If you think having the ability to make in-App donations through iPhones without hefty fees or hassle – please send Steve Jobs a message now by signing this online petition.”

What do you think? Did you sign the petition – why or why not? Would love to hear from you!

The 3.5 day conference was split into two tracks for IT and NGO, sometimes meeting separately, sometimes coming together to collaborate. I had the opportunity to facilitate the IT track and had lots of fun poking, prodding, and supporting some really interesting conversations and sharing sessions. I also had the chance to provide a couple presentations to the NGO track, one focused specifically on using facebook for campaigning in Romania.  The slides are below as well as some notes.

Notes:

In June 2010:  253,360 new users joined in Romania – Coming in 3rd in the world for adoption for the month. In July 2010:  1,555,360 total number of users in Romania. For context, think about it this way: in a country of 21 million, where only about 7 million have internet access, about 1 in every 20 is on facebook!

When it comes to campaigning on facebook, the real question is page vs group. The way functionality changes so rapidly means that what you need to think about the options in so far as they can be helpful to what you want to do today, in case the way you want to use them is discontinued or changed. Not the best scenario for a campaigner or organizer, but it is the reality.

Some of the key attributes that you may want to include:

• a welcome page/message that highlights who you are and the calls to action – remember that it’s more important for people to take the action related to your campaign than it is to only join your page/group
• connect events to your group or page – part of the role you or the organization can play is that of shepherd to the community, helping move people between online and offline; part of that comes from any events (whether they are online things or offline events) can be created using the facebook events tools and connected to the page or group so members that join on one side can follow through to the other
• add applications that can help automate the work – do you have a blog, add a blog or rss application to auto post for you; do you have a twitter account, add the twitter application to connect conversations – not all of the content or communication needs to be automated, but remember that there are lots of options out there and you can try out tools to see what’s right for you and your campaign
• don’t be afraid to have secondary pages/groups – for some, the organizational presence is the appropriate place for the campaign information and calls to action, but for others it is more appropriate to create a separate page or group just for that campaign, especially when the campaign may only target some of your full organizational audience and/or has other organizations partnering/contributing

I’d love to hear your examples of campaigning on facebook! In the slides, I highlighted some of the work of 350.org but I know there are lots of great examples out there. Has your organization campaigned specifically on facebook? I’d love to hear how it went!