Slideshare

I use Slideshare for my presentations and other workshop or training materials. It’s easy to use, and it makes archiving and sharing materials with attendees really simple. Column Five has a new infographic about Slideshare user data with some interesting highlights. First and very striking is the 3 billion slideviews/month number! Slideshare reminds me of YouTube in that many nonprofits and even individuals use YouTube as the online storage space for videos that they plan to embed on their website or blog and otherwise share across the web. You benefit by storing the videos in a public and popular place so those that aren’t already watching your website can still come across your video and get engaged. Slideshare, with that many views, is serving a similar purpose where users are uploading content to be stored on Slideshare that they intend to embed or share elsewhere but benefit from those on the platform coming across the material and learning more.

Another highlight is the organic search traffic that nonprofit should take more advantage of. Have you spent days putting together a presentation for your board or a potential funder that highlights your work and impact? Maybe outlines how a new program is going to make a specific change to your community or the world. Putting that presentation on Slideshare where the title and the slide material can be indexed for searches means the next time I’m online searching for “important programs to end homelessness in NYC” I find your slides, your ideas, and ways to get involved with your organization.

It’s also noteworthy the high percentage of business and organizational leaders using Slideshare. Even more reason to expect that those coming across your material there to be potential partners, donors, or volunteers. There is no need to highlight specific case studies here as Beth Kanter has, of course, already ccreated a great list!

Pinterest

wishpond’s new infographic on Pinterest user data has some interesting data but I also know far more organizations experimenting with Pinterest or even using it well already. The first thing that struck me about the Pinterest data is the stat 80% of pins are actually repinned from another board. It’s really similar to the high percentage of content on Tumblr that’s reblogged from another blog. Couple that stat with nearly 84% of the time pinning content and what that really tells me is users enjoy the site and they enjoy sharing and collecting content; they do not, however, probably want to leave the site just to look at your website.

According to the infographic, 57% of the content on Pinterest is also food related! Considering all these dynamics, I think City of Hope’s shared board collecting recipes for mushrooms as part of the Mushrooms for Hope campaign is right on target. It’s a great example of creating content that is mission-supporting, true to the audience and platform, and really creates great opportunities for people to have interaction with the organization that is valuable to them and not just part of an ask.

Are you using Slideshare or Pinterest?

How is your organization creating or sharing content on these platforms? Would love to hear your lessons and stories!

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Background: What’s ActionSprout

For years I have grumbled about the fact that Facebook doesn’t allow organizations to access the email addresses of their own Fans. And hopefully you never got me started on how the company has been treating organizations like frogs in a proverbial pot, slowly reducing the number of fans they deliver updates too. The idea that organizations have to pay to get an update onto a meaningful number Fans’ walls (Facebook acknowledges that it is down to 15% today) may be good business for Facebook, but the value proposition to organizations got less and less compelling.

At the same time I have watched organization struggle to engage with Facebook supporters in meaningful ways using just the actions Facebook has provided; Like, Share, or Comment. I have had numerous heated discussions with some of the loudest non-profit social media advocates about the real cost/benefit of Facebook as a platform for reaching supporters and deepening engagement with them over time.

To all who have endured my rants, you will be shocked to hear me say that I believe Facebook finally has the pieces in place to make a major impact on organizations ability to acquiring and building productive relationship with supporters. Yep, you heard me right, just at the very time Facebook is working harder than ever to monetize, I have become a believer. In fact, even their new Promote function provides nonprofits and campaigns with a rather compelling new tool for engaging organizations most ardent supporters.

Let me explain… Earlier this year Facebook rolled out their new Open Graph functionality and my long time do-gooding co-conspirator (Shawn Kemp) and I found ourselves contemplating if and how it might be utilized to help organizations acquire high quality fans on Facebook and, more importantly, build productive relationships with those supporters over time.

After months of learning and developing, we launched ActionSprout.com; to help organizations unlock their Facebook Fans with actions that move beyond Like, Share and Comment. The Facebook App gives organizations dozens of nonprofit-relevant social actions to engage supporters with directly on their own Facebook pages. For instance, instead of asking people to click “Like” on a wall post, they can now ask them to click “Recommend”, “Thank”, “Sign”, “Vote For,” “Stop,” “Contact”, “Support” or one of a dozen other actions we currently support.

Referral Rates

Over the past couple months we have been working with a few organizations and campaigns to put the system through its paces and begin to figure out how to actually use it and learn what kind of impact it can have.

Last week, we launched one of the most important pieces of the system for our team; the back-end analytics dashboard. As we push the dashboard live, we were excited and nervous. Would all these months of work be for not?

One of the key metrics we obsess over is the referral rate organizations are experiencing from their ActionSprout campaigns. In other words when a person takes an action like “Join” or simply clicks like on the post itself, do any of their friends join them? Facebook’s new Open Graph is designed to support the viral growth of highly relevant actions. Whenever a person takes an ActionSprout.com action on behalf of an organization, the app fires the Open Graph and automatically shares that action with some of their friends. We also give action takers other ways to help spread the word. But until you start seeing real traffic through an app like ActionSprout.com, there is really no way to know just what kind of referral rates to expect.

Case Study: ActionSprout and David Suzuki Foundation

One of the first organizations to run tests to measure referral traffic for ActionSprout.com was the David Suzuki Foundation, a Canadian Foundation working to protect the diversity of nature and Canadian’s quality of life, now and for the future. The results have far exceeded our expectations.

The Foundation launched it’s first campaign with the specific goal of testing the performance of ActionSprout.com relative to their standard campaign sign-up process (which drives people to a form on their website to complete a signup form). In order to help ensure that the data we were getting was meaningful, they were kind enough to focus on driving and measuring traffic to their ActionSprout.com campaign entirely through their Facebook wall even though they could have driven much higher performance had they also driven traffic to their ActionSprout.com campaign via email and their website.

The call to action for all posts was to join the Fall Family Challenge by clicking a link. The link on their first post drove people to the organization’s standard web form, not their ActionSprout app. This first post went out on a Saturday and resulted in 125 people signing up for the campaign. As would be expected, the vast majority of these 125 people were Fans who received the call to action from their news feed. “The results from that are meaningful,” says Sarah Hall, the Foundation’s communications manager. “After all, we can now reach out directly to each of those people via email and build deeper relationships.”

On the following Monday, The Foundation posted a similar call to action to their Facebook page. On this post, the call to action link pointed to their ActionSprout.com tab. That call to action drove 119 Fans to join the campaign—not bad for a Monday afternoon. But the really interesting part was what happened after they started seeing Fans take action. For each Fan who joined the campaign through ActionSprout.com, the organization has seen another 1.8 people who were not previously fans join, the campaign along with them. Where did these people come from?

• First, each time a person took the action it fires an open graph story that is shared with some of their friends and gets aggregated on their timeline. That means an open graph story is getting posted to their wall and timeline for 100% of action takers.
• Second, after taking an action The Foundation has ActionSprout configured to give the action taker a quick post to wall dialog. In their case, over 75% of action takers shared the action.
• Third, because this campaign was targeted at families with kids, many of The Foundation’s fans choose to like and share the post but didn’t sign up themselves. Some number of friends of these sharers chose to Join the campaign as well.

In other words, for every 100 Fans who joined the campaign through the ActionSprout.com app, the organization also acquired 180 new campaign members, for a total of 280 campaign members.

The thing that excites us and the David Suzuki Foundation is that those new people didn’t just click “Like” because they wanted to give a wink to a friend who was up to something. They joined a campaign that directly connected them to the organizations work. These people are new to The Foundation, but already Sarah and her colleagues know how they relate to their work and can begin to serve and engage them accordingly.

The David Suzuki Foundation also uses Salesforce as its CRM (constituent relationship management) system, and has ActionSprout.com setup to automatically add or update contact records with names and email addresses of any person who joins the campaign. (This feature is available starting on our mid-level $90/mo plan) During the two-week campaign, the David Suzuki Foundation added several hundred new constituents to its database.

Last Friday, The Foundation launched a new ActionSprout Campaign to support help them apply pressure to “Stop” a potentially disastrous China-Canada trade deal that the Prime Minister has secretly negotiated behind closed doors. This campaign has sees similar referral rates and but with much higher overall numbers. So far, their “Stop” campaign has seen more than 3000 people take the action in under 48 hours.

I can’t tell you how wonderful it feels to finally be able to do more than just grumble about the limitations of Facebook for building truly productive relationships. We are excited to continue to see what organizations do with ActionSprout.com. If you’re interested in giving the system a try, here’s a 30-day free trial code that will work on all of our plans (referral code: Amy112) – so jump in and take ActionSprout for a test drive.

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!

Principles of Community Organizing

There are many proven practices and strategies for engaging with communities and building up participation, whether around an event, a campaign, or a cause. Here are the five core principles as we see them from our work:

1. Focus on Shared Goals and Shared Ownership

First, identify what your community wants to do – what it is coming together around, whether it’s an event, an action, or a movement.  Next, identify what you want to do, what your organizational goals are.  Those two “wants to do” will overlap and that gray area is the sweet spot. It’s important to remember that not everything your organization wants to do or achieve, matches up with with your community wants to do, and vice versa. The key is that that’s okay!  Maybe you provide services, and your community doesn’t want to be providing those services, but they are happy you are doing so. And maybe the community wants to endorse a specific candidate, and your organization doesn’t. But both the community and your organization want to see certain laws passed, things improved, programs created or groups supported.  That’s the sweet spot where you can focusing your calls to action and community engagement.

2. Transparency

Be transparent with everything: in goals, activities, membership, successes, challenges, issues within the community, and so on.

This also means don’t build it in secret and then “launch” it  – regardless of whether it’s an online space, a program or a campaign. If it is really something that is coming from the community, you can’t just take the idea and run; you’ll want to co-create it from idea to implementation.

Be sure you lead by example:  interact with the community the way you want other organizations and the community members to do.  It’s like the golden rule for community engagement.  I like this picture for this point because often mother ducks will bring up the rear, supporting the ducklings and swimming along side them, instead of shooting ahead and expecting them to keep up.

3. Go Where the People Are

Different platforms have different users – be sure to do your homework by reviewing statistics and reports from various social media tools to know who’s really using them, and ask your community where they want to engage with you.

Being active in the community leads to organizational engagement, creates community, builds followers. If you know your followers are into LBS, then be in that community and reward their activity in unique ways, such as check in 3 times and get an unique BK Art Star Badge.

Leverage the power of the online communities and networks, such as with Tweetsgiving. Highlight the work of the community on the home page of the campaign or website.

4. Cultivate Leaders

Leadership development is incredibly important. You don’t actually want to be the one maintaining the engagement forever – if the community can take over your role, it’s a sign it’s not just sustainable but thriving!

Striving to be replaced can be a tough one for most everyone. It isn’t exactly in our nature but it is key to the ethos of a community builder. One way to work on supporting your community to not need you managing the program, platform, or whatever else is to encourage interaction without you. This touches back on letting the community know itself. If you’re making connections and supporting conversations across the network, you’re helping the community create strong ties that will not require your time and energy to maintain.

Striving to be replaced also means rewarding and spotlighting leaders. Positive reinforcement is one of the best leadership development practices you can build into your work across the board, whether it’s online or offline, on your facebook page, newsletter, annual fundraiser or neighborhood events.

Lastly, be active in sharing your toolbox. You can model behavior all you want but if no one can tell what tools you are using to be so successful, there’s no way they can jump in and help man the ship.

5. Know Your Community

Part of doing this well is letting your community know itself. That means don’t take credit where it isn’t yours, highlight the leaders and contributors in the community, and making connections across the network. It also means letting community members connect directly with one another, without going through you.

Knowing your community also means knowing your role in the ecosystem. It’s important, as I mentioned earlier in the strategy steps, to identify what your role or roles are as the organization and stick to them. Once you start spreading out, you squeeze out room for others to grow and develop or even to explore what’s possible. Not to mention create far more for yourself!

Knowing your community also means you help it grow. Sometimes that means making mistakes. Hopefully they are tiny and harmless, and that you’re there to learn alongside the community.  But, it’s just to say that you are in it just like the community is, and not everything we try in life works smoothly. Instead, design for growth and sustainability from the start with lots of room for feedback, evaluation and iterations to continue developing and redeveloping. The best time to fail is early and openly – that way you can learn and build to move forward.

Case Studies

Check out the slides below to examine four case studies of these principles in action:

Resources & Links

• http://socialbysocial.com
• http://wearemedia.org
• http://www.communityorganizer20.com/2011/05/03/how-to-create-love-online-case-study/
• http://www.communityorganizer20.com/2011/02/24/follow-the-leader-innovative-social-media-activism/
• https://amysampleward.org/2010/05/07/guest-post-on-online-community-report-sustainable-community-building/
• https://amysampleward.org/2009/08/06/online-community-building-gardening-vs-landscaping/
• https://amysampleward.org/2011/01/20/diy-community-engagement-metrics/
• https://amysampleward.org/2011/05/18/crowdsourcing-vs-community-sourcing-whats-the-difference-and-the-opportunity/

Here’s a Qriously case study, from Katy Gilbert – enjoy!

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I have been using our free Qriously account for the last month.  (Thanks Amy for getting us hooked up!) I wasn’t sure what to expect, but loved it straight from the start.  It is easy to use and understand.  The data is clearly laid out.  And it was so much fun to watch people answering the questions and getting real time data to things that would help our project.

Background on the project:

Stories of Our City is a worldwide project sharing true stories from around the world.  We believe that if people will listen to each other they will understand each other better – and hopefully take steps as world citizens to build a more peaceful world.

With this in mind, we asked questions in 3 primary areas:

1. content- “what kind of stories do people like?”
2. ideas about peace “what do people think about world peace?”
3. social media “how can we use social media to engage people in our project?”

Questions & Qriously Answers

Here is a run down of questions we asked and the way people responded around the world:

Content

“what kind of personal stories do you like best?  Funny or Dramatic

“what kind of stories do you like?”   Funny or Dramatic

Dramatic won the first one, but then funny won the second question. It was helpful to know that people want to listen to moving, dramatic stories if they are listening to life stories.

Peace

“What will stop the next war?” Understanding or weapons

With understanding winning out by 8.6 %.  But the interesting thing is you can see what people in certain locations think of your question.  For instance, in India, weapons won out.  But in the U.S. it was understanding.  It was great to be able to see the geographic breakdown on these kinds of questions.

“will there ever be world peace?” Yes or no

Although most Americans answered “no,” the Argentinians were the most optimistic of all the countries.

“what effects world peace?” World leaders or citizens

It was interesting to note that most people think world leaders (18% more than citizens).  This helped us realize that our project (dealing mostly in helping citizens understand each other better) has barriers to overcome in helping other people see that their actions effect world peace.

Social Media

The last category of questions that we asked was regarding Facebook and Twitter use.  We needed to know more about how people use facebook, so we asked them:

“what are you most likely to share on Facebook?” Photos or links

The results were tied.  So, we know that we can add photos and links to help engage people on our website and we don’t have to worry about not engaging a certain group.

“what do you share on Facebook?” Photos or random news

We found out that people are more likely to share photos.  So, now we know to spend time getting great photos and not so much time on being cute with the random facts.

We also asked people if they had ever heard of Stories of Our City and if they visit our website daily or weekly, etc.   It is a great way to find out how you are doing in your marketing strategies! – like having a global focus group at your disposal!

So, basically, I love Qriously and I am so glad that we got to give it a go- Thanks a ton!

Slides

Notes

Definitions

Let’s start at the beginning. What do all these words even mean? Here are the definitions I use in my work and when talking to groups I work with. Creating specific definitions for these terms which are often used in an overlapping way will help you and your organization ensure you’re all really on the same page.

The Cloud

For me, the two most prominent reason to include crowdsourcing in your engagement strategies for campaigns or contests include:

1. Crowdsourcing invites diversity by encouraging anyone with an idea or interest to participate
2. Crowdsourcing levels the playing field so it isn’t just your “favorites” or those you already know that get to play

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Aashika Damodar & collaborative technology for social impact

Every day I field questions from organizations and community groups looking to use facebook, Twitter or YouTube.. Most all of these groups are excited and enthusiastic but are coming from the wrong direction: focusing on the tools first. Our programs, services, and campaigns are successful, instead, when we focus on the community first, and that’s why Aashika Damodar’s work impresses and inspires me.

Survivors Connect is an organization supporting activists and building survivor advocacy networks using collaborative technologies to end modern-day slavery and human trafficking. Aashika, the founder and executive director, starting learning about and looking for ways to support the community of survivors when she was studying Anthropology and Political Science at University of California, Berkeley: “When I was in college, I learned of a labor/sex trafficking case right across from my dorm.  I myself was also almost a human trafficking victim for the purpose of forced marriage in India. By that point, the issue of gender-based violence and trafficking had crept into so many facets of my life, prompting me to make it my life’s work to end it.”

Building programs and services to support a community means not just learning about the problems they face, but understanding how technologies can help make a difference. Aashika admits to being “a big tech-enthusiast by hobby” and she “found that the anti-slavery movement was lacking in terms of participation in this field, as well as innovation.”  According to Aashika, “It is these very same technologies that often enable transnational human trafficking; so I felt that I needed to get involved in this way to make our activism smarter, and innovate on both the “process” and “product/software” frontlines.”

The Survivors Connect online platform includes various opportunities for those wishing to report abuse, take action, or otherwise support the network of activists, and relies on a variety of collaborative technologies, from data mapping to online seminars, SMS-powered communications to an online community network. Different regions around the global have a very different level of access than those in North America or Western Europe. Recognizing which tools are available to your community can make the biggest impact on your project’s success.

“It has always been quite interesting to me that in many parts of the developing world, there is near ubiquitous ownership of mobile phones,” explained Aashika. “Here is really where the innovative thinking began. Communication tech, in a sense, is shrinking us as groups while increasing our ability to connect. Why not use this to work on preventing some of the most egregious human rights abuses in the world?”

Taking advantage of mobile technology, Survivors Connect created SMS: Freedom which connects individuals and communities with experts and resources via text messages. In this way, information about scams or risks can easily be distributed to communities, or reports can be shared throughout the network.

“The experiences and stories of survivors were and always are my call to action,” Aashika told me. “They are the strongest souls Ive ever met. Survivors of various forms of slavery give us a glimpse of how the broader crime of human trafficking works, and just how much is involved.” And it isn’t just Aashika that survivors are inspiring; through Freedom Connect all members of the global network fighting slavery and human trafficking are invited to create profiles, share calendars, create groups, share resources and join together in discussions.

Most importantly to the success of Aashika’s work, is her ability to remember that it is not about the tools. Survivors Connect is not just an online platform and network working to end modern-day slavery and human trafficking, but a place to continue to learn and inspire—the technology is simply a tool for letting us connect and communicate. “We will not win the fight against slavery and human trafficking with egos, but with open and understanding hearts and minds.”

>> Learn more about Aashika and Survivors Connect today: http://www.survivorsconnect.org

In 2008, Aashika graduated from the University of California, Berkeley; she is now working on her Masters in Philosophy in Development Studies at the University of Cambridge, UK where she’s a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar.  Her honors thesis from UCBerkeley won the Ronald Frankenberg Prize and the Sylvia Forman Prize from the American Anthropological Association; it was also published in the 2010 Project Censored Journal.

How you can create an online collaboration space!

Working people and communities around the world can make sharing information and even just communicating a difficult task. Like Survivors Connect, maybe you want to share the stories and work from your community. There are various tools available, though, that make public networks or even private collaboration easy and efficient.

Top Tools for Collaboration

Tips for Collaboration Online

If you want to replicate some of Aashika’s success bringing people together online, here are the top 5 tips you need to keep in mind:

• Evaluate your Community: where are they, what kind of access do they have, and what are they looking to do?
• Evaluate your Capacity: how much time do you have, what kind of technical experience do you have, what resources are available?
• Evaluate your Goals: what do you and the community want to accomplish, what do you want to do today and what do you want to do in a year?
• Try Something First: don’t be afraid to jump in and give a new tool a try; if it doesn’t fit your needs, then move on!
• Build on Success: if something is really working, analyze what it is and why to see if

I recently facilitated a day long meeting with a group of 7 different community media centers in California. Our objective was to develop grants and programs as a group to strengthen our individual community media centers and support the movement as a whole.

To modify the steps of the game to help tell the story, here’s how Ericha used the Community-Driven Social Impact game with her network of Community Media Center participants.

Who was the community that you were working with?

I am part of the Digital Arts Service Corps, which is an initiative of the Transmission Project that pairs tech-savvy AmeriCorps Vistas with organizations dedicated to supporting community media and technology. My project this year is to create a collaborative among seven different community media centers (CMCs) in the greater bay area. The purpose of the collaborative is to share best practices and resources to create greater sustainability and more impact within our individual organizations and the CMC movement as a whole.

The community I am working with is comprised of the seven CMCs in the collaborative: Community Media Access Partnership (based in Gilroy, CA), Davis Media Access (Davis, CA), Access Humboldt (Eureka, CA), Access Monterey Peninsula (Monterey, CA), Community Media Center of Marin (San Rafael, CA), SF Commons (San Francisco, CA), and Community Television of Santa Cruz County (Santa Cruz, CA).

What were your goals for engaging with them?

During our first meeting as a collaborative, we identified four priority areas to focus on throughout the year. They are: productions, youth media/education, fundraising, and technology. I design and facilitate a day long, in person meeting every other month dedicated to one of these topics. We had our fundraising meeting on March 25. The goal of the day was to develop a collaborative grant proposal for a project that would be pertinent and beneficial to each CMC. This was a challenging undertaking considering the diverse populations served by centers in the collaborative. I used the CDSI game to get everyone thinking about the communities they work with, hear about other communities, and generate ideas about how we could work together to meet their needs.

How did you modify the game to match your community and goals?

I allowed everyone two minutes to write down their responses, then about seven minutes to share with the rest of their group after each question. After the final question was discussed, I brought everyone back together and collected some of the program ideas each generated by each small group. This ended up being a great way to jump start the brainstorming process. Ultimately, we were able to concentrate the broader ideas into three focused projects and chose one we wanted to move forward with.

What did you learn and what would you do differently next time?

I really appreciated the structured and in depth discussion this activity created. One thing I would do differently next time have better examples of the types of responses I was looking for with the first two questions. While there is value in having such open ended questions, some people needed a little more clarification and guidance to get them started. Overall, The CDSI game was an effective utilization of time that yielded meaningful results.

Share your story!

Have you run the CDSI game in your organization or at a workshop? Share how it went! The Community-Driven Social Impact game, like all of the content and resources on this website, is licensed for reuse and sharing with Creative Commons so you can feel free to put it to use in your organization!

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Photo credit: Michael Wesolowski