Social networks and social media has busted out of the marketing communications and fundraising silos and changing the way nonprofits deliver programs, manage, and even govern.  This session will take a look about these trends and how nonprofits can equipment themselves to be networked nonprofits.

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http://networkednonprofit.wikispaces.com

The writing process for the book:

• Expository vs storytelling
• Different brains – visual vs words
• Helpful guide tone vs colorful and wordy
• Hired an arbitrator to be the editor

There was one thing that we both had in common: chocolate.

What is the Networked Nonprofit?

Working through networks allows us to scale social change projects geographically and geometrically. When you do that, there’s an entity called the networked nonprofit.

BE:

• understand networks
• create social culture
• listen, engage, and build relationships
• trust through transparency
• simplicity

Do:

• work with crowds
• learning loops
• friending to funding
• governing through networks

Three Themes from the Book:

1. Social Culture

Red Cross – started social media efforts shortly after Katrina when people weren’t saying very good things. Wendy was hired “to make the bloggers go away.” As she started putting into practice some great listening practices, she realized that listening was the gateway drug for social media.  Staff started to see the value in social media and it led to adoption of tools. Fast forward to 2009, Wendy led a process internally to create a social media guidelines and operational handbook. It’s evolving the social culture of the organization.

Step 1: overcoming the fear and opening up – can’t let fears keep you from moving forward.

Step 2: make learning in public less stressful, worst case scenarios and contingency plans.

Step 3: Reflection – where the greatest learning is

Momsrising uses joyful funerals for things that don’t work. The richest insights come when we are at the wake of a joyful funeral.

Step 4: Leaders experience personal use.

Codifying a Social Culture: Policy

Most important thing in a social media policy: be professional, kind, discreet, authentic. represent us well. remember that you can’t control it once you hit send.

Step 5: Testing the policies: refining, educating

Operational guidelines need to be specific and include examples!

2. Transparency

The gravitational pull of social media is from inside organization out. You can’t close yourself off from the world.  3 kinds of organizations: Fortress, Transactional, and Transparent.

Transparency is not the same as being in a glass house. Think about national archives, behind a glass case – there’s still a barrier even if it is see-through.  A better anology is a natural sponge. They are anchored to the ocean floor, they let in 20 thousand times their weight of water through them every day, and they hold the nutrients from the water. It’s about engaging, that’s why you can’t have a glass wall.

Radical transparency: all naked all the time. You can’t run organizations that way. We don’t know where the line is but the line is there.

3. Simplicity

charity:water – focus on what you do best and network the rest.

You have too much to do because you do too much.

4. Reflection

One small step: what is one small step that you can take to make a big different in your organization to become a networked nonprofit.

http://networkednonprofit.wikispaces.com

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).

• Digital Media and Learning Competition: Applications now open! | NetSquared, an initiative of TechSoupGlobal.org – "The 3rd Digital Media and Learning Competition, from the MacArthur Foundation, is now accepting applications. In partnering with the White House, National Lab Day, and videogame makers Sony and EA, the Digital media and Learning Competitions has prizes up to $200,000 and is open to all kinds of innovative projects (including games) that make use of digital media for education and social change. Submissions close January 22, 2010."
• » Your Mobile Giving by State – Wendy Harman at the American Red Cross has posted a map and data about the funds donated via texting "Haiti" to 90999 to support the victims in the Haiti earthquake crisis. It's really interesting as far as mobile fundraising, but also just that the ARC are able to gather, analyze and share data like this in close to real time. Thanks for all that you are doing, ARC!
• 7 Things I learned From #Beth53 Fundraiser and PoST Class – Beth's Blog: How Nonprofit Organizations Can Use Social Media to Power Social Networks for Change – Beth shares some great lessons from the fundraising campaign she recently ran for her birthday. "This post harvests what I learned and what I still don't know about the birthday campaign strategy and measurement as well as guest teaching a graduate school class." My favorite lesson? 5.) Design for People To Self Organize!
• After Copenhagen: Turning Activism Into Impact – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – frogloop – There's a great guest post up today from Michael Silberman on the Frogloop blog: "Going to the U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen (COP15) was the closest I've come to a good strong punch in the gut — the type that makes you question much of what you once believed to be true. But it was also one of the best wake-up calls I could have asked for.

  …That means setting aside our shiny online tools and tactics long enough to ensure that we're using them to deliver real impact."

• 1 vote can equal $1 million « Nonprofit Communications: Duck Call Blog – "Today is the first day people can vote in the final round of the Chase Community Giving contest on Facebook. Between now and January 22, people who add the application can vote up to five times for five individual charities. Much has been written criticizing the contest and the initial selection of 100 charities who already received $25,000 and are now vying for the grand prize of $1,000,000. But, despite the controversy in the first round of results, I think there are some positive lessons that can be learned for nonprofits of all sizes."

Week 1:  Why Should Your Nonprofit Embrace Social Media?  (or not?)

Learn about basic social media concepts and principles, as well as the situations in which social media would or would not help your organization.  Here is a great presentation that introduces social media.

Week 2:  Thinking Strategically About Social Media

Learn about the key ingredients you should use for putting together a great social media strategy, how social media strategy relates to your organization’s other internet and communications strategies, and more!  You can even check out the example group exercise I contributed for creating a social media strategy!

Week 3:  The Social Media Ready Nonprofit: Dealing with Resistance

Learn about the signs of resistence in an organization, how to get organizational buy-in for social media strategies, and which policies are useful for dealing with social media in an organization.  Week 3 collaboration and contribution is happening now – join in or learn more!

What have been some of the hardest obstacles to over come in getting buy-in for social media at your organization?  Were the main evangelist, or did you have partners?

This week is Beth Kanter‘s turn as mentor with the topic of Effective Networking Online.  You can check out her post and follow along during her week.

Beth is a terrific mentor for the topic and the project.  Her first post on the Networking for Success blog for this week is a great online networking primer for anyone to refer to.  I recommend you check it out and stay tuned this week as the participating women learn more and engage via the blog with their own thoughts, questions, and ideas.

Have you ever participated in a learning process which required you to utilize the very skills you were learning?

Perspectives
I really enjoy the diversity of experiences and opinions that you all have. The blog is made better by the sharing of your thoughts and ideas in the comments. I try to provide information and my ideas, but that’s pretty lonely—your ideas and comments really help round out the conversations here.

Examples
It is so fun for me to get to hear back from you about experiences adopting technology in your organization, brainstorming about specific projects, or have an opportunity to answer or ask helpful and interesting questions. Please keep your great examples coming – your experiences are the useful case studies that help others!

Relationships
It has been my pleasure to build the relationships with you that I have and I am so looking forward to building more! I would love to hear from you about what you are working on, what you are thinking about, and if there is ever anything I could help with!

Thank you all for being such great readers—but really, for being more than readers. Thank you for being participants, and engagers, and conversationalists, and enthusiasts for technology in the nonprofit sector! And especially for sharing in this learning with me!

[photo by jaredchapman]

Watch the live blogging now!

They were all on Facebook (turned their noses up at Myspace), watch YouTube videos, and use IM applications, with more 20 people on their IM lists. No surprise there. But, none used RSS readers or knew what they were. (Not sure if this matches demographic studies of RSS users or not because this group was under 18) They were aware of tagging, but in the sense of how it is used on Facebook – to tag your friends in photographs or notes, etc. None of them had heard of Twitter, let alone used it.

Click here to read all of the post.

When it comes to my use of Twitter, it is purely as an individual and not on behalf of or associated with my employer. But! One of the most frequent recommendations I have about the micro-blogging tool is its use as a broadcasting/community building/reputation building tools for organizations. For example, the Cascade Climate Network (full disclosure: this is an organization I frequently volunteer with) just started a twitter account and are going to integrate it into their blog/website as well as use it to build community and spread news, calls to action, information, and event opportunities to those interested in the youth climate change field. Why use it? Like I have said in the past, Twitter can open a window into the conversation already taking place in your industry and bring you into that conversation as a participant, as an information provider, and as a partner in shaping the conversation.

Beth quotes an interview with Walter J Carl in which he says:

“The people who I see using it are an older demographic, people in marketing or P.R. or advertising, who use it for work, to present themselves as particular types of people. They’ll twitter, ‘I’m traveling,’ or ‘I’m going to interesting restaurants.’ They’re using it to do identity work.”

I disagree. I think that many people in nonprofits using Twitter are truly building a community of people interested in their work or that can share insight in their work. They are using the tool as another facet of information gathering, listening, dispensing information, and having a conversation. I think this is what makes Twitter so powerful; not the “look at me” of going to a fancy restaurant (or at least twitter-ing that you are going there), but the “look at me” of please let me contribute, share knowledge, ask questions, and provide information.

As with most social media, I believe the resource and utility comes with the golden rule: do until to the tool and the community as you would have the tool and community do unto you! You have to give if you want to get and the Twitter community is growing to do just that!

What do you think?

You can donate here and follow the Twitter trail of donations on Beth’s blog, too!

For the past month, I have been part of a team of bloggers supporting the Sharing Foundation in America’s Giving Challenge. For Beth’s birthday present, I donated $10 each for my husband and I to the Sharing Foundation via this widget.

I hope that you can give Beth the same birthday present (she has been asking for $10 donations all week!) today and in doing so help us get $50,000 for the Sharing Foundation!

Happy Birthday, Beth! Give $10 to the Sharing Foundation for her here!