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).

• Semphonic Web Analytics Consulting: The X Change Non-Profit Analytics Challenge – "The Non-Profit Analytics Challenge is a rare opportunity for the brightest analysts in the digital measurement field to collaborate & assist non-profit organizations to optimize their websites. The Analytics Challenge is a ½ day event at X Change conference on September 13th. Semphonic President and Conference Founder Gary Angel says " What a gift to have the best minds in the industry to work together and the big bonus is helping 2 chosen non-profit organizations."" Apply today!
• Twive and Receive Reveals the Top 20 Most Generous Cities & Who Would Win In A Fight Between the Hulk and a Kitten | Razoo Media Room – "Julie Nations, the Executive Director of The Ellie Fund said “It’s been the best communications outreach program we’ve ever done. Like every nonprofit, we wanted that prize money, but this was a bigger opportunity. It got us using social media in a way we hadn’t before, and our supporters loved it. This was a real chance to harness social media across all platforms. We reached out to people we’ve never met and got them onboard. Martin Luther King Jr. said ‘Everybody can be great because everybody can give.’ I say everybody can be great because everybody can Twive!”"
• What Are We Accomplishing and How Do We Know? | NTEN – Here's a great run-down from Amy Luckey of the process to use in exploring and evaluating your organization's impact. And she uses NTEN as an example so you can see all the work we've been doing to figure this out for our strategic plan, too: "What does your organization do?" That is a question most nonprofit folks can answer pretty easily. We have our elevator pitches ready to go. "What is your organization accomplishing?" Now that's a different question, one that's not as simple to answer for most of us. It's also one that is increasingly being asked by potential donors big and small.
• 7 Social Media experiments we tried with the 99% Power Coalition | NetSquared, an initiative of TechSoupGlobal.org – Joe Solomon does a great job sharing the tools, tactics, and mini-campaigns used in the recent 99% Power Campaign. I don't necessarily agree with all the tactics, but I SO appreciate him sharing their work! What do you think? Would love to hear your thoughts.
• 75% of Young Adults Gave to Charity Last Year, Study Finds – News – The Chronicle of Philanthropy- Connecting the nonprofit world with news, jobs, and ideas – The new Millennial Donor Survey is out! "Charities rarely make deliberate efforts to solicit young adults because they think people in their 20s and early 30s are unlikely to give. But a new survey of more than 6,500 people ages 20 to 35 shows they are inclined to give—and are more than willing to ask their friends and relatives to do the same—when they feel passionately about a cause. About 75 percent of young people who provided data for the 2012 Millennial Impact Report said they gave money to a nonprofit in 2011, while 70 percent said they have helped solicit donations by encouraging colleagues and others to support a cause."
• Case Study: Feeding America and the Spark Generator | Call2Action – Great case study about Feeding America's recent multi-channel campaign: "Feeding America is the nation's leading domestic hunger-relief charity. They work in tandem with a nationwide network of member food banks in the fight to end hunger. Their annual September campaign, Hunger Action Month, is a massive effort to educate communities on the scope of hunger issues in the United States and empower them to take action. Feeding America has utilized numerous Call2Action Sparks. This time, they had a variety of videos featuring well-known celebrities like Matt Damon, Taye Diggs, and Ana Ortiz. They were looking to harness the power of all the local food banks' (over 200) online communities."

By Julie Macalik, with Greenlights for Nonprofit Success

The first step in starting to measure your impact is to identify the major outcomes that you want to examine. In order to be successful in this step you will need full management support and a dedicated key project lead for your team. This person will take the helm on laying out tasks in a sequence, informing other staff of their roles and assignments, and providing assistance to people as they complete their parts of the evaluation.

The standard nonprofit data points come from fundraising, communications, programs, and finance so consider these sources when gathering your team.

The standard nonprofit data points come from fundraising, communications, programs, and finance so consider these sources when gathering your team. For example, a representative from the fundraising department can make sure you consider when your funders’ reporting cycles are so that you are producing outcome measurement results at a time that aligns with their requests for information about your programs. Also, those most directly affected should provide meaningful participation, so don’t forget about your front-line staff directly involved in providing services.

Next you will want to select the outcomes that you want to examine and prioritize them. For each outcome, specify what observable measures, or indicators, will suggest that you’re achieving that key outcome for impact. After you have made your selection you can then identify what information is needed to show these indicators.

There are many types of technology and other management tools available to assist in this process, and now is the time to take stock of your technology and the tools you are going to use to track your data. Decide how information can be efficiently and realistically gathered utilizing the different methods that are best for your organization including:

• Surveys – Consider what features you will need. If you’re just looking to get your feet wet with a quick survey, one of the many free or low cost online tools will do the trick. In fact, a more sophisticated survey package could be considerably more difficult to use. On the other hand, if you’re looking for survey software to support rigorous research, the more advanced packages are more likely to have the features you need.
• Interviews and focus groups – The desired outcome of this type of method is to solicit data without any influence or bias. This also allows you to develop a relationship with clients or other key stakeholders and get a full range and depth of information. One benefit of focus groups is the ability for participants to feed off each other’s energy and bounce ideas off one another. Consider using an outside facilitator to help develop questions and protocol and to help identify themes from your data.
• Documentation Review – Looking at internal records including applications, forms, procedures, and finances allows you to get an impression of how programs operate without interruption and identify new methods of collection.
• Databases – Nonprofits can use these tools to track data in real time and report on results. Internally they can assist in managing performance at the departmental or affiliate-level using dashboards and benchmark progress over time.

After the data is collected, organize the information into similar categories (i.e. concerns, suggestions, strengths, etc.). From here you can identify patterns and themes to help you categorize and analyze data according to the indicators for each outcome.

Continue reading this article, which includes more resources and tips, when you subscribe to NTEN:Change for free!

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).

• Introducing WebAPI ✩ Mozilla Hacks – the Web developer blog – Really excited by projects that help close gaps, provide accessibility, and increase portability of all things webby. Check this out: "WebAPI is an effort by Mozilla to bridge together the gap, and have consistent APIs that will work in all web browsers, no matter the operating system. Specification drafts and implementation prototypes will be available, and it will be submitted to W3C for standardization. Security is a very important factor here, and it will be a mix of existing security measurements (e.g. asking the user for permission, like Geolocation) or coming up with new alternatives to ensure this."
• How to collect email subscribers on your Facebook Page – Have you added a custom welcome page and/or email sign up form to your Facebook Page? If you haven't, John Haydon will tell you how: "From what I’ve seen, most nonprofits have no idea that you can add to your list — that precious database of your supporters, donors or newsletter subscribers — by strategically using a customized Facebook Welcome Page or custom tab. Notice the word “strategically.” Collecting email subscribers on your Facebook Page takes a lot more than simply adding an opt-in form to a tab — you’ll learn how to do that in just a moment."
• Google+ vs. Facebook vs. Twitter vs. … Part 1: T… – Lithosphere Community – "Michael was voted a 2010 Influential Leader by CRM Magazine for his work on predictive social analytics and its application to Social CRM. He's a regular blogger on the Lithosphere's Building Community blog and previously wrote in the Analytic Science blog. 'What I’m going to talk about today, are some of the network properties and social principles behind some popular social platforms. Of course, I will compare and contrast them to the new kids on the block (i.e. Google+), and talk about their behavioral implications.'"
• Grants Maps – I'm a huge fan of maps and I love social impact – check this out: "The Skillman Foundation has partnered with the New York City-based Foundation Center to provide Skillman Foundation website visitors with a custom version of the Foundation Center’s Philanthropy In/Sight data visualization platform, which utilizes Google maps to show the scope and reach of the Skillman Foundation’s work in Detroit."
• Library Value Calculator | Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library – I love this! What a terrific way to help tell the story of your impact in the community – I can see something similar working for all kinds of organizations, schools, and more. "The Return on Investment (ROI) Calculator determines the value of library services in Topeka and Shawnee County based on per capita spending of local and state funding. For every tax dollar you pay, the library returns several to you in reading, research, programs and other services. Here's an opportunity to see your tax dollars at work."

Location: New Orleans, LA

Topic: Maximizing Impact with Online Communities

Description: Are you collaborating, innovating, and sharing best practices with others in your organization? In your area of service? In your profession? Don’t reinvent the wheel! Learn to leverage online social and collaborative tools to maximize impact. We will explore the how and why of online communities of practice using hands on exercises, and key examples from the national service and nonprofit sectors. Whether you want to start a community, revitalize an existing one, or find places where your peers already share, this session will help you clarify your strategy and choose the human resources and tools to support your community.

Related Links:

• NCVS
• Points of Light
• Slides

—–

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

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).

• CTK Foundation Grant Award: Social Media, Technology, and Poetry for the Soul | Community Organizer 2.0 – "I was contacted by my colleague John Haydon last week to write about an interesting foundation grant challenge by the CTK Foundation. John was reaching out to bloggers, asking us if we would write about the launch of the fourth annual CTK Foundation Heart and Soul Grant Award to nonprofit organizations. I agreed to write about the award because of several interesting aspects: the award will help nonprofits support their mission through technology, applicants must create an original poem to submit, the Foundation’s use of bloggers to create awareness, and the opportunity for nonprofits engage stakeholders during the application process by using social media."
• Pew: Open government is tied to higher levels of community satisfaction | Gov 2.0: The Power of Platforms – "The results from a new study from Pew Internet and Life Project found that when citizens believe their governments are sharing more information, they are more likely to feel satisfied with civic life. The study will offer support for elected officials who run on open government platforms or who work for more transparency. Broadband users are more critical of their communities and local institutions."
• It’s About Impact NOT Influence  – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – frogloop – "Do you think your organization has clout or Klout? Is your organization considered a content curator? Are you a leader or a follower? Or are social media ranking tools an example of more kool-aid mix being added to the overflowing punch bowl? As more nonprofits get aggressive with their social media outreach, they are starting to take cues from the business sector about their own influence and finding “those influentials” that they think are going to produce magical results. “Is it even possible to measure online influence, divorced from offline influence?” asks Tom Webster over at BrandSavant. Nope, it’s not possible."
• From #gettngslizzerd to Getting Donations: Red Cross Capitalizes on Twitter Gaffe – Social Philanthropy – The Chronicle of Philanthropy- Connecting the nonprofit world with news, jobs, and ideas – "Shortly after 11 p.m. on Tuesday, someone named Ryan found two four-bottle packs of Dogfish Head Brewery beer. The more than 260,000 people who follow the American Red Cross’s Twitter account were promptly informed of the discovery. Accidentally, of course. Gloria Huang, a Red Cross employee, mistakenly posted the comment to the wrong account through the online application HootSuite, which can support more than one Twitter account at the same time. What the Red Cross did next is an example to other nonprofit organizations that make a similar gaffe."
• The Power of Facebook plugins, and other social sharing tools | Community Organizer 2.0 – Here's a great post from Debra Askanase with notes and slides from her recent webinar on Facebook: "I had a fabulous time presenting a webinar yesterday for Nonprofit Webinars about “The Power of Like and other social sharing tools.” I put together the presentation to answer these four questions: which Facebook tools (plugins) should I use on my website, why should I add share buttons to my website or blog, what is the ROI of Facebook Like and social sharing, and how does Facebook decide where to place a shared item within someone’s news feed?"

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).

• HopenSource – Thanks to @350 for the link – check out this great portal of hope and inspiration from Grist Magazine. "Show why Earth's not effed" and get inspired from the stories of those making change.
• LearnPhilanthropy.net – Online venue for grantmaker education – "The Grantmaker Education Initiative is bringing people together to create a stronger, more rational, and less fragmented system for grantmaker learning than we have today — one that builds a new culture of professional development in the field, works better for the individual learners involved in philanthropy, and better for the many groups and organizations that provide learning programs and resources to them.<br />
  <br />
  LearnPhilanthropy.net is a simple online venue we’ve created to invite dialogue among those who are passionate about grantmaker education. We hope to establish a collaborative learning community — with plenty of space for ideas and wisdom of the field. We aim to work together to create a vision for meeting the education and learning needs of people in our field. We invite you to join us, take our survey, and we welcome your contributions."
• Do Something: Helping Humanity With a Click of the Mouse | Fast Company – "Sending a text or clicking to vote may be the trendy way to help humankind. The question, says Nancy Lublin, is whether such so-called slacktivism really works. Name-calling is never nice — that much most of us learned in kindergarten. Go ahead and criticize the substance of an action or the content of a speech, but just calling a person a nasty name is like pulling hair. Unfortunately, a lot of it happens in the do-gooder sector–and lately, much of it has been directed at projects that could fall under the umbrella of a newish movement called "slacktivism.""
• OPEN CALL: Do Nonprofits Make Films? We Say Yes! – netwitsthinktank.com – "What's the top thing you can do this year to engage your constituents? Both online and off? Quick, what springs to mind? Well I'm here to tell you that it should be video. If you are going to do one new thing in 2010 to help get the word out about your organization’s mission, it should be to create a video."
• What You and Your Nonprofit Should Know About Facebook Changes – Beth's Blog – Facebook seems to be an ever-changing landscape whether it's features, privacy, security or functionality: something's always changing. Beth has a great post discussing some of the changes and how they impact your organization on facebook.
• The State of Online Word of Mouth Marketing [STATS] – "In a session yesterday at Forrester’s Marketing Forum, Forrester analysts Josh Bernoff and Augie Ray presented research findings on peer influence and word of mouth marketing. Some of the statistics were surprising, and the presentation was rife with practical tips for marketers we thought worth sharing."

Location: Manchester, UK

Topic: Social Media: A Challenge to Leadership?

Description: Social Media: A Challenge to Leadership? The first in a series of Knowledge sessions, is developed around the theme of how social can media inform and impact on leadership. We aim to provide a setting where participants can embrace new ideas, develop innovative leadership strategies and provoke new thinking about core leadership skills.In the first half of the afternoon Nick Booth of Podnosh will be leading the Social Media Game, specially designed for the event. People will work together on problem solving scenarios providing a chance to explore the issues around creating a social media strategy.We will then move onto a Question & Answer Session where participants can discuss the role of the social web in organisational development and identifying and mitigating risks with an expert panel. Other panellists include: Dave Moutrey – Director Cornerhouse, Manchester; Adrian Slatcher – Manchester Digital Development Agency & AmbITion project manager; Steven Flower – Substance; Chi-chi Ekweozor – Fresh TV.

Related Links:

• Project Website
• Project’s online community
• use the hashtag #leadlab

What is UniversalGiving?

“UniversalGiving is an award-winning marketplace which allows people to volunteer and donate to top performing projects in more than 70 countries around the world.”

It’s a marketplace, really, of opportunities to take actions for social benefit in various topics you may be after—want to donate money and leave it at that? would you rather connect with a group or individual in need half way around the world? maybe you want to join forces for a longer-term project for real impact. People simply choose a country of interest (such as China or Thailand) and an area of interest (such as education or the environment) and find a list of vetted opportunities to which they can donate money or give their time.

I’ve been watching volunteer opportunities related to technology and am so excited to jump in!

What is the Impact?

For those of you that like the number overviews, here are a few numbers to consider:

• more than $ 1.5 million has passed through www.universalgiving.org
• nearly 10,000 people have volunteered
• more than 70 countries served

UniversalGiving + Social Actions

As readers of this blog probably know, I’m really excited about the work Social Actions is doing to help connect the sources of actions and opportunities across the web to push them further.  Social Actions is “an open source database of actions people can take on any issue. The actions in our database are aggregated from across the social web and include everything from volunteer opportunities to micro credit loans.”

UniversalGiving has partnered with Social Actions to ensure that the volunteer and giving opportunities they vet and promote on their platform can be found by even more people, in more places online.  I think these partnerships are so exciting because I know how many people are willing, interested, and ready to contribute to social impact projects, whether big or small, near or far—but they just don’t know how to find the ones that match their interestes or skills.  This partnership means, then, that there is a higher chance interested people can find opportunities from UniversalGiving without having to know them!

By collaborating with Social Actions, UniversalGiving also gets to benefit from things like the Change the Web Challenge that saw many new applications for the Social Actions feeds – meaning new applications that could put Social Actions data (whether a general feed of information, or specific search criteria, or one specific action) in public places online like Facebook, blogs, and more.  Again, more people can now find UniversalGiving opportunities without even trying!

With the impact of that partnership in mind, I want to share two of the responses UniversalGiving has received from participants:

“Universal Giving is an instrumental partner to Sports Gift and our mission to provide sports to impoverished children.  Universal Giving helps us reach people across the country to tell them about volunteer opportunities, our community service programs and other charitable giving opportunities. Universal Giving has made a direct and significant impact on our ability to provide the gift of sports to thousands of children living in poverty around the world!” – Keven Baxter of Sports Gift

“Because we’re a relatively small NGO with a fairly specialized focus, it’s been great to be a part of UniversalGiving and gain the additional exposure to potential donors that we may have never otherwise reached.  Also, UniversalGiving’s ability to process a high volume of contributions from an intensive online donation drive, something beyond the capacity of my organization, allowed us to benefit from an MTV Networks employee giving campaign, even though it came about on very short notice.  UniversalGiving also provided MTV with the donation data they requested, quickly and efficiently, which secured a substantial corporate match for us.  UniversalGiving proved to be a great advocate for my organization.” – Michael Hayes of Solar Cookers International

Clearly, UniversalGiving is doing a good job making positive impact around the world.  I’m very excited to see them partner with Social Actions to make this impact reach even further and involve more people.  What I’m most excited about, though, is watching UniversalGiving’s work grow!

Connect & Learn more

You can follow UniversalGiving or Social Actions on Twitter, follow stories on their blogs (UG blog or SA blog) or visit their websites to learn more:

• http://www.universalgiving.org/
• http://socialactions.com