Supporting local businesses

This is always high on my list, but I made sure that this year our gifts came from shops owned locally, featuring products made locally as well. This means that products had less transportation costs and are tied to sustaining the community’s economy. For me, my favorite part of shopping locally means that I can create relationships with the shop owners and learn more about the products and producers they work with. I’ve found some of my favorite things this way and enjoy being able to share recommendations with friends – then it is a gift and a connection!

Supporting real crafters

I know I said that I’ve taken my turn a few times with DIY projects, but I’m just a casual crafter. Etsy certainly makes it easy to find those crafters that make my homemade soap look like a class experiment! I’ve also found with Etsy that sellers are eager and open to talk with you about the products they use and how they are working to be sustainable as well. This year, I took it a step further and connected with an incredibly talented crafter locally (double whammy!) so that we could meet in person to discuss the gift idea and ensure it is going to be perfect.

Supporting real impact

The holidays are also the end of the year when many nonprofits are running fundraising campaigns and preparing for the next year. I have given DonorsChoose.org gift cards as “thank you” gifts in the past (especially for speakers or presenters!) and enjoy hearing when someone writes back to tell me which project they funded and why. Razoo also has gift cards you can purchase online and email to recipients, and instead of giving to a classroom project like DonorsChoose.org, Razoo cards can be used to donate to over 1 Million organizations!

Whether you’re a Millennial, budget-conscious, DIY-specialist, or not, I certainly recommend these three options for your last-minute holiday shopping!

Photo: Flickr gazeronly

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).

• Why Your Infographic Is Evil (And Three Ways To Fix It) – “Blogger’s confession: I can spend a couple of hours interviewing sources and crafting a post several hundred words long and get a couple of thousand hits. Or I can write a pithy introduction, repurpose an infographic that has already appeared on several other sites and most likely was created by a public relations firm or a company looking to push a product and service and end up doubling or tripling those traffic numbers. I’ve done both. But I’m not necessarily proud of succumbing to the infographic trend. I’m not bashing infographics. Some of my best friends are graphic artists who design infographics that are eye catching, smart and tell stories better than my words ever could. But this latest visual Internet fad of telling almost every story with a dense infographic is something that I’m hoping will soon be played out.”
• Red Cross Opens Social Media Center For Disaster Response – TheNonProfitTimes – “The American Red Cross (ARC) has launched a digital operations center and digital volunteer program to coordinate response efforts during disasters, particularly when storm victims are huddled in a basement away from other forms of communication. The Digital Operations Center demonstrates the increasing importance of social media in emergency situations. The launch of a Digital Volunteer program will help Red Cross respond to questions and information from the public during disasters.”
• Crowdraising | Heath Wickline – “Advertising can be a great vehicle to make a real, emotional connection with our audiences and to raise the visibility of a campaign or organization. But the expense of buying ad space can be a barrier to many nonprofits. Ads aren’t worth a thing if no one seems them, and ad prices are based on the number of eyeballs that will see them. That’s why Super Bowl spots are obscenely expensive while you see ads for local furniture stores in the middle of the night. It’s how the system works and it’s a conundrum. Social media may now provide an answer. A new online platform calledLoudSauce is looking to change that difficult advertising equation by introducing a simple way for individuals to amplify ideas they like.”
• What can local websites offer the BBC and other public service providers? | Networked Neighbourhoods – “Networked Neighbourhoods has been working with the BBC to test the potential contribution of an alliance of London neighbourhood sites, using the forthcoming digital switchover as a catalyst. With representatives from a number of London local networks and heritage media groups, gathered in the council chamber at Broadcasting House yesterday, we explored the ways in which neighbourhood websites could be used as part of a two-way public service information network.”
• Facebook Fan Gates Are Dead: How Do I Get Fans? | Brian Carter – “A stunning change with the new Facebook Timeline is that you can no longer have a landing/welcome tab for your business page. Everyone is going to land on your Timeline Page with the big cover photo. You’ll still have apps (tabs) but they’ll be even harder for people to find. Few people were going to Facebook pages already, fewer were clicking on the tabs, and now it will be nearly zero.”

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I truly believe that in all communications, information sharing, marketing and even community building there is a natural balancing between more-and-more-global and more-and-more-local. Social media may connect people around the world but it can also connect them locally.  Just as our tools get more interesting and dynamic for global collaboration and impact, so do they for locally-focused work, campaigns, and communities.

According to the Pew Neighbors Online study recently released, 27% of American adult Internet users (or 20% of adults overall) use “digital tools to talk to their neighbors and keep informed about community issues.

The power of social media in a global context is two-fold: There’s huge potential with these news tools for real movement building, bringing organizations, campaigns and people together behind a movement and not just one brand or one call to action.  Global use of social media is also a great way to amplify voices, ideas, and stories.

The power of using social media in a local context focuses most directly on just those things that make “local” different: being “here,” connecting online and offline, taking action collectively and delivering services.

The opportunities for organizations to leverage hyper local tools include:

• Catalyze your community – be the catalyst behind community growth and collaboration.
• Fuel efforts or campaigns – target energy and capacity to promote and drive local impact.
• Build buzz and spread news – be the hub and resource for news and information.
• Get connected – be part of the community yourself by connecting with other organizations, community leaders, and individuals.

FourSquare

Estrella Rosenburg shares her case study using FourSquared in the 100×100 campaign on the Community Organizers 2.0 blog.  The Brooklyn Museum has done a lot with FourSquare, like sharing promotions and building visible community; check out the write up on the FourSquare blog or on the Museum’s site.

Meetup Everywhere

Meetup Everywhere is “an open and free internet platform for sparking Meetups everywhere about something. It’s only been out for a couple months and I think it has a bit more to go to be as dynamic and interesting as it really could be, but it’s a great way to see how easy it can be to inspire local action and interaction with your community. Check out the Meetup Everywhere site to see examples of how organizations and causes, like the Gulf Coast Benefit for Fisherman and Wildlife, are taking off.

Search

There are various tools for hyperlocal searching, and one I’m looking at recently is called Sency for Cities.  I think there’s a lot of potential for hyper local search and the power that comes with geo-tags/data. Creating a map or other aggregate of local resources, conversations, news and so on (even if it was done in a dashboard) could help your community and help position your organization as the hub.

Don’t forget the global context!

As you leverage tools for local impact, don’t forget the power they hold for going global. Continue to offer ways people who can’t be in your local community can contribute or spread the word, and even work on your behalf wherever they are.

What do you think?

What examples do you have to share? Is your organization thinking about using social media in a local context – if so, what are you working on and what questions do you have? Does your organization or local area have a case study to share? I’d love to hear it!

Note on platform: During last week’s Twitter chat, not unlike previous chats, we dealt with some major issues around lag and load time.  What makes a Twitter chat different than a blog post, for example, is that the conversation is 1. real time, and 2. co-created.  A blog post has, like this, one person writing it and sharing it at the end for comments.  That’s not to say that conversation can’t be incredible – but even then it is probably still not real time. I’m a huge proponent of blogs (obviously) but didn’t want to give up on the chat when Twitter was misbehaving. So, I turned to CoverItLive as it was a tool I’d used before and knew I could launch quickly. I hope that in the future we don’t have to turn to a back up/alternative, but I’d love to hear your thoughts about the use of CoverItLive this time!

What’s the point in using “global” tools (social media) for local organizing?

From @amoration: I find we’re always both global & local, so many of us travel frequently that virtual organizing tools are essential even for “local” endeavors

From @cosechajusta: I think part of it is just getting a message out there in as many formats as possible, so you reach as broad an audience as possible. Plus, sending emails, mass texts, etc is much quicker than doorknocking or cold calling folks.

From @rootwork: Well, I think it’s about going where people/supporters/potential supporters are. And in each local place, people are on different types of social media, some of which are global in scope. But that doesn’t mean you appeal to everyone on the planet every time you post on Facebook — you target your use of social media.

From @winwinapps: The fact that social media is forming networks and connections allows local to have more global influence.  But for now local is still something I use a map and a tank of gas to determine the limits of.

Best Practices:

From @davidahood: Still strongly believe that there has to be an element of face to face/on the ground connection to any successful engagement and mobilisation of any community. At the very least the key central organisers need to have close ties to local organisers so that there is a robust and well understood vision and objectives.

From @neddotcom: one strategy: ease of participation, make it easy.

From @davidahood: agree with @neddotcom. People want to take action on things that they care about – whether it impacts them directly or not. Our “job” is to facilitate that action and make it easier for them to participate. Inspire, empower and facilitate to take action. Social media makes that much easier.

From @rootwork: Social media is inclined toward leadership development — it’s built around people posting, blogging, photographing, videoing, etc. — so it’s good to play to that advantage. Figure out how to bring enthusiastic social media participants into the “inner circle” of planning & organizing.

From @winwinapps: Make it fun. Make the goal easily quantifiable.

From @pelleaardema: I do believe you could draw an ‘engagement pyramid’ for social media too. Not everybody needs to stick with the easy actions, some volunteers may be interested to set up ‘their own’ soc med campaign for your cause

From @neddotom: recap 1. easy 2. fun 3. overall goal 4. action oriented 5. decentralized/open

Tools:

From @rootwork: Facebook has been pretty effective at creating a place for discussion/strategy between events or meetings. Like I mentioned earlier, we use Twitter for live updates from events, and that’s been very successful — lots of positive feedback that people can follow along even if they’re not there. It works really well for a) hearings (legislative or municipal) and b) rallies or direct action. We haven’t used it as much at social events because it’s less clear what to “report” on.

From @pelleaardema: we use twitter, facebook to share what’s happening in the online forums, post announcements, invitations, etc.

Metrics:

From @rootwork: We’re a pretty small organization, with a small staff and budget, so I admit to not doing as much measurement as we should because of lack of time and staff resources. Mostly we measure it in whether we get positive feedback from our supporters and whether they seem engaged (commenting on stuff on Facebook, Retweeting, etc.). However I just found this great how-to on integrating Google Analytics on a Facebook Page, and hope to do that soon. http://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2010/google-analytics-for-facebook-fan-pages/

From @pelleaardema: # followers, # retweets, # clickthroughs (bit.ly). also measuring the number of clickthroughs from these sources to the main site (via Google Analytics).

From @neddotcom: WRT measurement, developed term CPA (with friend Andy Bourland (RIP) at first Interactive Advertising conference Monterey 1997. Cost per action. Action = money, sale, clickthrough, unique visitor, download, lead generation, email address, form fill out, questionnaire, etc. Working with Seth Godin at Yoyodyne, we defined measurement as 1) email participants then 2) continued/ongoing engagement

From @davidahood: We tend to track email opening and click through rates, what percentage of people take action from click through and growth in numbers of fans/followers/members. Personally still have a lot to learn about analytics and starting to use more – mostly google. But not everything is measureable….   mostly talking about level/quality of engagement via social media and feedback. will tend to summarise and record most common responses and also a few key ones that might be unexpected for assessment at end of a campaign or activity. if you couldn’t tell already, I’m big on conversation. So I value the interaction I have with people which isn’t always measureable but is undoubtedly invaluable in terms of engagement – expected or otherwise. The most engaged people will sometimes come up with the most amazing and creative ways to take action or influence. A great campaign is one in which people are so engaged it just takes a life of its own. That’s why its important to be clear on vision, objectives and values.

Roles:

From @amyrsward: think in organizing and community building there are always some roles, even if they vary from group to group in how they operate: guides/navigators, campaigners, day-to-day folks, content creators, share-ers etc

From @jonasthanatos: Can communicate effectively.. is persuasive, convincing, has charisma. I think all roles in community organizing have a bit of “willing to try to change the world” in them.

From @pelleaardema: thinking out loud: content creators/organizers, a positive spirit (definitely needed), guide/leader…. and i guess some positive criticism can help as well. Usually generates a lot of energy

From @davidahood: I’d say you need someone who knows the issue inside and out (campaigner), someone who is a media and communications specialist, someone great with web, social media and other technology and someone to organise events and coordinate volunteers and engage directly with members of the community one on one (community organiser?). also helps to have someone who can focus on fundraising. of course, in smaller organisations, this may have to be only two or three people

Successful and Unsuccessful Examples:

From @davidahood: Greenpeace internationally had great success recently with the Nestle campaign getting Nestle to end deforestation in Indonesia for palm oil. The campaign was active online and on the ground in over 22 countries – all with a focus on Nestle’s head office in Switzerland. Social media used to engage local supporters to act globally.

From @pelleaardema: Looking at the local communities I know: a lot of NABUUR communities use twitter to reach out, keep their supporters updated. HAve a look at @arrowwebhosp for example: a slum hospital in Nairobi

From @pelleaardema: we’ve tried to set up a twitter chat to answer concrete questions from local communities in a short timespan. That was not particularly successful. A lot of effort to get pple into the chat, then a lot of confusion, hard to manage the discussion and no concrete outcomes

From @rootwork: We tried to do some end-of-year fundraising through Facebook and Twitter. I think we got $20 But we didn’t plan it out very well, so I think it was more a failure of thinking through an effective strategy than an inability for those tools to enable such a thing.

From @pelleaardema: some NABUUR volunteers recently tried to fundraise for 400 malaria nets, via Twitter and betterplace.org. I think the lack of background on blog etc lead to them raising about 1/3 of the budget. Support info is very important. and good timing indeed

From @rootwork: The Media Mobilizing Project has done a lot here in Philly connecting community organizing to social media and especially video — community media trainings, organizing people to interview each other, etc. http://mediamobilizing.org/ VozMob is another great example of this, organizing immigrant communities in Los Angeles, using mobile phones, photos and video http://vozmob.net/en/about

From @neddotcom: Thomas Kriese as community manager of the now closed Omidyar.net was a great example of quite, decentralized leadership style helping guide a community to make real things happen in the world. Dozens and dozens of community lead projects happened around the world during the networks 3 years.

From @davidahood: San Francisco Zoo has done a wonderful job and engaging and supporting their community. http://www.sfzoo.org/openrosters/view_homepage.asp?orgkey=1859 It all started with one guy at the zoo (his name escapes me) who wanted to connect more meaningfully to all the people coming to see the animals. People now share videos and pics and are great ambassadors/advocates for the zoo and it’s program.

From @pelleaardema: A very small, local initiative: 3 community projects in Uganda, trying to conquer malaria http://twitter.com/TweetANet

Follow #4Change on Twitter or check out the #4Change blog to join the monthly conversations.

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).

• Web Thinking Manifesto | EchoDitto – "Our field is maturing rapidly. The next generation of movement leaders is overcoming its fetish with technology and expertise as secrets to online success. Indeed, now faced with existential challenges from a fast shifting landscape, the time has come for us all to rethink our most deeply held tenets in this struggle to remain relevant. Thankfully, a brave few are trying – and they're finding answers. Looking beyond traditional online strategy, they're fundamentally transforming how they and their organizations work – shifting their entire perspective towards what we call "Web Thinking" – to better reflect the reality of our time. And they're winning. They're charting a path forward for us all."
• film music | mobygratis.com – Are you looking for music to use for free in your nonprofit's video? Well, here's your source! If you want to use it for a commercial production, that's okay: they have an easy license for that as well ("with any money that's generated being given to the humane society.").
• 3 principles for reporters and bloggers in a networked era | Online Journalism Blog – I totally agree that context is just as important as content. "Dina Rickman posed a question to me this week about the role of a reporter in our current networked age. I thought I’d expand on my response, shown above. Depending on your point of view, this is either a draft manifesto for networked journalists and bloggers – or a set of gaps in the market; new scarcities in an age of abundance."
• Zero Strategist – Holistic Social Media, Web Strategy & Innovative Design – Todd has an excellent post about Blog Strategy with insights, examples, and best of all: strategy recommendations! "This is the first in a series of Social Media/Web Strategy Articles that I am going to be writing over the next few months. The first topic is blog strategy. You might be thinking that the blog and blog strategy topic is quite dead and that it is old news. We figured that out years ago right? I would say that it is not dead at all. Rather, it is evolving past a critical turning point right now and is relevant in the evolution of technology for quite a few reasons."
• FourSquare: Novelty or Buzz Worthy? – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – frogloop – Have you heard about FourSquare – maybe you are already the Mayor of some of your local businesses. Allyson Kapin explores whether: "is FourSquare valuable enough to become the next Facebook or Twitter? Should nonprofits take a more serious look at FourSquare and explore ways to leverage it?"

Oakland Local is launching today!

About Oakland Local

Oakland Local is launching in partnership with 35 local nonprofit, neighborhood & community organizations: it combines postings of partner organizations’ news and information with blogging and with reported stories from a top quality news team.  The news team includes: Susan Mernit, Amy Gahran, Kamika Dunlap, Kwan Booth, Ryan Van Lenning and others.Oakland Local is also media partners and collaborators with Spot.us, Newsdesk.org, The Center for Investigative Reporting, New America Media, Endless Canvas, Youth Rising, Youth Radio and Youth Outlook as well. The site offers forums, a directory of 320 local nonprofits and a blog directory of 180 active local bloggers!

You can also connect with Oakland Local on twitter and facebook.

Getting Local

There’s a lot of very cool activity happening lately around local websites.  The social web has opened a lot of doors for communities and collaborations and changed the way many people view the definition of community—on the web, communities can form easily and quickly around ideas, interests, and anything else—as physical geography isn’t important.  Now that social media tools have reached a certain level of ubiquity for those online (we can’t forget that many people are still not even online at all), we see people and groups turning the tools back around to help connect those who ARE geographically close.

The latest work we’ve been doing with the Social by Social concept (using social tech for social good) is to help apply the ideas and lessons we originally wrote about for nonprofit organizations to also be applicable to the work of local governments and communities (moving from connecting communities of interest to communities of locality).  It is fun and interesting work and I’ll probably be blogging more and more about it soon.

I’ll be watching Oakland Local to see how it evolves and grows and how the community reacts and uses it.

What do you think?

Have you used a local website before or started a local community network online?  What would you want to see included on a community website for your area?

• Check out Twestival Local
• Vote for your local organization: Some cities have already chosen the organization and others need local people to vote, so use the map on the Twestival site to find your city’s Twestival page to learn more!
• Follow the chatter on Twitter

Twestival Local puts the spotlight on hundreds of causes around the world.

Twestival Local aims to support not-for-profit organizations through global events on 10-13 September 2009. It is up to each city team to facilitate nominations and the selection process using the Twestival guidelines. If you are interested in finding out how your cause can be considered, please reach out directly to cities via Twitter or look for your city on the map.

The emphasis is on supporting one local cause where volunteers and donors can have a direct and measurable impact. The cause selected is the recipient of the fundraising effort and not the event organizers. Twestival Local encourages volunteers to also think beyond the financial goal and find ways to work with the not-for-profit including social media training, recruitment, or communication strategies.

About Twestival
“Twestival was born out of the idea that if cities are able to collaborate on an international scale, but work from a local level, it would result in a spectacular impact. While Twestival Global put the spotlight around one cause, Twestival Local is encouraging cities around the world to host events in support a local cause.”