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For over a year now, I’ve been moderating and facilitating a monthly online discussion for people working as community builders and for those looking for feedback on community building efforts. It’s called the #CommBuild chat and was born out of a facilitated monthly Twitter chat called #4change. Often in these chats, participants discuss the online tools they are using and new platform functionality, all with the hope of finding ways to increase community engagement. For example, this month’s online chat, normally coordinated via the text chat platform CoverItLive, tried out a new platform, Google+ Hangout. This video chat application is part of Google+ and allows up to 10 video participants to come together—great for #CommBuild participants because they get real face time with each other.

So when Scoop.it, a new content curation platform, hit the web recently, the #CommBuild network seemed like the perfect place to try it out.

Whether you’re interested in community building, hot air ballooning, or the way robots work, you’re never going to be the only person talking about it online. In fact, the web is so full of information that many organizations are finding it useful to pull together topic-specific content on the web and make it available in one place. These can be useful internally and externally—you can share news with colleagues or create a dashboard of resources for your community. Scoop.it positions every user as a content curator. Unlike a blog, which positions us all as topic experts with a soapbox of our own, Scoop.it makes it possible to pull together media of all kinds—blogs, news, videos, etc.—from many different resources.

How it Works

Scoop.it has an impressively intuitive interface for just being in a beta launch. You pick your topic, add a description of the collection, then you can begin searching for relevant articles and other media to include. Scoop.it provides automated searches to match all the keywords you include on your topic—check out the image below to see automated searches on Digg, Twitter, and Youtube.

You can “scoop” content (add it to your topic page) from the Scoop.it dashboard. You can also browse the web and “scoop” up content about your topic using a bookmark (when you join, you can follow steps to add the Scoop.it button to your bookmarks bar). Once you’ve added information to your topic, you’ll want to share it. Every time you add a piece of content to your page, you have the option of sharing the link to your page via Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

For the CommBuild topic, I used Scoop.it’s built-in search feature to add news articles and blog posts to my page—they show up as suggested content, and you can click to dismiss or add to your page. Once I put a handful of items on my page, I clicked Share and tweeted that I’d created the topic to my network. Just like that, it was out there. I then opened Tweetdeck, a desktop application for managing Twitter and other social platforms, and watched the stream of content from Twitter flowing by. As I saw links of interest—especially ones shared by the #CommBuild community, I added them to the Scoop.it page by clicking on the bookmark/browser extension and scooping (saving) it! Almost immediately, people replied with links to related resources, creating a place where the #CommBuild chat could go to stay on top of news and posts related to community building.

Why Scoop.it is Worth a Try

We interact with articles and other media all day long, so pulling it together under a central topic should fit into that flow. Scoop.it makes it easy to collect and share the things you’re reading, talking about, and interested in without the feeling that you’re adding a whole new platform to your daily work. I’m excited to see organizations diving in to Scoop.it to organize news and information about their cause, neighborhood, or organization. One word of caution: A topic name (in my case, “CommBuild”) can only be used once, and your name may already be taken, just like unique URLs on Facebook and user names on Twitter. I think Scoop.it could become a very interesting space for real time data in situations of natural disaster and crisis communications. I would love to see Scoop.it allow for group use so that multiple people can collaborate to maintain a single space.

What do you think? How do you collect and share content now? How would you use a tool like this in your organization or work?

Download the free ebook 7 Habits of Effective Personal Fundraisers

Here’s an excerpt and overview of the 7 Habits:

1. Personalize your fundraising
The most effective online fundraising campaign is a personal one. The most effective fundraisers use their personalities to promote their campaign as well as personal stories. Your relationships with your friends, family and coworkers are compelling enough reasons for your network to give to your cause.

2. Use multiple ways to raise awareness
Reach out to your personal network of friends, family, and co-workers. A personalized email is the best way to get donations. Social media is helpful to reach new audiences, too.

3. Keep up the human connections
Helping other people connect with the cause and need by focusing on being human. Meet people face-to-face to help them understand your passion for and commitment to the cause.

4. Emphasize how everyone can make a difference
Show that even small contributions will amount to big, tangible results. Let donors know exactly where their money is going and how much of a difference it makes.

5. Your cause is worth the effort
Getting donations for a cause isn’t easy. You’ll have to persevere through some dry spells and be assured that your efforts matter (because they really do!).

6. Remind others to contribute
Update and share progress with friends and family. This is an opportunity to remind others of your fundraising progress and how they can help.

7. Be appreciative
Always thank your donors and supporters! They want to be recognized and your appreciation goes a long way.

A big thank you to Rob Wu for including me in this resource!

What other habits, tricks, tips or trade secrets for personal fundraisers do you have? Would love to hear any other resources or tools you recommend!

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).

• SignOn.org Beta – Have you seen the new petition tool from MoveOn.org? "SignOn is a service provided by MoveOn.org Civic Action to allow anyone to set up their own online petition, share it with friends, and stay in touch with the signers of their petition using email." What do you think? Have you tried it yet?
• 30 Super Useful Nonprofit Hashtags – Twitter Chats, Too! « Company K Media – Kerri has an excellent round up of some of the most popular hashtags on Twitter related to the nonprofit and social impact sectors, as well as hashtags to follow to join in regular Twitter chats. Check it out and add yours to the list!
• Women Deliver » Updates » Winners Announced for the Women Bloggers Deliver Competition – Congratulations to my friend Toyin Ajao! Check out this very cool initiative and follow the stories of the three women selected to blog for Carbon for Water! "We are so excited to announce the winners of the “Women Bloggers Deliver” competition! Over the past few weeks, we received over 250 applications from bloggers around the world – from California to Kenya, and from Mexico to Iraq. The competition, a partnership between Women Deliver and Vestergaard Frandsen, was held to draw focus and attention to the just launched Carbon for Water project, a public health intervention that will contribute significantly to health and development efforts that are transforming the lives of families and communities hard hit by the lack of clean water. The three winning bloggers will accompany community workers as they distribute LifeStraw® Family water filters to almost a million households in Kakamega, Kenya."
• What We Lose if We Lose Data.gov | Freedom to Tinker – "In its latest 2011 budget proposal, Congress makes deep cuts to the Electronic Government Fund. This fund supports the continued development and upkeep of several key open government websites, including Data.gov, USASpending.gov and the IT Dashboard. An earlier proposal would have cut the funding from $34 million to $2 million this year, although the current proposal would allocate $17 million to the fund. Reports say that major cuts to the e-government fund would force OMB to shut down these transparency sites. This would strike a significant blow to the open government movement, and I think it’s important to emphasize exactly why shuttering a site like Data.gov would be so detrimental to transparency."
• Social Actions Transition: Introducing the GuideStar Team – My Social Actions – As Peter and Christine announced in March, Social Actions has a new home in Guidestar – here's an update of where the transition is at and introductions of the two Guidestar staff who will be instrumental in pushing Social Actions into the future!

Getting Started

Let’s start at the beginning: what is a “networked nonprofit” anyway? As Beth and Allison explain:

Networked Nonprofits are simple and transparent organizations. They are easy for outsiders to get in and insiders to get out. They engage people in shaping and sharing their work in order to raise awareness of social issues, organize com- munities to provide services, or advocate for legislation. In the long run, they are helping to make the world a safer, fairer, healthier place to live.

Networked Nonprofits don’t work harder or longer than other organizations, they work differently. They engage in conversations with people beyond their walls—lots of conversations—to build relationships that spread their work through the network.

Some of What I Like

Something that I think is incredibly important to talk about (because once we are talking about it, the next step is to DO it) is the opportunity we have now to truly focus work on movement building. Our campaigns, services, programs, and even visions can and should be opening up for other collaborators – whether they are individual, free agent supporters or other organizations – to make the biggest, lasting change possible.  As Beth and Allison say,  “But while social media power Networked Nonprofits, they aren’t the only reason nonprofit organizations need to shift their focus from their individual organizations to their networks.” There’s huge potential to be tapped by bringing together free agents and organizations working to build change through a movement.

One thing I always associate with both Beth and Allison is the term “resource.” They both have lots to share and are always looking for ways to contribute back to the community.  As such, I knew that their book would be a great resource and part of what makes it so is the inclusion of reflection questions for every chapter. If you’re reading the book, or if your whole team or organization is reading it, you have great questions to depart from for critical thinking and strategic planning.

One question I liked in particular reminded me of the presentations I’ve done recently focused on Community-Driven Social Impact:

Are there internal processes or conversations that would be appropriate to share for feedback at an earlier stage than you are sharing now?

This reflection questions comes at the end of Chapter 6: Building Trust Through Transparency. Something I discuss in my workshops is that you can’t simply “start” being community-driven, or communicating and expecting a two-way conversation to happen without having in a place the trust and transparency that if the community voices ideas, concerns or passions that they will be met by an organization prepared to respond and possibly act.

Plus lots more – I’m really looking forward to continuing conversations that emerge from the above topics and from The Networked Nonprofit!

Learn More

Review the slides below for an overview and introduction to The Networked Nonprofit. (Hint: remember to click on the “Notes” tab below the slides on SlideShare so you can see the speaker notes that go with each slide!)

You can learn more about the book on Beth’s blog or Allison’s blog – or visit the book listing on Amazon.com to read reviews, leave a review, and order the book today!

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I’m always honored and humbled to call Beth and Allison both friends and colleagues – it’s my pleasure to share a bit about this great resource they’ve contributed and hope you’ll share your ideas, questions, feedback and thoughts, too!

Well, Idealware has just taken it a step further by launching a Social Media Resource Library!

As they explain:

As a first step in our year-long social media research initiative, Idealware has compiled a library of nearly 200 – and growing – resources on social media. And, we’ve incorporated an easy-to-use tagging scheme so that you can find the resources most helpful to you.

The Social Media Resource Library , compiled in Delicious, will help your nonprofit gain valuable insights into how to best use social media for your organization. There are a lot of experts out there (while a majority of the resources tagged are from Beth Kanter and Mashable, there are tagged items from over 50 sources), and we are making it easier for you to find what you are looking for.

You can start searching the Library or learn how to add more resources by visiting the Idealware site here.

Go dive in! And be sure to share your ideas about the Library so the Idealware team and the rest of us working to provide resources can be sure there’s everything you need to meet your needs.

NESTA commissioned the work and the Social by Social team was comprised of Andy Gibson, Nigel Courtney, David Wilcox and Professor Clive Holtham and myself.

Why Social by Social?

There have been so many developments in communication technologies over the past few years, affecting so many aspects of our lives and working patterns, that giving shape and meaning to the chaos has become nearly impossible.

‘Social by Social’ is a term we’ve invented to make sense of what we’re talking about.

The word ‘social’ is often used to imply all the various work that goes on in the public and third sector, and by individuals, to improve the world around us, care for each other, create value for communities and tackle the problems and inequalities of the world.

(Social enterprise. Social conscience. Social problems.)

And ‘social’ is also used by technologists and the media to refer to the new two-way communications technologies available via the internet and digital technologies. Communications which create society, strengthen relationships, support social interactions.

(Social media. Social networks. Social infrastructure.)

This book is a map of where these two words meet. It is not limited to the fashionable trends in social media and ‘web 2.0’; nor is it specifically aimed at people in the social sector. It is about how these new tools for social interaction are changing our society, and how those of us with a social conscience can use them to do more good.

‘Social by social’ change is about using new technologies to bring people together to make their world better. This handbook is a starting point for working out how to do it.

New technologies are changing the way we engage communities, run companies, deliver public services, participate in government and campaign for change.

Nonprofit tech experts team up to help others master ‘social tools for social change’

Eight leading experts in social media and nonprofit technology have joined forces to create Socialbrite.org, a hub that showcases social tools for social change. The site, which serves as a learning and sharing center for nonprofits and social change organizations, debuted today at http://www.socialbrite.org/.

The Socialbrite team is made up of strategists with deep experience in offering social media consulting services, training workshops, conversational marketing, fundraising and outreach campaigns.

“We’re here to help nonprofits master the social Web to bring about meaningful social change,” said J.D. Lasica, a consultant and author of four books about emerging technologies. “There’s nothing else like this on the Web for nonprofits, social change organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and educators. Socialbrite’s mission is to shine a light on the best practices, social tools and strategies that will benefit each of these important constituencies.”

Beth Kanter, Amy Sample Ward, Katrin Verclas and John Haydon are among the familiar names in the nonprofit tech sector who are part of the effort.

Socialbrite.org is launching with a rich set of resources:

• A directory of Web 2.0 Productivity Tools in dozens of categories that can help organizations get a handle on the social Web.
• A Social Media Glossary that offers a deep, friendly introduction to dozens of social media terms in plain English.
• A first-of-its-kind Twitter widget that tracks tweets about nonprofits or social causes in real time.
• A Free Photos Directory, Free Video Directory and Free Music Directory that offers nonprofits, cause organizations and Web publishers a guide to hundreds of online resources for adding legal, high-quality content to their own Web sites, blogs, podcasts, newsletters, printed materials or online presentations.
• A Causes widget that points to charitable actions and donations on other sites such as GlobalGiving and Facebook Causes.
• Scores of additional articles, guides and tutorials to help newcomers and veterans alike get better acquainted with this fast-moving space.

Socialbrite draws on a team of experts whose practical, easy-to-grasp advice will help organizations find social media success. The strategists – located in New York, San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles and London – are:

• Beth Kanter, a longtime trainer and advisor to the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) and other organizations. Her upcoming book “The Networked Nonprofit” will provide a social media roadmap for nonprofits.
• J.D. Lasica, a social media pioneer who co-founded Ourmedia.org, the first video hosting and sharing site. He advises both Fortune 500 corporations and nonprofits in social media strategies.
• Katrin Verclas, co-founder and editor of MobileActive.org and past executive director of NTEN.
• John Haydon, a consultant who advises small nonprofits, small businesses and social entrepreneurs on social marketing strategies.
• Amy Sample Ward, a strategist who supports and educates clients in the nonprofit and social change sectors.
• Ken Banks, who is using mobile technology to foster positive social and environmental change in the developing world, particularly in Africa.
• Sloane Berrent, a cause-based marketing consultant who works with nonprofits and social cause organizations. She is currently a Kiva fellow serving a three-month tour in a rural section of the Philippines.
• Carla A. Schlemminger, a strategic marketing communications professional who integrates best practices in branding, PR and social media.

The Socialbrite site features dozens of videos, screencasts and slide presentations. All materials created for the site are released under Creative Commons licenses so that other sites and blogs can freely reuse the content.

“Collaboration is the key to success, in everything really,” said Amy Sample Ward, an Oregonian now living in London who heads up London Net Tuesday and collaborates with others to create local opportunities to share and learn. “I see Socialbrite as a great chance for us as strategists to collaborate while helping nonprofits keep pace with this fast-changing landscape.”

Socialbrite.org is built in WordPress, the popular open source blogging platform. Socialbrite’s lead developer, Esteban Panzeri, just finished work on a Creative Commons plug-in that lets bloggers assign different licenses to different blog posts, which he is releasing to the WordPress community.

The Socialbrite team members make their living through paid services to client organizations. Services include conducting in-depth workshops, working with senior staff to develop a social media strategy, and crafting campaigns to reach contributors and supporters through Twitter, Facebook and digital storytelling, among other modern approaches.

Visit the Socialbrite.org Media Center for tweets, information and more about the launch to help spread the word about this collaborative resource!

• Follow us on Twitter: @socialbrite
• Subscribe to our blog updates: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/socialbrite
• For business and speaking inquiries: newbiz@socialbrite.org
• To contact a member of the Socialbrite team: team@socialbrite.org

We are still working to get nonprofit organizations online and to move websites from ‘electronic brochures’ to a more modern presence, but the main bulk of organizations are there though struggling to get to the next level. They have a website that’s more than a carbon copy of an event handout, they have members who want to subscribe to something and funders who expect them to be resources to the sector. How do they meet those expectations?

Quality content drives traffic, increases value and in turn can increase the number or engagement of members, visitors, potential donors. So, how do they create the quality content, then?

1. Hear It: There are a lot of ways to listen to your members and your field. Subscribe to RSS feeds from organizations working in the same field, funders, members’ blogs, etc. Listen for topics of interest, questions that come up and conversations that are ongoing for tips as to what people are looking for more information about. You can use Twitter to listen to your community as well and pinpoint conversations that are important to focus on. Don’t feel bad about asking, either, because your community is probably waiting for an opportunity to tell you what they want/need.
2. Write It:  Blogs are expected to be updated often but everyone has experienced the strain of either too much work to do or nothing to write about. If you are listening to your community, your list of topics should be more than you have time to cover. If you have too much other work pulling at your time, enlist another team member or two to share the blogging responsibilities. The best thing to do, especially when starting out, is to create a blog schedule so you can work it into your larger work schedule and not push it down the list.  But, blogs aren’t the only things that should stay fresh—your website should stay up-to-date and pertinent as well!
3. Aggregate It: An easy way of ensuring that your website has new information is to create a page, or parts of pages that are fed by content from an RSS feed. This could be a feed from a Del.icio.us tag that you and your organization uses, or it could be from a news website, a funder’s site, or a sector-specific site. Pulling information in from other places on the web means there is more information available for your website visitors and with less work by you or strain on your time.
4. Share It: Be sure that you are allowing people to subscribe to your information, on your website and your blog, with RSS. Just because your website is the (if you’re doing everything right) go-to spot for news, information, and resources in your field, doesn’t mean people want to visit your URL to get that information. More and more people are using RSS and will expect to be able to use it with your website, too. Be sure to include your information in other outlets as well, so people who may not know it’s there can find out: include links and highlights in your e-newsletter, alert people to new content via any social media outlets you use (such as Twitter, Facebook, other blogs, etc.).

Read the rest of the post at Stanford Social Innovation Review’s Opinion Blog here.