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My latest post is up on the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog.  You can read the post and join the conversation on the SSIR blog here, or read the copied post below.

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A new report from the team at Forrester came out last week: Tapping The Entire Online Peer Influence Pyramid.  It comes at the same time that I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the importance of community builders/managers/leaders or organizational voices to give permission back to the community members.  The evaluation and recognition of peer influence, something that is not only prevalent but inherent in social media, is something that help empower and sustain your communities AND increase your staff capacity.  Let’s discuss!

First, let’s talk about permission.

As organizations or community builders active online, working to practice and create quality engagement, we are often trying to guide, collect or herd conversations and interactions into spaces that we have created or monitor closely. When I say “give permission,” in this post, I’m really saying that you should balance the herding and collecting of the community with the encouragement and empowerment for the community to go wherever it wants with your message or information.

Giving permission to the community is really just recognizing that conversations already take place in spaces online where you don’t have a presence, a fan page, or a profile. That people talk about your services or programs, issues or sector wherever they are and you may never know about it, know them, or be part of the conversation.

Giving permission to the community to have conversations without you requires trust. You have to trust that the community will take your communications or mission forward. You have to trust that the community will monitor or respond to comments or issues in a way that matches the way you would (that you’ve modeled the behavior the way you want it repeated).

The conversations and connections that are taking place elsewhere, whether it’s on or offline, don’t have to remain a mystery to you, though.  Give permission for your community to report back – and provide the mechanisms to do so.  Create places for or explicitly ask for feedback, not just about what you do and how you do it (which you probably already do) but also what your community is doing, learning, hearing, seeing, interested in and so on. This way you can build active two-way communications that help you stay informed but also empower the community members to be part of team.

Now, what about peer influence?

I’ve talked before about how to map your community and the messages within it.  What’s so great about the chart from Forrester at the top of this post is that it shows you a great way to view segments of your database in an influential way. You don’t simply have to say there are people that respond to action alerts and those that don’t… I may not sign your petition, but what if I’m forwarding it on? What if you could send powerful invitations to spread the word or rally behind a cause or action to a select group of people instead of creating mass mailings to everyone you know?  Think of the difference: your communications become more strategic, more streamlined, and more efficient by recognizing those in your list that fall into the different peer influence categories!

Giving permission to peer influence

All of this is really to say: you can create a multiple win for your organization and your community by giving permission to broadcast and influence on your behalf.  It sounds simple, but there are always infastructre requirements behind everything.  In order to give permission and leverage the peer influencers in your community, you need:

• to create a dashboard, toolbox, or any other catchy name where influencers can grab images, videos, files or messages that are ready to be broadcast
• to create opportunities for influencers to be unique or valuable with their participation
• to monitor how your influence tools are used (“share with a friend” or RT or so on) to see what content is best or most successfully shared and if there are new influencers emerging
• to provide recognition or spotlight for those that are taking your message into their networks and creating impact
• to help your staff, team or organization to understand the value in distributing the communications and influence of your work, and help them leverage the network  in similar ways across all departments and campaigns

What do you think?

How has your organization seen peer influence or community leaders emerge in social media? How have you created ways to give value back to those driving your message to their own communities? (Think about all of this in terms of campaigns, fundraising, events and more!)

Join the conversation on the SSIR blog or share your ideas in the comments below.

I come across so many great conversations, ideas, and resources all over the web every day. Here are some of the most interesting things I’ve found recently (as of February 23rd). You can join the conversations in the comments, or click through to the original posts to find what others are saying.

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).

• Social Media Today | ROI: How to Measure Return on Investment in Social Media – A great post from Brian Solis on Social Media Today discussing the ROI of social media. This is a really great post to read for anyone thinking about how to measure, evaluate, and even consider the impact of social media use (and that should be everyone). "Over the years, Social Media experts attempted to redefine ROI for a new era of influence. While some introduced alternative philosophies for measuring the nuances tied to social media, others wondered aloud whether ROI simply wasn’t necessary as the tools and methodologies for analyzing yields didn’t yet exist. And furthermore, by focusing on justification and metrics, we were distracted from the primary objective of building relationships and cultivating dialogue. … But that was then and this is now. In 2010, we enter in to a new era of social media marketing, one based on information, rationalization, and resolve."
• Cause Fatigue #4Change Recap « 4change – Did you miss the recent #4change twitter chat? The February chat focused on cause fatigue, but if you missed it, Zero Strategist has done a great recap of the conversation and highlights. Check it out!
• The Collaboration Prize – Search Database – Wow! Check out this great resource – a database of collaborations! "The first phase of this database of nonprofit collaboration models (currently consisting of the 176 nominations deemed eligible for The Collaboration Prize in 2008) contains the information submitted by each nominator in response to specific questions about the nominated collaboration. Additional models of collaboration from The Collaboration Prize will be added soon. While the contents of the first phase are limited to data contained in the nominations submitted in 2008, the next phase of the database, to be launched in the next few months, will have an interactive component, whereby the existing data can be updated and the database can be expanded by adding new collaboration models that were not part of The Collaboration Prize project."
• Welcome to Kopernik – "Kopernik — www.thekopernik.org — a new non-profit venture that provides life-changing technology to the poor, launches today. Kopernik makes technology designed for the developing world accessible through the Internet and by harnessing the power of individual donations. Kopernik’s aim is to bring this technology to the poor in developing countries via the site, and link them to individuals willing to make a donation towards the purchase of the products. It is the brain-child of Ewa Wojkowska and Toshi Nakamura who have extensive experience in international development as UN staff members." Check it out!
• New Ideas for Promoting Physical Activity in London – "The Go London social innovation competition is a call for ideas on how to make London more active, the first of its kind to be energised by the groundswell of optimism surrounding London hosting the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012. It is a shared movement to create a city where physical activity is a normal part of Londoners lives and contributes to making London a more livable, sustainable and healthy city.

  The project aims to help improve activity levels of everyone by finding out what's already out there as well as asking people for their ideas on how they think London could become more active. In the same way that stories can come from anywhere to inspire others, and we'll hope to capture as many of these as possible, simple, life changing ideas can spring up too. Through the creative use of social media Go London hopes to capture as many of these ideas as possible."

• Facebook Causes: Not just for Individuals: ICT Hub Knowledgebase – The Knowledgebase from LASA is a great place to find articles on all kinds of topics related to technology for organizations. I wrote an article for them on how organizations are using Causes and it's now up. Visit the knowledgebase if you want to learn more about Causes but also head there to find some valuable resources on hardware, software, social media and more.

Tonight, I attended a live panel discussion on the question of whether Technology is Really Good for Human Rights, or not.  Below are live notes – apologies for spelling and grammar – that follow the main points and audience q/a.  Enjoy!

Context for the event from Rory Cellan-Jones:  Prevailing ethos of the web has been libertarian, optimistic about the potential of the internet to be a medium of free expression and break down barriers.  That ethos continued until the last three years or so with issues in Burma, Iran, and China.  We’ve seen potential for those unsympathetic to the cause to use the technology too – a bit of an arms race created.  Technology is amoral – it doesn’t care. In Iran we’ve seen it used to get out information and resist censorship but have also seen it used by the government to alter a mobile phone system and monitoring calls.

Tweets and highlights from this event on Twitter at #AITech

Panelists include:

• Susan Pointer, Google’s Director of Public Policy & Government Relations
• Andrew Keen (via video), author of Cult of the Amateur: How the Internet is killing our culture
• Kevin Anderson, blogs editor of the Guardian
• Annabelle Sreberny, Professor of Global Media and Communication, School of Oriental and African Studies (with special interest in Iran, bloggers & social media)
• Rory Cellan-Jones, Technology Correspondent for the BBC, is chairing.

Susan Pointer: declaring an interest as a passionate advocate of the potential of internet technology. When it comes to the potential to underpin human rights, for me the question is not technology good for human rights but is the access to information, the ability to connect with people online, to use online tools to mobilize offline activities, to question wisdom, and shine a light of transparency – it’s a useful tool for promoting and underpinning human rights. So, the answer is yes as a tool. The access to information drives knowledge. The technology itself is not intrinsically good -at Google we are advocates for free expression on the internet and free access for all; the technology istelf is and should be a neutral platform for this. it does not itself dictate who does the communicating or how we assess the communications. Nor does it require that we leave our human faculties at the on switch – the internet democratizes the channels.  Rather than ask if the tool is perfect or not, we should work together to make it a perfect tool, keep the internet platform healthy.

Andrew Keen: I would never argue that technology is against human rights. When it comes to the internet, you can of course find lots of examples where twitter or facebook or email have been used by governments or corporations or regimes. But, the tools of the digital revolution are used by those against the regime but are equally used by those in the regimes.  Because of the natural of the internet, where traditional intermediaries have been done away with, it’s increasingly easy for regimes to use this supposed democratized media for their own.  I haven’t seen that much proof that internet has changed [post the Obama election]. Changes come through people and culture and not through technology. I’m not arguing that it is bad, but the internet isn’t necessarily good for human rights.

Annabelle Sreberny: Communication technologies have been good for human rights since we created the alphabet. These are tools that can perhaps accelerate the speed of information and the number of people involved, but it’s always had the potential for change. Politics is communications by another name. Communication technologies have always been used for political change, especially with Iran. 1905-1911, people were publishing in exile, printing and sharing over the boarder, etc. in Tehran. 1975 revolution used leaflets and cassette tapes helped mobilize and push the revolution. Youtube and facebook are just the new tools for political change. Western audiences came to know Iran through the 2009 election, the internet had been the place where you could find politics happening inside Iran when in person it was very hard there.  For example, the internet was important because it was difficult to organize offline. Given the difficulties of face to face politics and public space control, many of the people 30 and under stay home where they can be online and be free. They are inventing it for themselves. One thing that internet technologies can do is the bringing together across boundaries – so, the diaspora are slowly invited back into politics. Which causes a lot of Iranian politics to take place outside of the country.  This is politics – we need the good and the bad; the cyber army, the 10,000 bloggers claimed to be trained by the national guard, etc.  In Iran the regime hasn’t yet shown itself to be as savvy as the green movement.

Kevin Anderson: I think in terms of human rights and damage of censorship the internet has been a net good.  Without social media, we wouldn’t have been able to provide the kind of information that was available. It would have been a blackout of information but suddenly there’s a way to get it out. The Guardian had an injunction to gather all the names of the people who were killed and detained and that’s something that would have never been possible without the internet. I think what we are learning is that increasing the freedom of information isn’t all that’s needed to free those living under extremist regimes.  People point to Obama but it was actually a perfect marriage of the internet and traditional pounding on doors. The internet can be problematic – some of the debates can become quite divisive online instead of cohesion. I think underlying slacktivism isn’t enough – you can’t just turn your profile green.  Just as the Guardian used crowdsourcing to get the names of those detained, the government is using crowdsourcing too. Security is going to be increasingly one of the things that internet activists have to learn. Today, a China official said the internet is a new battlefield without gun powder. The incident with Google in China has made aware the increasing militarization of the internet – targeted attacks against corporations and activists and that’s the most worrying development.  These are sophisticated attacks and as the regimes become more sophisticated in espionage methods, people engaged in human rights will have to live in a new threat environment.

Questions:

Isn’t there plenty of evidence that technology is actually bringing information to societies in a way that was not possible 20 or 30 years ago?  Isn’t accelerating the process by which people can take on governments?

Andrew Keen: The wall in Berlin was open by accident by a guard, so you could argue that the internet is a distribution of knowledge so that would have never happened. The internet is actually a really effective tool for maintaining regimes.  So, this organization of knowledge could actually be a good thing for demoralizing government.  The more knowledge there is in the world, the easier it is to spy or look into the knowledge.  Let’s not delude ourselves that the opposition are Luddites.

We always thought of the internet as a free space with free spirits, anarchic, but it’s actually becoming dominated by a few corporate players, like Google. It has said a lot about it’s commitment to freedom of expression and so on, but it’s first duty is to it’s shareholders just like any other corporation.  Given that, how profound is Google’s commitment ever going to be to human rights?

Susan Pointer: First, Google’s size – we live or die by the trust users have in our services. We have no contract, tie-in, etc. – most all of our services are free.  Those users are free to choose whether to use our services or elsewhere. We retain their loyalty by providing services they want to use and having protections in place that they trust. It’s very different than your traditional model. Without a doubt, every user is important to our business but every user has the choice. Do we want to keep you? Of course, so we have to keep innovating, providing exciting services and that’s what drives. We support an open and competitive environment that is based on user buy in. In terms of our commitment to online freedom of expression, from the beginning our motto has been to do no evil – it means we are committed to providing as much access as possible.

Even in China?

Susan Pointer: We took the decision as a very complex – google.cn  It was not an alternative to the normal site. We found that there were users in China couldn’t access the .com site so it was created to give them access.

There was no commercial imperative behind that?

Susan Pointer: It was absolutely based on what would provide the most access to our users there. What that means  is that in order to set up the .cn site we had to be compliant with Chinese law. Which meant self censorship of the results. We would do that, we would not provide access to the .com site so you could still get results there, and on the .cn site we would provide a message when censorship was happening so the user would see when results were being withheld. In light of our investigations of attacks on the human rights activists, we have taken the point that we are no longer comfortable self censoring results and are pursing how we can provide results without censorship with China which could mean we have to discontinue use there.

Historically, people have used all kinds of methods to fight for human rights. Is there evidence that these tools are making the fight easier?

Annabelle Sreberny: The arguments would have to focus on the speed and the numbers of people involved. It’s about scale. They work like memes, the speed people react and join in.

Slacktivist term, is there not a danger that 20 or 30 years ago there was far more intensity because easy technology wasn’t there. You had to get face to face with people.

Kevin Anderson: I think it’s a bit of both. The idea that social media completely transplants face to face – one of the difficulties is that it isn’t an either or. I think there are people who say “yes, there are people who have said I’ve changed my avatar green…” One of the things with Dean’s campaign initially was that they had huge amounts of online activism but had problems turning that into real life work. It can be broad but shallow. The power of the Obama campaign was translating online activity to real world impact. Translating a click into someone on the streets is the step it takes.

People have seen technologies for a force for good and bad – in Iran you have to say that there was a unique set of circumstances. Before the election you had a population that had migrated to the internet, a government who had let them have that space. After the election that space exploded and the government was slow to catch up. But now they are catching up, with the cyber army and beyond. The question is how can we make it a force for good?

You use the term slacktivism about people in the west – the point that needs to be made is that internet lets people participate in the activism without the fear, true there is the other side of the coin…

Kevin Anderson: The point I’m making is that politics is communications but it is also a number of other actions, especially when you are dealing with regimes that have been successful at staying in power. You have to use all the tools of politics to make that change. While freedom of communications is key, there are a number of other steps. As regimes get more sophisticated, like we see China exporting some of it’s internet controlling tools elsewhere (like Iran), the methods have to get more sophisticated. If you show support you are lazy – no. But there has to be a number of people taking actions in the real world, too.

Annabelle Sreberny: Mousy solidarity – how easy it is to click on a petition, and so on.  Why the sense of solidarity? Because we don’t ave politics like this – it feels good to be part of it. We feel like we can participate.

Our attention span is ever shorter, time is relative.

Kevin Anderson: If it’s going to be that transient 24-hour news cycle, that sustained action is key. Once the novelty wears off, breaking through the media cycle is difficult. In Iran, it’s quite clear, this is a long sustained struggle and isn’t something that’s going to happen quickly. You had more democratic and open societies with the Velvet and the Orange revolutions. With the Chinese, the point they made was that we have to control information otherwise there will be chaos.

Susan Pointer: It was the immediacy that played the role in creating interest in Iran. Had that information come out weeks later it would have been restricted to academics and others pouring over the information. It’s important to sustain that information and interest. The discussion about membership of an organization and what it means to be active: lots of people would have joined a group or gone to a meeting without contributing. The power of showing numbers online can be more powerful than showing up online. We need to look at how membership and participation are defined. Where does the pressure come from on an international exposure. How we defend the nature of the internet: it makes institutions and governments nervous. We need to be as vigilant in our spaces as internationally to keep it without gatekeepers and screeners. That’s what will keep it a source of immediacy.

The deision making process by Google – with Iran it can seem clear. What kind of process does Google go through to make those decisions?

Susan Pointer: Once we created google.cn we had to meet compliance. In general terms, I spend a lot of my time with issues where access to our services are restricted and we work to fix it. The open access to our services – it shouldn’t matter where in the world you are, you should be able to access services.

Is the speed and scale of internet communications a bug as well as a feature?

Kevin Anderson: My experience online is largely positive. The places where i see the most animosity is news sites. And that’s not the internet to me.

There’s debate between those who say you should be able to say/do anything and those that say other people’s human rights are at risk in that situation.

Kevin Anderson: I can only speak for myself but I wouldn’t say anything online that I wouldn’t say face to face. It’s said that it is still so new we haven’t created social mores for it. I remember when the AOL newbies came on and we thought they were ruining the internet… if you are saying things you think would turn you red if you were saying them outloud, then you probably shouldn’t say them.

Climate change and climate gate – what are the social media implications?

Kevin Anderson: as a journalist, yes, we want to present all sides but do we present all sides as if they are valid? At the Guardian our editorial decision is very different than at the BBC. We can take a stand. I believe strongly in objectivity but it can be a difficult thing in fractious debates like this. It might be a bit beyond this debate.

If corporations are immoral – one of the reasons we expect corporations to be moral is because Google wears morals on the sleeve, etc. Where does the openness of information infringe on human rights (like Google Buzz – there was no consent for followers, etc.)?

Susan Pointer: mission, people, leadership and so on decide who a company is. I chose Google because I felt that it made good decisions. It’s easy to disassociate ourselves though. One thing I would say from our perspective is we follow through from the way we communicate, some would argue we are too open but I think that’s part of the process to engage with users. Buzz is one where we thought we had the controls in place but the options that were there could have been better with visibility – and we responded immediately.  We do have the ongoing discussion with our users. Privacy comes down to individuals having choice, transparency and control. Transparency in the human rights space is interesting – we want the option to be anonymous but we also want to know who is saying something.

Google’s business depends on knowing more and more about users – behavioral advertising. Isn’t that going to be difficult to walk that line? You have to make bigger profits and that lies in knowing more about your users.

Susan Pointer: Majority of our advertising is contextual – the search you made and the content on the page. We hold IP addresses, and not users. You can also opt out permanently of being associated with certain things. In settings, users can have the option to opt out, or opt in to certain things.

Annabelle Sreberny: So much of the content from Iran was user generated content sent to the media – what’s happened to that? Why should we be working for free for large media? Facebook is increasingly hard to excavate. People put content online that they want to share but you can’t get to it. What happens to the content we are putting up there?

Do you think access to technology will be acknowledge as a basic human right like water and shelter? Is it trivializing human rights by associating the internet with it?

Kevin Anderson: Yes. Technology – internet is about communications. We already have universal access provisions for things like telephones. Technology infuses my life. What we are seeing now is not that people don’t have access but choose not to have it. Why do people exclude themselves and what are the resasons? Especially in a technologically advanced country, that becomes a bigger issue.

Susan Pointer: When we are talking about technology we are taking it from the point that you have access to it. We have to consider the fact that in many places of the world people still don’t have access. We aren’t just talking about changing governments but giving citizens access to information at all.

Should Amnesty be fighting for the right to access the internet?

Annabelle Sreberny: Article 19 – the fundamental mission. THe right to community is all about access. Thinking about the right to communicate opens up many interesting issues.

Is there any indication that Amnesty is doing better now with technology?

Amnesty Rep: You can argue yes. If you look at Amnesty’s history, 49 years ago people wrote letters to get people out of prison. Once we had fax machines, we started having urgent actions to send a fax. Now we coax people to send emails. Technology gives us new ways to do things.

I would imagine a letter or a bag of letters 20 years ago was possibly more effective than a million emails today.

Amnesty Rep: It explains why we’ve never given up on letters. To some extent you can delete your inbox really quickly than you can get rid of a bag of letters. But it also means we can get information quickly and from everywhere quickly.

What technology means for people who are experiencing a crisis who don’t have access – don’t make it onto twitter, don’t make the news cycle?  Like Sri Lanka where pictures weren’t getting out.

Annabelle Sreberny: There were also huge demonstrations elsewhere pulling in the diaspora.  They play a role in alerting the media in other places. We can fall into the trap that one technology takes over from all others. Other technologies are still around. With the diaspora, you just need to get enough people to pay attention that they can spur the media.

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“Tonight’s event is one of a series of events linked to Amnesty’s forthcoming Media Awards, which recognize excellence in UK human rights journalism. The Digital category, won last year by Wikileaks, awards innovative digital content appearing for the first time on a UK-based website and covers news, blogs, features and comment or debate, audio and visual material. This year a new Sponsorship Fund will help smaller media outlets cover their cost of entry, opening up the awards to more blogs and less-mainstream sites. Closing date for entry to the awards is 1 March, more details at www.amnesty.org.uk/awards“

The Social Media for Social Good collection from NTEN and NetSquared calls for your case studies in leveraging social media tools in your program work.

Social Media for Social Good

Everywhere you turn, you’re hearing about social media. Especially when it comes to fundraising. But at NTEN and NetSquared, we know that social media is good for a lot more than raising money. We know that social media can be used to change the world. That’s why we’re launching the Social Media for Social Good case study collection!

Whether you’ve run a successful advocacy campaign, integrated social technologies into your education programs or have found innovative ways to use social media to further your mission in any other way, we want to hear about it.  There is still time to submit your case study – but hurry!

Why participate?

We know that one of the best ways to learn is to hear how others have succeeded before. Submitting your case study means you can share your story with others looking to learn and explore the social media for social good space.  It also means that you’ll be entered into our competition:  We will choose 3 case studies to be featured in our session with Beth Kanter at SXSWi this March!

Vote!

Over the past month, organizations have already submitted their case studies and now it’s time for you to cast your vote! Rank your favorites to help decide which case studies are featured at SXSWi.  (Don’t worry, if you haven’t submitted yet, you can still do that, too!)

Deadline for submissions and voting is February 26th!

• Review the submissions and cast your vote today!
• Learn more and submit your case study now!

Don’t worry, I’m not trying to start an adjective revolution! Totally Baldacious is the latest campaign from The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and it’s turning heads! Well, it’s turning them bald…

“The Totally Baldacious campaign is a great way to show your love and solidarity with cancer patients while you help raise awareness and funds for cures.  Whether you decide to shave your head or color your hair, you will be helping The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society raise money for much-needed, life-saving cancer research.”

I really like so many aspects of this campaign that instead of simply changing my profile picture or tweeting about the campaign, I wanted to take a closer look, share with you some of the elements that are making it a great campaign, and some suggestions for ways it can be improved.

What Works:

Microsite: Creating a space for your campaign that is separate from your organization’s website can be really helpful for those new to your work or finding your campaign via social media.  People know they are in the right place, any tabs or links they click on will help them learn more about the campaign (and not get lost in the various sections of your organization’s website) and target information to them about the rest of your work based on their interest in the campaign.  Creating a separate web space isn’t always necessary, but in this example it really works.

Options: The barrier to entry to the Totally Baldacious campaign is low enough that everyone can participate in a way that contributes to the campaign, but that they are still comfortable with.  Asking people to shave their heads is a big deal, so creating innovative ways for them to join together without having to commit to something they just can’t commit to is really essential to high participation numbers.  Encouraging people to lighten the color of their hair instead of shaving it, or changing their online profile picture to a bald head to raise awareness all play on the same theme for support of those who’ve lost their hair from their fight with cancer, but don’t make people feel bad if they don’t want to “go all the way.”

Calls to Action: What may seem simple, is often very difficult to achieve, and in this case it’s the calls to action.  The Totally Baldacious campaign, though, does an excellent job making the calls to action clear, consistent, and do-able.  It’s so important that your calls to action – both buttons and actions – are the same throughout your site or campaign space (don’t want people getting confused about what you want them to do) and are easy to identify quickly (don’t want people poking around trying to find how they can participate).  Make it as clear as possible, like they did, with a “how can I participate” section.

What Could Improve:

Visible Goal: Even though the calls to action are very clear, the goal of those actions is a bit muddled. Is it to raise money? Is it to raise awareness? Is it to grow the list of supporters? It can’t be all of them.  It can be one, and the others can be bonuses; but all three can’t exist together as the ultimate goal.  Depending on the page you are on or the call to action you are joining, the goal you are helping to reach can be different.  It would be great if all signs pointed back to the same place.  (Individual fundraising pages have goal meters, why not an overall goal and thermometer graphic?)

Visible Participants: A campaign like this draws on the power of social media and the networks of it’s supporters. People that change their profile image to a Baldacious bald image (like mine above) should be able to see others who have done the same, and those who haven’t done it yet should get to see the latest newly-bald faces to inspire them to join.  People contributing money to an individual’s campaign or to the campaign over all should be able to see other’s who have donated, and those thinking about donating should be able to see other recent donors to inspire them to give.  These are just a few of the many ways to make the participating community more visible.

Movement Building: Don’t ever forget that what we are trying to do isn’t just get people to change a picture or donate money; it’s to change our world into one without the issues, illnesses, and struggles too many people face every day.  With that in mind, it would be great to see the Totally Baldacious campaign create a global-facing or at least globally open portal, too – through the way participation is made visible (previous point) or in other ways.  I see such potential in campaigns that get it right on so many levels to also get it right by catalyzing collaborations and truly building towards a movement.

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Thanks to all those at The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and everyone else who made the campaign possible.  It looks great, is creating some fun ways for people to join in, and I hope it continues towards success!

If you haven’t yet, why not make yourself Totally Baldacious?!

I’m so thrilled to share the news with you all that my blog post, Online Community Building: Gardening vs Landscaping, was the most popular blog post on the Stanford Social Innovation Review’s opinion blog in 2009.  It is such an honor to me to contribute to the valuable collection of knowledge and insight at SSIR and to have a piece rank so highly is too good to be true!

Thank you for all those who follow my contributions on the SSIR blog and continue to spark interesting and challenging conversations on this blog.  I’m so thrilled to be part of this community!

Check out the Top 5 SSIR Blog Posts!

I have a guest post up on the NTEN blog discussing some of the ways social media was put into action as soon as the earthquakes struck in Haiti:

When disaster strikes, we want information as soon as possible and we want to help just as quickly. How can we do that? Whether we look at mapping tools, fundraising, or missing person systems, the social media response to the January earthquakes in Haiti all leverage the powerful technology we can hold in our hands: our mobile phones. But the way we think about and turn to social media in a time of disaster is changing.

The disaster in Haiti is a perfect example of these changes: the impact of the Real-Time Web and the power of our phones.

Read the full post to learn more about mapping, mobile fundraising, volunteering and the Real-Time web impact:

The Social Media Response to the Disaster in Haiti

I come across so many great conversations, ideas, and resources all over the web every day. Here are some of the most interesting things I’ve found recently (as of February 11th). You can join the conversations in the comments, or click through to the original posts to find what others are saying.

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).

• Oxfam in Haiti – Google Maps – This is a great example of how you can use a tool like Google Maps to tell a story and provide easy access to information – great job Oxfam! "Oxfam is responding to the biggest earthquake for 200 years in Haiti. This map shows some of the sites where Oxfam is providing water and sanitation, as well as employment through the cash-for-work program. Oxfam has reached 100,000 people across multiple sites and is aiming to reach 500,000 total over the next six months."
• Download the 2009 Data Ecosystem Survey Report | NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network – NTEN just released a report on the data ecosystem in nonprofit organizations – it's free for members, but $50 for non-NTEN members. "The data ecosystem is the collection of tools we use to manage all the ways we interact with donors, volunteers, activists, and supporters. We wanted to find out how happy organizations are with each of the tools they use, but also what tools make up their ecosystems, and how happy they are with those ecosystems as well."
• 5 Ways to “Emerge” as a Nonprofit Leader | Rosetta Thurman – "Many young nonprofit professionals are waiting until they get the title of “Director” to lead. They are waiting until their older colleagues deem them “ready” to lead instead of emerging as leaders in the here and now. But what we have to understand is that this behavior doesn’t benefit our organizations nor the communities we seek to serve. What we have to understand is that we need as many young people as possible to emerge as nonprofit leaders, even if they don’t have a title. The future of the nonprofit sector depends on it."
• 5 Real Challenges For Non-Profit Texting Campaigns – "Given the many aspects of texting, from technology to communications, non-profits need to consider SMS with their eyes wide open. Causes may even want to consider alternative mobile channels for communications and fundraising. Here are five things non-profits should consider before pursuing texting."
• A Consumers Guide To Low-Cost Data Visualization Tools – Check out this great, free report from Idealware! "You've got data. How do you transform it into charts, graphs, and maps that will help your audience understand the data and move them to take action? This 30-page independent Idealware report provides an overview of the types of graphic formats that might work for you, and then compares eight low-cost tools that can help you create them."
• Glasspockets – Check out this new resource from the Foundation Center:
  "With Glasspockets, the Foundation Center and its partners hope to:

  * Inspire private foundations to greater openness in their communications.
  * Increase understanding of best practices in foundation transparency and accountability in an online world.
  * Illustrate how institutional philanthropy is relevant to the critical issues of our time.
  * Highlight the many stories of philanthropy that show how private wealth is serving the public good.
  * Illuminate successes, failures, and ongoing experimentation so foundations can build on each other's ideas to increase impact."

The Real-Time Web and Its Future, a new report from ReadWriteWeb, focused on the changing ecosystem of the Web, one that runs in real-time.  “For the following report, we interviewed 50 companies, developers and executives building or leveraging real-time Web technology. We combined that research with insights gained from more than 300 industry leaders that participated in our Real-Time Web Summit in October 2009. The end result is an extensive, authoritative premium report: The Real-Time Web and its Future, edited by ReadWriteWeb lead writer Marshall Kirkpatrick.” I recently had the opportunity to connect with Marshall to discuss the report and the insights RWW discovered through the process of aggregating and distilling so much information from experts and Web users.

Review the Table of Contents and read the report introduction now, or learn more in the following interview.

First, what does the “real-time Web” really mean?

It means different things to different people, but the most literal meaning is probably this: real-time systems push information from a publisher to a subscriber (be they a human reader or a machine consuming information) as soon as it’s available, without the subscriber having to ask if there’s anything new.

Think of how Facebook notifies you that you have new messages without having to refresh the page, or the way your Instant Messaging client shows you new messages as soon as they are sent. The underlying technologies used in those kinds of circumstances are now being integrated into all kinds of other websites because real-time delivery of information changes the user experience radically and offers all kinds of benefits. It’s smoother for users, users and systems get to take action immediately on new information and it’s much more efficient, meaning that your technology can do more with less computing expense.

When did RWW start focusing on the real-time Web?

Probably middle of 2008. Like people generally do, we thought about the impact that Twitter and Facebook were making on the web. When we looked deeper though, we quickly found out that there is far, far more going on in the real-time web than those two services.

For the report, you interviewed 50 Web experts – what were some of the surprising things you heard?

I was surprised to learn how broad this field is. We talked to people working with public records extraction in real time, with designers building lightweight, real-time presentation sharing tools, Google engineers have some incredible ideas about ways they hope that their PubSubHubbub real-time protocol will be used – stuff like real-world sensor networks and contact info syncing. When I started those interviews, I knew there were broad possibilities but I had no idea how broad.

How has the real-time Web already impacted nonprofit organizations or those focused on social impact work?

One of the organizations I did an interview with was the American Red Cross. As they say, “at the Red Cross, the real-time web saves lives.” Real-time information delivery has changed the way that organization works in radical ways. It’s amazing. Disaster response work that used to take days now takes minutes, using a combination of Sharepoint, mobile devices and airplane surveillance. The Red Cross also pays very close attention to the rest of the real-time web, though. I was fascinated to find out that the team at HQ is full of fans of the Breaking News Online iPhone app.

What impacts are right around the corner?

Organizations that choose to do so are already able to run circles around the web using these real-time technologies. I expect that some will do so and many will not. It will be like the difference between organizations that developed an effective web or email presence early vs. those that did not. If organizations want to be relevant and effective, they will need to incorporate some elements of real-time information delivery into their work flow. Be that pushing real-time updates out to their websites and supporters, consuming updates on breaking news in their sector in real time, or collaborating remotely in real time. Using only the parts of the web that you must refresh for updates, when you remember to do so, be they email or web pages, will soon feel like putting your ear up to a tin can with a string connecting it to some other tin can far away. I don’t mean to say that everything will be real time and you must always live in that flow, but I do believe it’s fast becoming an essential form of engagement. Not just because everyone is doing it, either, but because it’s really very useful.

How can nonprofits or social impact groups take advantage of the real-time Web?

There are as many ways to take advantage of the real time web as there are to use the web in general. Here’s one of my favorite stories though. Some time back I was doing a workshop for nonprofit communications people and one of the attendees worked for a women’s advocacy organization. As a proof of concept, we took the RSS feed of the New York Times and filtered it for keywords related to her organization’s areas of interests, I think we used Yahoo Pipes to filter, it might have been FeedRinse.com, but that’s not hard to do in many different ways. Then we took the filtered RSS feed and we ran it through an RSS to SMS/IM alert service. I use Notify.me a lot but even faster than that now is an iPhone app called Nofitifcations. Or have your team’s geeks check out Superfeedr.com. So the idea was, this person could then watch the NYT feed automatically, get an SMS or IM alert whenever a relevant story was published and then she could call up her local newspaper or other press. “I don’t know if you’ve heard about this story breaking on a national level,” she could say, and or course they probably hadn’t because they don’t have robots watching for these things automatically, “but if you’d like to cover this topic on a local level, our Executive Director is an excellant source for information.” That journalist will love you for it. Do that enough times and your organization, no matter how small, will have a chance to grow its public profile substantially.

That’s just one idea. There are countless other ways that real-time information delivery can be leveraged by nonprofits. From live video to live updates to live collaboration, more and more experiences online are going on in real time.

How can we follow you and RWW as well as other leaders examining the real-time Web?

I’m at Marshallk.com, we’re at ReadWriteWeb.com, on Twitter I’m @marshallk and the whole ReadWriteWeb team is at http://twitter.com/rww/team

We’ve also assembled a list of real-time web industry thought leaders at http://twitter.com/rww/real-time-web

Review the Table of Contents and read the report introduction now, or buy the full report from ReadWriteWeb.

Technology for Change

What’s your favorite example of technology helping people create positive change in the world? I think there are too many to count, really.  For example, simply review the hundreds of ideas listed in NetSquared’s Project Gallery and you’ll quickly see that people from around the world are hard at work leveraging all kinds of technologies to create positive change for communities tackling many different issues.

One example that I’ve blogged about before is the annual project from EpicChange: Tweetsgiving.  During the US Thanksgiving holiday, Tweetsgiving asked people around the world to use Twitter to share something they were grateful for and include the link to the Tweetsgiving site (where people could donate to help build a library, classroom and more for the benefiting school in Tanzania).  This year, the Tweetsgiving campaign also asked people to gather in person, offline and have gratitude parties, where people could also donate in person to the project.  You can see the numbers (from tweets, to dollars, to videos and more) on the EpicChange blog here.

Enter the Contest

As part of HP’s Create Change initiative, they want to initiate a dialogue on how technology and individuals create social change – and to do that, they have partnered with bloggers like me that think we know a few folks with ideas on that subject! (Looking at all of you readers, hint hint!)

HP is giving away a new computer and printer bundle to the winner selected in the contest – and we all have the added bonus of learning about ways others have leveraged technology and finding case studies that can help us in our work.  I’m really looking forward to hearing about the projects you find inspiring!

To participate in the contest, follow these easy steps:

1. Answer the same question that I discussed above:

What’s your favorite example of technology helping people create positive change in the world?

2.  Provide your answer in the comments below (if you’d like to blog your answer on your own site, simply leave a comment here with a link to your site to be sure it’s included)

3. You have until February 28th to submit a response to the question

On March 1, I will select a winner at random (all commenters who answer the question will be put into a hat and I’ll draw one at random).  The winner will be announced here in an update at the bottom of the blog post that day.

So, get your submission in and be in the running for a new computer and printer!

(To find out more about HP’s Create Change initiative, visit their website or Facebook page.)

UPDATE: Winner Announced

As promised, I took all those who commented on this post and chose one at random. Actually, I wrote everyone’s name on a slip of paper, put them in a measuring cup, and my husband chose the winner at random. I even took a picture!

So, congratulations to Ryan Long!  You’ve won the contest for a new computer and printer bundle from HP, and will be connected to process your winnings.  Thanks again for sharing your favorite example of technology for social impact: LiveMocha.com, a website where people can learn and teach languages from around the world.

Thanks to all those who submitting comments with your favorite examples of technology for change! I’ve learned about more projects and seen some of my favorites mentioned. I hope you all find more organizations or tools to use, learn from or support, too!

My latest post is up on the Stanford Social Innovation Review opinion blog. You can read the post and join the conversation over there – it’s also copied below.

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It’s not a surprise to any of us that social media is changing the way our organizations work, not just communicate. The lessons in social media are especially important for organizations working with the public, whether it’s public service or opinion. The Hatcher Group, a Maryland-based public affairs and communications firm, released a great report this past Fall called New Media & Social Change: How Nonprofits are Using Web-based Technologies to Reach Their Goals (PDF). Despite the generic title, this is a report chock full of examples, best practices and data about the effects of joining the conversation online.

The 30 participating organizations in the report are members of the State Fiscal Analysis Initiative, a group of independent, nonprofits with a shared commitment to responsible budget and tax policies. As such, it’s easy to identify some of the goals these organizations have for using social media, including: engaging with and even influencing the general [voting] public, influencing news, engaging with and influencing politicians and legislation, and sharing data, information or viewpoints. Social media is a prominent social gathering place where these goals can definitely be met. Joining the conversation is incredibly important if these organizations expect to change policy and change minds.

Joining the conversation really means conversations.

It’s not just a phrase or some insider lingo, when I recommend organizations join the conversation, I mean just that! People are talking online and the best way to influence what they are saying or how they are thinking about issues is to talk with them. The survey found that blogging and blog outreach was the most popular social media choice.

• 83 percent currently reach out to bloggers and the remaining 17 percent plan to in the future
• more than 93 percent now monitor citations of their organization in the blogosphere

Many groups included in the report maintained blogs (either on their own site or elsewhere), but what the numbers above (and the effects listed below) indicate is that you don’t necessarily have to create your own blog to join the conversation. It’s already happening, so go there!

Being an active member of the conversation pays off.

• 88 per-cent of the organizations said they had been cited in blogs as a result of their outreach efforts
• 64 percent felt that they had successfully affected blog coverage of an issue.
• 16 percent of the organizations were subsequently invited to submit guest-posts

Real-time is just as important.

Over half of the organizations surveyed reported that they do not use Twitter and do not intend to, with only 24% reporting use of the tool. This is a huge missed opportunity to influence public opinion, participate in the conversation, attract attention from journalists and policy makers, and more. Twitter is part of the real-time Web, meaning it enables people to communicate, share information, spread news, and distribute links in “real-time” as it happens. As more and more people join the micro-blogging platform Twitter, it becomes an even more relevant tool for organizations working on impacting legislation and connecting with voters. It’s true that with blogs, there’s a bit more time for responses to be prepared (and even approved internally) before posting. But, that should not stop organizations joining Twitter and empowering staff to leverage organizational talking points, resources and research to better information the conversations there.

One organization had particular success using Twitter to facilitate its state policy work. As the legislative session in the group’s state was winding down, things began moving at such a rapid pace that daily newspaper updates were not sufficient to inform and pro- mote its advocacy efforts.The organization found that following Twitter updates posted by reporters and advocates from the state- house was the fastest and easiest way to track legislative develop- ments.The group’s representatives were also able to update their Twitter profile to provide rapid-response statements.These short and timely statements sent out on Twitter caught the attention of local reporters, who then contacted the organization to solicit quotes for stories.

What do you think?

How has your organization joined the conversation online? Are there any tools or techniques in particular that have helped you find or contribute to the conversations taking place across the web?

(Download the full report in PDF: New Media & Social Change: How Nonprofits are Using Web-based Technologies to Reach Their Goals)

Last year, NTEN created a scholarship fund program to help support many more people attend the Nonprofit Technology Conference.  Donations were matched by Convio and with over $10,000 raised by the community, we had fun at the largest-attended NTC yet!  There was even more value for the buck though: NTEN Executive Director put her pride on the line, saying that if the $10K mark was met, she’d perform Put a Ring on It…and boy, did she!

This year, the whole gang is getting roped in!  NTEN is hoping to raise $10,000 from the nonprofit technology community again this year, and Convio is going to match those dollars to help get as many folks to #10NTC in Atlanta this April 8-10.  And what’ll happen to the NTEN staff if we hit $10K?  They’ll be doing their own rendition of the Muppets Bohemian Rhapsody!

So, please join me in helping make the NTEN staff have some fun and support attendees who otherwise wouldn’t be able to make it to Atlanta.  There are lots of ways to get involved:

• Donate now!
• Share the widget or this post on your blog, website, facebook or elsewhere
• Tweet it! (Here’s a tweet you can use: Join me in hitting $10K for the #10NTC – the Muppets Bohemian Rhapsody may be involved http://nten.org/scholarships )

Here’s the widget!

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to connect with Colin Rhinesmith, Community Media Coordinator at Cambridge Community Television (Cambridge, MA, USA) and Adjunct Lecturer for the Media and Culture Program at Bentley University.  Colin told me that they recently held a very popular social media workshop for seniors at Cambridge Community Television (@cctvcambridge) but that it is a topic that would benefit from more coverage – so, I asked if I could interview him!  You can learn more about the workshop and the issues seniors face with social media in the interview below.

How did Cambridge Community Television get involved with social media and social media trainings?

At CCTV we strongly believe that providing the tools to create media enhances citizens’ ability to participate in civic life. Since 1988, CCTV has provided Cambridge residents with access to media production equipment, training, facilities, and cable television channels to accomplish this goal. In 1996, CCTV opened computerCENTRAL, a state-of-the art community technology center, to extend our mission by providing our community with access to computers and the Internet.

Social media is a perfect compliment to our public access television channels. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other online tools extend our community into virtual spaces where our members can make and share media. The physical location of CCTV, as community media and technology center, provides Cambridge residents with additional opportunities to build community through face-to-face interaction; something social media can’t replicate in quite the same way.

CCTV first got involved with social media in 2005 when we switched our website’s content management system over to Drupal. Since then, CCTV members have used our website to set-up accounts, start a blog, and share their community-based, non-commercial media with residents in Cambridge and beyond. As a result, we have grown a vibrant and diverse online community.

In late 2005, Steve Garfield and Ravi Jain taught our first videoblogging workshop, Blogosphere: Video Blogs 101. Here is a fun video from a class they taught here at CCTV the following year. The social media classes have been a great addition to our training program ever since. More recently, we have expanded our offerings to include specialized workshops for seniors, nonprofit organizations, city departments and agencies. The response has been overwhelming. The extraordinary interest in social media training has allowed us to use our mission to serve a new information need in our community.

How did the social media training for seniors program develop?

CCTV has offered computer and Internet access to seniors in Cambridge for many years. As an example, we offer special hours for seniors in computerCENTRAL every Monday from 10AM – 12PM. We are also located up the street from the Cambridge Senior Center. The social media training for seniors program began late last year through a partnership with the Agassiz Baldwin Community. Members of the organization asked us to provide a workshop for their seniors. We saw this as a great opportunity for us to expand our social media trainings to an underserved population of our community.

When it comes to seniors using social media, at least in your experience, what are their goals?

Seniors want to know what’s going on. They hear about Twitter and Facebook, but many seniors don’t know what these tools are and how they work. They know their families are using them, and they see social media as a chance to connect more with their friends and families. Seniors also see social media as a way to connect more to the world around them.

What are their struggles?

Many of the seniors I’ve worked with are not sure how to get started with social media. It’s important for seniors to trust and feel comfortable with the tools before using them. Many seniors also prefer to use social media with people they already know. Some seniors don’t understand why a person would use social media to connect to people they don’t know. Lack of experience using computers and the Internet is also another struggle for many seniors.

Have you found, or has Cambridge Community Television developed, any valuable resources targeted directly at seniors moving online?

We had a difficult time finding social media training materials that were relevant to seniors in our community. Through Twitter, we connected to David Wilcox of Social Reporter who recommended that we take a look at the UK-based Digital Unite to find social media training materials for the “Over 50s”. David’s recommendation turned out to be an incredibly useful resource (Thanks, David!).

DU’s Learning Zone offers guides with PDF downloads on a wide range of social media topics, including information about how seniors can share photos and video, get started with social networks and blogs and learn more about web tools and security.

As we continue to offer more social media trainings for seniors, we hope to contribute our own Creative Commons licensed materials that other community-based individuals and nonprofit organizations can use in their work. People who are interested in getting involved can join our Technology Resources for Nonprofits group on our website.

How can interested readers contribute to your work and that of others assisting seniors in moving online (and doing so in a way that meets their goals and recognizes their fears)?

CCTV is excited to join other community-based organizations that provide social media training to seniors. However, we are still looking for successful training program examples that other individuals and organizations have offered to seniors that we can use and learn from here in Cambridge. Creative Commons licensed training materials would be particularly beneficial.

How can people follow you and Cambridge Community Television?

Connect to CCTV on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. You can also follow us on Friendfeed.

If you are interested in supporting community voices in media, please consider connecting to CCTV in person or through our social media platforms listed above. If you live in Cambridge, please stop by our community media and technology center at 675 Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square to say hello and learn how you can make media for your community.

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I’m happy to share this interview with Colin on the blog and hope to hear from you about issues, case studies, or resources you’ve found in working with seniors in social media.

I come across so many great conversations, ideas, and resources all over the web every day. Here are some of the most interesting things I’ve found recently (as of February 3rd). You can join the conversations in the comments, or click through to the original posts to find what others are saying.

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).

• Net2 Think Tank: Online Fundraising Lessons Learned | NetSquared – "The Facebook application Causes recently announced it hit the $20 Million mark in donations. The America's Giving Challenge from Case Foundation spurred $2.1 Million in donations for charities this past winter. But, despite these numbers, for most organizations and causes raising money via social media is still a hard thing to do. There are different rules and new opportunities with online fundraising and every platform or application comes with a different community and varying functionality. So, what have you learned from trying your hand at online fundraising? This month's Net2 Think Tank asks you to share a lesson learned from online fundraising."
• Social Enterprise | GreenXchange: Crowdsourcing Social Innovation – Marcia Stepanek discusses the newly launched collaborative effort amongst diverse companies to create an open area for innovators and innovation. "Launched last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, GreenXchange (GX) is a new Web-based knowledge exchange that is being spearheaded by 10 companies and social enterprises, including Nike, Best Buy, and Creative Commons, the San Francisco nonprofit that works to expand the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. Its seven other backers include Yahoo!, IDEO, Mountain Equipment Co-op, salesforce.com, 2degrees, the Outdoor Industry Association, and nGenera, a corporate strategy think tank."
• 10 must-read Facebook resources for non-profits – Ross McCulloch – Ross has a great collection of resources about using Facebook, including Pages vs Groups, adding paypal, examples and case studies. Whether you are already using Facebook for your organization or not, this is a good place to go to learn more about how to use the social networking platform to it's fullest.
• Seth's Blog: Random rules for ideas worth spreading – Seth Godin shares a list of rules for those times you develop an idea worth spreading. My favorite rule: "Seek out apostles, not partners. People who benefit from spreading your idea, not people who need to own it." Have you found any of these to be true in your own idea sharing and development? Which are best/worst?
• 350.org: giving new meaning to “new organizing” | Working Wikily – This is a great case study about community organizing from the 350.org campaign. "A lightbulb went on in my head while I was listening to the PdF webinar last week that laid bare the machinery that made it possible for 350.org to achieve the most widespread day of political action in history back on October 24th. We’re still in the midst of examining the various threats that traditional “membership organizations” are facing and the story of 350’s success is one of the best illustrations I’ve seen yet of the new model. In the words of 350 organizer Phil Aroneanu, “It’s about concerned citizens who are looking for a meaningful way to engage. It doesn’t make sense to ask them to click once and that’s it. That’s not a believable theory of change. Building those [local] leaders is the secret to the way that we organize.”"

Earlier this week, an announcement on the Causes Application blog broke the news that over $20 Million has been donated since May 2007 via donors using the social networking application.

There’s been quite a lot of talk in the last year about the opportunities for fundraising online, generally, as well as the best practices for organizations leveraging social media for campaigns (as well as the idea to use free tools to raise money in hard economic times).  There’s also been a bit of controversy around the Causes application specifically, due to it’s decision to abandon the MySpace platform and offer it’s application/services only to the Facebook community. (You can read more about the MySpace/Facebook move here, here, and here.)

Here is the graph of donations on Causes since it launched in May 2007:

Some of the additional data provided from Causes in their announcement, includes:

• 400,000 people have made at least one donation
• $25 median donation amount
• 35,000 causes have received at least one donation
• $2.1 million raised by 2009 America’s Giving Challenge participants
• $4.5 million raised through the Birthday Wish feature

Despite the initial awe and excitement around a number like $20 Million, I want to take a moment to think about the other side of the data.  There certainly is more to the story and I hope you’ll share your perspectives as well.

Social networks are still for engagement, not money

Fact: Of the hundreds of thousands of organizations registered as possible beneficiaries in the Causes application (Washington Post data), only 20 organizations, including the Nature Conservancy, Doctors Without Borders and St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, have raised over $100,000 using Causes.

Context: Organizations can’t assume that applications like Causes or simply the use of social networking sites like Facebook will translate into new revenue streams supporting the organization.  Yes, of course, I would advocate that organizations who are eligible ensure that they can be listed as beneficiaries of causes on Facebook (visit the FAQ here) but doing so is an enough of an action to replace your other funding work.

Fact: Causes Birthday Wishes (make a donation campaign for a charity of your choice tied to your birthday) accounted for a third of all donations in the past 6 months.

Context: Birthday Wishes are campaigns started by enthusiastic supporters.  You may not know them, and you may have never heard of them.  But you need to get to know them fast!  Be sure that you are connecting with the passionate volunteers going out and raising money for you: thank them, support them, encourage them.  And be sure to share invitations for the fundraiser and those that donate to his or her campaign to join your organization outside of facebook (on your enewsletter, your action alerts, an offline event, or something else to keep them on your list).

Fact: 400,000 users have contributed to a cause at least once.

Context: That’s a lot of people. How many fans does your organization’s Fan Page have, or how many members are in your facebook Group?  Probably not 400,000.  How many of your fans or group members are in your database, though? The most difficult part to applications like Causes is that you don’t get the data.  With so many people donating to causes, maybe only once, it’s crucial for the benefiting organizations to reach out and encourage donors to connect with the organization directly – that way they may find out more about your work, help you and take action, or even donate again.

Skewing the numbers?

Lastly, I can’t find any data to shed light on my question but I would love to understand if the numbers Causes is touting reflect only the funds raised on facebook, since they stopped allowing the users on MySpace to access the service.  I think it would be unethical and obviously skewing their own data.  I’m incredibly frustrated at the lack of transparency from Causes, especially around this issue.

What do you think?

Would love to hear your experiences, any lessons learned or best practices, and ideas.

—–
Update:

Luise asked to see the comparison of growth of facebook users during the same growth period of Causes donations so I whipped up a simple chart:

A recent comment from Ichi (working on social media for good in Japan w/ SocialCompany.org) asked after the tools I was using on this blog to bring in comments via Twitter. He suggested I post about the plugins I use so others could check them out – and that’s just what I’m doing!

There are my three most-used Wordpress plugins:

Postalicious (Get this plugin)

Postalicious is a WordPress plugin that automatically posts your delicious, ma.gnolia, Google Reader, Reddit or Yahoo Pipes bookmarks to your blog. The exact details of how your bookmarks are posted are very customizable and are designed to meet your specific needs.

I use this plugin to create my Great Reads posts – it lets me find blog posts, stories, news and anything else online that I think is interesting to the readers of this blog and tag it with Delicious, adding my notes about the link in the field in the Delicious bookmark.  It checks for my saved items, and once I have five things it posts it for me!  I really love it

Twitoaster (Get this plugin)

Automatically retrieve Twitter Replies and/or Twitter Retweets to your Blog’s Posts. These Twitter mentions are handled like Posts Comments, using WP built-in comment system.

I like this tool because it brings in conversation from Twitter to the comment stream for the relating posts.  What I wish was improved was the tracking to pull in the full conversation, and not just retweets, etc.

Tweetmeme (Get this plugin)

The TweetMeme retweet button easily allows your blog to be retweeted. The button also provides a current count of how many times your story has been retweeted throughout twitter.

I like this plugin because it puts an easy-to use button at the top of posts for people to tweet out a link to the post if they want to share – it even pre-writes the tweet for you with the link!

What are your favorite add-ons, extensions, or plugins for blogs?

I come across so many great conversations, ideas, and resources all over the web every day. Here are some of the most interesting things I’ve found recently (as of January 29th). You can join the conversations in the comments, or click through to the original posts to find what others are saying.

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).

• JustGiving blog: Seven-year-old Charlie raises more than £100,000 for Haiti! – Read this great case study from JustGiving about Charlie's bike ride to raise money for Haiti relief support. "Charlie was really upset by the television footage of the Haiti disaster, so, in conversation with his mum, he came up with idea of cycling around South Park near his home in Fulham, London as many times as possible. As Charlie puts on his JG page, ‘at least 10 laps, I hope!’. Charlie set himself a fundraising target of £500 for UNICEF – not an insubstantial amount for a seven-year-old."
• Why We're In the Age of the Citizen Philanthropist – There's a great post up on Mashable with quotes from Britt Bravo (Have Fun Do Good), Kari Dunn Saratovsky (Case Foundation), and Peter Panepento (Chronicle of Philanthropy). "Our new communications technologies have empowered the individual, and caused a disruptive effect on the non-profit sector. Here are five examples of the citizen philanthropist’s immediate impact."
• Footnotes: Online Outreach on a Budget – January Nonprofit Blog Carnival – "This month we spent some time collecting posts about nonprofit communications on a budget. Below you'll find a combination of great resources that were submitted, and information I've found useful in my own research on online outreach. So bookmark this post and take the time to apply this knowledge to marketing and communications at your organization – it's cheap (or free) and has worked for others!"
• Online Branded Communities: Misguided and Missing the Point – Marketing News Blog – This is an excellent review of best practices and case studies for online community management. Even though the authors (Kathy Baughman and Steve Hershberger) are focused on for-profit brands, the lessons ring true across sectors. "If you ask brand managers the purpose of online communities, the reply you’ll most often hear is “customer engagement.” Among marketers, this term is more prevalent than Frisbees at a dog beach. But the real question is this: Are brands providing meaningful and engaging experiences to their customers through their online communities? Our research on 135 online communities representing 45 major brands indicates that, with few exceptions, the answer is no."
• Idealware Field Guide to Software for Nonprofits by Laura Quinn in Computers & Internet – "What types of software should your nonprofit be using? It’s hard to even know even what types exist, let alone what might work for you. Through a friendly, easy-reference format, this book helps you pinpoint the types of software that can help your organization based on your needs and your level of technology savvy, and provides user-friendly summaries to demystify all the possible options.

  The 84-page Field Guide includes an overview of 35 different types of software, helping you to understand what each is, how it fits in with your needs, how much you might expect to pay, and some of the most common vendors in the area."

I recently had the opportunity to connect with John Brennan, the driving force behind OpenAction.org, which empowers individuals and organizations by helping them tell the world about the positive impact their actions have. You can learn more about John and OpenAction in the interview below.

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John has spent time working for Microsoft, doing R&D for the defense industry and was part of a few past startups that didn’t quite reach “critical mass.” In June 2009, John decided to sell nearly everything he owned and set out for New York City (via San Diego). With over a decade of web development experience, John channeled his skills into building something with social value. John is currently working on OpenAction, a platform that connects people to the projects they care about. It’s a sustainable solution to help create and strengthen the emotional connection between organizations and donors. The team also hopes to incentivize organizations to share knowledge and give beneficiaries a direct voice.

Where did the idea for OpenAction begin?
That’s a funny story actually, but I suppose many entrepreneurs have similar stories. Last March I met Joe Solomon and the Social Actions team through twitter. I remember leaving for Vegas and making a promise to Joe that I would submit a mashup to the 2009 Change the Web Challenge. The mashup was a map showing where people were volunteering in near-real-time. It ended up winning the competition, $5,000 and lots of exposure.

I’ve always done side projects part time, but never had the courage or funds to go at it full time. The community showed me a need for what I built, so I used this momentum as an opportunity to take what I built to the next level.

I left my 9-5 in San Diego on June 4, set out on a month long road trip with my brother across the United States to New York. On July 5 the real fun began.

How was the project developed?
Some of the foundation was built in April 2009, but the majority of the product development started in August 2009. I spent the first few months asking questions and listening to what NGOs had to say about how they did their job and what could make it easier.

I’ve spent the past few years working with the semantic web, referred to as “web 3.0″, that focuses on open standards and linking data. Many of us are aware of open source software and open architecture, but open philanthropy doesn’t exist yet. Once NGOs standardize the way they publish project data on the web, “apps” can be built on top of this data. Much like Apple did with the iPhone.

I also knew it needed to be both top-down and bottom-up. The problem with developing a standard is that it is only as useful as those adopting it. So that’s where OpenAction comes into play. Essentially, we give organizations a simple tool to manage project information, like photos and videos. The real value to organizations is that they now have a dynamically updated map they can embed on their web site. Instead of paying a web developer to add new project data, they can do it using a few simple form fields. This might put my developer friends out of a job (laughs), but it’s all about becoming more efficient.

Our application also automatically generates RSS feeds for their supporters to stay engaged throughout the life of the project. It’s similar to how one subscribes to a blog. The project updates themselves can displayed in a timeline, so people can easily follow the project’s progress as it unfolds before their eyes.

What’s next for OpenAction?
Our organization helps people find and connect with projects they care about. It makes sense to let these people connect to others working in the same space. So we are starting to map social entrepreneurs with the hopes that they might be able to make more of an impact working together than apart. This is actually how my partner and I connected several months ago. We were both doing similar, but separate mapping initiatives. We decided we’d be stronger together — and we were right.

So if any of your readers work with social entrepreneurs, or are such, I would love to connect with them as well. After all, while we might see different paths to the same goal, the goal is usually the same: positive impact on the people and the planet.

What else are you working on?
Working on trying to find time to sleep.

Do you have any lessons learned or stories you can share with other social entrepreneurs?
This is probably my sixth startup, but first as a “social” entrepreneur. So for brevity I will keep to the last year, and maybe save the rest for a separate blog post one of these days.

I would say, don’t go at it alone. This is so important. You really need to have someone that is as involved in the idea as you are. Not only to give more proof that the idea has legs, but it gives you someone to bounce ideas off all the time. And unlike friends, this person will understand the problem space. Simply put, startups will inevitably have ups and downs, and having someone else in it with you is just good for morale.

Tapping into the (right) community is also an important lesson I learned this time around. In past startups I would use friends and family to measure early success. Sometimes they were the target audience, but that was often due to the lack of product focus. I love thinking about the famous stories of Davy Crockett here. Not the tales itself, but the method used. He claimed to have killed that infamous bear, and all the towns people believed it as if he went to each and every person to spread the word face-to-face. Having a conversation with every townsperson would be a nearly impossible feat. Davy Crockett was, however, an expert story teller and community builder. Instead, he spent his time talking to the heads of each village. The key here, I believe, is to empower your community and let them be your biggest advocates.

A third, and final lesson is often used by web developers, but can easily be applied to social entrepreneurs. It’s the KISS principle. “Keep it simple stupid” — enough said. Don’t over engineer or over think a problem, let the market and your audience dictate your next move.

How can people follow your work and OpenAction?
We are actually going to be on OpenAction ourselves, to sort of practice what we preach. Things have just been super chaotic as of late. I would say the best way is to follow me @worldlyjohn and my partner Mike @wanderingwenger.

To learn more and check out OpenAction for yourself, visit:
http://openaction.org

Nancy Schwartz, president of Nancy Schwartz & Company and blogger at Getting Attention, has just finished analyzing data from a nonprofit marketing survey of more than 900 nonprofit leaders, revealing that they are doing a poor job connecting with their audience and community.  Nancy explains:

“Nonprofit marketers say their key messages are failing to connect with the people who need to hear them and that is a serious problem.  The way nonprofits talk about themselves to the public is a core competency critical to any organization’s success. The bad news is that most nonprofits admittedly are doing a very poor job, despite a great deal of effort. The good news is that fixing the problem is highly do-able and promises vastly greater success than they are experiencing now.”

The survey results included:

Most Nonprofit Messages Don’t Connect Strongly with Key Audiences:
Eighty-four percent of 915 nonprofit leaders who completed the survey last month said their messages connect with their target audiences only somewhat or not at all. Respondents represented organizations of all size, issue focus and geographical location.

Behind the Disconnect—86% of Nonprofits Characterize Their Messages as Difficult to Remember:
Most nonprofits report that their messaging suffers from lack of inspiration (73%) and poor targeting to audience wants and needs (70%), and is difficult to remember (86%). Few communicators laud their messaging for its strengths: Only 13% of organizations characterize messaging as cogent while 8% describe their messaging as potent.

Here are some comments from survey participants explaining why their messages fail to connect:

• “Our messages need to be more succinct to communicate how effective we really are.”
• “We don’t move our base to action.”
• “We have individual elements that are OK solo, but no unified path.”
• “Our messages aren’t hard-hitting or targeted enough. So they fall flat.”
• “We need to shape messages that are simple enough for staff to remember and feel comfortable in repeating it to others.”
• “Too much jargon. I can’t even understand what we’re saying.”

Inconsistency Reigns, Leaving Confusion and Annoyance in Its Path:
Less than 50% of nonprofits report consistent use of their positioning (organizational tagline, positioning statement and talking points). That means that even though most organizations have taken the effort to craft messages, those messages aren’t used consistently across channels (website, direct mail, email), audiences or programs.

More information and complete survey results, plus specific recommendations on how nonprofits can start to immediately improve key messaging, are available at:

http://nancyschwartz.com/articles/index.php/messaging-crisis-for-nonprofits/

I come across so many great conversations, ideas, and resources all over the web every day. Here are some of the most interesting things I’ve found recently (as of January 25th). You can join the conversations in the comments, or click through to the original posts to find what others are saying.

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).

• TakingITGlobal and Nabuur Launch New Action Guide on Online Volunteering | NetSquared, an initiative of TechSoupGlobal.org – "TakingITGlobal (TIG), an organization that operates the world’s most popular online community for young leaders, and Nabuur, an online volunteering platform that links Neighbours (online volunteers) with Villages (local communities) in Africa, Asia and Latin America, announced today the release of a new Action Guide on Online Volunteering available for download on the TIG website." Check it out!
• Chase Community Giving Contest Ends With Yet More Controversy – Beth's Blog: How Nonprofit Organizations Can Use Social Media to Power Social Networks for Change – Beth Kanter has an excellent post chronicling and compiling many posts and resources, as well as commentary and criticism surrounding the Chase Community Giving contest that just finished. "This contest was the culmination of a two-part "vote for me" cause marketing strategy that started in November and has been rife with controversy. In some ways, it comes as no surprise that the race to the finish line ended with more allegations of dubious behavior by contest participants and those watching them compete. It's left some nonprofit professionals wondering whether these types of contests are a good idea." I strongly agree with Hildy Gottleib's comment at the end of the post and urge you to read both the post and the discussion in the comments.
• Online Fundraiser's Checklist – "FREE DOWNLOAD: The Online Fundraiser's Checklist. How Do You Ensure Fundraising Success This Year? Take advantage of Network for Good's handy new eGuide, The Online Fundraiser's Checklist, to ensure you don't miss a thing."
• 3 Powerful Social Good Trends in 2010 – Ben Rattray, the founder and CEO of Change.org, has a great piece on Mashable showcasing the three trends he sees coming in 2010 for the social change sector. "2009 saw a proliferation of online charity events, competitions, and “friendraisers” that spilled across Twitter (Twitter) and Facebook (Facebook) and filled email inboxes everywhere with more requests for money than any Nigerian prince could ever hope to make. And while it’s hard to argue that this is a bad thing — anytime someone gives money to feed the hungry instead of buying another digital potato seed in Farmville, global karma rises, if even just by a little — this focus on using the web as an ever-more elaborate means of getting people to fork over cash misses the much bigger opportunities just over the horizon."
• Try These Dynamic Digital Storytelling Platforms | Community Organizer 2.0 – "Nonprofit organizations can tell the best stories. Stories about the impact that a nonprofit has on people’s lives can engage, recruit and solidify donors and members. As ImpactMax writes so beautifully, tying individual stories to overall contextual problems and societal issues can really change policies. Anecdotely, I see a lot of blogs and Flickr photo streams, some YouTube and Vimeo use. Why limit yourself? There are so many other tools and platforms that are exciting, innovative, incredibly engaging, and beautiful. Here are my top digital storytelling platforms and tools for your nonprofit to try out in 2010."