Heroes with A Heart Grant Recognizes Unsung Nonprofit Heros – Guest Post by John Haydon
If you’re like most people, you get most of your inspiration from people who are quietly changing the world each and every day. They’re not on the front page of the newspaper, and they’re not mingling with the Gates and Buffets of the world. They’re everyday people like you and me who have shown extraordinary commitment to making this world better than when they found it.
The CTK Foundation “Heroes with a Heart” Grant Award asks YOU to nominate a “Hero with a Heart,” and give them a chance to win $5,000 – a simple thanks for the hard work that they do.
What are the details of the “Heroes with a Heart” Grant?
Here’s an overview of awards the CTK Foundation will offer and details on how you can nominate your Hero:
$15,000 for Three Heroes One Hero with a Heart from each of the three categories of Health and Human Social Service, Animal Rights and Environmental Protection and Arts and Literacy will be awarded $5,000 USD and a professionally produced video about their affiliated nonprofit for use in public awareness or education.
$1,500 for One Hero The CTK Foundation will also be offering a $1,500 (USD) President’s Choice Award (the Susan Lee Winter Grant Award) for an individual working to provide creative and innovative approaches to HIV/AIDS education or prevention.
Blogger’s Choice Award Lastly, there will be a Blogger’s Choice Award of $1,000 (USD). The CTK Foundation will choose a blogger (hopefully Beth) who will hand-pick one winner from any category.
Applications for all Heroes with a Heart grant awards open on Wednesday, February 1st, 2012 and close Wednesday, February 29th, 2012 at midnight.
Finalists will appear on the CTK Facebook page for public voting during April and winners will be announced on May 1, 2012. This award is open to registered nonprofits or charities of all types and sizes, worldwide.
On Tuesday, the Susan G. Komen Foundation, a leading breast cancer charity, pulled hundreds of thousands of dollars in breast cancer screening funds from Planned Parenthood. Each year millions of women are screened for breast cancer at Planned Parenthood, and Susan G. Komen’s funding pays for about 170,000 of those screenings. These services are particularly important for women from under-served communities.
The AP reported that Komen for the Cure has decided to halt grants to Planned Parenthood and the decision was politically motivated. Within hours, Planned Parenthood sent a fundraising email out to its network, asking supporters to replace the money that Komen had pulled for breast cancer screenings for low-income women. As the news traveled from email boxes to social networks to mainstream media, activists, men, and women expressed their outrage.
My Networked Nonprofit co-author, Allison Fine, started a fundraising campaign on Causes this morning called “Komen Can Kiss My Mammagram” quickly raising several thousand dollars. I observed conversations happening in threads on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks – people urging their friends to donate or take action. I started receiving emails from organizations like Momsrising urging us to email the Komen organization and ask them to restore this much needed support of women’s health.
My colleague, Kivi Leroux-Miller, wrote an astute case study documenting the social media response and provided an analysis about why it happened. As Kivi says, “This is what happens when a leading nonprofit jumps into a highly controversial area of public debate without a communications strategy, stays silent, and therefore lets others take over the public dialogue, perhaps permanently redefining the organization and its brand. Watch and learn, so you don’t make the same mistake on whatever hot button issues your organization might be wading into.” Read her analysis.
Let me go a little meta here. Last week Kivi wrote about “newsjacking” the technique of piggy backing on a crisis to get more media attention. And it worked! Kivi got a call from a newspaper in Dallas writing about the nonprofit marketing angle. She also got quoted on an influential blog.
I asked Kivi to share her process:
I was on the Washington Post site reading something else when I saw the AP story. Literally five minutes later (around 4 pm ET), I got the fundraising appeal email from Planned Parenthood (nicely customized with my name and state, I might add). I immediately forwarded it to Nancy Schwartz, because she had blogged about Komen’s Kentucky Fried Chicken partnership and I knew she’d want to follow up. Again, literally minutes later, I started to see mentions on Facebook and Twitter.
Nancy and I tossed around the idea of doing some kind of joint post about the story, her on the branding, me probably on how Planned Parenthood grabbed the moment, to publish on Thursday since Nancy was busy all day Wednesday. But then the story just exploded on Twitter and Facebook in the early evening, and I kept waiting to see what Komen would say. And I waited, and waited, and waited.
Absolutely nothing.
The fact that they had this totally inane tweet about prostate cancer in a mummy as their most recent tweet when they were getting eaten alive on Twitter just made me crazy. Same thing on Facebook — their most recent post was about a partnership with Energizer and people were just going wild on Energizer, because they just happened to be the most recent update on Komen’s page. I probably checked Komen’s Twitter and Facebook pages 20 times Tuesday night, pleading with them in my head to say something to their supporters. All the while, I was taking screen captures, which I’ve made a habit, because it’s so much easier to just grab it as you see it, rather than trying to find it later.
Whenever I get obsessed on a nonprofit story like this, where I find myself spending an hour, or two, or more focused on it, I know I have to blog it right away. If I’m that taken by a story, I know my readers will be too, and if I’m going to put that much time into something, I have to turn it into content I can use — I’m trying to blog five days a week after all, and it’s not always easy! Before I went to bed, I’d decided to post on Wednesday and to focus on Komen’s non-reaction and how I really believed they had completely changed their positioning within field, I assumed without really meaning to do so. I’d posted on both my personal and Nonprofit Marketing Guide Facebook pages that I was probably going to write about it the next day.
Got up Wednesday morning, saw that Komen still hadn’t said anything, and started writing. Building out a blow-by-blow post like that, then adding your own commentary, takes some time, especially when dealing with a controversial topic like abortion. My own personal feelings aside, I really wanted to focus on the nonprofit marketing angle, because that’s why people read my blog. I probably spent a solid two hours on the post this morning, not counting all the research the night before.
I really didn’t think about the newsjacking potential of the post until I got into writing the commentary, and decided to really call out Komen for the lack of responsiveness to their supporters. I knew it would be a good lesson for my blog readers, but then mid-morning, Komen posted on Facebook (but still not on Twitter), and I found the response to be really lacking given the outrage.
I published around 11:30 a.m. ET, and at that point, I figured my post would probably get covered by the nonprofit trade press, like the Chronicle of Philanthropy (which it did). I really didn’t appreciate that the story had gone beyond the nonprofit news world until my phone rang around 1:30 pm and it was Kate Nocera from Politico.com. That’s when I thought, “Damn, I just newsjacked this story!” She had been searching for reaction to the Komen story and came upon my post. I was so irritated with Komen at that point that I was pretty critical in the interview.
I usually publish my weekly e-newsletter on Tuesday or Wednesday and hadn’t gotten to it Tuesday, so it only made sense to include the Komen story in the e-newsletter too. I had planned for that edition to be a longer article on using photography, but I cut that back and led with Komen. Traffic to my site was so heavy this afternoon that the site started crashing every 15 minutes, so I had to call my hosting company and upgrade (I was already on a decent virtual private server, but had to double the capacity.)
This isn’t the first time that Komen has endured a social media backlash. It’s ill fated “Buckets for the Cure” backfired.
As I reading the comments on Allison’s campaign wall over at Causes, my friend Stephanie Rudat has posted some of the visuals. This made think of Pinterest. Given that Pinterest’s demographics are mostly women, I wondered whether it might be worth experimenting with some “Pinactivism.” I set up a board named after Allison’s Campaign, “Komen Kan Kiss My Mammagram” and invited other women who work in social media and activism to add to the board. All the visuals are linked to Allison’s campaign. The board got over 500 followers in less than half hour. Whether they donate or not is another story.
The point is that social networking platforms provide a canvas for people to find each other, self organize actions in something they believe, and do it. A lot more nimbly than the most likely fortress like communications machine at Komen. In the book I just finished with KD Paine, we talk about the importance and a method of measuring relationships. This public relations disaster also shines a light on the importance of measurement of relationships and the ability to respond in real time.
Does Google + have the potential to be a valuable platform for nonprofits or is it just another shiny object to distract nonprofits? Should your nonprofit do more than simply set up a presence on Google + and not invest any more time? What is a productive way to experiment and learn to the answers to these questions without wasting time? These were the questions that were going through my mind as I listened to a presentation on Google + Alex Abelin at the Social Media for Nonprofits Conference as he explained some of the benefits. This post will help you create a plan for getting started with a low risk experiment.
Before jumping in, hit the pause button. What are your communications objectives and the audience you want to target? Do you have a couple hours a week to devote to a learning experiment to get comfortable with the platform, the work flow, and learn something about what what content and engagement works on Google +? Are there other ways you should be investing your time? If you don’t have the time or good answers to these questions, simply set up a presence for now and come back to it when the timing makes sense.
But if you Google + seems like the right next step in your integrated social media strategy, here’s how to get started.
Become Familiar with the Google + Landscape
If you’re new to Google +, here’s the official set up help pages and instructions from Google + . Set aside some “play and explore” time to observe, read, and interact with your colleagues and peers who are on Google +. One of your first tasks will be to find interesting and valuable people and brands to “circle” and follow to support your goal to become familiar with the Google + landscape.
If you set up you presence when Google + first launched, but you didn’t organize it to learn, now’s your opportunity for a fresh start.
My first step with a new platform is to create a “Circle of the Wise” consisting of people who regularly share useful tips and news about the platform. I look for people in the nonprofit space, but also those who work for the platform or have specialized in blogging about the platform. Or people whose Google + is focused on Google + tips, news, and resources. Ask around if you don’t know who they are. I start with a handful and expand from there. Also, my circle of the wise is constantly changing, but here’s a few for you to get started.
Debra Askanase Blogger and trainer who share useful tips about Google + (and other platforms too!)
Janet Fouts: Blogger and social media coach who is consistently blogging some excellent posts about how nonprofits can leverage google +.
John Haydon: Blogger and Facebook Guy also shares tips on Google + along with tips about other platforms
Louis Gray He’s on the Google + team and shares items about new features, analytics, and other stuff.
Toby Stein: Google + mobile and pages Community Manager
Natalie Villa-Lobos Community Manager for Google + she shares information about Google +, but also more broadly resources about building online community that are applicable to Google + strategy
Google for Nonprofits They are sharing information about hangouts about Google products, how-to resources, and important feature changes.
Nonprofits Organizations This is Heather Mansfied’s Google + brand page. You can cruise through her public circles of nonprofit brands and check the nonprofit of the week on Google +
If I’m just getting started on a platform, my circle of the wise is a tightly curated list so I don’t get overwhelmed or distracted. Not everyone in the circle is tightly focused on Google +, but I know I can find good information there. But, if you want more suggestions, see 22 Must Circle Nonprofit Bloggers and Nonprofits on Google + that Heather Mansfield aggregated. It is a diverse list of different nonprofits and people that have a presence and share information information on Google + that might be of interest to nonprofits.
Next, I put together a circle of nonprofit brands that I could observe and learn from. I have two nonprofit brand circles. One where I’m simply aggregating nonprofit brands I discover on Google + that has over 700 nonprofit brands and more tightly curated list of nonprofit brands that are sharing content or engaging with their audiences in interesting ways. That second circle is a “watch list” and I look for patterns and ideas.
What I learned is that most are defining success by the number of people who have circled them and are testing to see what content resonates with their audiences. Once they’ve mastered the work flow, the time investment is 1-2 hours per week.
Set Up A Learning Experiment
After you have explored as an individual, you may decide that you only need to set up a presence and be done with it. You are now ready to set up your Brand account. Heather Mansfield has a good set of instructions for doing this AND avoiding some common set up mistakes.
If you want to stick a toe a little deeper into the water, the next step is create a simple plan to test the waters for your brand. You are testing to see what works and what doesn’t. Most importantly, determine a focused, but brief amount of time daily that you can spend on learning about Google +. When in the phase of learning a new social media platform, you’ll need to block creative immersion time (a few hours) for set up and learning the daily work flow.
If you already have established an editorial calendar, spend some time thinking through how your Google + can align with your editorial focus, but be differentiated from other channels. (And, not take you a lot of extra time). For example, what if your nonprofit is launching a new program and you’re holding a press conference. Why not hold a google hangout to share that news as well? Google + recently added a feature of doing video status updates, why not a regular video status update thanking a supporter? Or maybe your audience will respond to a content curation strategy – that you share and annotate the best links on your topic.
You can mix it up with specific content for Google + and content cross-posted from your other channels. Mari Smith shared an excellent list of tools and suggestions to make this efficient.
Once you’ve internalized the work flow (creating and posting content, reviewing Ripples (the Google + metrics tool), and listening and engaging with your audience), you can most likely get the daily time commitment to a few hours per week.
You will waste your time if you don’t pick out the important metrics that allow you to learn whether what you’re doing is working. I think the most important piece is to figure out what the right mix of content and engagement is – and if that can lead to traffic or conversions.
Google + has an analytics tool that is very basic, called Ripples. It offers a quasi social network analysis to see how your posts are shared: when, by whom, and to whom.
An analysis of Googe + posts against these metrics can help you make some decisions to improve your content, engagement tactics, and identify your influencers. Debra Askansae wrote this informative piece about what it does and how to get started using it. Frank Barry shared this piece from Dan Soto that digs deeper into the metrics, but before careful not to collect data you don’t need.
Is your nonprofit on Google +? What’s your definition of success? What have you learned? Have you decided not to invest time? Why?
Infusing Social Into Social Justice Organizations – Guest Post by Daniel Jae-Won Lee, Executive Director of the Levi Strauss Foundation
Time Magazine provocatively named “The Protester” as its 2011 “Person of the Year” for its riveting influence on last year’s social and political events. As courageous citizens connected with each other to express dissent and organize public actions, social media tools spurred activism and social change in unprecedented ways.
Chalk up my vote for 2011’s “Best Debut Artist” and “Best Supporting Actor.”
But for legal and advocacy organizations that defend civil liberties in the United States, forays into the social marketplace come with a unique set of challenges – and, no doubt, risks:
In the decentralized (indeed, some might say cacophonous) field of social media, engaging in two-way conversations means surrendering “message control” and the traditional calculus of “message discipline.”
In this sound bite culture, social justice organizations must carve out nuanced positions on complex social issues, from racial and gender equity to immigration reform. What this often means is that their messages might not garner the media attention or viral traction they deserve.
While emotive storytelling is crux to engaging the hearts and minds of social media consumers, advocates are ethically bound to preserve the privacy of vulnerable clients.
Finally, substantiating impact and success to risk-averse board members may be vexing.
The Levi Strauss Foundation launched the “Pioneers in Justice” initiative to tackle the “social media for social change” zeitgeist head-on. Through this initiative, we are supporting a group of dynamic, next-generation leaders in the social justice field in the San Francisco Bay Area as they retool their organizations for greater impact. The Bay Area, after all, is renowned as a cradle of innovation – both for technology and social movements.
“Pioneers in Justice” operates as a forum to explore social media tools that may power their local advocacy work and explore “networked” ways of collaboration within the social justice sector – and equally important, a space to address any concerns that may surface along the way. The Pioneers’ approach is flexible yet focused:
We encourage these organizations to take sensible, measured steps to integrate social media into their organizational and social change trajectories. As Beth Kanter invokes: Crawl, Walk, Run and Fly.
We also aim to help them measure incremental progress against their goals of engaging younger and more diverse constituencies, driving successful campaigns, and building a moral and political consensus around their change agendas.
MiACLU is a one-of-a-kind project born from this framework.
MiACLU.org is an online, Spanish-language platform created by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, an organization well-known for its spirited defense of civil liberties (advocating free speech, marriage equality and immigrants’ rights, among other issues). As rapid demographic shifts powerfully reshape the cultural and political landscape of California, they also give rise to anxieties that may render immigrants vulnerable. Latinos, who comprise the bulk of California’s immigrant population, tend to be younger and less affluent than the state population as a whole.
Against this backdrop, the ACLU-NC is seeking a crucial opportunity to grow its impact. This year, MiACLU seeks to engage 10,000 monolingual and bilingual Spanish-speaking Californians. MiACLU is a new entry point – amplified by ethnic media and personalized through community outreach—to engage this population on the key issues that affect them.
MiACLU isn’t just a cookie-cutter to an English website—it’s an independent portal for original content in Spanish, with its unique set of tools. Facebook, Twitter and text messaging are also in the pipeline. It’s the first web-based space to promote the understanding and protection of constitutional rights among Spanish speakers by the ACLU affiliates in California. Check out this manual with vital nuggets of information about knowing your rights in the wake of natural disasters, or this article explaining how immigrants who are victims of crime may apply for a U.S. visa.
In time, it may become a platform for immigrant communities to help ACLU-NC drive momentous legal and policy victories. For example, ACLU-NC is working to keep local police and sheriffs out of immigration enforcement; Latinos account for 40% of all Californians and many experience racial profiling that is exacerbated when local law enforcement gets pulled into immigration enforcement.So, that’s the spirit of “Pioneers in Justice”: taking leaps of faith (big and small) with social media to drive engagement and action among new and unexpected audiences.
Can justice roll down like waters, propelled by viral?
Daniel Jae-Won Lee is the Executive Director of the Levi Strauss Foundation, an independent private foundation that conveys the pioneering spirit and enduring values of Levi Strauss & Co.: originality, empathy, integrity and courage. He leads the Foundation’s international grant making in four areas: confronting HIV/AIDS stigma and discrimination, advancing worker rights in the apparel industry, helping low-income people save and invest in their futures, and advancing social justice.
Here are my slides and curated resources materials for a talk called “What Can Nonprofits Learn from Robin Good, the Best Content Curator on the Planet?” that I will be presenting at the Social Media for Nonprofits. This area, content curation, is a social media competency that I’m focusing in my own learning and teaching. One of the best ways to learn is the study, observe, or interview the experts. That’s why I invited Robin Good to skype into my session.
Last week, in preparation for this talk, I had a skype call with Robin Good, one of the best content curators on the planet. He will join me via skype from Italy for an interview and discussion. I recorded the above skype interview as a technology back up – it is filled with great advice and worth listening to for 14 minutes. (If you’re short on time, I have a transcript linked to resources here)
The session will begin with a simple primer about content curation, the benefits, and a few examples of nonprofit content curators and their tools. Then, if all works well, I will bring in Robin for a discussion. If not, we’ll roll the video. Either way, you’ll learn a lot!
What is Content Curation?
Content curation is the organizing, filtering and making sense of information on the web and sharing the very best content with your network. If you think about what a museum curator does, it is very similar. The museum curator does research, is an expert in the artistic style, selects the best examples, puts them together in an exhibit, provides important context with the annotation on the labels, and so on. Not too long ago content curators used to be called journalists!
I like the metaphor of a sommelier, They know the grapes, the winemaker and their techniques, and vintages. They taste many wines to find the best of the best to match with the food in the restaurant. They can answer questions about the wine to help diners navigate a wine list to make the best choice. The content curator does this as well, although with information.
One reason content curation is becoming more and more appreciated because of the huge amount of information available on the web. There’s some much of it that it is now measured in exabytes which is equal to a quintillion bytes. The creation and sharing of content on social media and social networks is contributing to this information overload. The average user on Facebook shares/creates 90 pieces of content a month. With over 800 million global users on Facebook, if you do the math – that’s a lot of information!
We can’t blame it all on the amount of information. The problem is our information consumption — we’re indulging too much at the buffet called the web. We need to go on an information diet. And guest what? Mindful consumption of information is at the heart of content curation practice.
Benefits for Nonprofits
There are benefits for both nonprofit organizations and the people who work for them.
Improve staff expertise: It used to be that we could be trained to do our work and we wouldn’t need to update and synthesize new information on a daily basis. That’s less true. One 21 century work place literacy is sense-making of information together and alone.
Improve Thought Leadership: If your organization is curating content on a particular topic, it can help with branding your organization as thought leaders in the space.
Content curation forms the base of your content strategy pyramid. It’s about curation, creativity, and coordination across channels. Your content strategy is essential to the success of an integrated social media strategy.
Robin suggests that you need two sets of tools: discovery and curation tools. The discovery tools help you discover the best stuff through the use of RSS feeds and persistent search. (You also have to know your sources!). The second set, curation tools, help you organize and present your collection. Robin has tested hundreds of tools – from free to enterprise level. He kindly put together two mind maps with links to tools that are free and easy to get started with. You”ll find them linked here.
The Practice
I will ask Robin some questions about his practice as an expert content curation to see what we can learn. Here’s two resources I put together. One is a collection of selected articles, slide decks, and interviews with Robin Good. The other is a collection of content curation for nonprofit resources that I have to used to develop workshops and trainings.
Is your nonprofit doing content curation? Let me know in the comments.
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