Archive for the ‘Case Studies’ Category

Sep

2010

24

Category:

Case Studies, Engagement

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20 Comments

The Ladder of Love: Growing Facebook Fans

Ladder of Love on Facebook

I was lucky enough to spend my last afternoon in Alaska  driving to Talkeetna with Aliza Sherman who lives in Alaska who I’ve known since 1995 and with Cassandra Stalzer my host!    I love the framework she created for identifying and cultivating Super Fans on Facebook.   I like to call it the ladder of love!

The very first step is getting attention and getting people to “like” or join your Facebook page.    There are many creative ways to promote your Facebook page to promote your page to your target audience and get them join or like.    Here’s an example from the Food Bank of Monterey County, a Lucile and David Packard Grantee that I’m coaching this year.

They launched their page slowly and had about 100 fans.    Earlier this week,  TysonFood Hunger Relief blog offered to donate 100 pounds of food product for every “like” on their page.    They’ve increased their fan base by 4 times or over 400 now – and the odds are good that there will be a truckload of food delivered to the Food Bank on October 4th.    What’s nice about this approach is that it isn’t a contest and the only “winners” are the people who are served by the Food Bank.

Don’t forget about the importance of the Facebook feed.   Fans  won’t visit your page,but they may see your news in their news feed. Getting people to like or comment on your Facebook content improves the chances that more people will see it in their feed, an algorithm referred to as “EdgeRank.” TechCrunch goes into more detail about Facebook’s EdgeRank here.

The big mistake that many organizations make is that they stop at the “attention” phase of the ladder of love.   Getting people to click the “like” button and join your Facebook is only the first step in a deep engagement strategy.    You have to provide good content so people it will catch your fans attention and they will like your posts.   And, of course, you need content that inspires good conversation.   (Using spreadsheet aerobics will help you hone your content and engagement strategies on Facebook)

But to bring your fans higher up on the ladder of love – to loyality, leadership, and evangelism – takes consistent engagement and relationship building.

When I was in Alaska, I asked Mary D Barber what nonprofit did the best job of engaging its audience on Facebook consistently?  She pointed to the  Anchorage Concert Association. When I examined their page, I noticed they engage with audience before, during, and after shows.

What I found later after interviewing their Executive Director, Jason Hodges, is that before each show begins they make an announcement from the stage.  They ask patrons to pull out their smart phones, take a photo of the person sitting next to them, and post on their Facebook page.  Then they ask them to shut the smart phones off.

Once you have this level of consistent engagement, you will begin to see leadership and loyality and be ready to reach out to those emerging super fans who will become your evangelists and spread their love for your mission all over the social web.

How have you used the “ladder of love” to plot your Facebook or social media strategy?

Sep

2010

16

Category:

Case Studies, Experimentation

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9 Comments

Social Media: Who Will Do The Work?

Three Models

No matter where I’m speaking or teaching workshops, the same questions come up …

How much time does it take to do social media effectively?
Who in our organization is going to do the work?
How are ever going to find the time to do social media?

Social media does take time even if you are efficient.   While the specific hour count can vary depending on what depth of your social media strategy,  you need at the minimum couple of hours of week for a selective strategy.    There are three options:

  • Free:  Leverage volunteers, fans, or interns
  • Integrated:   Review and prioritized tasks in existing  job descriptions and make room for social media tasks
  • Staffed:   This can be quarter, half, or full-time

 Of course, these options are not mutually exclusive.    Here’s a great example of mixing the first two.

This year as part of my role as Visiting Scholar for Nonprofits and Social Media at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation I’ve been coaching grantees.  I’ve had the pleasure of working with ZER01, the producer of the 01SJ Biennial , a multi-disciplinary, multi-venue event of visual and performing arts, the moving image, public art, and interactive digital media.   The organization has a small administrative staff.  The staff person responsible for social media is Danielle Siembieda who  has other responsibilities beyond social media.   

Under the theme “Build Your Own World,” ZER01, in collaboration with dozens of partners, will present over the course of 4 days, from September 16-19, hundreds of artworks, performances, events, and artist talks, which not only imagine the future of the world) but begin to build it.   

Danielle’s challenge was how to creatively incorporate the use of social media to enhance the experience of the audience to select and participate in many different simultaneous arts events taking place.    Given the Silicon Valley location,  the audience would doubt have smart phones in hand and be likely to be posting on Facebook, Twitter, or checking into locations using Foursquare or the festival blog.

Danielle set up a “Social Media Builders” group of interns who are knowledgable about the art work and comfortable using social media.    During the three-day festival, they will be live tweeting events,  engaging with the audience on Twitter,  leaving tips on Foursquare, video blogging, photographing, and otherwise using social media to capture the event.

Each ”Social Media Builder” as a profile on the site.   Each profile has their social media presence information and what they will be covering.  The program book and other print materials will be distributed at the event to make people away of the builders.    They are encouraging audience to ask them questions and engage with them during the performances and events.    Danielle also did some training and prepared some “cheat sheets” for the volunteers to use.  

This is a small pilot to understand the work flow, time commitment and to identify the most effective to incorporate social media into the event that enhances audience enjoyment and understanding of the art.

If you are in the Silicon Valley in the next few days,  check out the event.

Jun

2010

09

Category:

Case Studies, Guest Post, Networks, Strategy

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8 Comments

How KaBOOM! Is Using a Networked Approach To Scale Social Change

Monitor Institute: KaBOOM! Case Study

View more documents from Noah Flower.

Note from Beth: Please join me on June 21st from 1-2 PM PST for the virtual launch of The Networked Nonprofit.  One of the key messages in the book is that nonprofits need to work less as isolated institutions and more as networks.  Over the past year, I’ve has the pleasure of working with the good folks from Monitor Institute this past year as part of  my work as Visiting Scholar at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to explore network effectiveness. I invited Heather McLeod Grant to write a reflection base the case study of KaBOOM! which you should read in full.

By Heather McLeod Grant, Monitor Institute (and co-author of Forces for Good)

At Monitor Institute we are interested in “emerging practices” in the social sector—including new more networked ways of working. Just last week we published a new case study of KaBOOM! called “Breaking New Ground: Using the Internet to Scale,” by myself and Katherine Fulton. (KaBOOM! is a national non-profit dedicated to saving play through engaging communities; creating dialogue; and providing tools, training and resources to build playgrounds across the United States.)

Instead of taking a traditional non-profit approach to scale, KaBOOM! has used the Internet to disseminate its model, empowering local communities to self-organize and build their own playgrounds using free resources on its website. While the idea of giving away a non-profit model itself isn’t new, KaBOOM! is one of the first non-profit organizations to take this approach online.

And the results have been impressive. Through a suite of online tools—including a social networking site, online training, do-it-yourself content, and a Google-map mashup—KaBOOM! has empowered more than 6,000 communities to build local playgrounds in the past few years (far more than the 1,700 it has built directly in 15 years). In so doing, it has had more impact for less cost. In 2009, a dollar spent by the organization on online tools helped to improve 10 times as many neighborhoods as a dollar spent on playground equipment.

With assistance from KaBOOM! and several social-media experts—including Beth Kanter—we identified seven key lessons for nonprofits that want to use the Internet to evangelize their program model and increase their offline impact:

1.    Keep it simple and concrete. The more you can simplify your program model and codify it, the easier it will be to help others replicate it in their own communities. Programs that are really complex, or which rely on tacit knowledge or specialized expertise, are harder to transfer to the online environment.

2.    Treat your online strategy as mission-critical. KaBOOM! quickly realized that its online strategy isn’t just another means of communication—it is now central to how the nonprofit delivers impact. In other words, KaBOOM!’s social media strategy is not the icing but the cake itself.

3.    Build your own technical competency. Because the online strategy is so critical, KaBOOM! recently moved its website development in-house; relying on external vendors increased costs and delays, and didn’t give the nonprofit enough opportunity to iterate and learn.

4.    Nurture your online community via its leaders. KaBOOM! is now doing more online “network weaving,” connecting leaders in various communities with one another, and with others in its network.

5.    Create incentives for action. In order to encourage more action, KaBOOM! is developing systems to recognize and reward those who are having the most impact both online and offline.

6.    Give up credit to increase your impact. Like many nonprofits working in more networked ways, KaBOOM! has learned that it must relinquish some control; in fact, it has had to take its brand off of some online tools, as this inhibited local adoption.

7.    Care more about real-world outcomes than online metrics. While KaBOOM! does track online metrics, its leaders actually care more about what happens in the real world as a consequence of someone visiting the website or using its tools.

This approach hasn’t been without challenges—in fact, KaBOOM!’s current offline business model hasn’t transferred to the online environment. But, it has proven to be an effective way for KaBOOM! to scale its impact dramatically in a relatively short period of time. We think that KaBOOM! has a lot to teach other nonprofits just starting down this path of integrating online and offline action .

For those interested in reading more about networked ways of working—including networked approaches to scale—check out the recent cover story of the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR), entitled “Working Wikily” by Diana Scearce, Gabriel Kasper, and myself. The SSIR article explores how social media tools are driving more connected ways of working (what we call “working wikily”), characterized by principles of greater openness, transparency, distributed effort and collective action. Research came out of our work over the past three years with the David and Lucile Packard Foundation (along with Beth) and other clients. We are also eagerly awaiting the release of Beth and Allison’s new book, The Networked Nonprofit. (Having had a sneak preview of the manuscript, I predict this is going to be the next BIG book in our sector. )

So: what other examples have you seen of innovative approaches to scaling social impact? How are other nonprofits using online platforms to disseminate real-world program models? What lessons are YOU learning?

Heather is a published author, speaker, and advisor to high-impact organizations; she recently joined the Monitor Institute as a senior consultant. She is the co-author of Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits, which was named a Top Ten Book of 2007 by the Economist.

Jun

2010

04

Category:

Case Studies, Fundraising, Networked Nonprofit

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38 Comments

How Many Free Agents Does It Take To Change A Nonprofit Fortress?

The Networked Nonprofit
View more presentations from Beth Kanter.

Allison Fine and I are honored to be delivering a conversational keynote at the Personal Democracy Forum today in New York City.   Our session is part of a series brief talks that look at the future in a networked age.   Our topic is rethinking nonprofits in a networked age.   It just so happens that Allison Fine and I wrote a book together over the past year,  The Networked Nonprofit, on that topic.

There has been an explosion in size of nonprofit sector over last twenty years, huge increases in donations and number of organizations, and yet needle hasn’t moved on any serious social issue.  Growing individual institutions ever larger has failed to address complex social problems that outpace the capacity of any individual org. or institution to solve them.

That is why we feel passionately that nonprofits need to become more like networks and leverage the power of social media and connectedness.     That was the inspiration for the book and the title, “The Networked Nonprofit.”

Making the shift from working as a single organization to one that works in a networked way both inside and outside of institutional walls is not a one-step process.  Many organizations cannot just flip a switch.  It isn’t as easy to change as changing a light blub.   In the book,  we offer a 12 step framework to guide nonprofits on how to embrace social media holistically.   In our research, we found that some nonprofits are born as naturally networked nonprofits and have it in their DNA.  While other nonprofits, institutions that have been working in a particular way for decades, have more challenges in making the change.  Some will probably never change.

We believe that Networked Nonprofits first have to be, before they can do.   The being includes:

  • Understanding social networks through social network analysis
  • Creating a social culture at your nonprofit
  • Listening, Engaging, and Valuing relationships
  • Becoming more transparent, less of a fortress
  • Simplicity, letting go, focusing on what you do best and network the rest

Once an organization has assumed this way of being, then comes the doing.  Networked Nonprofits are masters at:

  • Working with “Free Agent” fundraisers
  • Working effectively with crowds
  • Rapid experimentation and learning
  • Friending and funding
  • Networked Governance

The framing our discussion is the question,  “How Many Free Agents Does It Take To Change A Nonprofit Fortress?”  is not just a play on those light blub jokes.  We’d like to focus on the challenges that some nonprofits have working with free agents.   But first, let’s define the terms “Free Agents” and “Fortress.”

A free agents are powerful social change players.   A free agent, as we are defining it,  is a person (many times a GenY, but not always) who is a passionate about a social cause, but is working outside of a nonprofit organization to organize, mobilize, raise money, and engage with others.   Free agents are also fluent in social media and take advantage of the social media toolset to do everything organizations have always done, but outside of institutional walls.  Some times they go on to form their own nonprofits like Amanda Rose and Manny Hernandez.

Flickr Photo by Stuck in Customs

In the book, we talk about three different models for transparency and nonprofits.   The least transparent is one that we’ve dubbed the Fortresses.  These institutions work hard to keep their communities and constituents at a distance, pushing out messages and dictating strategy rather than listening or building relationships.  Fortress organizations are losing ground today because they spend an extraordinary amount of energy fearing what might happen if they open themselves up to the world. These organizations are floundering in this set-me-free world powered by social media and free agents.

Flickr Photo by Big Tall Guy

We’ve been witnessing Free Agents crash into nonprofit  Fortresses – not even getting past the gate.  We think this is a lost opportunity.

It happened in April at our NTEN/NTC session on the Networked Nonprofit right before our eyes in a room filled with people from nonprofits and Shawn, a passionate free agent fundraiser and video blogger.   (You might know Shawn from his  “Uncultured” project – I first encountered him in 2008 through Blog Action Day.)

Shawn’s frustration with traditional organizations spilled over.  He grabbed the microphone to address the room full of nonprofit professionals and said, “the problem isn’t social media, the problem is that YOU are the fortress. Social media is not my problem: I have over a quarter million followers on Twitter, 10,800 subscribers on YouTube, and 2.1 million views. Yet, despite that, I have a hard time having you guys take me seriously.”

He turned and pointed a finger at Wendy Harman from the Red Cross who was  also in the room and said, “When the Haiti earthquake struck, I contacted the Red Cross. I offered to connect the community supporting my work with your efforts in Haiti. But I was dismissed as ‘just a guy on YouTube.” A few hours later he wrote a blog post titled “You Are The Fortress!” to further vent.

Crash, Bam, Glass Smashing ….. but the story didn’t end here.   Something amazing happened.    Wendy Harman engaged with Shawn in the comments of his post and later by phone or email.  Shawn wrote a second blog about his meeting with Red Cross and applauded them for taking the step to explore ways to work together.  The title of this post is “Unfortress”

Source: Nicci Noble

This morning Shawn shared some more thoughts about how to engage free agents from his perspective.  So, I leave you with the questions we are posing to the audience at the PDF conference:

  • What is your experience turning Fortresses inside/out?  What works?
  • Should we try to change free agents or just let them be?

Answer these questions in the form of a light bulb joke in comment (include your email address)  and you’ll be entered into a raffle for a copy of the Networked Nonprofit.

Update:  Here’s the video and a blog post from Becky Wiegand over at TechSoup Blog.

May

2010

24

Category:

Case Studies, Crowdsourcing, Philanthropy

Tags:

9 Comments

Minnesota Open Idea: Crowdsourcing Contest For Social Change Done Right

The Minnesota Open Idea is an example of an online social good contest that works.  It combines expert judging with popular vote, online strategy with good old fashion off line organizing, links objectives to a theory of change, and incorporates a fun and engaging way for people to learn about and take action on a timely community problem.   In this interview,  Jennifer Ford Reedy,  VP for Strategy and Knowledge Management,  at the Minnesota Community Foundation shares the how they designed this online social good contest for success.

Last November, you may have read about how the Minnesota Community Foundation‘s GiveMN’s Minnesota Give to the Max Day raised $14 Million online in 24 hours.   Last week, the community foundation finished its  first Minnesota Open Idea contest  to fund the best idea to address the childhood obesity issue.  The winner was Christine Tubbs, whose idea “Kids Lead the Way” is described in the above video.

They partnered with Ashoka Changemakers to develop a state-of-the art idea challenge web site,  how they married an online social good contest with civic engagement.  They had hundreds of people exercising on the field at a Twins Baseball game and the contest finalists throwing out the first pitch.   The finalists also appeared on the state’s premier public affairs show in an “American Idol” style session to showcase their ideas.

1.)  Why did you pick the childhood obesity issue for the challenge?

Obesity is not our issue as a foundation but our group of operating partners landed on obesity because we thought it was such a good fit with our criteria.  There is a long list but basically: everyone can understand it, everyone could do something about it, it is newsworthy so we can get media partners interested, it is really important for the state.  In the future, challenge topics will be crowd-sourced from the public.

2.) How does your innovation challenge connect with your theory of change?

Our intent is that building this high-tech “civic infrastructure” will improve the functioning of our entire sector.  For MN Idea Open, it is infrastructure to support community problem solving and our hope is that providing an easy to use platform will increase the frequency with which decision makers in Minnesota engage large #s of citizens on issues and, in turn, increase civic engagement and improve the quality of decisions.

Our TOC is (1) that making issue education fun can dramatically increase public engagement on a topic and (2) that framing issues in terms of what people can do about it will make more people internalize that “the problem is us” and encourage them to take action rather than just admiring the problem.

3.) What was your judging process?  You didn’t use the “Vote for Me” approach.

We talked to many others who have sponsored contests in Minnesota and around the country to develop our judging structure.  We wanted expert screening so that we and other partners could feel good that the popularity contest was confined to strong ideas.   We only allowed 1 vote per e-mail address.   We were not trying to create a frenzy around voting for the sake of #s, our goal was  to get as many people as possible to consider the issue and the ideas.

We had 15 community evaluators who reviewed all 400 proposals as they were coming in and scored them on three criteria: Innovation, Impact, and Sustainability. The platform has a judging interface so they could do it all on-line.  Then the group came together and debated the highest-scored proposals and whittled the pool down to 21 ideas. Those 21 ideas were sent to our 7 judges to read, score on each of the same criteria, and rank.  They then came together and debated and picked the three finalists.  The judges represent an amazingly diverse set of perspectives.

The whole process was managed by the Citizens League, which is a local organization that does citizen-driven policy development work.

4.)  Can you share some of the outreach strategies?

We worked with Grassroots Solutions who helped with a grassroots organizing strategy.  They built an inner circle of orgs that we called “the strategy cabinet” to be the heart of the outreach effort.  Strategy cabinet partners got a lot of attention from Grassroots Solutions to help craft strategies to reach all their stakeholders.

They also recruited scores and scores of organizations to be “allies.”  We sent these folks materials to use to engage stakeholders but didn’t give a lot of hand holding.  It was pretty much good, old-fashioned organizing.  GS had interns talking to folks at every single library in the state and following up the conversation with an outreach packet of posters, palm cards, video, etc.  We had tables at nonprofits conferences and at some of the strategy cabinet sites.  We also did all we could through social media and traditional media outreach.  We were able to get substantive interviews with us and issue experts on every major tv and radio station.

5)  If you were do this all over again, anything different?

We WILL do this all over again we’re using what we learn to improve the contest.  Future contests will be easier because we will build on the base of partners/participants we have.  One thing we will definitely do differently is source challenge topics from the public.   We need to have more partners around the state.  I want to have about 100 core organizations that can act as our ambassadors and they start planning their own programming around the Idea Open dates/topics.

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