Archive for the ‘Guest Post’ Category

Feb

2012

03

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Guest Post

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Heroes with A Heart Grant Recognizes Unsung Nonprofit Heroes

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.

Go to www.communitytech.net/foundation to nominate your Hero with a Heart today!

For regular updates on the Heroes with a Heart Grant, check out the CTK Facebook Page.

Good luck, Heroes!

John Haydon blogs about social media tips and tools here and is the co-author of Facebook for Dummies.   This post was originally published here.

 

Jan

2012

31

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Guest Post

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Guest Post: Infusing “Social” into Social Justice Organizations

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.

 

Jan

2012

13

Category:

Crowdsourcing, Guest Post

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Are Crowd Funding Platforms the New Patrons of Independent Media?

Wisconsin Rising trailer and Kickstarter Campaign from samayfield on Vimeo.

Note from Beth: Over five years ago, I connected with Sam Mayfield, an independent media maker,  through my blog.  In 2008,  she asked for advice about raising money to go to Africa to help support the first community access television station opening in Ghana.   At that time she made and raised $2,000 using Chipin, using the case study I had documented where I raised money to send a young Cambodian women to college.  This was the very beginning of what we’re calling crowd funding or social fundraising.      Will a networked approach to making and funding documentaries, particularly those that are about social change issues become the norm in our connected world?    Vince Stehle thinks so as he explained in this guest post about Gasland.   And, this month, Sam is raising money to support a new documentary called Wisconsin Rising on the kickstarter platform.   I invited her to share her experience in crowd funding.

A Guest Post by Sam Mayfield

When I think of story telling, I think of books. The Little Golden books from my childhood, non-fiction books that revolutionized my perspective of the world and novels that I rarely take the luxury of reading. The art of storytelling though, and documenting an event or a slice of time is, of course, not restricted to bound pages. Stories surround us on the radio, in newspapers, in our music boxes, in short web videos and on large screens in movie theatres. I am a documentary filmmaker and video journalist, and I think of my work as a form of story telling and documenting.  Some of the tools needed to do this work are obvious: a camera, microphone, headphones, tripod, laptop, and maybe a light. As an independent producer, I can tell you that these are merely a fraction of the tools that one needs in order to properly document and later tell a story. Social media has become an important tool for me in storytelling and, in particular, helping to finance my work. I am currently raising funds for a story that I believe needs to be told about the 2011 people’s uprising in Madison, Wisconsin.

In the months of February and March, 2011, in Madison, Wisconsin, we saw thousands upon thousands of people occupying the Wisconsin State Capitol building. The people’s response to Governor Scott Walker’s announcement of his controversial Budget Repair Bill was historic: a prime space for a storyteller, and documentarian.

As a freelance video journalist, I was asked to go to Madison on assignment for the progressive media outlet The Uptake. When I got on the ground in Madison, I checked in to my hotel and headed straight for the capital. I saw for myself that history was unfolding in front of me.  Thousands of people were in the streets; people carrying political signs surrounded the statehouse, and inside the capital building itself, thunderous sounds of chanting and singing filled the halls and bounced off the marble. This was a little slice of heaven for someone who appreciates the value of people acting collectively and standing up to the bully of injustice.

My background is in community media. Before branching off to work as an independent producer, I worked for five years full time at CCTV government access television in Burlington, Vermont, and before that I worked with community radio and community television in college. Rooting myself in community media taught me the value of covering a story thoroughly. We do not swoop in to get the hot sexy moments at an event and then swoop out to our next story. We cover an issue from beginning to end. Some call it boring. I call it thorough. Admittedly, I am a sucker for municipal government and find municipal meetings interesting. I’m ok with that.
Telling stories independently and without the backing of major media outlets or a major film company is what separates independent freelancers / filmmakers from the rest of the storytellers. We scrape it together. Our stories come from our heart. Why else would we put ourselves out there to live on the dimes we make per story?
Social media has provided a unique platform for independent producers to get their stories out and to raise money for their work.  In 2008, I raised money to go to Africa to help support the first community access television station opening in Ghana. At that time I made a blog and raised $2,000 using Chipin. (Thanks Beth for helping shepherd me through that learning curve). Now, fast forward to 2012. I have a blog, a website, a twitter account, a facebook page, a reddit account and we recently launched a Kickstarter campaign.
We are currently trying to raise $40,000 of our $200,000 budget through Kickstarter, the online fundraising platform that facilitates grassroots investment. We set a target goal and must raise that amount or lose all pledged funds by the set deadline of 12 p.m., January 21.  If we are successful, we’ll join over 15,000 artists, filmmakers, activists, and entrepreneurs who have collectively raised over $125 million using this innovative “crowd-funding” model.

Times have changed and so have the tools, but the need is the same. Dollars help make independent projects possible.

 

Jan

2012

12

Category:

Guest Post, Leadership, Transparency

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Learning Out Loud – Guest Post by Linda Wood – Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund

Note from Beth: One of the themes I’ve been exploring over the last few years related to networks is transparency.   We devoted a whole chapter to the topic in the Networked Nonprofit. In my next book, “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit”  my co-author KD Paine and I take a look at how you measure it.   First it requires understanding the definition.  Transparency is more than disclosure.  It includes participation in acquiring, distributing, and creating knowledge or what my colleagues at the OE Program at Packard have dubbed “Public Learning.”       Linda Wood, Senior Director of Leadership and Grantmaking, Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, calls it “Learning Out Loud,” and has shared this reflection on one of the foundation’s programs.

“When you don’t know what you don’t know, you’re going to fall over yourself and make mistakes, and that’s what we were doing.” That’s the candid assessment of Kate Kendell, Executive Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, in a new video from the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund.

We at the Haas, Jr. Fund asked Kate to share her experiences with our Flexible Leadership Award in this video because we knew it could benefit others to hear her story. To hear how starting in 2004, this well-respected but relatively small organization suddenly found itself at the forefront of the movement for marriage equality. How Kate and another leader at NCLR, Shannon Minter—two of the best legal and political minds around—struggled to address all the challenges and opportunities presented by the organization’s explosive growth. How through taking a deep breath and admitting what they didn’t know—and being willing to learn—NCLR has emerged stronger than ever.

The Fund established the Flexible Leadership Award program in 2005 to help our social change grantees cope with the twin challenges of organizational growth and movement leadership. Since that time, the program has served more than 50 nonprofits, helping them to strengthen everything from fundraising capacity to communications to staffing and board development.

Let’s be blunt here: investing in leadership can be a tough sell. For one thing, when you’re scrambling to address pressing needs every day, it can be hard to see how taking the time to broaden your leadership base, assess strengths and weaknesses, and develop a plan for change is anything but a luxury. As Kate says in the video, “The last thing I wanted to deal with was leadership. We were just doing the work.”

There’s another reason organizations may be hesitant to invest in leadership: it means having to actually admit you are facing challenges. Too often we mistake a steely resolve for leadership. Leaders are supposed to just get things done, whatever the personal or organizational cost. And certainly, in today’s tough funding climate, it can seem foolish to admit to anyone—least of all funders—what you don’t know or what you do need help with.

NCLR took that risk. And in so doing, Kate and Shannon strengthened the organization by cultivating leadership in existing staff and bringing in new staff. They learned how to share responsibility and developed processes for decision-making. They developed a senior leadership team with increased capacity for fundraising and communications. Now, Kate says, she knows she doesn’t have to make tough decisions on her own, and she doesn’t even try. Says Shannon in the video, “we are exponentially more productive than before we learned these lessons.”
As foundations, we wield a lot of power. We can use that power to intimidate our grantees into thinking they need to have all the right answers – or we can encourage our grantees to tell us when they are struggling.
I hope our new video – and the detailed information accompanying it – will help other foundations take steps towards greater transparency and learning out loud.
Because in the end, by welcoming the kind of candor that Kate and Shannon exhibit, we can all learn right along with them.

 

– Linda Wood is senior director of Leadership and Grantmaking at the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, a family foundation based in San Francisco that is dedicated to providing fundamental rights and opportunities for all people.

 

Dec

2011

16

Category:

Fundraising, Guest Post

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Thank You To the Max: Minnesota Give to Max Day Raised $13.4 Million in 24 Hours

Note from Beth: The 3rd annual Minnesota Give to Max Day took place last month.  The campaign has been profiled on this blog since it started.  And every year, the good folks in Minnesota share their results and lessons learned.  It’s become an annual holiday tradition for Beth’s Blog.

Minnesota’s ‘Networked Nonprofits’ raised $13.4M in one day by Jeff Achen, GiveMN.org

On November 16, 2011, more than $13.4 million was raised to benefit Minnesota nonprofit organizations. And, a record 47,534 donors logged on to GiveMN.org to donate to their favorite Minnesota charity. That tops last year’s donor record by nearly 5,000. In a 24-hour period, nearly 4,000 Minnesota nonprofit organizations benefited through donations, matching grants and prizes. In total, GiveMN has helped raise $46 million for nonprofit organizations across the state of Minnesota since launching in November 2009.

Social media strategy payoff

In my Nov. 14 guest blog post, “24 hours, millions of dollars, thousands of nonprofits—What gives in Minnesota?,” I talked about how relationships were key to this collaborative social fundraising effort. Those relationships were strengthened through the use of social media. Here are some statistics that show just how important Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were to our success.

We had 150,742 visits to GiveMN.org throughout the 24 hour event. Average time on site was over 9 minutes. Here is the breakdown of where our unique visits came from:

  • We earned 202 new likes on our Facebook page on November 16, 2011 and increased our fans by 1,263 since Give to the Max Day 2010
  • We gained 203 new Twitter followers in the month of November
  • Our Give to the Max Day celebrity PSA video has earned 2,620 views on YouTube, in addition to being aired on numerous local and state television networks
  • Our Give to the Max Day “Thank You” video has earned 2,413 views on YouTube
  • Our Give to the Max Day Livestream webcast from the Mall of America saw 1,693 unique viewers over the course of the day

 

Traffic sources to the Give to the Max Day webpage on November 16.

Since our outreach efforts focused on providing nonprofits with social media resources, email templates and content such as a video PSA for use on their homepages, it would seem those efforts paid off when it came to driving traffic.

Here are some highlights from our post-event nonprofit survey (Total nonprofits who completed the survey as of 12/01/11 = 380):

  • 61 percent of respondents said social media worked best for promoting Give to the Max Day (79 percent said sending out email promotions worked best. Multiple answers were acceptable)
  • 71 percent of respondents said Give to the Max Day helped them raise additional money that would not otherwise be raised

And, here are some highlights from our post-event donor survey (Total donors who completed the survey as of 12/01/11 = 5,757):

  • 44 percent of respondents said Give to the Max Day was their first time using GiveMN, down from 61 percent in 2010
  • 72 percent of respondents said they heard about Give to the Max Day from an email from their nonprofit (Percentages were in the teens for those who heard about the event via television, radio, newspaper, Facebook/Twitter and friends)
  • 26 percent of respondents said they found it useful to be notified of giving opportunities on Facebook or Twitter
  • 48 percent of respondents said their preferred method of giving was online through nonprofit’s website (18 percent said they preferred to give through a third party site like GiveMN.org, however 97 percent said they would use GiveMN again in the future)
  • 79 percent of respondents were female
  • 91 percent of respondents were 31 or over
  • 59 percent of respondents earned less than 90,000 per year in total household income

Owning it

Our success is really the collective success of thousands of nonprofits, most of which developed their own unique strategies for the day. This truly has become their event. We’ve asked some of them to share their strategies with us and we’re posting them on the GiveMN Blog.

A huge thank you also goes out to our partners at Razoo.com.  Without their online technical expertise and amazing social and mobile sharing tools, we never could have made all this happen. Razoo is an online fundraising platform that  offers a secure, streamlined donation process and a suite of free and easy-to-use fundraising tools that inspire individuals and nonprofits to give and fundraise online. This year was GiveMN’s third year using Razoo to host Give to the Max Day, and our event was just one of six regional giving days Razoo hosted this November.

What we’ve learned from this year’s success is that our preparation, planning, outreach and training really pay off. This effort provides nonprofits with guidance and motivation to participate and succeed.

Digitally speaking, three of our most valuable outreach efforts include:

  1. A webinar for nonprofits to learn about participating in Give to the Max Day
  2. A nonprofit toolkit that includes logos, templates, our social media planning guide and links to training materials
  3. The addition of two volunteer interns to assist with the influx of emails and phone calls from nonprofits around Give to the Max Day. Our volunteers provided critical technical and moral support to hundreds of nonprofit representatives during October and November

Jeff Achen is the interactive media strategist for GiveMN. Jeff is in charge of video production, photography, graphic design, communication efforts and social media strategy for GiveMN, including the GiveMN blog, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

 

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