As part of my work as Visiting Scholar at the Packard Foundation this year, I’m facilitating a peer learning group based on “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit” and the next session we are focusing on the sense-making step of measurement. This part of the measurement process is most the fun because it covers visualization, pattern recognition, and reflection.    I wanted to take a deeper dive into resources out there that provide useful tips about how to do this step for folks who were not data scientists or data nerds.

I did a quick scan of data visualization resources to look for practical advice on the process of thinking visually and some technical information on what chart to select and data storytelling.  Here’s what I discovered.

(1)   Data Visualization Survival Guide:   This resource (including the 176 slides powerpoint deck) was suggested by Devon Smith.  The deck was part of a workshop facilitated by Gregor Aisch who combines data visualization, information design, and journalism.   The deck provides specific practical advice on charts, color, and maps.   I like the chart advice:

• Avoid 3d-charts at all costs. The perspective distorts the data, what is displayed ‘in front’ is perceived as more important than what is shown in the background.
• Use pie charts with care, and only to show part of whole relationships. Two is the ideal number of slices, but never show more than five. Don’t use pie charts if you want to compare values (use bar charts instead).
• Always extend bar charts to zero baseline. Order bars by value to make comparison easier.
• Use line charts to show time series data. That’s simply the best way to show how a variable changes over time.
• Avoid stacked area charts, they are easily mis-interpreted.
• Prefer direct labeling wherever possible. You can safe your readers a lot time by placing labels directly onto the visual elements instead of collecting them in a separate legend. Also remind that we cannot differentiate that much colors.
• Label your axes! You might think that’s kind of obvious, but still it happens quite often that designers and journalists simply forget to label the axes.
• Tell readers why they should care about your graphic. Don’t waste the title line by just saying what data is shown.

(2)  The Functional Art:  This is the title of a book by Alberto Cairo who also teaches infographics at the University of Miami.   I discovered him through Upwell’s shark lover, Rachel Dearborn.   You can get a quick overview of the ideas in the book from the deck above (and listen to a recent lecture), but I definitely need to read this book.   His approach is less about the drawing part of information design and data visualization, but the THINKING part.   How do you think visually?  How do you tell stories with data?

(3)  How To Tell Stories With Data:  This is a deck from Edward Segal that combines the best practices of storytelling narrative with data visualization.   The slides that resonated with me were the principles (slides 19-29), but especially like the advice in Slide 26 (above) about “sexy charts.”     I found this from a very well curated list of data storytelling resources that will require a deeper dive another day.

Talk pivot tables to me … RT @jonesabi OH re: data: “Is it well-structured enough and is it sexy?”

— Beth Kanter (@kanter) May 1, 2013

(4)  Data for Radicals:   My longtime colleague and friend, Lisa Williams, is working on a book about data visualization for beginners.   I’m looking forward to the book!

(5)   The Power of Infographics by Mark Smiciklas.   Chapter 11 has a simple and clear visual guide to selecting key shapes, icons, symbols, graphics, and charts to communicate data visually.  I like the simplicity.  But, I wanted to go a little deeper on how to decide which chart format is best — and found this useful piece.

(6)  Data Points that Mean Something by Nathan Yau – The process of creating meaningful data visualizations means combining the skills of a designer, statistician, and storyteller.   The author writes the flowing data blog.  The book has a section about exploring data visually and the process.  He suggests asking these questions:

• What data do you have?
• What do you want to know about it?
• What visualization methods should you use?
• What do you see and does it make sense?

He makes a good point that to avoid “drowning” in data, learn to swim in the shallow end of it and work you way towards the deep end.     The key is to come up with some questions, particularly from the point of view of the reader or audience.    On his blog, he has a good list of tips for selecting the right chart and graph and making sense of the data – “Basic Rules for Making Charts and Graphs.”    The book also has a useful guide to detecting patterns in your data: Increase, Decrease,  Combination, Outlier, Noise.    And the way to communicate those patterns visually:   position, length, angle, direction, area, volume, and color.

What are your favorite resources for data visualization for nonprofits?

Most of think about infographics as part of our marketing and communications tool box.  Therefore,  we want an end product that looks good, professional, and captures attention and if we lack graphic design chops  we turn to in-house graphic designers or hire professional designers..    I couldn’t agree more!

But there is another reason to consider “DIY” infographics – as a sense-making technique.    My personal rule in measurement is to spend 30% collecting and organizing data and 70% thinking about what it means.    For me, I need to see patterns and link it back to strategy and tactics.    And, there is no better way consolidate your insights by expressing them as DIY infographic.

Okay, now you’re probably getting stressed out thinking about today’s to do list, that report you have to write, and a day scheduled with back-to-back meetings – and probably think it takes days to create an infographic.   It doesn’t have to be that way.   You don’t have to be the world’s best artist to create a respectable infographic to help you make sense of your data, but it does take a little consideration and small amount of inspiration.   In “The Power of Infographics” Mark Smickilas offers some good recipes for creating your own infographics.     You need to start with data, audience, and time allocation.     For inspiration, check out this Pinboard of nonprofit infographics which will lead you to many more examples.    Now, comes the perspiration part.

Yes, the process of creating your own information design is straightforward but you need to invest some energy learning about design fundamentals and honing your visual thinking skills.    And then there is mastering the tools.   I’ve been looking for free, low cost, easy-to-master tools and templates to reduce some of the sweating.   Here they are:

1.  Microsoft PowerPoint or Publisher: Both of these old standards have layout tools that make it easy to compose your infographic (and export the final product as a graphic image).    I like the Smart Art templates to help me see patterns in my data.    Hubspot just published this awesome collection of infographic templates for Powerpoint.   And, ironically, the templates are just pretty, but they help guide you in planning and designing your infographic.  Take this template that helps you think about how to use color and chunk your information.   The infographic (it’s a snippet – click through to see whole thing) on oral health was created in publisher with clip art.

2.  Clip Art: There’s a lot of clip art around, although a lot of it is ugly.   One of my favorite resources is The Noun Project which is a visual language site that collects and organizes symbols and icons for public use.   It has tons of icons that are easily searched by keyword and you can share your own.  Most are in the public domain.

3.  Know Your Charts and Graphs: Some infographic templates come with charts, but it is useful to take a quick tutorial about knowing what type of chart is best to represent what type of data.    After helping my kids with math homework (they had to represent some data in a chart), I found this awesome, free chart maker at the National Center for Education Statistics.  But the bonus was the tutorial to help you better understand and apply charts.  If you remember your 6th grade math and science, you might want to skip the tutorial and check out the online chart tool (I love the meter charts).   These free tools will save you time, but you don’t have complete control over look and feel.

Then I discovered Chartwell Fonts.   This font lets you take simple strings of numbers and transform them into charts. The visualized data remains editable, allowing for hassle-free updates and styling.   You have to slow down to create the charts and you really how to think about you want to present your data.     When you use automated excel or survey monkey charts, it encourages you to skip that important step.  While it took 20 minutes longer to create these from scratch,  it forced me to really think about the data and it generated additional insights.  That’s the most important thing to me, anyway.

Most of the time you’ll be making charts and graphs of numerical data, but some of your data may be a content analysis or theme analysis – and you can use word clouds to illustrate the frequency of a particular theme.   My favorite free tool for doing that is Wordle

4.   DIY Infographic Tool Suites: There are tool suites out there that combine all of the above into one package.  One of the popular ones is PiktoChart which has a free version.  There are scores of free, low cost, and expensive tools to create your own infographics.

Honestly, for me it was less time consuming to use simple tools because I could focus more on what the data means vs trying to figure out a particular tool works.      I think once I hone my DIY  infographic skills for sense-making so they are second nature,  then I might need to upgrade my tool box.

Are you using DYI infographics to make sense of your data or part of your marketing tool box?  What are your favorite tools?  How are you honing your visual thinking and sense-making skills?

Your organization uses an editorial calendar to plan out content for different channels, but there is still need the need to optimize it for different channels and do that efficiently.    Optimizing your content for social channels does not have to be labor intensive.   Many organizations create great content for their web sites or blogs and slightly tweak it for Facebook or Twitter – with a focus on making it visual.    And, of course, there are benefits to visual content like increased engagement.

Take the example from National Wildlife Federation to engage its audiences around the 2013 Green Inaugural Ball event on Facebook and Twitter.   First, the publish a blog post that includes text and a simple visual that incorporates the hashtag.     That visual is used as their Facebook post and they also tweet using the hashtag #greenwish with a call to action to share a #greenwich with the president, our  country and their community    The want their stakeholders to rally around what they want to see in the future to protect public lands, wildlife and great waters, and also what kind of clean, sustainable solutions they want from the president.

The NWF is using a technique called “Text Overlay” — taking a photo and adding a few words.    One of the more common ways that nonprofits are using text overlays for their Facebook content  is for adding testimonial snippets to photos, like this series “Faces of Fellowship”

Using text overlays is one feature that an image editing tool offers.   As John Haydon points out, you want a tool that can edit your visual content as follows:

visual storytelling also means that you need the ability to quickly edit the photos you are sharing. You need the ability to do several things with an image:

• – Cropping–There are various different optimum dimensions for photos on each social media site, requiring the ability to crop images on the fly.
• – Adding Text–A picture says 1,000 words, but adding text narrows the field.
• – Combining Images–Before/after pics, infographs.
• – Adjusting Contract and Tone–Many times the photos you take at event will need a little touching up.
• – Resizing Images–Hi-res images taken with a Cannon Powershot might be way too big for a Facebook Page update.
• – Creating Various File Types–Depending on the situation, you may need GIFs, JPGs or PNGs.

You might be wondering if it is difficult or expensive to create images with a text overlay, but it is very easy to do and there are many easy to use and free applications.  In a recent discussion on Facebook, nonprofit social media managers shared some of their favorite apps for doing this:

• PicMonkey on PC, it is  web-based and super simple and you don’t even have to create an account.”
• Photoshop Elements
• WifFlip
• Snagit
• Skitch
• Pixlr
• Awesome Screenshot, a chrome extension
• Over app for mobile phones

How is your nonprofit using text overlays?   What is your favorite visual editing tool for optimizing social content?

In 2013,  social media will continue the trend of “going visual.”    More and more nonprofits are adding data visualization to compelling story telling to create amazing infographics as part their marketing tool kits.  For a quick primer on infographics, see “Five Infographics To Master Infographics in Five Minutes.”

If you have decided that your nonprofit going to go visual in 2013, figure out your goal.     Infographics can be used in different and creative ways and some obvious ones such as marketing messaging, educating about a social issue, to celebrate a successful campaign,  to report to stakeholders on key performance metrics, an  annual report, and even a marriage proposal!    Need some more  ideas?   Check out my pinterest board “Nonprofit Infographics.”   Before you hire a designer, work with your in-house design or do it yourself, it is a good idea to identify the goal, audience, data, and key message that you to communicate.   Your graphic designer will certainly help you refine this initial idea.

Some nonprofits  make use of their in-house designers to create beautiful and eye-catching infographics.    One example is Best Friends Animal Society as profile by John Haydon on his blog in “Nonprofit Storytelling with Infographics” which offers some simple tips for getting the most out of your infographic.   Others are working with graphic designers to commission infographics as part of campaigns.    For example,  last year, when the Humane Society reached 1 million fans on Facebook, they created an infographic as part of the marketing campaign.

If your organization doesn’t have an in-house graphic designer and you have a budget to hire one,  ask colleagues from other organizations that have created infographics for referrals.  Debra Askanase posted a request for referrals and within 15 minutes got these designer names that have experience working with nonprofits:   Rad Campaign, elefint designs, submit infographics, and Jennifer Reynolds.  Visual.ly has just opened a site to match infographic designers with those who want to hire them.  Many designers sign their work, so if you find an infographic by a nonprofit that catches your attention,  you can easily find the firm’s web presence.

If you need a professionally designed infographic for your work, definitely work with a professional.  But if you want convert more of your content to visual material or if you don’t have any budget for a designer, going the DYI (Do It Yourself) method can produce great results.   It used to be that if you wanted to create an infographic and you had zilch graphic design skills, your only choice was to hire a graphic designer to execute your vision for you. But, now thanks to some free and low costs online software applications and decent clip art, you can now create your own visualization of ideas and data yourself. And if you have do it right, it can capture attention, be fun, and , even get  shared and spread by others.

Creating an infographic is more than drawing skills.    Infographics not only include pretty pictures or illustrations,  but those visuals are summarizing some data to convey your key marketing message. So you also need data visualization, marketing, and storytelling skills.  In this post, “How to Create An Infographic in 30 Minutes” offers some easy step-by-steps for accomplishing this important pre-drawing work.   You might also want to brush up on what types of charts and graphs are best for making presenting your insights gleaned from the data.

When you are ready to add charts and graphics to your infographic,   there are plenty of free or low cost tools available.     One favorite tools is Piktochart, a simple, easy to use infographic creator that was recently profiled in Forbes.   Another approach is to use free infographic clip art from the Noun Project or this collection in combination with Microsoft Publisher or Photoshop and create your own infographic from scratch.

Here’s a DIY infographic from Sarah Mapes, Director of Communication, Colorado Coalition for Medically Underserved.   The infographic was part of their content strategy to share policy data about oral health issues for children in Colorado.    Sarah uses Microsoft Pubilsher and attractive free infographic images such as those found in this collection.

Here’s another  example from NY Cares.

But remember,  infographics don’t go viral on their own.   It takes some focused attention and work, but these two posts  ”5 Ways to Get Your Infographic to Go Viral” and “21 Things to Help Your Infographic Go Viral” can help you think it through.

Is your organization working with a graphic designer to create infographics, taking the DYI route, or a combination.  If you’re going the DYI route,   please include a link to an infographic your organization has created!

Last week, I had the pleasure of doing a Brown Bag Lunch Book Talk for Measuring the Networked Nonprofit hosted by VolunteerMatch at their offices. After the session, I sat down with VolunteerMatch’s President Greg Baldwin to learn more about how they use data, measurement, and learning to measure and improve impact. This is part of my preparation for a session we are doing at next month’s Media Impact Forum, a day long session for funders, technologists, media makers and social change activists to explore innovation, impact, and learning.

As you get off the elevator at VolunteerMatch, you are greeted by the organization’s real time dashboard, a live visualization of all the activity that is taking place on the VolunteerMatch site.   The mesmerizing displays shows a stream of data across a map of the US of all the people currently on the sites searching for a volunteer opportunity that is compelling and irresistible.   It is a live data trail of interactions and connections on the site. One might be tempted to pause at this cool display and say so what!    But as Greg explains, it is helping to track in real-time the organization’s social impact.

The key performance indicator or data point or  metric they are tracking is “referrals.”  A referral is when a person connects with a nonprofit for a volunteer opportunity.     This is their key metric because their mission is to strengthen communities by making it easier for good causes/nonprofits and good people who want to volunteer to connect with one another.    As Greg explains, their key result is for people to volunteer for a nonprofit organization in the real world, not just find the opportunities which is a step in the ladder of engagement.   They know that based on the number of referrals that 50% will result in an actual person volunteering.   They know from their tracking and research, that the average site user will connect with three or four opportunities before finding the right match.  As Greg says,  ”There is a little bit of a dating process going on.”

They also know from ten years of collecting and making sense of their data  the average number of hours the typical volunteer will volunteer for an organization once they are matched (90 hours according to Greg).  They use that data point to estimate social/financial impact (# of volunteers x # of hours per year they volunteer x average $ per dollar that is work) which according to Greg was approximately $650 million dollars.

Everywhere you turn in the VolunteerMatch office, there is a dashboard on the wall. The dashboards are cutting edge electronic displays like the real time data dashboard, or the infographic of VolunteerMatch’s annual report from 2011 that is posted right next the elevators.   In the waiting area is a hardbound copy of the VolunteerMatch’s quarterly dashboard from the past ten years – and if you look closely at the reports each data point ladders back up to the organization’s mission.

VolunteerMatch is more than just the web site where nonprofits can post their volunteer opportunities, they also work with corporations to provide customized versions of their platform.    Another interesting example of data visualization at VolunteerMatch – and a low tech one at that – was this “horse race” showing the migration to a new a version of the software.

And judging by a peek at the whiteboards in the conference room, planning out and using data visualization to improve programs and measure impact is something that is discussed at regular staff meetings – so it is institutionalized.

I was, of course, delighted to meet the office dog, “Austin,” who posed with his copy of the Measuring the Networked Nonprofit and have added his photo the collection of famous nonprofit pets posing with the book.

Earlier this week, I participated in a  meeting hosted by the Knight Foundation that brought together a small group of  amazing thinkers in Silicon Valley — nonprofits, for-profits, activists, bloggers, and others interested in technology for civic engagement that builds connections between residents and our governments.    It’s all related to its  TechForEngagement summit last year.  (Lucy Bernholz, who also participated in the meeting, wrote up this great post about the space/movement that is in the center of her research).

One of the themes that came up is the gap in skills of citizens and nonprofits and the use of data.   It is all about the data, but data is playing a huge role in civic engagement strategies and if people or nonprofits lack the skills to use it for civic engagement goals, that poses a problem.   And while I haven’t done an in-depth map of this space,   I keep thinking that a network of intermediaries (people who teach skills, connect skilled volunteers, generate discussion — those data nerds) is missing.  (I may be wrong, let me know in the comments).   There are organizations and individuals who work as intermediaries on connecting the dots between data experts and the people, but what about a network?

As I have been doing workshops based on “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,”  I keep hearing that a big reason that nonprofits are not looking at the data they collect or even collecting it  - is because of skills.     One strategy is to find a data nerd for hire or to volunteer with your organization.   But, everyone can raise their data literacy, especially visualization.      So, as I curate resources on this topic,  I was excited to discover Rahul Bhargava – a data nerd who writes the Data Therapy Blog for the MIT Center for Civic Media.

What I most like about his approach is that he makes data accessible to those of us who do not have advanced statistical analysis skills.    He makes data visualization and working with data fun – and of course offers lots of practical insights.

I discovered him through Kat Friedrich’s blog post  ”How nonprofits can earn news coverage using data visualization.”    The blog post is about the launch of the Boston Foundation’s new resource for community organizations and media,  the Boston Indicators Project website. The site contains data visualization tools, thanks to a collaboration with the Institute for Visualization and Perception Research at UMass Lowell.   Why this resource?  According to the blog post:

“Data and reports alone do not produce change,” said Charlotte Kahn, Senior Director of the Boston Indicators Project. To create change, data must lead to action. And community organizations can use data to illuminate the challenges they face.

These ideas make me wonder where there are community technology spaces in neighborhoods that are teaching data literacy skills to the people and where nonprofits are learning to improve their capacity on this skill set?  If you know of or have examples of data literacy curriculum for nonprofits or data empowerment for community organization,  let me know in the comments.

Note From Beth: If you’ve picked up a copy of the newly released “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit:  Using Data to Change the World” than you no doubt noticed the cartoons, created by Rob Cottingham,  that begin each chapter.   Rob worked with us as we developed each chapter to pick out the key idea and poke of at it – we wanted to write a book about measurement that was accessible and fun to read.

But, cartoons can be terrific infographics or used as technique for sense-making.    Cartoons are good communication tool.   Because of the combination of humor and brevity, cartoons are a great way for your organization to share information and ideas.    Cartoons can encapsulate an idea or message with a single image, people pressed for time can absorb them quickly and share them more easily.

Okay, you like the idea of using cartoons to visualize your data or communicate your ideas.   But what if you can’t draw?   Rob Cottingham offers some tips in this guest post.

Using Cartoons to Make Sense of Your Data by Rob Cottingham

There’s never been a better time to not be able to draw.

Okay, let me back up. It’s not that it doesn’t matter how well something is drawn, or how visually attractive it is. If you’re great at drawing, or you have a good eye for color and composition, you’re way ahead of the game — all other things being equal.

But all other things usually aren’t equal. (Try measuring them if you don’t believe me. I know of a rather good book on measuring things.) Exacting design standards can work against you if they keeps you from posting a less-than-perfect visual so long that the conversation has moved on to another topic by the time you hit “Publish”. And slick production values may not have the same impact as something that’s crudely drawn, but reflects an authentic voice conveying an important, resonant idea.

So here’s how you can add some visual cartoon-flavored impact to your story, blog post or report, even if you’ve never so much as doodled Snoopy on a high school notebook.

First, remember that the underlying content trumps everything else. What’s the message you want to convey, the story you want to tell, the fact you want to get across? What’s the emotional reaction you want your audience to have? What action do you want it to drive them to? Start by answering those questions, then start thinking about the visuals you want to create (and how you’ll make them). That can save you a lot of wasted effort, and you’ll avoid wasting your audience’s time and attention.

And tying for first, don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t draw. Most of us actually can. We just have limits to what we can draw and how well, and beat ourselves up when we trip over them. But bumping up against our limits is how we learn to do better. And even if you never get to the point where gallery curators are banging on your door, there’s a lot more acceptance online of pretty rudimentary drawing skills… as long as they get across a great idea.

If you can draw two circles and make them overlap, you can make a Venn diagram. (If you can draw three circles, you can draw a more complex Venn diagram than most of the ones you’ll see out there.)

If you can draw a triangle on top of a square, and add a rectangle…

…then with a little practice, you can draw a house…

…and if you draw a line or two coming out of it, pointing to a few words (no shame in doing those with your computer, by the way!), you have a cartoon.

Two pointy lines, a circle, two dots and six straight lines,

… and you can make a cat…

…which, if you play your cards right, might volunteer to help you with fundraising.

The point isn’t to convince you that you can, in fact, draw Tippy the Turtle and should enroll now for an exciting career in illustration. It’s to say this: everyone has limits. See what you can do working within them, and every once in a while, press those boundaries gently and try to learn something new. Because those limits can bend and shift, and the more (and more often) you push against them, the more they’ll move.
(Bonus silver lining: Constraints in your drawing ability can force you into the kind of simplicity that focuses your message onto what really matters. If you can’t draw the cluttered, distracting background, you won’t.)
So that’s my pitch for learning to draw — or, more accurately, learning what you can draw now, and learning how to draw more down the road.

In the meantime…
Still can’t draw*? You can still create great pictures. Sites like Bitstrips.com and apps like Comic Life have amazingly simple interfaces that let you create comic strips and cartoon panels — and you’ll never have to draw so much as an eyebrow. Online charting and data visualization tools like Easel.ly are can let you pull together charts and info graphics quickly and easily.

Countless online meme-generating sites can let you whip up a sharable text-on-photo image in seconds; a mobile photo captioning app like Over for iOS lets you do it yourself right on your own device.

Or find some inspiration from the way webcomics like a) Dinosaur Comics, b) the profanity-laced Get Your War On and c) Wondermark use artwork created by others.  Specifically, they use a) exactly the same clip-art in exactly the same positions in every single strip, adding dialogue; b) a very few different pieces of really awful clip-art, adding dialogue; and c) vintage public-domain 19th-century illustrations, adding dialogue. Just be sure you aren’t running afoul of anyone’s usage rights. (By the way, at least one of these artists actually can draw very, very well. So can Randall Munroe, who draws the stick-figure-centered, wildly-successful xkcd
By “can’t draw”, I mean “Your drawing skills aren’t yet to the point where you feel comfortable sharing your creations with the world, but you’re working on them and any day now, you’re going to post that first doodle.”
If you don’t want to use a pen, you can still use a camera. Whether it’s a top-of-the-line DSLR or the nearest smartphone, a camera coupled with your imagination can take you a long way. Trying to dramatize the impact of overfishing and habitat degradation on wild salmon stocks? Get a few discarded fish bones from your local fish store, lay them on a sandy beach and (with a little chopping and arranging) set out the panels for a cartoon. Snap it, Photoshop in a few dialogue bubbles once you get home, and you have your cartoon.
You can do the same thing with all kinds of visual communication, of course. Those salmon bones could become a bar chart, tracking the decline in population. Or engage your inner pre-schooler to chart changes in education funding: make a line graph by gluing macaroni onto construction paper. Or if you want to draw attention to a word or phrase, write it in big letters on a blackboard or a lined flip chart, or draw it on a napkin — whatever context makes sense for the underlying idea. Take a picture of your creation, and you’re set.
Finally, keep working at it. Use your emerging skills — in drawing and in the alternatives — to create cartoons, but also to explore other ways to communicate visually. Try new things, see what works for you and for your audience… and keep learning.  Read great books like Dan Roam’s The Back of the Napkin, and follow folks like Sunni Brown. Add Information is Beautiful and Sketchnote Army to your information diet. Watch Beth’s Pinterest board on visual marketing.

In a bind? Let someone else do it. There’s the absolutely lovely way of paying a cartoonist to draw a custom cartoon (thanks, Beth!), or to license an existing one — but there’s also a trove of cartoons and illustrations out there available under a Creative Commons license. You can search for them on Flickr, or just Google “creative commons”, “cartoon” and various keywords. Or you can start bookmarking cartoonists you come across who post under an open license. (Modesty forbids suggesting a starting point.) Just be sure you respect the terms of that license, which may require attribution, using the image without modification, or using it in content that has a similar license.
And please doodle. On your meeting notes, on your grocery list, on the draft annual report you’re editing… because sooner or later, you’re going to look at one of those doodles and see a cartoon — the kind you’d be proud to post, publish or share.

Rob Cottingham is the Principal of Social Signal.

Source: Hot Button Studio

In my forthcoming book, “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,” co-authored with KD Paine,  my favorite chapter was about the sense-making process of measurement – called “Measurement and the Aha! Moment—Using your data to tell stories, make decisions, and change the world.”    There’s where I discovered a new passion – data visualization techniques for sense-making.    The process of translating your spreadsheet into an infographic can help lead you to insights and the product, the infographic itself, is a good way to report your results as this example of a quarterly dashboard report from DoSomething.Org illustrates.   It can also make using data fun!

Here’s 5 infographics that will help you get up to speed about using visualization processes to generate insights from data.

1:  What is an infographic?

Source: Infographics Archive - Click To See Full Image

We’ve all heard the phrase, “a picture is worth 1,000 words.”   An infographic (short of information graphic) is a picture that blends data with design, storytelling, and insights that helps nonprofits concisely communicate messages to their audiences.   While infographics are used to share marketing messages, they can also be used for reporting because visualizing the data can convey complex information to an audience in a way that can be quickly consumed (“at a glance”) and easily understood.     To create a good infographic, it requires a blend of skills:  data visualization, sense-making, and information design.

2:   Understand and Communicate Why Infographics Are Important To Senior Management

Source: Rickmann's Posterous

Vision is our primary sense and we use it to differentiate and learn the nature of everything around us by recognizing patterns.  Even the sentence you are reading right now are a prime example of our unique ability to recognize patterns.     Visualizations – or making pictures from  lots and lots of text makes it easy for us to digest information and more quickly understand it.      With more and more information and data in our daily lives,  our culture and way of working is going more visual.   This has some implications for your marketing strategy and there are compelling reasons to incorporate visual content creation.   And if you need to make the ROI argument on why you are spending time and resources on creating visuals, here’s a list of the tangible and intangible benefits of adding infographics to your marketing and reporting mix.

3:  An Infographic – Yes or No?

Source Visual.ly - Click to see full image

Infographics are shiny objects that everyone wants to use.  There are some fantastic infographics produced everyday, but there are also ones that just terrible because the data is poorly visualized or the visualization does it show good thinking.   Bad infographics can be misleading, confusing — or simply wrong.  Or just plan ugly and silly.  If your nonprofit social media team is trying to decide whether or not to create and use an infographic as part of its marketing strategy or reporting process, here’s a decision-making tree.     I would argue that incorporating a visualization process as part of your regular reporting on results will improve your data sense-making skills.

3:    What’s the point? And What’s Your Points?

HSUS Society Infographic To Celebrate Reaching 1 Million Fans

If you have decided that your nonprofit is going to use an infographic, figure out your goal.     Infographics can be used in different and creative ways and some obvious ones such as marketing messaging, educating about a social issue, to celebrate a successful campaign,  to report to stakeholders on key performance metrics, an  annual report, and even a marriage proposal!    Need some more  ideas?   Check out my pinterest board “Nonprofit Infographics.”

5:   Use Best Practices

Source: Comical Concept

Whether you decide to take the DYI route or hire a graphic designer,  use best practices in designing your infographic.   If you lack graphic design skills, you should sketch out your insights and main ideas.    Here’s one of the best guides on the topic, chocked full of tips, examples,and how tos.  You will also want to read up on data visualization for nonprofits and here’s an excellent advocacy guide.    If you want to create your own infographics, here’s a list of 100 tools, many are free or just use this shorter list of do-it-yourself infographics for non graphic designers.

Resources

Nonprofit Infographics Pinterest Board: a collection of examples of infographics used by nonprofits for different purposes
Visual Marketing Tips, Tools, and Resources: a curated resource collection of practical information for different approaches for visual marketing
Data Visualization: a curated collection of resources for nonprofits who want to incorporate data visualization into their measurement and learning activities

Has your nonprofit used infographics as part of its reporting process on results or other uses?   What are your challenges?  Please share your story in the comments!

We may need to start wearing these here! RT @kanter what every #datanerd needs in their wardrobe – I Love Data T-shirt bit.ly/QlhMt4

— Mission Measurement (@MissionMeasure) September 5, 2012

The September, 2012 Issue of the NTEN Change Journal is pure crack for nonprofit #datanerds (folks who would definitely wear a t-shirt emblazoned with “I Love Data!” in the office).      But if you read the articles in this issue, you will come to conclusion that loving (and using data) for strategic decision-making is becoming a must-have skill and competency for nonprofit success.  Does your nonprofit have those skills?

There are many different ways to collect, analyze, visualize, and make sense of data and you’ll discover in the September Issue.    Two themes come together in an article by the Chronicle’s Peter Panepento about the   “How America Gives” online tool:   Public Data and Data Visualization.     This tool allows users to dig into detailed geographic data about how much money Americans give to charity.

Panepento’s article explains the data that lies beneath the tool and some of the ways that a team of  journalists and developers have sliced and diced and mapped the data.    Tools like this and others in development – are somewhat new addition to the fundraiser’s tool box and a new form of strategy – “Data-Driven Fundraising.”   Now certainly development professionals have a history of using research – think donor research for big endowment campaigns.   Also think about the data and analysis that a development professional would perform on the donor data base to analyze multi-channel fundraising campaigns.    Tools that mash up public data allow nonprofit fundraisers to do benchmarking and a better analysis of market conditions.

Peter also mentions in the article that the Chronicle is working on the next online tool in partnership with Blackbaud, PayPal, and Network for Good to create a new index of online giving that will debut later in September. The tool will pool the data from these three sources and do analysis of online giving habits in the US, practically in real time.  Well, a few weeks after it is collected as opposed to after form 990s have been release after year or so.     This data, if analyzed, might reveal some predictive trends.

I can not resist playing with online data mapping tools, so I gave America Gives a spin.  Just for giggles,  I compared my current town here in California to where I used to live in the Boston area for percentage of total income donated to see which one was more generous, but no town or zip level data for my former place of residence.   I could compare it at the county level.  What I really wanted to do was export map image, but I could screen capture it or dump the data into a spreadsheet and create a graph or use chartwell fonts.   (And to do all this without too much “yak shaving“)

I couldn’t help but think about the skills sets and competencies nonprofits will be need in the future.  Like the field the evolving field of “data journalism”  will there be a new breed of fundraisers?   A data analyst on the fundraising team or a data analyst position on staff like at DoSomething?  Maybe for larger organizations, but for smaller nonprofits there will be more professional development opportunities for nonprofit fundraisers will include data analysis skills and tips for getting started.

Is your organization making use of public data for organizational strategy decisions?  Do you have a data analyst on staff or have staff been trained in these skills?  Maybe this idea is new or maybe you’ve been hearing about it, but not sure how or where to begin?   The first step is go download and read the new issue of the NTEN Journal.

Last week,  I wrote a post about Nonprofits and Instagram, asking if it was valuable for nonprofit marketing.  The post summarized why it may be important, best practices, and a few nonprofit examples.       One of my blog readers, Sarah Mowry, Outreach Director for the Deschutes Land Trust pointed me to Nature Conservancy’s Instagram contest, an image scavenger hunt.

Here’s how it works, according to their recent Facebook and Tumblr posts:

The Nature Conservancy has used photo contests to crowdsource photos from its network through social media in the post, as far back as 2008 when it ran a contest on Flickr.    There are some obvious benefits:

• Engaging its network beyond the like on Facebook. This is a high level engagement task, to take a photo and tag it on Instagram.  But Instagram users seem to be responding, with over 280  posting gorgeous photos with the tag .   This is one way to bring people in your network past the lower engagement activities such as liking a photo – and may encourage  higher levels of participation with the organization.
• Encourages social content creation from network. This means the organization can be more efficient because it has opened up and allowed its network to create content about what they love: nature.  The photos, particularly since TNC’s audience are photography enthusiastic, can become a richer source for compelling photos than stock photos.   There is also other value: How much time or expense did this save staff?  How much good will is generated by those contributed and by the winners of the contest whose works will be posted on the Nature Conservancy’s FB and Tumblr.
• A methodology for experimenting, piloting, and ultimately adopting new channels. In my maturity of practice model, “Crawl, Walk, Run, Fly“, nonprofits reaching the “fly” level have an institutional process for testing new channels before investing more heavily     The process might go something like this 1)  Research best practices and users   2)  Set up presence and explore, get comfortable with techniques, see what others are doing  3) Launch a small proof of pilot related to strategic goals and well defined success metrics and value.   4)  Rinse, Repeat, Leverage or not

On my post last week, Andy Sternberg, shared some thoughts about the value Instagram can provide brands, including nonprofits.

“Tags (hashtags) are also a great way to discover your community and encourage them to spread the message on Instagram. For example, a search for “fallingwhistles” (either in the Instagram app or on a 3rd party web viewer such as Statigram or Webstagram) user photos with the tag — typically featuring “whistleblowers” wearing the whistles sold by the nonprofit to raise funds for its campaign for peace in Congo . “Like” these photos as the nonprofit on Instagram and thank them and watch your community and movement grow.   A few nonprofits that I see setting good examples of how to leverage Instagram include (by username): fxckcancer, healthebay, breakthechainprogram, pencilsofpromis, and  surfrider_foundation.”

A quick look through these nonprofit users offers a couple of other ideas for contests on Instagram to encourage engagement:

1.   Snap, Tag, and Share

Who wants a FREE #FxCKCANCER Shirt? Snapshot this picture, share it with your followers, tag @FxCKCANCER & hashtag #FUCKCANCER Monday 8/13 we will randomly select a WINNER! Thank you all for the continued support! No One FIGHTS Alone join our cause by visiting www.fuckcancerfoundation.org

2. Caption Contest

Caption contest. Go…

Vickie McMurchie, SurfRider Community Manager, shared some additional thoughts about another example of an Instagram contest

http://web.stagram.com/p/208665417907704621_19039867
http://isd.surfrider.org/2012/isd-instagram-contest/
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150952695148305.422147.28126338304&type=3

Does your nonprofit have an institutionalized process for researching, piloting, and adopting energing technology?  What does it look like?  How is your organization experimenting on Instagram?

Instagram, the mobile photography app purchased by Facebook, has been getting a lot of attention lately.   From critics saying it is killing photography to hype and hoopla from marketing pundits saying it is a must-have as part of your “visual marketing tool box.” In Steve Rubel’s Ad Age post,  ”The Revolution Won’t Be Televised; It Will Be Instagrammed” points out some underlying trends that might make some of the hype less hype:

• Smartphone use has become pervasive, siting recent research reports from Pew  Internet for America Life research
• Visual marketing is becoming an important part of the online marketer’s tool box – especially because images are global, easy to digest, and distributable.

There are some nonprofits, early adopters, experimenting with Instagram.    I’ve been following charity:water that has been posting a photo of the day.     But charity:water’s CEO, Scott Harrison, is also using it quite skillfully to share imagery about his organization’s work.    Like many nonprofit leaders and staffers,  Scott is “mixing up the personal with the professional brand.”     I think instagram is a terrific platform to do that – if you have a culture that is comfortable with mixing it up and, of course, people who like to share photos.

Others are using Instagram by sharing visual stories about their programs using a branded profile, like Children’s LA and Unicef USA.     And take a look at the how the US Embassy in Wellington, NZ uses it.

Instagram is one of those channels where a nonprofit could start with a small pilot that is strategically linked to communications or marketing objectives and pick a success metric and track it.   But first  best practices and measurement, learning, and improving. This guide for business marketers is relevant to nonprofits.  It boils down the techniques to simply:   Curate, Snap, Hashtag, Engage, and Repeat. Simply Measured offers a free report that lets see which of your photos/stories was most engaging.

I ran an analysis on my Instagram experimenting and discovered that my most engaging photos included Monks, Clouds, and Cats!    Porter Mason from UnicefUSA also suggests this other measurement tool: Staigr.am

Is your nonprofit experimenting with Instagram?   What have you discovered? How are you defining and measuring success?

I have a couple of addictions.  One of them is magic markers and pens.  But I also love using those pens for visualization techniques and especially to sketch out charts and graphs.  I did a deep dive on data visualization techniques while working on a chapter of my next book, Measuring the Networked Nonprofit, with co-author KD Paine.    That’s when I heard about the book, “I Love Charts.”

The book is based on the popular tumblr blog with the same name - I Love Charts. The blog has been collecting examples of data visualizations from the hilarious to the useful.     One of my favorites is this visualization about the different between data collection and getting insights.

Having the examples in a book as well as following this blog regularly gives you lots of great ideas for how to visualize and present data and ideas.   I’ve gotten more than a few good visuals for presentations as well.

It’s definitely one to add to the “Nonprofits Data Visualization Wiki”  that I’ve put together to curate and present the best resources for instruction based on ongoing curation over at scoop.it.   If you’re looking for tools for creating your own visualizations,  I suggest this list of tools:  Infographic Tools.    If you want some tips on creating your own charts and graphics, see this informative deck from Idealware.

What are your favorite resources for data visualization techniques?   How are you using data visualization in your nonprofit’s work?

From SXSW Session: Shut Up and Draw

I have been interested in visualization techniques, visual facilitation, and visual thinking since 1991 when I read Tony Buzan’s book, “Using Both Sides of the Brain: Mind Mapping Techniques” that started me down a very slow and leisurely learning journey.      This year I’ve been focusing on data visualization and techniques for nonprofits – and working on my visual thinking skills without letting my basic drawing skills become a barrier.

I’ve been a fan of Dan Roam’s work since his book “The Back of the Napkin” in 2008.  He was the keynote speaker at the 2012 NTC this year talking about the ideas in his recent book, “Blah Blah Blah:  What To Do When Words Don’t Work.”   I’ve gone back to his workbook based on his first book to practice and improve visualization skills and thinking as well as drawing.

He has some terrific advice about how to apply visual thinking to your data visualization and to get insights.    But first, he simplifies what visual thinking is:  Look, See, Imagine, and Show.

Look:  What is out there?  What am I looking for?  What are the limits?
See:   What do I see?  Have I seen this before?  What patterns emerge?  What stands out?
Imagine:  How can I manipulate the patterns?   Can I fill in gaps?  Have I seen enough or do I need to look at more?
Show:  This is what I saw, this is what I think it means.   Is this what I expected or not?  When you look at this, do you see the same things?

These are a great set of questions to ask as you look over your data.  The steps are:

• Collect your data
• Lay it out where you can really look at it
• Establish the underlying coordinates
• Map the data
• Draw a conclusion

As a trainer,  I always do a participant assessment to understand their experience, knowledge, and attitudes related to the topic – for the most part social media and networked nonprofits.   I have a survey that allows me to understand the composition of the group in aggregate as well as the maturity of practice levels for each individual participant according to “Crawl, Walk, Run, Fly.” Understanding this, I can adjust and customize the curriculum level and content.

I use survey monkey and grab the visual chart for each question and dumping each chart into its own Powerpoint slide.   I thought was done!  But I realized that having the visuals for each question on a separate slide did not let me see patterns.    I also found the ready-made charts from survey monkey ugly and distracting … but lacking graphic design skills and drawing skills.   Then, I caught myself in the negative thinking trap and told myself, “shut up and draw!”

I gave myself 30 minutes, played Mozart on my Ipod and looked at all the data one page.   I followed Dan Roam’s steps  I did some rough drawings, but I wanted to create more insightful visuals. Then I discovered Chartwell Fonts.   This font lets you take simple strings of numbers and transform them into charts. The visualized data remains editable, allowing for hassle-free updates and styling.   You have to slow down to create the charts and you really how to think about the “show step.”    When you use automated excel or survey monkey charts, it encourages you to skip that important step.

Old Way – Not Visual Thinking – Automatically Create Visual for Every Survey Question on Separate Powerpoint Slide

Better Method:   Create Visualizations of Important Data and Pull Together On One Slide

This took some time, but the ability to stretch my visual thinking muscles was worth it.    I know understand the process and it took less time the second time it did, and even less the third.

What is your techniques or process visualizing data?

Back in January, I wrote a post about Pinterest  as a curation tool to organize and share visual content I’ve collected in a pleasing visual way.   As the platform has evolved over the past few months,  there are some other benefits including driving traffic and conversions and more recently how pinning helps encourage audiences to “like” the brand more.

I’ve be facilitating a few introductory workshops and briefings about Pinterest for nonprofits with a goal of explaining it, what it does, benefits, and examples of how nonprofits and others are using it.     I’ve been actively curating  tools, research, and tips and have found some great ones that I’m sharing sharing below.

Source Convince and Convert

1.    Integration

Convince and Convert has a terrific post by Chris Sietsama called  ”Abandonment Issues: What To Do With Content Archipelagos” in which he asks you take a bird’s eye view of your content and figure out if there is a content area that is “standing alone” and not integrated into your overall strategy.  He suggests doing an inventory and asking how each contributes to your overall goals and whether it is measurable.    Based on the answer, either repurpose, abandon, or bring into the fold.

If you’re just starting to think about adding Pinterest to your content strategy or if you jumped in before you had a strategy, you can do this type of questioning on the front end, perhaps coming up with a small experiment that supports an overall goal and a measurement strategy.

2.   Research

You might also want to spend some time doing a little research on site and browse some of the pinterest stat sites.   This will help you get a sense of the users and whether or not Pinterest is a good fit for your content.

Repinly is a site that analyzes Pinterest users and content.  You can discover the most popular categories for pins and boards, how users spend their time, and most followed users.    Checking out top pinners is a good way to learn best practices.

You will also want to take a look at what and how other nonprofits are using Pinterest.   There are several Pinterest boards that showcase nonprofit users like these:  Nonprofit Organizations,  Nonprofit Pinterest Ideas, and Nonprofits on Pinterest.   For more ideas, see this list of 50 nonprofits on Pinterest.

It also might be worth doing a little research on PinME and see if any your existing content has already been pinned by other users.  I was surprised to find so much of my blog content pinned by others.

3.   Mindful Implementation

Once you have done your research and have a basic concept for a pilot or action learning project for Pinterest that supports your overall objectives AND is integrated with your content strategy,  now it is time to establish good practices.    The above image is a chunk out of an useful infographic “64 Pinterest Marketing Tips,”  simply use it as a template and tackle a half-dozen or so techniques per week for 30 minutes a day.    If you practice Pinterest like you would practice piano etudes, you’ll master the basics quickly and get better results.

I’m curating How-Tos and Tips for using Pinterest here and here if you want to explore other tips and tricks.

4.   A Few Pinterest Measurement Tools

Most importantly, you’ll want a way to measure against your overall goals – so you can track whether the small experiment is working or not.       There are many  tools that can help you, here’s a few that help with measuring your Pinterest use:

Pinpuff is a sort of klout for pinterest that gives you a number from 1-100 that indicates your “pinfluence.”    The site gives you suggestions of other users collecting similar content.

And while there is some bogus stats that attempts to give you a dollar amount per pin,  the site does generate some useful data for you.  For example, you can a list of the followers, repins, and likes for all your boards.

A similar site is PinReach which gives you an number from 1-100 and suggests influential followers.   It also shows trending pins, topics, and users, although I found it too general to be of use.

Probably the best one is Pinerly and I’m on the waiting list.   Based on this analysis from the Poynter Blog, it looks like it generates useful metrics.

How is your organization using pinterest strategically?  What type of pilot test are you doing?   Have you explored any of the measurement tools or other management tools?

Visual Thinking Presentation for UnitedHealth Innovation Day

At the NTEN NTC conference this year, I did a session on data visualization for nonprofits called “Picturing Your Data Is Better Than 1000 Numbers” with Johanna Morariu from Innonet and Brian Kennedy of ChildrenNow. Shortly after, I decided to start curating resources on data visualization over at Scoop.It and continue to add the best stuff to the resources section on the session wiki.   In my reflection post about the panel,  I was musing about one of the points raised:  ”How Can We Visualize Data If We Can’t Draw?”   This is a common theme for those interested in incorporating visualization techniques.

In a post called, “Data Visualization and Data Art Continuum” the author quotes Stephen Few, a highly regarded data visualization expert:

“There is a distinction between data visualization (“the goal that data be visualized in a way that leads to understanding”) and data art (“visualizations of data that seek primarily to entertain or produce an aesthetic experience”).”

What he means is that there is a difference between eye candy infographics that are not conveying insights – and visualizing data.      There is a tension between art/graphic design skills and visualization of ideas, insights, and concepts.     He comes to the conclusion that: “There is no data visualization without graphic design and no data art without data.”     I think there is a subtle distinction between “visual thinking” and drawing skills.    Visualization of data requires visual thinking to be meaningful and you don’t need to be Picasso to be a good visual thinker and share your ideas in a drawing.

This brings me to the above presentation that I discovered on this blog post, “Visual Thinking at United Health Innovation Day”   There is some really useful advice for those who think because they lack drawing skills, they can’t do data visualization or learn how to think visually.

The major problem or block to using visualization is that many people think drawing is just for artists and if you can’t draw well, than you shouldn’t bother to do it.  That’s an assumption you need to challenge.  It  stops a lot of people from embracing visualization.   It has stopped me in the past.   But I followed the advice of colleague Rachel Smith, who teaches visual thinking and facilitation:   “Send your inner critic who says you can’t draw on a vacation to Hawaii.”

The point that presentation makes is:  Start thinking as drawing as a way to think!

To remove the mental block, it is okay to draw like a cavemen using symbols and low tech short cuts.    Above all, return to your inner 6 year old.   I’m not an artist, but giving myself permission to draw with my magic markers really helped me get past the block.   You also need to learn and practice a visual alphabet.  The two best resources to learn are:  David Sibet’s “Visual Meetings” book and Dan Roam’s Blah Blah Blah: What To Do When Words Don’t Work.    As you practice your visual alphabet, just accept imperfection, practice, and get better.

The presentation also notes that it is important match methods to the audience and their learning style.     The styles are: head, heart, and hand.

Another tip was about deciding on the resolution and I think this slide shows that visual thinking can be done with basic drawing skills or more advanced graphic skills.

The presentation ends with a great reflective question – why is it that we aren’t using visual thinking techniques in our organizations and our work, is it skills or cultural?    It ends with some recommendations on how to change culture in an organization to embrace visual methods.

Are you using visualization techniques in your nonprofit?  This might be data visualization, visualize facilitation at meetings, or other techniques.   How?

NTC 2012: Data Visualizaiton Panel

I’m here at the 2012 Nonprofit Technology Conference in San Francisco this week.  I am on a panel about measurement:

Picturing Your Data is Better Than 1,000 Numbers:Data Visualization Techniques for Social Change

Are you intrigued by infographics and how they could improve your communication strategy? Are you interested in what it takes for an organization to systematically use data? Or are you maybe even drowning in data and looking for someone to throw you a life-saving suggestion for software and other tools? Then this is the session for you!
Through lively sharing and discussion this session will cover a range of topics related to nonprofit engagement with data and information visualization, including: Organization culture and practice: What does it take for organizations to systematically use their data? Approaches and tools: What are the basic guidelines for designing and using data and information visualizations? What are the go-to tools? Exciting examples: What are some great examples from nonprofits? Data and information visualizations for advocacy, evaluation, social media, network analysis, operations, and more!

I will be joined by Johanna Morariu from Innonet and Brian Kennedy of ChildrenNow.

Our session is part of the online live streaming sessions and it was fun trying to translate some of the face-to-face interactive exercises we’re doing in the room to activities online.   You can take a look at the online exercises here.

The panel will look at data visualization from three different lenses.   Organizational culture,  visualization and data sense making techniques, and a case study from Children Now about they went from sharing all text-based advocacy data to using visualization for policy change.

Since data visualization should be part of an organizational measurement and learning process, it is important to consider organizational adoption challenges.  I’ll be covering that with a brief case study, tips, and interactive exercise.  I’m excited because it will be the first time that I’m speaking about my forthcoming book “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit:  Using Data for Social Change” co-authored with KD Paine.    If you want to be notified when the book is available, sign up here.

Here’s the resources, more on the wiki we created for the panel.

Resources

Data Informed, Not Data Driven
http://www.bethkanter.org/curiosity-driven/

How To Switch to Data Informed Culture
http://www.bethkanter.org/switch-data-driven/

What does the data say?
http://www.bethkanter.org/data-sa/

The Five Stages of Measurement Acceptance
http://www.bethkanter.org/measurement-acceptance/

Measuring the Networked Nonprofit: Get Notified When Book Is Available
http://bit.ly/measure-networked-nonprofit-book

Drawing by the Numbers: A terrific resource for data visualization for nonprofit advocacy
http://drawingbynumbers.org/toolsandresources

Examples of nonprofit infographics
http://pinterest.com/kanter/data-visualization-for-social-change/
http://pinterest.com/kanter/nonprofit-infographics/

100 Infographic Tools
http://dailytekk.com/2012/02/27/over-100-incredible-infographic-tools-and-resources/

Beth’s Curated List of Infographics for Nonprofits: Tips, Tools, Examples
http://socialmedia-strategy.wikispaces.com/Infographics

Johanna’s Resource Guide:
http://www.innonet.org/client_docs/resources_formatted.pdf

Picture This: Expert Opinions On Telling Your Stories With Pictures
http://www.nonprofitmarketingblog.com/comments/picture_this_expert_opinions_on_telling_your_story_with_images/

Does your organization use data visualization?   Share your experience in the comments.

The newest social media darling is Pinterest, a platform that nonprofits can use to curate compelling visual content.    Pinterest, with its ease of use and the pleasing beautiful sea of visuals, is the perfect place to curate inspiration for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

Like Whitney Friedlander, I decided to mark MLK Day holiday by searching and curating  some inspiring images that link to great content about one of this country’s greatest leaders.   Here’s my complete  MLK pinboard and selected ways to mark to the day in Dr. King’s honor:

1.   Listen to his “I Have A Dream Speech”

You can listen to it on YouTube or read the full text here.  Or read and listen to a reflection by his speech writer on NPR or this visual analysis of the speech by Nancy Duarte.   Or like Simon Mainwaring, you can think about what his words mean for us today.

2.  Tweet or Text his Quotes

Dr. King has many inspiring quotes.    For a collection of quotes, see MLK Online.   What’s your favorite?   Mine is here:

“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”

And a reminder from Nancy White that small gestures or small steps can lead to big ideas.

3. Google Doodle

Like commemorative postage stamps, Google has been honoring MLK Day with a Doodle since 2003.

4.   MLK Day of Service

While some may be protesting today, others are giving service to their community as part of the MLK Day of Service Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: ‘What are you doing for others?’”   Each year, Americans across the country answer that question by coming together on the King Holiday to serve their neighbors and communities.   The MLK Day of Service is a part of United We Serve, the President’s national call to service initiative. It calls for Americans from all walks of life to work together to provide solutions to our most pressing national problems.   (Unfortunately, you can add Facebook content to Pinterest directly, but the work around is to make a screen capture and add the link manually.)

5.  Occupy the Dream

Some people may be spending this day off doing service to their community, but others may be protesting.  Occupy the Dream is a Occupy protest on federal reserves in different cities.  More here from the Huffington Post

6.  MLK Day Infographic

A celebration of MLK Day on Pinterest would not be complete without an infographic. With a little bit of searching, I found a fabulous one on the Hands On Blog.

How are you celebrating the life and work of Dr. King?

My Pinboards on Pinterest

Pinterest is a virtual pinboard where you can organize and share images and videos you discover on the web.  Think of it as social network of visuals – where you can find images from other people with the same interest or use it to curate your own visual “interest space.”

The clean interface and simplicity of  its features make it easy to use and gives you a calm feeling which perhaps accounts for its popularity.  At first glance, the site attracts people interested in using it for non-work interests, such as wedding planning, decorating, scrapbooking, and family photos, but brands and nonprofit professionals are also using it to curate information related to professional and organizational topics in a visually pleasing way.   But if you want to be successful, you must curate and share relevant content.

I am visual learner and I’ve been a content curator for years. I was drawn to Pinterest because the functionality is exactly how I’ve been using my flickr account for years, but makes it easier to share images you’ve found from other web sites and people.     I created several pins based on professional interests and a few personal topics.     My most popular pin is a collection of nonprofit infographics, but the second best one is a personal one, “I Love Magic Markers.”   Here’s the number of followers for each pin:

Nonprofit Infographics (287)
Social Media and Nonprofit Book Recommendations (250)
I Love Magic Markers (237)
Social Media Best Practices (215)
African Fabrics (115)

Nonprofit Infographics Pin Board

I Love Magic Markers

My strategy for content curation will be highly selective and focus more on quality than quantity.    And to have these images linked to more contextual information beyond the image source.    For example, to my blog posts on the topic.     Who knows maybe Rafe Needleman’stongue in check “prediction” that Google + will acquire Pinterest and that might actually make it more useful.

Source: Elad Blog

The Big Picture

Pinterest is a small example of  how the social web is evolving.   There is so much content being created and shared, that making sense of it is getting harder and harder unless you have context.  This is what content curation does – it joins your social graph with interest graphics.   It’s explained in more detail in this TechCrunch post, The Age of Relevance.   Several of the newest social platforms create “interest graphs” a map for navigating to subjects and people of interest. The Interest graph is a superset of the social graph, a people map.  The interest graph includes people, things, and their linkages and it helps users navigate the information thicket.  Content Curators are doing this and more platforms will facilitate curation.  Pinterest is one of them.

The difference between content shared through social graphs is that sharing is a stream.  That can feel overwhelming and hard to organize when lots of categorical pieces of content fly by you .   The tools that create interest graphs, the curation tools,  allow you to put some structure and that’s what provides the context.   It is also part of what makes pinterest and other curation tools so addictive.

But remember, as Nancy Schwartz points,  Relevance Rules! in her advice about campaigns,  you need to be strategic about what content you’re curating and WHO you’re sharing with.  Content curation should link to your integrated strategy objectives and identified audience.  Otherwise, you’re wasting your time playing with a pretty shiny object.

Nonprofit Uses Pinterest

Joe Waters wrote an interesting piece in the Huffington Post about Pinterest and nonprofits.  He points out that it is an audience he wants to reach with his cause marketing information:

It’s easy to use, powerfully visual, populated with cause marketing-loving women and growing like crazy. 4,000 percent in six months!

The heavy presence of women 25-44 on Pinterest is what distinguishes it from other new social media platforms, which are generally populated by men 18-24. Here’s a site that already has the audience everyone wants: women and moms who make most of the household buying decisions.

Joe also asks a few good starter questions if your nonprofit is considering setting up a presence:

• Do you have an interesting or compelling story to tell with images?
• Is your cause considered hip, trendy, or do you just want to be?
• Are you engaged on other social media platforms?
• Are you looking to reap the rewards of local SEO?

I’d add to this some questions about measurable objectives and who is the target audience.

AARP People Making A Difference Pin

Several Nonprofits are experimenting with Pinterest.   AARP has several boards related to it content, including “Over 50 Making a Difference. ”  Amnesty International  has set up a list of book recommendations, “Human Rights Reading.”  National Wildlife Federation is curating wildlife photos and other visually related content.

Help Attack has created this demo video about how to use for fundraising.

Joe offers some guidelines for using the site:

• Be useful
• Pinterest users are looking for ideas and inspiration.
• Create categories that reflect what users are looking for.
• Give the job to someone who has an eye for aesthetics.
• Learn from these 15 Pinterest superusers.
• Don’t just pin, repin.
• Let your supporters pin for you.
• Add “pin it” buttons to your blog or web site so your visitors and supporters can create their own pin boards that highlight your cause.

If you decide to set up a board, here’s some useful tips from Mashable and this analysis of the top brands on Pinterest and some more ideas about how to use for your organization.  Or just wait until the Pinterest for Dummies book publishes.    While the user base is predominantly female, there are guys there too.

I’ve set up a resource sheet with more examples, tips, and links here.

Special thanks to:  Nancy Schwartz, Zan Mccolloch-Lussier, Maddie Grant, Stephanie Scwab, Amy Sample Ward, Alejandra Owns, Jen Martin, Tammy Gordon, Melanie Mathos, Chad Norman, Michael DeLong, Debra Asknase, Janet Fouts, Kyra Stoddart, Marc Sirkin and Sue Anne Reed for sharing their insights about Pinterest.

Is your organization curating content as part of a strategy to be relevant to your audience?  What you think of Pinterest?  Jumping in or watching from the sidelines?

What are your nonprofit’s strategies for incorporating content curation?   Do you think pinterest might be useful to your organization?  How will you use it strategically?

Flickr Photo by Colin Faulkingham

If you want extract value from your social media strategy, you need to use measurement.    That means setting measurable goals,  collecting the right data, making sense of it, and transforming it into actionable decisions.   Sense-making is an essential workplace skill along with several others.

Robin Good curated this article about research on future workplace skills. (Found it via Curata’s collection).   The skills are:

Robin aptly points out that these skills are also required for content curation.   In a recent slide deck on the “Visualizing the Agency of the Future,  Jess3 and Leslie Bradshaw also touch on new work place skills, emphasizing the importance of data visualization.   They use this quote:

“The ability to take data – to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value form it, to visualize it, to communicate is giong to be a hugely important skill in the next decade.”- Hal Varian, Google

I think these workplace skills are important for nonprofits, especially making sense out of data.   What does that actually mean?  How do you do it?   Does it require some special gift?

Let’s dissect an act of sense-making using Facebook Insights.    Your Facebook Insights analytics programs is most likely going to give you some “associated metrics.”   If you look at this out of context, it become trivia.   So, you must have an outcome or result identified and know how each metric you pick helps you take a step towards that outcome.    The goal of my Facebook page is serve as a focus group to listen to nonprofit practitioners and their ideas, concerns, and needs to use social media effectively.   My result metric is the number of good ideas  and saved time getting those ideas that I get for blog posts, curriculum development, and presentations.

I know that in order to generate good ideas from network, I need to feed and tune it.    By feeding,  I’m talking about posting engaging and useful content that resonates.     So, that’s my track content against two metrics on in the new FB Insights:  Reach and Virality.   That’s all well and good, but the data – in and of itself – is pretty useless unless I use my sense-making skills.  Here’s how I do it:

1.   Look for the Patterns

I check my insights monthly against my editorial calendar.   The first step is to look at the visuals on the dashboard.     The blue represents weekly reach.  The green represents people talking about.  And, those purple dots represent frequency of content.   A bigger dots means more frequent postings, not dots means no content posted.

I like to use metaphors … so I ask:   Where are the mountains?   Where are the mountains?  Where is prairie?

2.   Look for Clues in the Canyon First

I immediately go to the low points, the canyons and the flat lines.  Then I look at the date and carefully review what type of content and topics were posted.  In the example above,  I discovered a turkey in the canyon.  It was Thanksgiving and I didn’t post.     I’ve asked myself,  should I make an effort to post everyday, even during holidays?  Or should I post automatically even though it is likely to not get noticed as much as hand posting?    For me,  the numbers when back up, so I was glad I took a few days off.

3.  Look for Clues in the Mountains

Over the years, I noticed different types of mountains and hills in my Facebook analytics and Google Analytics for that matter.    One of them is the Devil’s Tower.    A spike that stays high for a days.  I get excited whenever I see a Devil’s Tower!

4.  Analyze the Content

One of the posts that I shared during the “Devil’s Tower” period was visual of some social media icons with a note telling folks if they needed social media icons, here’s  a good resource.  In the comments,  I shared the link to the post where I found it.     So, this was practical information, visual, geeky, and fun.

5.  Analyze the Comments

Next look at the comments and see if you can detect any patterns.  Be sure to click through and look at the comments on shares too.   I noticed that someone in network shared it with her network but calling it a “Fun Friday Share.”

6.   Turn Insights To Actionable Decisions

All this is fun to do and interesting but so what?    What I do is now relate this back to my content and goals.   Remember, I was looking to encourage more engagement and interaction.   So, what I do is write up content ideas for the next month.  In this case,  ”Post geeky, visual, fun stuff on Fridays.”  If you take a peak at my spreadsheet, you’ll see that I’m rather disciplined about learning – and include a “What did we learn” column to write down these insights so I have them at hand when I’m planning for the next campaign or the next editorial calendar.

If your takeaway from this post is, “hmm .. I should post geeky, visual, fun stuff on Fridays on Facebook” then you’ve missed the point.     It is more important to practice and sharpen your sense-making skills – the process I just took you through.

What have you learned from analyzing your social media data?   How do you transform data to actionable insights and decisions?

TweepsMap is an interesting Twitter app that will put your followers on a map of the world, literally.   It analyzes the percentage of total followers from countries, states, and cities. (here’s more about how it works)    While you can check out the profiles of your followers and find out where they’re from (if they filled out the location information), you can’t really get a snapshot.   When I analyzed my followers, I discovered that 60% were from outside the US (compared to 70% on Facebook)

So, I started to dig down and review the information country by country, continent by continent.  I shared the screen captures on my Facebook page.   Cindy Leonard asked a great question:  How come you don’t have any followers in Washington state?

I made a mistake, I didn’t give my data the sniff test before sharing it.     That’s some great advice from KD Paine for the last chapter of our forthcoming book,  ”Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,” which is on data analysis and turning data in action.     So, look at every chart, every graph, every number and ask does it make sense.

So I asked on Twitter if there was anyone out there from Washington state – and a number of them responded back.     So, it looks like there is a glitch.    My colleague, Zan Mccolloch-Lussier, from Washington state suggested that the problem might be that is confuses Washington, DC with Washington state.

Despite a few glitches,  you use this tool to see if your audience is local or global.    What did you discover by putting your Twitter followers on the map?