Source: Zazzle

How do you learn?  When you want to acquire a new skill or apply some new knowledge, do you learn by passively sitting and listening to an expert lecture for 90 minutes without a break and 150 PPT slides?   What do you actually retain?   And, what do you actually apply?   Or do you learn better when you get a chance to process the content every 15 minutes by thinking about it quietly or talking with a peer?   Do you concentrate better when you move around versus sitting for too long?

I know for myself that I don’t learn, retain, or apply when content is endlessly shared – even from expert – without a break.   If I can’t process what I hear by asking questions of the expert or checking in with another participate or sitting quietly and just thinking about what was shared, there is a point that I reach after about 15 minutes – it’s call “My Brain Is Full Up.”       I wondered whether or not I was just weird, so I have been looking to some of the literature that looks at learning design from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience.

Now that could be hard reading, but Sharon Bowman’s “Using Brain Science To Make Science Stick” has been a terrific resource.  If you are a trainer, you are working with the human brain every day and you need to know as much as possible about how humans learn and how to teach a topic well.   Understanding what holds people’s attention or breaks it can make the difference between delivering a session that is valuable or a waste of time.   The book offers several simple principles to incorporate:

• Movement is better than sitting
• Having participants talk is better than listening
• Images are better than words for instructional aids
• Writing is better than reading
• Shorter is better than longer
• Different delivery options are better than the same

Incorporating Movement

The book goes into depth about each of these principles and how to incorporate into a training session.   I’ve really taken to heart the movement principle.   Despite what people may say in an evaluation, brain science suggests that the longer people sit the less they learn.     The book offers some techniques to incorporate movement with the goal of improved retention and learning:

1.   Body Breaks: The book suggests incorporating some sort of movement or body activity every ten minutes.   One technique described that I use often is “share pairs,”  it makes people get it up, take that body break, and check in with someone.

2.   Walk and Talk: I do this a lot in half-day or full-day trainings.   Participants might do an exercise, but the results are on the wall for a debrief.   It is a more structured body break and incorporates more in-depth debrief on content.

3.  Wall Writing: This an exercise where participants will write specific responses on labeled charts on the wall at designated times.    It can be an answer to a question, a question learners still have, a summary statement, an opinion about the content, facts they want to remember, or how they plan to use the content.

What I’m struggling with how to incorporate body breaks with having participants being able to debrief in more depth, especially in the context of a 90 minute conference session.     During a recent conference session where I used share pairs to keep people moving, one of the comments on the evaluation was, “The share pairs were too short/frequent to get deep enough.”     Now that’s a design challenge – how to deliver an interactive session that can go in-depth with 80-100 participants in 90 minutes!

Talking VS Listening

The brain science literature suggests that learners understand and remember more when they talk about what they are learning.  However, there are some people who attend conference sessions or training to have information wash over them and are uncomfortable with talking or moving.    One comment in the evaluation from a recent NTC session, while in the minority, said it this way:  ”While the presenters were engaging and had good information, there was too much time having attendees talk to one-on-one about their own experiences and situations.  I want to learn from the experts and the time I spent talking to peers did not give me any meat and minimized the time that the experts talked.”

The book offers some great reminders about how to make your presentations more interactive.   The best one, “Stop Talking:  The longer you talk, the less they learn.”    Even if you are just pausing for 60 seconds to give people a chance to summarize what they learned.   If you are going to incorporate group discussion, it is important to remember that there is low-risk and high-risk.  Low risk allows participants to collaborate on an answer to question and high risk asks one person to respond.   It is good to begin with low-risk.   The same goes for small group and large group discussions.     Give participants an opportunity to answer the questions as well as ask open-ended questions.   All these techniques incorporate interaction and better processing of your content.

In some instances, you might have extreme introverts – those who are highly uncomfortable interacting with other people to learn.  According to research, they represent 2-12% of the population in the US.   This was true for the NTC session, one person commented, “I’m an introvert, so partnering up with another person didn’t work for me.”     Another principle will work for them – “Writing vs Reading.”    You get people to quietly debrief in writing what they learned.  I like to use as a closer, but perhaps it could be offered as an alternative for the introverted in the room.

How do you learn best at conferences or workshops?  Do you want endless content or do you need some ways to process what you have learned?  As a presenter or trainer, do you allow the audience to process your content?  How?

I’m getting a jump on my summer reading!    Colleagues Kari Dunn Saratovsky and Derrick Feldmann have published a new book called Cause for Change:  The Why and How of Nonprofit Millennial Engagement.  The book is based on their many years of research, convening, and consulting with nonprofits on how to engage with this younger generation.     The book is a must-read and their annual conference, MCON, is a must attend – if you want the latest thinking about strategy to engage younger people in the sector – both inside and outside of your nonprofit’s walls.

The book is a great read for nonprofit leaders of all generations.  It takes us through why it is important for nonprofits to connect with Millennials based on a good synthesis of recent research and follows through with informative chapters that will help your nonprofit build a solid strategy for connecting with the connected generation in your organization’s communication’s strategy.  It also offers examples, inspiration, and best practices for developing the leadership potential of these leaders in your nonprofit’s organization.

I found the chapter about motivations and tips for encouraging Millennnials to volunteer very valuable.   It begins with a story about Team Rubicon,  a new model for  disaster relief organization and veteran-focused enterprise founded by Jake Wood shortly after the Haiti Earthquake.   Wood, like many Millennials, are trying to find meaning in their work and delaying entry into the traditional workforce.    The book gives the example of enrollment numbers in AmeriCorps which are at record numbers, but more importantly talks about how their alumni represent a paradigm shift, an opportunity to harness on-the-ground experience into a new leadership generation – either in the US or abroad.

Millennials are a new breed of doers and as a result nonprofits need to better understand how to engage them in volunteer work.    As the book points out, it goes beyond providing good volunteer opportunities to offering a relational experience between the volunteer and the organization.   The book suggests that nonprofits need to solicit feedback, provide follow up, and ask what they could do better.    While there are fantastic platforms for nonprofits to recruit volunteers, they have make the experience an engaging one for this generation in order to transform them into champions and supporters.    The book offers some advice:

• Provide experiences based on skills
• Focus on the 3 R’s  (Recruitment, Retention, and Recognition)
• Build a continuum of engagement from micro-volunteering to deep engagement of serving on a board of trustees
• Key to retaining Millennial volunteers is providing: flexible opportunities, leverage their social/personal networks, provide career building opportunities, engage for their skills
• Be open, transparent and solicit feedback
• Create an advisory group of Millennials to help guide your volunteer program

As the book points out,  Millennials want to serve and many are willing to combine service with giving – if nonprofits can incorporate these practices in their volunteer programs.     How is your nonprofit adapting its volunteer program to attract younger people to serve and as future donors?

If you want to learn more about how to work with Millennials from both inside and outside your nonprofit,  head to MCON Conference in Indianapolis in July.  More information here.

Last month, during the Nonprofit Technology Conference plenary session on placing little bets and learning from failure,  we  issued a challenge to 1,000 nonprofits  in the audience.   Let’s do more than just give failure lip service,  let’s put it into practice and share learning from a failure or placing a “Little Bet.”     A ‘Little Bet” as defined by Peter Sims, author of the book – Little Bets, is a small action that you can take to discover something new.  It’s an affordable loss that leads to innovation.

Place a little bet & or share your #failure story… you could win a Surface! #13ntcbets ow.ly/k24ok

— Case Foundation (@CaseFoundation) April 13, 2013

The Case Foundation offered to give away a Microsoft Surface and so we issued a call to nonprofits to submit their “Little Bets” stories.  We received 18 fabulous stories about small fails in fundraising, project management, communications, social media, and internal planning.    But the winner was a story about stepping out an organization’s comfort zone to try to avoid repeating past mistakes.     The winner is Heartland Pride and here’s their story:

Little Bet: After years of having a local organization that planned pride in the Midwest fail numerous times, our organization was formed.  We started out with a task force that began to analyze what was working and not working in regard to the prior organization.  After many months and the realization that things were beyond repairable with the old organization we formed a new one.  We took all the necessary steps to become an official 501c3 and we made little changes to the event in the first year we hosted it.  The second year we made changes and moved our event to a large park in Omaha and in doing so we were able to save the organization more than 25K in expenses and make it possible for us to retain more of our profits allowing us to provide larger grants and scholarships to help the local LGBT community!  When we started we literally had a 5 member board that planned everything and over the past few years we have grown a volunteer base that is allowing us to continue to grow!

Learning: We learned that by not changing what was happening over  the years we were doomed to repeat the mistakes of the previous organization.  By stepping out of the comfort zone we were able to seek out new partnerships and the organization was able to increase it’s financial gains!  I for one am extremely proud of the work we have done and look forward to continued success!

It was hard to select a winner because all of the stories were terrific.  Here is a summary of the stories and what people learned from the experience:

Events

Youth Business Initiative:    Planning and implementing a big idea for an event on a small budget and for the first time, will no doubt include some mistakes and problems will arise that are beyond your control.   However, don’t be afraid to try something new, look at both the positive outcomes and reflect on how to do it better the next time around.    Don’t try to do something like this along, build a support system to help.

The Gifted Learning Project: Whenever you plan a fundraising event, double check the calendar and dates in all your external communications.

Social Media

Dr. Mani Children Heart Foundation:  To raise money using social media as part of your strategy, you need a group of champions with tight connections to your mission and voluntary opt-in email works well for this.  Loose ties or people you are connected with on social networks are good for spreading awareness and you need them as part of your campaign, but to raise dollars strong ties are essential.

Jewish Federations:     When developing a strategy for an engagement campaign, don’t be off the cuff.   Use the planning process to get internal buy in from staff.

Energy Employees Claimant Assistance Project: If asking your community to generate content, make sure they know how to use the platform and tools.

Partnerships

K02 Adventures Community Interest Company:  Patience is needed when you partner with an organization or government entity that has a different way of working than your nonprofit.

Helping Our Peers:  Asked two local government entities to apply for a grant for a program but they said no.    Got permission to apply and after the two government entities did not receive the grant,  rose above the personal politics and offered to share the funding.   Taking the high road in partnerships always works.

Working With Consultants

Dominican Sisters of Springfield, IL:  When hiring a consultant, always do your due diligence.  Check references before you hire.  Make sure the deliverable is reasonable and tie payments to deliverable items in the contract.

Internal Planning and Project Implementation

Domuskids:  Facilitating a staff meeting where participants are asked to brainstorm, something not typically done at staff meetings requires more preparation for staff to make the shift into a different mindset.   Introducing the idea and smaller ways to practice the new way of thinking can help make this exercise more productive.

JCamp 180:  If you are rolling out a big project, break it down is small chunks for easier monitoring.    If the project includes an assessment and learning process, design it so people can easily learn from one another.

Drop in the Bucket:  When developing a project for a remote area in a developing country, the less obvious things can get in the way.  Test your assumptions.

Children’s Hunger Fund:  If you are collecting feedback from participants in a program using an online platform, make sure you test the system with participants before rolling out widely.

Fundraising

Smile At Your Baby:   If you are doing a fundraising event, make sure the venue is appropriate and acceptable to your audience.  ”Free” use of a space should not be the only criteria.

The Piedmont Environmental Council: Proof your fundraising emails before you send them out.

Disability Network:   When you plan a fundraising project, make sure you have a solid team of volunteers to help you implement – and train and equipment them to support the effort.

Motley Zoo:  Don’t set an unrealistically large fundraising goal because it is too daunting.   Break it down into smaller, bit sized campaigns.

These are terrific examples of how to learn from mistakes and little bets.

Sunrise on Sacred Maori Land outside of Auckland, NZ

I’ve just returned from an amazing trip of facilitating workshops, discussions and master classes as well as a keynoting a conference on “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit”  in Australia and New Zealand.    It made me very happy to be teaching non-stop for almost two weeks.     I’m always learning as I help others learn.    Here’s a couple of reflections from my “trainer’s notebook.”

I started with a full-day workshop outside of Auckland called “The Networked NGO in New Zealand,” this workshop was for activist organizations and focused on strategy, measurement, and best practices for managing and implementing social media as a network.   Stephen Blyth, a nonprofit capacity builder who I met when I keynoted Connecting Up in 2008, hosted my trip to NZ and arranged for this workshop to take place on Makaurau Marae which is the land of Maori.

The workshop started with a welcoming ceremony.    We sat in the hall – two rows – the guests and the Maori.  We sang the song of welcome which is also about being networked and working together.     After finishing the song, we rubbed noses which was a traditional welcome gesture.  One thing I have learned working mostly outside of the US is to start a training by honoring a local tradition.   I couldn’t have asked for a more authentic, culturally appropriate start to a workshop.    The spiritual nature of the welcoming ceremony set the tone for a day of reflective practice for participants.

Effective learning that creates results and transfers to action over time starts with unleashing people’s existing knowledge – they need to pull forward pre-existing information.  Too many times I have observed trainers simply launching into the new content without honoring what participants already know.   You also need to challenge participants thought processes and stimulate curiosity  about what you are teaching.    This includes meeting and greeting people, setting up the room for interaction, getting people to move around, to be actively involved with the content, and appreciating learners.

New Zealand Workshop: Burning Questions

Connecting Up Master Class

One technique I use is the “Burning Question” board.   I used it for my master class at Connecting Up in Australia as I have used it for almost every training I’ve done over the past twenty years.    Here’s how it works.   When learners enter the room,  I ask them to reflect on their “burning question”  or why did they want to take this workshop.  What question do they want to answer by the end of the day?  Not only does this give learners a chance to think about questions they have, but also helps me figure out how how well agenda matches expectations and manage them throughout the day.  I’ve used the burning question technique in many different ways over the years, this is an example of one way to do it.

Circle and Workspace in New Zealand

New Zealand: Tables for Small Group Exercises

The room layout and physical space is very important to setting the right mood for energized learning.  I have written about this in great detail here.  I had my ideal set ups in Australia and New Zealand – rooms with circle seating or round tables and space in the room to move around or work on interactive exercises such as creating your organization’s networking map.

Space to Move Around

In the orientation or beginning of the workshop, it is also important to get people moving around and talking to one another – and to honor what they already know. This is something you do at the beginning but throughout your content delivery. Effective training is not about stuffing content down people’s throats, but giving them an opportunity to digest it. One technique that I have been using over the past twenty years is share pairs — having people talk with another participant and puzzle about how they might apply the content to their situation.    It is also great to see colleagues, like John Kenyon, apply these techniques to their own practice.

Pass the Ugly Doll in New Zealand

Having a formal closing to your training helps extend the learning to action.   Learners, despite their best intentions, might find it difficult to apply what they’ve learned right away.    That’s why I always do a reflective exercise at the end with the question, “What one thing can you put into practice next week?”   I also give everyone a chance to say a few words at the end of the training and pass the “ugly doll.”  The green ugly doll has accompanied me around the world and has been in the hands of many people who work for NGOs and social change.  So, there is a spiritual ending and a commitment to applying what has been learned as well as communal ending.  The ugly doll got passed in New Zealand and in Australia.

Pass the Ugly Doll in Australia

For this workshop,  John Kenyon and I were teaching simultaneous workshops.    We thought it would be a great opportunity for the participants in both of our workshops to share what they learned.  So, we did a double closers.  I suggested that we used my “Hello My Name” share pair that I have been doing for the past five years and adapt it as a closer.

My Name Is What I Learned

We asked participants to create a name tag comprised of key words of what they learned.   My workshop participants used the red tags and John’s used the blue tags.  Then we facilitated a series of small groups so they could cross pollinate.    Finally, since we were on the Gold Coast on the beach,  I suggested that we do a walking debrief on the beach, although we adapted it to the beach promenade.   This is an exercise I used in Tunisia.  Getting fresh air and walking helps people digest.

Walking Debrief on the Beach Promenade - My Favorite Closer

Walking Debrief

Line up #surfers #13cu #netnon (note tourists joined in) Made with @vineapp vine.co/v/bEZXiLl7HEU

— Paul Rees (@paul3141) May 15, 2013

We made quite the spectacle stopping traffic and at one point a tourist took a photograph of us posing for a photograph.

Meeting with Funders in New Zealand

And, for every social media workshop, I like to close by taking a photo of the participants such as the session I did with funders in New Zealand where we discussed social media capacity building and peer learning design.

@kanter great master class today. Most useful handouts and activities ever! #13CU #netnon

— Christiana Stergiou (@scribblybark) May 15, 2013

The formula for a great training session includes:

• Energizing learners to be curious
• Great content and learning design
• Closing exercises that inspire learns to apply what they learned

Note from Beth: I’ve just finished doing some social media workshops in New Zealand with Volunteering Auckland and now in Australia.  Next month,  I will be traveling to Washington, DC for the NCVS Conference and can’t wait.  I will be doing  a panel on using social media as part of volunteer recruitment.   While I’m still “down under,”  Michelle Nunn agreed to share this guest post about conference highlight

Get the Scoop at the National Conference on Volunteering and Service in Washington, DC #NCVS guest post by Michelle Nunn

I’m eager to let readers of Beth’s Blog in on the best, old-fashioned way to be a networked employee at a networked nonprofit dedicated to social change: Come to Points of Light’s annual Conference on Volunteering and Service in Washington, D.C. next month.

From June 19-22, more than 5,000 people from around the nation and the world will gather to discuss best practices in engaging volunteers and new ways people can power solutions to some of our most pressing social challenges.

If you come, you’ll find out:

• Why I think this is the best time in history to be working for social change.
• Why Wharton professor and bestselling author Adam Grant thinks serving others is the key to individual success.
• What Republican strategist Karl Rove and Democratic strategist David Plouffe have in common.
• Why Frans Johansson subtitled his bestselling book, “What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation.”
• What New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has to say about ways volunteers can drive recovery after a natural disaster.
• What Fox’s Bill O’Reilly and MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry have in common.
• What Beth Kanter has to say about using social networks to advance the cause of volunteerism.
• What entrepreneurs and those who create business models can teach the rest of us about engaging volunteers.
• Who will sing for his supper at a huge gathering on education reform.
• How you can help clean up the national mall, feed the hungry in D.C. and get your members of Congress engaged in service.
• How you can help Chase, our conference title sponsor, decide how to invest more in the nonprofit sector.
• How to meet tons of great people, engage in great conversations and learning, and have a great time in our nation’s capital.

There will be 13 Conference Tracks to engage any imagination. They include: Nonprofit Capacity Building, Service Innovation, Business, Economic Opportunity, Emergency Preparedness and Response, Excellence in Education, Faith, Global, Leadership, National Service, Veterans and Military Families, Volunteer Management and Youth Service and Leadership.

I hope you’ll make a plan today to join us for Points of Light’s Conference on Volunteering and Service in Washington, D.C. Together, we can network our way to a better future.

Find out more and register here: www.volunteeringandservice.org.

Michelle Nunn is the CEO of Points of Light, the largest organization in the world dedicated to volunteer service, and author of Be the Change

Note from Beth: Greetings from the Gold Coast in Australia.  I’m here to keynote Connecting Up Conference,  While I am in OZ,  I invited Jon Stahl to share this amazing case study.   Enjoy

For several years now, nonprofits have been investing time, energy and money building Facebook pages and working to engage supporters on Facebook. Unfortunately, as Beth has pointed out , Facebook doesn’t always make it easy to generate meaningful and measurable results that drive your mission or your bottom line.

About a year ago, Facebook began rolling out a series of important changes, most notably the launch of Facebook Open Graph, designed to empower app developers (like us here at ActionSprout) to create tools to help brands and organizations get more out of Facebook.

Over the past year, large corporate brands have embraced Facebook apps from companies like Wildfire (purchased by Google), Buddy Media, (now part of Salesforce) and WooBox, for things like coupons, sweepstakes, and contests. Others have spent tens of thousands of dollars to build custom Facebook apps from scratch. These apps help organizations take advantage of Facebook’s new functionality in order to generate more meaningful and measurable fan engagement.

These are powerful tools. But even nonprofits that can afford them find that they don’t address our sector’s unique needs to engage people in advocacy, organizing and fundraising. That’s where ActionSprout comes in.

In this blog post, I’ll show off a simple campaign that generated some great, measurable results for Best Friends Animal Society. Best Friends is a nonprofit organization that is working to bring about an end to pet homelessness and the shelter killing of nearly 4 million animals a year. The Society has a large and vibrant online community, including a Facebook page with more than 300,000 fans, and many of their posts get thousands of likes and hundreds of clicks and shares. (And yes, many of their posts feature cute dogs

But, like many organizations, Best Friends Animal Society has struggled to find a seamless, consistent and budget-friendly way to convert those fans into email list subscribers, donors and action-takers. Changes to Facebook’s EdgeRank formula have only added an extra layer of complexity. With a goal of converting thousands of “likers” into leads, Best Friends turned to ActionSprout to help make that goal a reality.

Red’s Get Well Card

Best Friends’ first ActionSprout campaign was designed to engage Facebook users in supporting a long time friend of the organization who had recently learned that her adopted paraplegic dog, Red, had been diagnosed with cancer. Best Friends created a “Get Well” card for Red, and invited Facebook fans (and their friends) to sign it and add their best wishes forRed’s speedy recovery. The resulting call to action was a richer, more engaging and measurable online action than the typical like, share or comment.

Promote It With A Wall Post

Best Friends promoted Red’s Get Well Card with a single Facebook wall post.

Cute dog photo: check. Emotionally compelling, urgent call to action: check. But instead of sending people away from Facebook, when people click on the link in the post, they are taken to the campaign located on the ActionSprout app on Best Friends’ Facebook page.

Users click “Sign” to sign the card. If they have never taken action through ActionSprout before, they get a standard Facebook App permissions dialog. This dialog gives us permission to read (and share with Best Friends) basic contact information (name, email) from their Facebook profile and to use Facebook Open Graph to share their online actions. After users sign the card, they can also leave Facebook comments on the card itself, generating additional engagement–and more shareable Facebook activity!

ActionSprout includes more than 30 different actions you can choose from, each of which can have many different kinds of objects, giving you a broad creative canvas to play with when designing your own campaigns. Once Best Friends had their content written for the post, it took them about 5 minutes to configure and launch this campaign.
Measurable, Meaningful Results
Best Friends launched Red’s Get Well Card with a single Facebook wall post, let it run organically for about 48 hours, then promoted it with $300 worth of Facebook “promoted post” advertising. All told, the post was seen by about 65,000 people.

1265 people signed Red’s Get Well Card, or about 2% of the people who saw the initial wall post. The biggest surprise of this campaign was that of the 1265 signers, only 216 were already fans of Best Friends’ Facebook page, and only 142 were already in Best Friends’ email file, so Best Friends was able to generate more than 1100 new supporters with this single campaign.

These 1100+ new supporters came on board because they saw their friends interacting with the campaign in a number of ways, including:

1. 4481 people “liked” the original wall post promoting the campaign.
2. The campaign received a total of 1377 comments, including both comments on the wall post and comments on the Get Well Card itself.
3. Supporters shared Red’s Get Well Card 2082 times. This includes both shares of the wall post, the campaign itself, as well as automatic shares generated through Facebook Open Graph by users taking the ActionSprout action.

Red’s Get Well card was one of Best Friends’ most popular and most engaging posts in February 2013. But even more impressive is the fact that unlike their other posts, the team can measure its success by:

1. Number of new supporters (with names and email addresses) acquired – over 89% of the supporters who signed Red’s Get Well Card were new to Best Friends’ file.
2. Number of fans whose contact information was acquired.
3. All of the standard Facebook content engagement metrics such as likes, shares and comments.

Happy Endings for All

Red’s Get Well Card is a simple example of what the next generation of Facebook engagement and organizing looks like: creative, meaningful social actions that users can take without leaving Facebook. More importantly, they include permission-driven capturing of contact information and integrated peer-to-peer sharing so organizations can begin to move their relationships beyond the walls of Facebook.

Campaigns like this can open up important new rungs on your Facebook Ladder of Engagement.

Oh, and our story has a happy ending for Red as well. On February 14, nine days after the card went live, Best Friends’ Melissa Lipani wrote:

“We’ve got terrific news to share! We received a call this morning from Diane, Red’s dedicated mom. She was happy to report that the veterinarian caring for Red let her know that surgery to remove the cancer was successful, and they were able to get ‘clear margins.’ Diane shared how touched she was to read all of the sentiments posted here and on Red’s card. She feels they are a big part of Red’s recovery! She let us know that Red is doing very well, and sending virtual kisses to all of his friends. A big thanks to all of you! -melissa l.”

Jon Stahl is Director of Strategy at ActionSprout, where he helps organizations engage, organize and fundraise on Facebook.

Source: Gemma Correll – I Love Charts

Note from Beth: I just knew that I was going to start obsessing about charts and graphs after my Excel spreadsheet obsessions started.  I thought if I set up a tumblr blog curating great nonprofit spreadsheets, but the next logical step is create visualizations of your data.  What better way than in Excel.    I got into a wonderful conversation with Stephanie Evergreen, another nonprofit datanerd who loves spreadsheets who offered to write up this guest post about how to create the perfect graph.

Six Steps to Great Graphs By Stephanie Evergreen

Low budget? No programming skills? Me, too! Great data visualizations don’t necessarily require an expensive software package or a programmer on staff. Here is how you can work with what you already own, Excel, to increase the impact of your data visualizations. Let’s start with one basic dataset – a count of the number of followers, advocates, and donors for a non-profit over the last 6 years – and rock the graph so it is clear and compelling.

Step 1: Which Chart is Best?

Excel provides all sorts of default chart types to choose from, but the truth is, keep it as simple as possible. If your data adds up to 100%, you might choose a pie chart. It’s difficult to interpret area, so if you use a pie, restrict the number of wedges to 4 or fewer. People are better at judging length, so bar charts are a decent option also useful for comparisons. People are even better at judging points on a line, but box plots aren’t yet a default option in Word (here’s a tutorial on how to force one out of Excel, though

Since we’re working with the defaults, here is how our social media data looks as a bar graph.

The bar graph is okay, but when trying to look at change over time, line graphs are a more appropriate chart type.

Ah, so much better! Now the trends are much easier to see at a glance. The choice in chart type should be driven by the relationships in the data we want to visualize. For more help, check out my favorite chart chooser tool.

Step 2: Use Color to Emphasize

Excel’s default colors are so equally dark that it can be difficult to tell the graph’s main point, without some serious cognitive effort. Changing the color can help bring attention where we want it. Of course, that means we have to know where we want it. So in this case, I’m suggesting we pay attention to the advocates, who used to be followers, and some of whom will become donors. I’m going to change the line color for advocates to green, my action color, and change the others to a shade of gray.

Your action color will likely be something from your brand. Use a color-picking tool to find out the exact color and navigate to the custom color area in Excel to match your shade.

Step 3: Delete What You Don’t Need

Little things in this chart still make it feel cluttered and distract from the data. Most of the time, we can do without the tick marks along each axis. Just right-click on each axis, and in the format area, change the tick mark option to None.

We can also lighten up the gridlines. They support estimation of the data values, but the default is so dark it can compete with the actual data lines. Right-click on them and change their color to a light gray. If you are going to put the number labels on your data lines, delete the gridlines altogether.  Just a few tweaks there cleans up the data visualization.

Step 4: Directly Label

Our brains make better sense of the data when we replace the legend with direct line labels. Just click on the legend and hit your delete key. It will feel good.

Then right-click on each line and select Add Data Labels. This will give you numbers. So right-click again for select Format Data Labels. Uncheck Values and check Series. Now each data point will have its appropriate label, like “Advocates.” But you only need the label at the end of the line, so click on the others and hit that happy delete key again.  This way, interpretation of which line stands for what is very obvious.

Step 5: Save as a Template

Whew – sounds like a lot of work, right? Make this process easier in the future by saving the chart as a template. Look in the chart types area of Excel and you’ll see a space to save what you have made up to this point. Name it something you’ll remember. Then the next time you need to make a three-line graph, click on your customized template and BAM – instant great graph.

Step 6: Annotate

Let’s get back to the original reason we visualize data – we’re looking for a pattern. We graph our social media impacts because we need to see how launching new platforms has influenced our clients. So now that we have taken lots of things out of the graph, let’s add back in some thoughtful annotation to help make the patterns clear.

Several pieces were added: I inserted icons along the timeline to illustrate when the nonprofit launched each social media platform. Based on that, we can see a series of changes in the data. After each launch, followers increase, and after a lag the advocates and eventually the donors increase as well. Let’s point out that pattern using the title. I left-justified the title and changed the text from something generic to a clear take-away point. No reader can mistake the message. I added a subtitle to further elaborate.

You can use Excel to do more  than create awesome line graphs. Are you inserting this graph into a slideshow for your Board?  Try the slow reveal.   Once you have mastered clean graph redesign, pull several together into a 1-page dashboard, like my annual report. Or entice your annual meeting invitees with scratch-off graphs.

Six steps help us tweak Excel’s defaults into rockstar data visualizations that help us understand our work and better communicate it to others.

Stephanie Evergreen blogs, tweets, and trains on how to make awesome graphs, slides, and reports.  Her forthcoming book, Presenting Data Effectively,  is coming soon, better early your copy now!

 

Note From Beth: I’m on my way to Australia and New Zealand lead a series of workshops on Networked Nonprofits and Measurement, culminating with a keynote at this year’s ConnectingUp Conference in Australia, so expect to see a few interesting guest posts. I caught up with Danny Alpert at the NTC Conference in Minneapolis, MN where he briefed me on how he is using a “Transmedia” strategy to raise awareness and funding to support homeless services. He graciously agreed to pen this guest post while I was in transit to “down under.” Enjoy.

Transmedia – Making Change Across Mediums by Danny Alpert,  Executive Director, Kindling Group and Executive Producer, See3 Communications

I became a documentary filmmaker to tell meaningful stories that explore social issues and inspire change. When I started out, the “broadcast, festival, and screenings” model of distribution dictated community engagement strategies that were more linear, and limited. We knew that if our film was compelling, we could break through to the people in the audience — and maybe they would help get the word out about the film and the issues it explored.

Today, it’s a whole new ballgame. The digital tools we have at our disposal are limitless — allowing great stories to reach more and more people, and providing new opportunities for recruiting advocates, changing policy, public education, and creating real change on the ground. Knowing your audience remains essential, because each platform is a new arena for expression, and a new avenue to engage different targets and users. But simply put, cross-platform campaigns are the future of documentary film, and issue advocacy.

My latest project is called @home, which explores homelessness in America through the story of Mark Horvath (aka @hardlynormal on Twitter). Mark is an e-activist who interviews homeless men and women, and shares their stories across every digital medium he can find — YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Google +, you name it. Just like Mark, @home is moving beyond the old models of documentary film, using social media, web video, and a smartphone “game for change” to to spark a conversation about homelessness, and how we can solve it.

In a recent Pew research study, 43% of people who use social media reported that they decided to “learn more about a social issue” due to something they read on a social networking site, and 18% said they decided to take action offline. Whatever the issue, once you’ve engaged online — even with just a retweet or a $5 donation — you’re in the door, and you’re a part of the team. The more people we reach on digital platforms, the more attitudes we will impact and the more boots we’ll have on the ground to organize and advocate.

Right now, we are running a crowdfunding campaign to finish the documentary at the project’s core and develop the @home game. To build momentum and get our supporters fired up, we’ve produced a series of webisodes — hitting themes like veterans and homelessness, the power of social media for change, and the solutions we know can work in fighting homelessness. By seeding compelling content and pushing boundaries for distribution with new technology, we can deepen our impact and widen our breadth.

We live in a world where it’s increasingly difficult to keep a person’s attention, and there’s a whole lot out there competing to be seen. Effective engagement still comes down to one-on-one relationships — that’s why we’re defining audiences for each of these clips and collaborating with allied organizations and supporters who can help us tap into new audiences and opportunities. The videos we are producing create win-win motivation for distribution — they point to our partners’ successes and expertise in this field and, at the same time, are helping build our own online community.

Our newest webisode features none-other-than Beth Kanter, a long-time friend and supporter of Mark Horvath’s digital movement to make homelessness visible. Watch to see her, social media influencers, and Mark’s friend network talk about how Twitter and Facebook are changing the game for do-gooders across all issues.

We believe that we are out in front of a growing movement to tell stories across channels and platforms — not as a novelty, but as a necessity forriel upping our impact and reaching a wider audience. This “transmedia” movement has so much potential to produce wins, letting advocates like us better target, personalize, and grow our campaigns.

If you believe in the power of transmedia to make change, please support the @home campaign now — and share this cutting-edge project with your friends.

Daniel Alpert is the executive director of the Kindling Group, a non-profit documentary and community engagement production company, and executive producer for See3 Communications, which uses new media to activate people and advance social causes. His work as a producer, director, and editor has been nominated for Academy and national Emmy Awards, and has aired on PBS, HBO, and A&E. His films have explored causes from human rights and curing cancer to animal welfare and religious coexistence.

Flickr Photo by TomtheJet

I’m headed to New Zealand and Australia to facilitate workshops in both countries and to keynote the ConnectingUp Conference (Australia’s version of the Nonprofit Technology Conference).   I am excited for a return visit to Australia.   I delivered the keynote there in 2008 and taught a workshop, “Take Me To The Social Web.”     One of the workshop participants was Stephen Blyth of Common Knowledge - a long time nonprofit capacity builder and trainer – who invited me to come over to New Zealand to facilitate some workshops to NGOs and meet with funders who are interested in the peer learning and networked capacity building approach.  Stephen is an expert in many training methods so this will be an excellent co-learning experience.

I’m thrilled that one of the workshops will be held on Makaurau Marae which is the land of Maori.     The workshop will start with a welcoming ceremony – I couldn’t have asked for a more authentic, culturally appropriate start to a workshop outside the US.   To help prepare, Stephen Blyth pointed me to a video, The Beginner’s Guide to Visiting the Marae. is a straightforward and respectful explanation of basic marae protocol, from the wero, to the karanga, pōwhiri, whaikōrero, waiata, koha and the hongi.    This video was an effective primer for me as a  marae novice.  Stephen was kind enough to point me to additional web resources that explain the protocol in detail and some terms with how to pronounce.   He also sent me a book to read on the plane!

Here’s my some of my itinerary while I’m in Australia and New Zealand:

May 11, 2013: Full Day Workshop:  The Networked NGO in New Zealand.   This workshop is for intermediate organizations and will focus on strategy, measurement, and best practices for managing and implementing social media.   This training will be the kick off for a peer learning group that Stephen will facilitate over the next few months.

May 13, 2013: Meeting with NZ Funders.   This session will be briefing about of the ideas in “The Networked Nonprofit,” and “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit.”   We will discuss ways that they can design capacity building efforts for NGOs using peer learning and a networked approach as well as how to measure and refine their own social media usage.

May 13, 2013: Half-Day Workshop.   This workshop is co-hosted by Volunteering Auckland.  This workshop will be for smaller NGOs, mostly volunteer-driven and or smaller staffs and how they can open up and become networked nonprofits and use social media effectively with few resources.

May 15, 2013: ConnectingUp – Master Class on becoming a networked nonprofit, using measurement, and making sense of data.    I’m lucky that colleague John Kenyon is teaching a master class on strategic technology planning at the same time.  We plan to do a joint session at the end of the day – and it may be walk on the beach to debrief as we will be on the Gold Coast.

May 16, 2013: ConnectingUp Conference Keynote I will be giving a keynote at the conference.  I will be talking about several themes including learning from failure.

While I’m in transit, I’ve arranged for some exciting guest posts and I will, of course, be blogging and sharing what I learn about NGOs, Networked Nonprofits, and Measurement in that corner of the world.

I was invited to present a key note at the Mekong ICT Camp in Thailand about nonprofits, social media, and measurement.   This event is a biannual training workshop on information, communication, and technologies for citizen media, community health, and civil society development in Mekong Region and included participants are coders, journalists, and NGO staff from Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam.   The camp took place in Cha-am, Petchburi, Thailand.  The camp was organized by Thai Fund Foundation in partnership with Opendream, , Thai Netizen Network, Frontier Foundation and Tactical Technology Collective.

The theme for the training was “Data, Data.”   Unfortunately, I could make it to Thailand, so I presented and lead a discussion remotely using Google Hangouts from California.  Here’s a few reflections about presenting remotely in locations outside of the US.

1.  Format: Our session was 90 minutes.   Tharum Bun, a blogger in Cambodia that I have known for ten years, did an introduction and I presented for 25 minutes.   The audience had very good English skills so no translation was needed.     During the presentation, we had participants jot down questions on index cards and those were used by the facilitators to lead the discussion.   This method was used because the facilitator needed to speak into the mic so I could hear the questions.

We used Google Hangout because they found it was more robust for video, audio, and screen sharing in that remote location.   Using Google Hangout, you can switch between slides and camera, although when you are in slide mode, you can’t see the remote participants.     The Google Hangout was projected on the screen.

2.  Test, Test, Test: When the hosts arrived at the conference location for set up, we tested the connection and Google Hangout on location.    The site had great wireless and Tharum was able to test on his laptop and give me a tour of the facility, including a walk outside.   Most importantly, we tested the technology in the room where the presentation was taking place.     We also tested with other users on the wifi.

@kanter we have wifi connection interuption here

— Henry Khu (@HenryKhu) May 7, 2013

3.  Have a Plan B, Plan C, Plan D: During the thirty plus years I’ve been training nonprofits to use technology, if there is any one lesson I’ve learned – it is this:  ”It isn’t a matter if the technology won’t work, it is about your back up plan when it doesn’t work.”   So we had several back up plans.   In the event that we had poor connection and audio break up, we’d stop using the video.    I had also sent a copy of my slides in advanced so, participants could follow along locally if we needed to stop the screen sharing and in fact we ended up having to do that.    Finally, if there was a black out or interruption of the Internet,  I was going to SKYPE out and call the facilitator’s cell phone (we tested this as well).       We did have a brief outage for about a minute or two, but we were able to re-establish the Google Hangout quickly.     If the event of total disruption,  I had sent a link to a previously recorded podcast I did with the Stanford Social Innovation Review that participants would review and we use Facebook to do the Q/A.

4.  Pre and Post Event Interaction: The event has a hashtag or Facebook page, it is good idea to say hello to participants before the event and do answer any follow up questions.

Of course, nothing beats the experience of actually being there!    So, it was fun to see the photos of the recycled water bottles and beach breaks.

Photo by Be Chandra

I’m teaching a master class today in San Francisco for arts organizations for Theatre Bay Area.  This is a continuation of my work with TBA over the past 3-4 years.    The first year  I experimented with a peer design that included face-to-face workshops, action learning projects, and monthly calls back in 2010 called ArtsLab.  The second year in 2011, we did two sets of peer groups using workshops, action learning projects, and micro grants to encourage experimentation.

The third year now expands the program into a “train the trainer” model.    The master class is part of  a, NEA-funded experiment being conducted by arts service organizations like Theatre Bay Area all across the country. The goal to help their members, small arts organizations,  how to use social media and digital technologies to transform and energize their relationships with audiences, supporters, funding bodies and other arts groups.   My master class here in  San Francisco will be video taped and shared in other cities by a local facilitator using a lesson plan that I have developed.

The first phase was an intensive “Digi-Strat” boot camp last month.  Staff members from theatre and arts service organizations met in San Francisco offices to undergo instructor-level training in strategy and tactical digital and social media.  Along with my train-the-trainers session, project consultant Alli Houseworth ran sessions on using the tools and worked with participants to further customized the curriculum.

Now the networked capacity building begins.  Trainers from arts service organizations will  train their members. Theatre Bay Area is currently in the process of inviting a small number of Bay Area theatre companies to participate in a tailor-made six-month digital strategies training based on the peer learning models used through the project’s three years.  Each company will identify a specific, goal; design an experiment to meet that goal using one or more social media platforms; run their experiment; and then assess the results.  All this, with support from the project consultant.    This is a model that I have designed and implemented over the past twenty years of my work as a technology trainer, so excited to see it in the train-the-trainers model – way more efficient!

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?

This map is one of a series of 80 global maps describing the state of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine habitats.  It is the result of a collaborative data and data visualization project undertaken by the Nature Conservancy scientists,  working with governments, scientists and conservation organizations around the world.   They are displayed here using new data visualization tool called Google Fusion Tables technology.  I discovered while browsing through the gallery wondering if any of this technology was within the reach of nonprofits.

Google Fusion Tables was one of several tools mentioned in this blog post, “Data for Good:  A Beginner’s Guide for Nonprofits and Social Ventures.”   And while it is true that the tools are low cost and somewhat easy to use, not every nonprofit has those capacities within the organization.    A few months ago, I wrote a post called “Help, My Nonprofit Needs A Data Nerd and Where To Find Them,”   so ever since been looking for more resources where nonprofits can find and work with a data scientist.   Here’s two:

Sumall Foundation:  SumAll.org is a non-profit organization dedicated to doing social good by analyzing data.  Their mission is to provide better data and analysis to gauge the success and impact of a social effort and how to improve.   The foundation — a non-profit entity that’s part of cloud-analytics startup SumAll and funded with a portion of the company’s venture capital investment — is gathering data on specific issues and trying to raise awareness of the problems and highlight some possible solutions. In the process, it hopes to help the non-profits in those spaces understand why they should use data and how they can make the best use of it.   Here’s more about what they do and they are actively looking for nonprofit partners.

Making Sense of Your Data Course:  If your nonprofit needs more help analyzing your datasets,  Professor Bill Howe at the University of Washington is inviting organizations of all types – small businesses, nonprofits, and research labs, to name a few – to join his massively open online course, Introduction to Data Science, in order to connect with students from all over the world in a collective pursuit of data mastery.   More about the project and this opportunity to get free help with your data over at the GuideStar Blog.

Is your organization working with a volunteer or consultant to improve its capacity to use and apply data?

This year at the Nonprofit Technology Conference, I had the pleasure of designing and facilitating a session on “Content Curation for Nonprofits”  with Will Coley.  This blog post offers reflections and resources from the session.

I’ve been a content curator for many years, using the techniques to help me develop curriculum materials for workshops and blog posts – as a form of professional development.  Will Coley, comes to the topic understanding how activists and activist organizations are using the techniques as part of their content and engagement strategies. Will is also does a lot of work with video – so when he proposed that we incorporate video interviews as part of the session,  I was thrilled.

The session was designed to balance content delivery with peer interaction.  The value of bringing in pre-recorded interviews with other folks to offer brief insights related to the particular topic made the session more engaging.   While it is hard to measure actual attention spans, there is research that people pay closest attention during the first 10-18 minutes of lecture – and then their minds wander.   So, varying speakers, interaction, and mediums – helps make the content stick.

One of the points we emphasized was that the art and craft of content curation was not mindless, click sharing of content.  That the curator selects, describes, filters, organizes, and present resources.   I did this in real-time as part of my presentation by highlight a e-book from Curata called “Feeding the Content Beast” with a foreword by Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs and the co-author of “Content Rules.”

I went through what specific pages to read and why, and had included a screen capture of the six practical tips because I thought it was the best set of tips to approach content curation and highly relevant to the audience of nonprofit professionals looking for time saving techniques.   I mentioned that they had to fill out a form, but they could download the entire 20 page booklet.   I also acknowledged Giuseppe Mauriello, another curator on Scoop.It from where I found this excellent resource.

Harold Jarche - Click to Original Source

Today,   one of the foremost content curators Robin Good highlighted an updated version of Harold Jarche’s “Seek Sense Share” model applied to content curation.   I first came across Harold’s Seek Sense Share model back in 2011 and I actually made my New Year’s resolution for professional learning.  Later that year,  I had begun to notice that I needed to pay more attention to training my attention and to be more intentional about how I was sharing information.   The Seek-Sense-Share framework really helped me.

I connected Harold’s framework to content curation because it was useful for teaching the trade craft of content curation.   I hope that participants took away from our session, if nothing else, that content curation requires the human brain, as Robin Good points out.   And that if we haven’t reviewed and thought about a resource, we should not share it.   This might be mean sharing less.

Content curation takes focus and discipline — being “brains on.”

For a terrific example of using Storify to curate content from a conference session, see what James Howe put together.

Last week, I was lucky enough to be invited to participate in a meeting organized by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation called “Advancing Social Media Measurement for Foundations.”     The participants were a cross-disciplinary group and included people who work at different foundations in the areas of evaluation, communication, social media, and programs as well as people who work for nonprofits and as consultants who work in evaluation, social media, network analysis, data scientists, and others.

The main part of the meeting was two working sessions where we were divided into five small groups to focus defining outcomes, strategies, key performance metrics, and measurement methods for five outcome areas that may be common to many foundation’s communication’s strategies.

• Our foundation is viewed a valuable information source
• Our foundation is viewed as transparent
• Lessons are disseminated, multiplying impact beyond our foundation’s reach
• Public knowledge, pressure (to change policy) and action increase in strategic areas
• Our networks strengthen and diversify

Our group, like some others, found it difficult to work on these generically and struggled a bit until we created some specific scenarios.   Having spent a year working with KD Paine on our book, “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,”  we faced the same challenge at times, although we had fairly large group of Packard Foundation grantees testing the frameworks which helped.   Despite the difficulty of working measurement in a generic way, the output from sessions was quite valuable.

What was most useful for me was the opportunity to see around the table with evaluators and communications people and brainstorm, shape, and clarify success outcomes.   It was also quite useful to hear and try to translate different evaluation frameworks and methodologies to social media.

MT @jeffcdi@mayurhpatel of @knightfdn “social web is not icing; needs to be baked in” to foundation strategy, w HT to @elzbthmllr #sm_re

— Elizabeth R. Miller (@ElzbthMllr) April 25, 2013

Mostly, these outcomes focused on communications, but I would like to see another step – going through this process but with a grant strategy or program lens. The day kicked off with presentations.    I shared the above presentation about the State of Social Media Measurement in the nonprofit sector.   It covered maturity of practice in social media and measurement and brief case studies of advanced practitioners including Humane Society, UpWell, and DoSomething.   I shared some areas of improvement and notes about tools, including Alison Carlman from Global Giving’s spreadsheet.

“SlideShare is a hidden gem for sharing philanthropic learnings and content” @mayurhpatel from @knightfdn @rwjf #SM_RE — Christine Nieves (@NievesChristine) April 25, 2013
 

Mayur Patel from the Knight Foundation shared an fantastic presentation on the Knight Foundation’s experience measuring its social media use.   His thoughts are shared in this follow up blog post and I captured the main points as Tweets in this Storify.   What struck me were the many similarities to business to business marketing strategies and measurement.

Katelyn Mack from FSG gave a presentation about the results of  social media impact for the Knight Foundation Community Information Challenge.   The presentation offers some great examples of how to measure offline engagement and how to measure it.

At the end of the meeting, we were asked to sign a “commitment to continuing to advance social media measurement.”    There is a desire to move the practice of measurement forward in the field – so stay tuned for the grand synthesis and report from the meeting and continued dialogue.  For starters, follow the #sm_re hashtag on Twitter.

In the sequel movie  Crocodile Dundee 2, there is a great line when Mick Dundee visits the US and two guys try to rob him at knife point.    He pulls out his outback knife, which is three times larger and says,  ”Now, that’s a knife!”     When Alison Carlman, unmarketing manager for Global Giving, shared her social media measurement spreadsheet during a peer learning session I’m facilitating for Packard Foundation grantees based on “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,”  I couldn’t  help but think, “Now That’s A Spreadsheet!”

Why is this such an awesome digital marketing/social media measurement spreadsheet?   The spreadsheet captures strategy, outcomes, tactics, and Key Performance Indicators or metrics.   This isn’t a bunch of metrics trivia disconnected from decision-making.     Global Giving uses a number of sophisticated metrics tools to collect metrics across channels, but that data is cleaned, organized, and summarized in this worksheet that sets up the team to make good decisions based on their data.    Be clear, a fancy program did not automate this dashboard – a human had to use a little elbow grease (approximately a couple hours of work) to assemble it, but the payback insights is well worth the effort.

Collecting data from free or paid measurement tools is easy.  And there is no lack of social media metrics tools!  The challenge is not finding the perfect metrics tool, but how you pull the right data into excel – and work with it to clean and organize it.   Analytics and monitoring tools are great at shoveling  data, lots of data, but to make sense of the data and glean valuable insights requires some additional work.  That works does not require genius level talent or root-canal-like pain.  It can start with thinking about how to best design your spreadsheet!

One caution to point out – as with any technology tool – you have to make sure that you are using it correctly.    My colleague, David Geilhufe, pointed out that 85% of spreadsheets contain errors.  That’s why it is a good idea to do what Rebecca Krause-Hardie does, “cross check totals and formulas.”

For the Packard Foundation “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit” peer learning group,  I’ve been collecting and curating spreadsheets from nonprofits that they use for social media, multi-channel digital campaigns – to both manage and measure.  It is much easier to start with a template and modify its design than start with a blank spreadsheet. But, I’ve been struggling with the best low-cost easy way to discover, curate, and share those spreadsheets more broadly.

This past month,  I’ve also been curious about Tumblr, having noticed that it is getting more attention from nonprofits.   Tumblr blogs are very focused on a topic and the best ones border on being a little bit nerdy and obsessive.And, viola – the perfect learning project for Tumblr!     A tumblr blog called “Now That’s A Spreadsheet.”      The Tumblr blog showcases examples of nonprofit spreadsheets for online integrated strategies including social media management and measurement.   You can download the actual spreadsheet too.

Have an awesome spreadsheet for social media measurement or management or more multi-channel campaigns?   Please tell me about it in the comments and your spreadsheet (without the data), could be featured in “Now That’s A Spreadsheet!”

Click to See Larger Image and Full Data by Marc Smith

How do you measure your network to learn how to improve outcomes?   That was one of many questions raised at during a Twitter Chat last week around the #sm_re hashtag.     The chat was a prelude to a convening on April 25th at the Robert Wood Johnston Foundation of  40 thinkers and practitioners, bringing diverse perspectives and expertise into discussions to develop measures for evaluating the impact of social media on philanthropic outcomes.   I’ll be participating in the session, as part of the context setting by giving an overview of themes in my book, “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,” co-author with measurement guru KD Paine.

The chat, moderated by Kami Huyse, and included RWJF staff Debra Joy Perez (@djoyperez), assistant vice president, Research and Evaluation, and  Tina Kauh(@tinakauh), program officer, Research and Evaluation, covered some stimulating questions.   Here’s a curated transcript of the chat that I pulled together.     But for this post,  I’d like to dig into one of the questions,  ”How do you measure your network so you know if it is growing stronger?”

This is a question that is hard to answer in a Tweet or two, and in fact we devoted to an entire chapter to the topic in the book – “Understanding, Visualizing, and Improving Networks.”   Of course, with anything you measure, you have to determine what your goals and success means:

Important to think about network goals, and what being a network member means #SM_RE

— Victoria Dougherty (@VJDConsulting) April 18, 2013

Once this is established, along with goals – the methodology to measure your network relies on having a baseline methodology and using Social Network Analysis.   The latter can be a very geeky topic, requiring expertise in statistics, understanding social network analysis terminology, and hard to master software.   That often intimidates nonprofit folks (including me), but it doesn’t have to be that way.    There are low tech tools and online (low cost or free) SNA tools and great resources like Marc Smith at NodeXL

I’ve been teaching workshops, training other trainers, and developing curriculum on “networked nonprofits,” literally around the world, and one of the first topics we address is understanding your network.   This comes from my first book,  ”The Networked Nonprofit,”  co-authored with Alison Fine.  Understanding and mapping your network is one of the indicators in my “Crawl Walk Run Fly” maturity of practice model and looks something like this:

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I use low tech tools first – paper, markers, sticky notes, and sticky dots.    Participants spend time working together to draw their networks — people and organizations who are important to reaching their organization’s outcomes.  They are asked to visualize the relationships – and who players are both online and offline.   I also ask them to identify people who are “hubs” – those with lots of connections and those on the “edge” or could be a bridge to new connections.  Also to show the relationships to different clusters (related people or organizations) and nodes (a person or organization).

Here’s a collection of network maps from a couple of recent workshops – and you can see how they use color to show differences as well as different types of lines to show the relationships.

Ventura County Community Foundation - March, 2013

GuideStar India - Networked NGO Workshops - Packard Grantees

Radio Bilingue

The last drawing/map  is from a peer learning group of Packard Grantees that I am facilitating based on “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,” from Radio Bilingue.   Since the goal is for participants to learn and adopt these practices,  they are given “recipes” to do the mapping and then share with colleagues.

Community Foundation of Monterey County

Once participants do a low tech drawing, we move to explore some of the online mapping and SNA tools to visualize online networks.  The map above is a visualization of the Community Foundation of Monterey Twitter following using TwitterMap.  It is also a fun way to visualize your Twitter network – and there are some great free apps to do that.

NodeXL and Marc Smith

In 2009,  I was lucky enough to take a social network analysis workshop using a SNA free plugin for excel called NodeXL with Marc Smith, a sociologist specializing in the social organization of online communities and computer mediated interaction.  (I wrote about it here).    He has set up the NodeXL gallery that is collecting visualizations of different networks online using the tool, especially social network maps of people tweeting with a particular hashtag.  For example, he ran a map of the #gpf13 hashtag that illustrates the network talking about unlocking data in philanthropy.     Marc did a map of the Twitter hashtag for #sm_re (see first image above) and got on Skype to discuss it how one might use a network visualization as a way to measure the strength of a network.

In order to really understand the social network map of people tweeting the #sm_re hashtag during the chat earlier this week,  one has to look at it in context.  The map above depicts everyone who was tweeting during the Tweet Chat.  Let’s imagine for a second that this chat was the beginning activity around forming a network to spread best practices about social media measurement in advance of the meeting next week, and maybe might include other activities.   For all intents and purposes,  this could be the “baseline” depiction of the network.     The next steps would be to get “snapshots” of the network during activities along the way and look at how the network has evolved and changed.

The missing link is understanding what patterns in the network mean – and how those are interpreted against the network goals – in this made up scenario – to spread best practices and knowledge around social media measurement for philanthropic outcomes.  With me?

Marc shared his expert knowledge  and here are some notes.

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What is the shape of the network mean?

Marc showed the slide above that illustrates the different shapes of networks.    The #sm_re network is shaped like an “in group” or a community.   Where folks are well connected to each other and there are pockets of nodes on the edge, etc.   The other patterns illustrate different variables such as whether the hubs are just broadcasting their tweets vs engaging and responding – and whether or not there is just a relationship between the hub and the nodes or whether the nodes are talking with one another.     The overall shape of the network could, perhaps be mapped to a specific outcome or result.

What do we see in this #sm_re map?

You can find a description of the details of the map here, but two top line observations:   There are hubs and islands.

Hubs:   The sunburst shapes are hubs.  These are people or organizations that are strongly connected within a network.   If you look at the map of people tweeting the hashtag, #sm_re – there are two  big hubs.  These are G1 and G2.  There are two smaller hubs G4 and G5.   The overall donut or galaxy shape means that these people are a community around the subject-matter and may be linked in other networks or communities.

Islands:   These are the Twitter users who are not connected to others or the Hubs.    Sometimes these are referred to the “edge” or “periphery” of a network – people not well connected to the network or “weak ties.”  These are arranged in military style in G3.

One SNA concept that Marc shared  comes from Ron Burt and it is about “Bridging VS Bonding Social Capital.”   So one strategy is to look for places where people are not connected to one another and make a connection.  This is a role for hubs or perhaps “network weavers.”    Making connections strengthens the network bonding, but it is also paradoxical.   If you become too much of a tight knit network, then it can lead to stagnation because you are not bringing in new ideas or people.

The map can help us hone the practices we use on Twitter for building the network and perhaps help improve the outcomes as illustrated in this slide from Marc’s presentation.

Social network analysis maps are useful for helping you understand your network, developing a baseline visual, and identifying strategies for making your network stronger.

Have you mapped your network?   What did you learn?  What tools did you use?

Place a little bet & or share your #failure story… you could win a Surface! #13ntcbets ow.ly/k24ok

— Case Foundation (@CaseFoundation) April 13, 2013

You’ve heard the mantra: Learn from failure. But no one likes to screw up and you can’t learn when you’re beating your chest in frustration or pointing fingers at each other. Some smart organizations are helping their people make failure not only productive, but also fun.   That’s the summary of a post I wrote last week for the Harvard Business Review Blog called “Go Ahead Take A Failure Bow.”

Two weeks ago, during the Nonprofit Technology Conference plenary session on placing little bets and learning from failure,  the four panelists issued a challenge.   Let’s do more than just give failure lip service,  let’s put it into practice and share what learned by placing a “Little Bet” or low risk pilot where you can learn something.    Listen to the one-minute video clip from Peter Sims describing actually what a Little Bet is.

CALL TO ACTION:   Place a Little Bet at Your Nonprofit and Share It (You could win a Microsoft Surface or Other Schwag from the Case Foundation)

“Place a Little Bet” – try something small to experiment with, learn from it, and share it.

Share Your #npfail story in this survey by May 3rd (extended)  and you will have a chance to win a Microsoft Surface or other schwag from the Case Foundation that is sponsoring the contest. (They are also doing a sector wide survey on failure and innovation).  

Now you have some practical techniques for learning from failure and a reward!    What’s your #npfail story?

I was honored to be invited to cover this year’s Global Philanthropy Forum, a community of donors and social investors committed to international causes.  The annual conference helps inform, enable and enhance the strategic nature of their work.       This year’s conference, “The Future We Make” had four themes – strategic philanthropy, modern day slavery, agriculture and nutrition, and education, learning, and employment.

I went to cover one session,   “Building An Information Infrastructure:  Unlocking Data for Philanthropy.”  with Jacob Harold, Guidestar;  Robert Kirkpatrick, UN Global Pulse;  Mayur Patel, Knight Foundation.   Darin McKeever from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (and Markets For Good)  was the moderator.

What follows are my notes, but if you want to spend more time learning about this topic, I’ve pulled together these additional curated resources:

1)  Curated Tweets
2) Curated Blog Posts and Resources that provide context to the discussion or resources mentioned
3) Social Network Analysis of the #GPF13 tag during the discussion created by Marc Smith

Notes from Session

Darin McKeever started the discussion with some framing of the topic – some of the ideas he shared are addressed in his recent post on Forbes called “Moving from Big Data to Big Wisdom,”  that was published as part of debate “Can Big Data Have Social Impact?”  For further context on mindset and work practice changes in philanthropy to embrace data, here’s some points from Lucy Bernholz.

Fdns use 3-yr old data to make 5-yr plans.Is this any way to run a sector? #gpf13 #philanthropy

— Gwen Walden (@WaldenPhil) April 15, 2013

The topic of data is a geeky subject, but exciting because in this era of big data and networks,  our collective capacity for problem solving has never been greater.    Data is transparent because of social media, data visualization, and open data from governments – all helping us to usher a remarkable period in human history.  On demand access to trusted information for every realm of decision-making is available,  and yet for all the technology progress – many in our social sector find ourselves at loss.  Why are we using data that is 3 years old? Philanthropy needs to understand how to make best use of open data sets and increasingly disintermediated data that is hard to find. He compared nonprofits to the business sector.   Nonprofits and donors find it time consuming to find and analyze meaningful data to help outcomes.   Many in the sector are at a loss to where they can tap into or validate information that the for-profit sector is collecting. Today, more than ever, there are opportunities to collect, share, and analyze data, but there are also challenges. Jacob Harold,  Guidestar, shared some thoughts to this question, “What are the basic building blocks to facilitate better access to data?”    He talked about scaffolding as intentional effort to change something.   He acknowledged that the information or data scaffolding in our sector is complicated.   “How are we going to act in a VUCA world?”  Is it so crazy that we just trust our intuition or can we inform our intuition with data?   He talked about how much data we have at our finger tips, but the challenge of making it meaningful.

#gpf13 Technical part about data easy – hard part is getting humans to collaborate @jacobharold — Beth Kanter (@kanter) April 15, 2013
 

He referenced that there are over 371 platforms for social change data.  That’s a good thing because lots of people are addressing social issues, but it is also a  nightmare?  How do we weave it together?  He mentioned several projects underway to weave data together in our sector.   Guidestar’s piece of the problem that is about individual nonprofits, but there are many other pieces to the puzzle.  ”Guidestar has had a monopoly and it needs to be an open one.”   He also talked about how the need to package the data better for the sector to use it, especially organizations that do not have the skills, capacity, or resources to hire a data scientist.

Global Pulse @rgkirkpatrick

Kirkpatrick gave an overview of how data is being used for international development.   They are using both big data, data mining, predictive analytics, and “big listening.”  He talked about how the private sector is using this sophisticated analysis in real-time, but his organization is using data to answer the question: How can we measure human well-being with this real-time data?   They use big data to gather time-sensitive information so their programs can act quickly, for policy change, but how to make this a reality for more in the sector.

#gpf13 learned a new term “Data philanthropy” ask to corps to make their data to ngos to analyze for social good. A new type of CSR?

— Beth Kanter (@kanter) April 16, 2013

They are  trying to get companies to share data mining, for example mining Twitter and FB to detect disease outbreaks.  They have been engaging with corporations in “Data Philanthropy” to get the raw data available – can be used to analyze the impact of programs.   “Any reuse is a risk of misuse.”   But he emphasized that  Big Data has a role in public good, but we  need a way to convert it into useful data. The UN is a neutral platform, trying to learn in the ground, setting up labs in partnership with government.  They are convening geeks, policy wonks, security analysts, and others to do experiments. For example, they have some predictable analytics on how people use their mobile phones and this helps understand whether or not they have jobs. They recently launched lab in Indonesia and started to hear through social media chatter that vaccine serum had meat and that people should not get vaccines.  This was a misperception and they used that to go out into the field to educate folks.     You can find more examples and case studies in this white paper . Mayur Patel, Knight Foundation Patel raised some great questions:  What is the role of philanthropy – how can it guide scaffolding?   How do we use private resources for advancing public good?  Data has to be framed with this. What is philanthropy was held accountable for stewarding the data – how it has been collected and organized.

#gpf13 “Data is an outcome, not just an input” @mayurhpatel — Beth Kanter (@kanter) April 15, 2013
 

He talked about data itself being a public good.    The data itself is the product, it is a new asset class.   What does that mean for foundations and the social sector?
Data as an outcome or asset.  What is the role that philanthropy can take that can create the incentive for people to use it.     He talked about the consequences of not valuing data as a outcome with a story about EveryBlock. It is not just the software and technology platform, it is the data. How do we protect data streams that in the public interest?

The data streams through nonprofit activities are not just by-products – they are important. We to think about our relationship with those new data streams?    May be generated as a by-product of activity. He suggested the need for open source licenses for data and research should be available openly within a year. IssueLabs is a great start.

Eureka RT @kanter: #gpf13 @mayurhpatel “Not every np will hire data staff person” I wonder: What abt shared resource person 4 several orgs?

— Annette Prentice (@liannetic) April 16, 2013

He also asked about the capacity of nonprofits to use the data once it is opened up?  Jacob Harold essentially asked, “If we build it, will they come?” Patel observed that  ”Not every nonprofit will have the capacity to hire a data scientist.”  While there are great resources to find them to volunteer, there needs to be more shared resources and capacity building.  In addition to capacity building, there needs to be standardization, tools, and visualization resources.   No infrastructure to do this! Patel pointed out that we need to think back to twenty years ago when using the Internet was new – and what systems wide infrastructure and capacity building systems did the sector put into place?

@kanter data circuit riders? — Victoria Vrana (@vicvrana) April 15, 2013
 

This was a stimulating session about data in the social sector and what is needed to make it actionable and useful. The idea is geeky as Darin points out, but also exciting.

What you think is needed for nonprofits to embrace the data? What systems level interventions are needed to improve the nonprofit sector’s capacity to embrace data — not only collect, but to make sense and apply?

On April 25, 2013, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) will host a national convening of leaders from 11 foundations, as well as experts in evaluation, social media, and communications to develop measures for evaluating the impact of social media on foundation outcomes.    There’s also a Twitter chat on April 18th at 3 pm EST  if you want to talk about social media measurement.

I have been invited to participate and help frame the day with a brief presentation about the state of nonprofit social media measurement based on the book I authored with KD Paine, Measuring the Networked Nonprofit.     I’m very excited for this learning experience because over the two years my work as Visiting Scholar at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation has focused on going deep on facilitating peer learning for grantees on measuring outcomes for their networks with social media while balancing and upholding the principles of being networked.

I think sometimes there is a disconnect between measurement and the actual practice.   In some organizations, measurement is this thing done at the end to justify or validate social media.  In other organizations, those that are lucky enough to have M&E staff, there is a disconnect between measurement practices for programs and communications.    It is important to think of measurement integrated into everything the organization does – I’ve called it being data-informed.   For that to happen one has to look at a maturity of practice and where to take small steps towards improvement.    I developed one for networked nonprofits and social media called “Crawl, Walk, Run, Fly”

Click to See Larger Version

These are the practice indicators for measurement – for three different areas – analysis, tools, and sense-making.   At SXSW,  I did a workshop with Carie Lewis and David Neff who assessed their organization’s measurement practices along the Crawl, Walk, Run, Fly continuum.  What was interesting, these very advanced social media practitioners have good measurement discipline, but it isn’t yet organizational or department wide in some cases.

The next step in using this framework has been to established quantifiable measures – which allows organizations to see progress.   I’ve also used this as benchmark for my training and peer learning projects so one could quantify transformation.  The framework also works well as a benchmarking tool so a group of  similar organizations working together as a movement can learn from one another.    This makes easier to embrace a key principle of movement building “sharing and documenting practices” that Rachel Weidinger shared during her session at NTC last week.

I think if I were to sum up social media metrics for nonprofits, I would say that best examples of social media practice and measurement are when social media is used for engagement with a purpose.   We have to look at what the result overall is – it is not just views for the sake of views or comments and likes for the sake of comments and likes.   It is about how social media (and other digital tools I might add) help an organization move towards longer-term outcomes in their theory of change or articulated goals.

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This chart comes from Chapter 5 of Measuring the Networked Nonprofit where we discuss how to measure outcomes from social media versus activities.   The point is that there is sometimes confusion between activities and results.   One of the best parts of writing the book was being able to have long discussion with Katie Paine, the Queen of Measurement.    While specific outcomes and KPIs will vary from organization to organization and must be customized in context,   the chart is a generic list of potential outcomes that a nonprofit might see from social media and some generic Key Performance Indicators (the one metric that matters to measure to success).

There is also the issue of social media measurement tools.  I think the focus on analytics software distracts many people away from thinking about outcomes.  No matter what metrics we’re collecting, eventually we need to put them into excel and analyze them to get insights.   So, I’m constantly telling folks that the best social media measurement tool is excel.

It is very important for us not to forget the importance of building relationships, transparency, and experimenting.  Sometimes a too rigid focus on measurement can lead us away from being innovative and taking small risks or little bets – and even more importantly learning from failure.  Take for example how UpWell applies the learn start up thinking to their social media campaigns, using measurement.  This form of measurement and social media metrics are just as important as measuring outcomes.

And, I must also emphasize how important learning from failure is.   You can read my first Harvard Business School Review Blog post is about how nonprofits  learn from failure.    And, I’m sponsoring a little bet of a contest to get nonprofits to share their #npfail stories (details here).

In advance of convening on Social Media Metrics hosted by RWJF, there will be a Twitter chat on Thursday, April 18, 3-4 p.m. EDT, with RWJF staff Debra Joy Perez(@djoyperez), assistant vice president, Research and Evaluation, and  Tina Kauh (@tinakauh), program officer, Research and Evaluation and moderated by Kami Huyse from Zoetica.   Join RWJF online Thursday, April 18, at 3 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time for the Twitter chat using the hashtag #SM_RE.    This chat is an opportunity to engage with other meeting participants and a wider network on Twitter around current practices, assumptions, and opportunities to measure the impact of social media on philanthropic outcomes.   Stimulate your thinking about social media measurement, share your ideas and valuable resources, and learn from the experiences and perspectives of others.