Apr

2012

25

Category:

Capacity, Training Design

Tags:

2 Comments

Integrated Social Media for Sustainable Agriculture

Ag Grantees Twitter Webinar  

View more presentations from Beth Kanter

As Visiting Scholar at the Packard Foundation,  my work plan includes delivering many different peer learning opportunities, coaching, and training with grantees.    Yesterday,  I had the pleasure of doing a Webinar for grantees of the Agriculture Sub-Program.    This blog post summarizes some of the knowledge shared about effective social media strategy, tactics, and practices.

In the many years that I’ve been designing and delivering capacity building and training,  I’ve learned being a guide on the side and helping to surface the knowledge and experience in the group produces far richer learning experiences.   As a trainer, I strongly believe that learning experiences need to weave content delivery with participant interaction.     Also,   it is far more effective to have peers share their own case studies and experiential learning with others.   I always design to incorporate the voice and experience of the participants.

1. Connecting Learners to the Content and Each Other

Introductions always run the risk of getting a little boring – if you just introduce the presenters, the agenda, and logistics.     For this webinar,  I incorporate some instant polls so we could get a quick reading on who was on the call.     In addition,  I wanted to explore TwitChimp, a tool for making Twitter lists, that Robin Good dubbed, “the ultimate Twitter list curation tool.”    I created a list of grantee’s Twitter Profiles and shared back the analysis of most tweeted words and hashtags.

Most Frequently Tweeted Words

What I liked about TwitChimp is that has the ability to add annotations to the link and gather public feedback for additional “tweeps” to add.   You can also embed the list into pages which makes it handy for Webinar resource pages.  Unfortunately, it is still in beta, so you can only make one list and plans are to make multiple lists a premium feature.

2.  Peer Case Studies

The main part of the call featured case studies by peer grantees who shared their strategies for social media integration, measurable objectives, measurement, and social media techniques, particularly use of Twitter.

Daniela Aceves – Communications Manager, Roots of Change, kicked it off with a fantastic case study about a recent campaign.    Roots of Change is a fairly small nonprofit, while Daniela’s job is full time, she estimates that only 15% of her time is allocated for social media.    She juggles tweeting and Facebook with other communications tasks such as managing the web site and other communications channels.   I asked her how she managed her time to be able to get such great results for the organization’s campaigns.

Daniela shared that she works with volunteers and interns and that she does several short bursts during the day to tend to respond or post content Twitter or Facebook.  Also, because Daniela has been a great measurement maven, she discovered through analyzing her data that the optimum amount of posting is twice day.  She notes, “By focusing on only sharing highly relevant content (and not just our own), we get better results.  The important thing is consistency.”   She also uses Google Alerts to monitor the conversation and will address important conversations promptly.

Daniela also shared an example of a recent Twitter chat that they have been hosting to raise awareness about food sustainability issues.    Through careful tracking of results, she was able to document the return on the investment of her time.    I also thrilled to hear how her organization picked up an idea shared at last summer’s grantee convening and adapted grist.org’s ladder of engagement.    Everyone agrees, including her boss, that Daniela rocks.

Next up was Hanna Welch, Social Media Producer, from grist.org. As an environmental news site,  Hanna’s position is full-time.     This allows grist.org to have the capacity to implement a “maven strategy” – that is be on multiple channels where Hanna serves as the community manager.   I’ve been lucky to have the opportunity to a great deal about how grist measures its strategy because they were a featured case study in my forthcoming book, “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit” with co-author KD Paine. (Sign up here to receive a notification when it is published)

Hanna shared a wonderful story about the evolution of grist.org’s use of Twitter chats, including #hipsterfarmerbands tag which started as tweets about a story about young farmers and sustainable agricultural practices.   Hanna was listening and scanning responses from the network when she noticed that someone had suggested that different, humorous, band names for these hipster farmers.  So, they started a fun meme.

Hanna also shared how she spends her day – which is 1/3 strategy, 1/3 research/monitoring, and 1/3 implementation.     Her big tip was to connect with peers.  Hanna networks with other social media professionals who work for online news sites – using a private Facebook group.   She notes,  ”I can’t emphasize how much time this has saved me to be able to reach out and get instant answers to social media questions.  I could not imagine doing social media without connecting to peers.”

Hanna shared an example of how they experiment on other platforms, like Pinterest.  It’s a four-step process:   1) read social media trade press 2) discuss with peers 3) present in-house 4) design a measurable, low risk experiment to start.

3.    An opportunity to Process and Apply

I always incorporate some sort of reflection.  For this design, we will do a second call where participants will have an opportunity to discuss how to apply what they learned.

If you do training, what are your best design tips?    If you are applying social media,  have you connected with peers either informally or formally to assist with your learning curve?  Did it work?




Apr

2012

24

Category:

Capacity, Civil Society 2.0, Guest Post

Tags:

Comment

Supporting NGOs in underserved countries, and recommending consultants

Packard Grantees from Pakistan, with In-Country Team

Note from Beth: I’ve just returned from leading an intense “Networked NGO” training for Packard Foundation PRH grantees from Pakistan.    The four-day workshop covered effective practices of networked ngos, including culture change, integrated social media strategy, and tactics.    I worked with a group of eight organizations with two staff people from each.    So, I’m very interested in this topic and will have a lot more to say once I recover from jet lag.  I’m very grateful that the OE Team at Packard has shared this guest post about this important topic.  If you work for an NGO in another region of the world or have experience delivering capacity building program,  I encourage you to join the discussion here.

We at the Packard Foundation’s Organizational Effectiveness Program (OE) are in the thick of assessing and refreshing our grantmaking strategy. This periodic review pushes us to candidly reflect on what works and what we can do better with our grantmaking. As part of this process, we’ve committed ourselves to actively reaching out to our partners for input. One part of this effort is our new, experimental strategic planning website.

A few weeks ago, we featured the following question on the site: Do you think that OE funders should require grantees to undertake an organizational assessment before awarding an OE grant? Why/why not? We received several insightful responses, of which many emphasized the context-specific nature of assessment needs (i.e. “it depends” on several variables). Rachael Barrett of the Women’s Refugee Commission offered the following from the perspective of an organization that recently sought out capacity building funding: “My quick answer is yes … having organizational assumptions challenged by an unbiased outsider will hopefully help us make a more refined decision about next steps.” Jared Raynor of the TCC Group gently reminded us that, in light of “today’s capacity building environment”, we should first take a deeper look into what we hope to achieve with our grantmaking, which in turn would inform our answer to this question. He also emphasized that “organizational assessment” is a large umbrella term that encompasses a wide variety of tools and purposes, a fact that further complicates our discussions.

We really appreciate these perspectives and, in the next few weeks, we’re featuring two more questions:

1)      What is the best way to support a strong NGO sector in underserved countries or regions such as South Asia, the Western Pacific, or Sub-Saharan Africa?

  1. Funders: what have you tried in this space?
  2. Non-profits: what kind of capacity-building support do you think is most needed in the country or region where you work?
  3. Everyone: What has worked well and what hasn’t?

2)      Should funders recommend capacity building consultants or require grantees use certain consultants for projects they fund? Why or why not?

Can we count on you to contribute your experiences and insights?

 

Apr

2012

23

Category:

Guest Post

Tags:

3 Comments

Everyday Technology: Innovative Ways To Do More With Less

Flickr Photo by Nielio

 

Note from Beth: Innovation was the buzzword at the Nonprofit Technology Conference!   I ran into the good folks at Idealware who offered to do a guest post on the topic – looking at small ways to be innovative.

Everyday Technology: Innovative Ways To Do More With Less, Guest Post by  Laura Quinn and Chris Bernard

When you think about innovation, you probably think about the huge leaps we’ve made—the lightbulb, the airplane, the computer—or the leaps we hope to make, like jetpacks and space travel. But at its core, innovation is really about finding creative solutions to existing problems and needs—challenges faced by nonprofits every day.

Through a recent research project, we learned that nonprofits are innovating in subtle but remarkable ways, and we believe their success is replicable for other organizations. In the free report, Unleashing Innovation: Using Everyday Technology to Improve Nonprofit Services, we share nine examples of what real world organizations are doing—and a framework for innovation you can use to emulate their results at your own nonprofit.

Idealware partnered with the Minnesota-based MAP for Nonprofits on this project into how, and how effectively, human services organizations are using technology to innovate their service delivery. For the most part, we found they had not implemented expensive, high-end projects as a result of strategic planning processes, but low-cost solutions that were the result of someone identifying and addressing a need.

We believe all organizations have the potential to replicate their success using straightforward, inexpensive technology to do more with less, not just those in human services. And through our survey of 180 Minnesota human service nonprofits, and detailed follow-up interviews with staff members from 13 of those organizations, we identified the core elements common to their successes to create a framework for innovation.

You can read more about the framework in the free report, but we wanted to share with you a case study about an organization that began using social media for volunteer recruitment—a solution that cost nothing, but had immediate community-wide returns.

We appreciate all that your nonprofit does. We want to continue finding ways to help you do it more effectively.

Best,

Laura Quinn, Executive Director of Idealware

Case Study: Community Thread, Stillwater, MN
Four Full-Time, Seven Part-Time Staff

As one of Minnesota’s eight volunteer centers, Community Thread connects people with volunteer opportunities, provides volunteer support to other nonprofits and sponsors large scale opportunities to volunteer. Executive Director Valerie Jones said the organization wanted to find a way to reach a new and larger audience, and the organization’s strategic planning process had identified marketing as a priority.

A staff member began experimenting with using Facebook to reach out about events and opportunities. “We hired a young person,” Jones said, “and one day, she said, ‘Can I try this?’ I told her to go for it. Once we got a response, we started getting more conscientious about what we were posting.”

Jones quickly realized she’d found a means not just to promote the organization and its events, but to recruit and engage volunteers, and bought into the social media effort. The organization’s social media presence became like a snowball gathering mass.

“Let’s see, now we do Facebook, Twitter and a YouTube channel, and we guest blog for the local Patch (community news website),” she said. “It became clear to us that we could use messaging there to engage people for volunteering.”

Last year, when the nearby St. Croix River flooded, Community Thread served as the volunteer manager for relief efforts and used its Facebook page to spread the word, recruiting roughly 1,500 volunteers for flood relief efforts.

“That emergency created a lot of public awareness,” Jones said. “Facebook was an immediate channel to keep people up-to-date.”

She estimated that the organization’s other programs recruited about 200 volunteers using social media last year, as well. In addition to posting links and invitations to events and to volunteer, staff began taking photos at events and posting them with quotes from participants.

“We use a lot of photos—we’re kind of obnoxious with our camera,” she said. “We’ve had great luck using photos and pictures to tell our story.” That led to an attempt to create videos, beginning with one celebrating the organization’s annual “Spring Into Service” event.

The only cost for social media is staff time, Jones said— from two to four hours a week spread out over five days. “Let’s see, now we do Facebook, Twitter and a YouTube channel, and we guest blog for the local Patch (community news website). It became clear to us that we could use messaging there to engage people for volunteering.”

So far, she has not yet begun using any analytical tools to measure results and is tracking only the number of volunteers, though she said there are other signs that point to the success of the effort.

“We get people who call and say, Hey, I saw this on Facebook, how do I sign up?” she said. We also get some walk-in traffic from people who say they saw this on their friend’s Facebook page, and they want to participate. And it’s increased a number of backdoor things— local businesses will say, ‘We heard about you, are you new?’ Well, no, we’ve been here for 43 years. The only thing we’ve changed is the social media.”

Community Thread’s marketing committee supported the social media effort, as did several board members “who were not tech savvy but had heard from their grandkids or kids that social media is big,” Jones said. But not everyone was comfortable with the idea.

Karla Bataglia, Community Thread’s senior center program director, said she had some skepticism about embracing the new approach.

“I’m an old school person,” she said. “My kids had to literally grab my telephone—you know the old kind, about two inches thick, with a long antenna?—out of my hands and make me get a small phone. It was a huge phone, like a CB radio. I’m a little intimidated by it all. The language of computers, and Twitter, and what I assume is in Facebook, is also not common to me, and the lingo seems to change so quickly. I’m afraid by the time I get in there, things are going to change so quickly I won’t be able to keep up.”

But as other programs within the organization began to experiment, and succeed, using social media, Bataglia said she realized she risked being left behind.

“I could see where I was missing the ball,” she said. “I can see the potential in helping with my program planning, and I can see it would be a great way to connect with people.” She envisions social media as a means of engaging people interested in volunteering, to recruit instructors, and to quickly communicate with people comfortable with social media.

Jones said that, as a whole, the organization has approached social media with enthusiasm as a cost-effective way to get the word out about its story. “It’s free advertising,” she said, “and it’s generated more business in terms of people looking for volunteer referrals.”

Chris Bernard is the  Editorial and Communications Director for Idealware.  Chris is a longtime freelance writer who has worked in journalism, advertising, and corporate marketing and communications, and as a technical writer for several high-tech startups. He brings 17 years of experience telling stories and crafting messages to his work with nonprofits.

 

Apr

2012

20

Category:

Fundraising, Research Studies

Tags:

2 Comments

Data Nerd Alert: Donors Who Give Through Multiple Channels Give the Most

Guest Post By Dennis McCarthy

We’ve known for some time that an integrated multi-channel approach to constituent engagement is key for nonprofits to be successful; however there’s been limited understanding of optimizing integrated marketing or its impact. Convio, along with CAREUSA, recently completed Insights into Integrated Marketing Constituent Behavior to further the thinking and dialog around integrated marketing

With the study’s findings, we can now more confidently say that nonprofits need to adapt to in the way they both engage externally with their supporters as well as organize their efforts internally. Integration on both fronts is imperative.

The study takes a deep dive into the metrics associated with a multi-channel marketing program at CARE USA – particularly the relationship between traditional direct mail and digital channels (also referred to in the study as offline and online). Further it explores the quantification surrounding the relative financial value of different engagement approaches e.g. dual channel vs. single channel communications.

The central finding from the study is that dual channel donors give the most. On average, dual channel donors give $123.29 annually; this is 46 percent more value to a nonprofit than direct mail only donors.  [See chart above]

Even though Online Only and Dual Channel cohorts both returned higher annual donor value than either Offline cohort, the underlying factors influencing this trend are different for the two high value cohorts. Dual Channel donors made higher average gift amounts than Offline Only donors, while Online Only donors made more frequent gifts than Offline Only donors.

Additional findings from the study include

  • Online engagement improves the retention of traditional offline direct response donors. This illustrates that the ROI of online engagement should not solely be measured by giving online.
  • Adding digital channels does not materially cannibalize revenue from direct mail. Multi-channel donors gave almost as much through traditional sources as offline only donors.
  • There is no discernable downside to cultivating direct mail donors via email. Maximizing email collection for that audience and giving the option to give and engage through both channels is important.

To maximize the benefits of integrated marketing, nonprofits must commit to an integrated approach and organizational alignment, aggregate and analyze data, and move away from a one-size-fits-all donor treatment plan to toward paths that align with unique donor preferences.

How is your organization optimizing integrated marketing to enhance the donor experience? What strategies and tactics can you share?

Dennis McCarthy is Convio’s VP of Strategy and Business Practice and frequent speaker in the nonprofit sector. To download the full Insights into Integrated Marketing Constituent Behavior study, including detailed key recommendations, visit www.convio.com/care. (http://resources.convio.com/ConvioCareReport.html)

 

Apr

2012

19

Category:

Capacity, Guest Post

Tags:

2 Comments

Scrappy VS Strategic: Is there a generational divide in nonprofits around how to innovate using new technology?

Photo by Ceclcia Aros

Note from Beth: I’m working in Dubai this week and have lined up some guest posts from some colleagues.    Daniel Ben-Horin from TechSoup Global wrote a thought provoking post over at the SSIR about generational differences in nonprofits when it comes to trying to scale social change strategies using social technologies.  It prompted some great discussion and I hope you’ll participate.

Scrappy VS Strategic – Guest Post by Daniel Ben-Horin

I loathe the cloying mock humility of the twitterverse (“so honored that @important person says I am an important person”), so it is with some reservation that I write that the comments on my recent SSIR post about ‘scrappy and strategic’ have just blown me away. Thanks, Beth, for asking me to write about this conversation here.

I thought the original post was pretty good. You can decide for yourself. It riffed off a diverse European trip I had just taken and broached a fairly simple idea — that there was a generational divide in terms of thinking about change, and that maybe this divide was bigger and more important than was generally realized. I hadn’t seen that particular idea much discussed, so I thought I’d just throw it out there.

As of this writing, there are 13 responses (ok, two are from me) from people who work (in some cases lead) the Morino Institute, Random Hacks of Kindness, TechSoup Romania, CROS, Meedan, the Gates Foundation, Beth Kanter, Campus Party USA, Vulcan Labs, and Fundacja TechSoup/Warsaw Social Hackathon. That’s quite a range, but what really counts is what they had to say. They took my fairly simplistic expostulation and gave it some real depth.  Here are some excerpts:

The tension between generations on scaling social change ideas with technology.

“What I love about these (youth driven, hackathon) events is the optimism, hope, raw ability and potential for a home-run in a networked tech-environment that can accelerate to tangible and scalable change in a relatively short period of time. … I love that they are going to do it with or without us.

What I don’t love is seeing the same solutions built over and over again (though I certainly see value in youngsters figuring out for themselves).  What I don’t love is the lack of data they face, lack of support in nailing down specific problems, and that they have to go back to school on Monday.” — Chris Worman, Restart Romania

“There appears to be a growing tension between the Baby Boomer generation that is in large part responsible for our current state of affairs and the young people coming out of schools and entering the labor markets.  They are our hope and our challenge.” — Mario Morino, Morino Institute

“On the generational issue—and I’m speaking a baby boomer myself —I think we no longer can consider ourselves to have wisdom because we have experience.  We need to switch to a “co-learning” role with younger leaders – and learn from them together as we make change.  And that isn’t easy for a lot of us who were born in the babyboomer “Me” generation to shift and work alongside the “We” generation.” —Beth Kanter

What does strategy and how to scale mean to different generations?

“We are starting to see this new era when thousands upon thousands can actually think and act together in technologically enabled collaboration…I think we see and feel a tension … not because there is an inherent dichotomy and tension between scrappy and strategic, but rather because we haven’t figured out how scrappy becomes a critical component to healthy and robust strategic vision.” —Todd Khozein, Random Hacks of Kindness

 

“That’s not to say we don’t use objectives. We just don’t hinge on them so much that it cripples our options or blind us to new perspectives. Instead we hinge on values as drivers for our action… It’s a great time for this dialogue: the baby boomer generation has accumulated a lot of resources and is also at a point where it’s asking (again) the big questions and addressing the big issues in the world. In the same time, young people are the most connected, best informed and empowered generation ever, mostly due to new media and technology.” – Vlad Atanasiu, Resource Center for Student Organizations (Romania)

The tension between real time data tracking and longer-term tracking

“There is much excitement and interest in measuring/tracking/using data in real time to shift course on emergent, collaborative, and innovative efforts.  At the same time, we see a huge emphasis and need to “scale what works” in the field which implies rigorous measurement that PROVES what works.  It’s completely possible to do both within the same organization, but I don’t think people are always clear about when they are using measurement and data to “sense-make” vs. “case-make”.  Totally different set of measurement tools and skills needed. We need to be very informed and focused about what types of data, measurement, and evaluation we need for the stage of the intervention.” — Victoria Vrana, Gates Foundation, Charitable Sector Support

But after you have concrete proof that your McGuyver solution works – and Lean Startup metrics can definitely help measure that – you’ve got to invest time, energy and money into making sure you have the capacity to scale and consistently deliver a high-quality amazing service with a solid team. …I think the answers to resolving some of these tensions lie in technology and a new philosophy of management…. more and more startups – especially ones with a young leaders at their helm – are turning to an open management structure and philosophy that emphasize speed and a meritocracy of ideas over bureaucracy and micromanagement.” —Lucky Gunasekara, Vulcan Labs

“There is a recipe here which involves open data, open code, and access to the movers and shakers needed to provide access to important data and infrastructure.” —Ed Bice, Meedan

Freedom is needed for innovation in nonprofits – how can we feel comfortable with that?   Also, how we facilitate our networks and sharing control to solve complex problems.

“For innovation to happen a lot of “freedom” is required—creativity and a group process both take time and flexibility. Time is money and flexibility makes people uncomfortable.

Facilitating a community driven effort also means giving up power and handing it over to the social actor(s). Now: giving up power. That just sounds like becoming vulnerable and threatens everyone.” — Alicja Peszkowska, Fundacja Techsoup/Warsaw Social Hackathon

“I have the strong feeling that more and more people all over the world -and a greater number amongst the youngest- are now working with this common and somewhat unspoken ideal of a better world -one with less violence and more justice, respect, and work for others’ well being as much as for ourselves.  We are many with many unique ideas that may seem isolated and technology is not only enabling them but may also connect them by what they have in common; that is the vision.  Maybe that vision has to be written and shared to take us to the next level.” — Juan Negrillo, Campus Party USA

“ I think being scrappy is the key to engaging with the communities you’re serving, feeling and understanding the problems they’re faced with, and McGuyver-ing a disruptive (bias – technology driven) solution. There’s no way you can strategic plan your way to that.  -  Lucky Gunasekara, Vulcan Labs

These are just excerpts from the posts; I hope they provide a flavor for the dialogue. Please check out the full comment stream. And, of course, please add yours.

Note from Beth: Also be sure to read Daniel’s post on innovation in the nonprofit sector.

Daniel Ben-Horin founded TechSoup Global in 1987 and is co-CEO.

12345102030Last »