My Giving Guru-ness

I had a fun time last Thursday doing a video chat with Kari Dunn Saratovsky of The Case Foundation in preparation for the upcoming Giving Challenge.

Kari and I chatted for an hour taking questions via Twitter and by email. It wasn’t easy to be that chatty and pleasant for a whole hour but I tried my best!

Here is the video conversation in its entirety. And here are a few links to specific topics you may find interesting:

1.) How much time should small non profits expect to spend using social media?
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2177112/highlight/18811
2.)    How do you convince your CEO to get your organization to engage in social media?
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2177112/highlight/18814
3.)    How do you develop social culture through social media?
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2177112/highlight/18815
4.)    How do you separate the personal from the professional?
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2177112/highlight/18816

Folks should definitely take a look at the other guru conversations as highlighted on The Case Foundation’s home page.

Managing Social Media Not Letting it Manage You

I am a guest “giving guru” tomorrow for the Gear Up for Giving effort organized by The Case Foundation in preparation for the second Giving Challenge. I wrote a piece on how to reorganize onself to better manage social media, and the time it takes to engaged online — and not be overwhelmed or managed by it. The post is below and also on the Case Foundation blog. I’ll be doing a live video chat tomorrow at 1 eastern to talk about online giving using social media.

I hope you’ll join the chat tomorrow and check out the other terrific resources and video chats on the Case website.

I want to tell you about my friend, Sheila. Sheila is the Executive Director of the Inner City Homeless Shelter. She’s worked at the shelter for fourteen years, the first ten as the program director.

Sheila has watched over the past few years in bewilderment as all of this webby, bloggy, Facepagey stuff has been happening. She doesn’t quite understand what they’re all doing. Sheila uses email at work, she still has her AOL account at home that she uses to send messages and funny stories to her sisters and mother, and she has a cell phone that she uses, when she remembers to turn it on.

Sheila was aware that other organizations were setting up Facebook pages but didn’t know why, and hoped, really, deep down inside, that maybe all of this was a twenty-first century version of the hoola hoop, which she was also never very good at anyway.

She hears bits of conversation about some new thing or other seemingly every week, was it Wither or Twicker, well, whatever it was, everyone seemed entranced with it while Sheila could barely keep up with email and couldn’t envision adding any more things to her life, increasing her information overload and making her long to-do list always longer.

Oh, how she dreads her to-do list! It’s a treadmill of a list that just keeps churning on and on, while she dashes from meeting to meeting. Sheila works at least twelve hours a day on a shoestring budget. And year after year she has to find new ways to raise money to keep the place afloat. It always feels like a house of cards; she’s just one major grant withdrawn from the whole thing collapsing. She can’t make the day any longer, she can’t click and ping like the kids, she feels like she’s fading away into oblivion. In a sigh of resignation Sheila adds one more thing to her to-do list: hire summer intern to take care of social media stuff.

Does Sheila sounds familiar? Maybe just parts of her story strike a chord with you or someone you know. Sheila needs to learn how to work better, smarter, more effectively. But the key for Sheila is not to think of adding social media to her too-full do-to list, but by becoming a more social person using the tools right in front of her.

The first step is finding a mentor, maybe it’s a young person at work, or one of her kids, who can help Sheila learn to use the tools. She needs to really try them out, gets hands on and practice being social. Sheila needs to upload photos, be a guest blogger somewhere, set up her own Twitter account (as herself, not behind a logo!).

Sheila needs to build an online social network of trusted people, friends and people she knows by reputation, who make up her ecosystem of people and organizations who care about her issue and organization. On sites like Facebook or Twitter, she beings to reveal herself in small bits. What she’s thinking of doing, what questions she has, what help she needs. Sheila starts to unwrap herself from the waxy building up of organizational inertia that makes it so hard to reach outside and invite others in.

Once Sheila begins to practice in private, she can begin to talk to her staff about all of the ways that they can begin to work with their network, not at or in spite of it. Only when Sheila is comfortable with the social media, can the entire organization start to get creative about ways to leverage the creativity and smarts in their network.

This will all take time. Mastering anything new takes time. But what choice does Sheila really have because continuing down the same road, working in an organizational silo, refusing to engage with her network that is sitting there, waiting and wanting to help, isn’t a sustainable way of working. Ellen Miller, the co-founder of the Sunlight Foundation has spent a forty-year career as an advocate for open and transparent government. In the last five years, she has become an outspoken and energetic proponent of using social media for social change. Here is Ellen’s advice to Sheila, “If it is a priority to you to reach out a community for whatever the purpose is; financial support, volunteer support, community support, if outreach to your community is one of your key responsibilities then this has to be a priority.”

Managing one’s time with social media is an important and not always easy task. Here are a few tips for managing the flow based on Leo Babauta’s blog.

1. Practice turning the flow on and off. Designate specific times to use particular tools and try to stick with it. If 8-9 am is Twitter time, stick to it. And don’t worry about being off line for a while, everyone will survive.
2. Take a week and track where you go online and how much time you spend there. What was a good use of time, what wasn’t? Eliminate the bad time.
3. Cleanse your Inbox. Unsubscribe to everything that you possibly can. Emails have an expiration date, it’s important to delete the mail, clean it out, and get rid of what’s been sitting there for a while. Set up folders for specific topics to move them out of your Inbox. There is nothing more dispiriting than facing two thousand emails every day.
4. Find your trusted sources. Watch to see who is quoted or retweeted a lot in your network and make sure to follow them. And don’t be afraid to defriend other folks who fill up your spaces with less useful information. Let these trusted, influential sources search the web for you.

Twitter is NOT a Micro-Blog

Sometimes a word or notion is fired in the kiln of conventional wisdom and becomes forever set. Unless, and until, A. Fine blogger takes up the charge and forces some rethinking!

Twitter is known as a micro-blog. I think that this is completely wrong. Twitter should be considered a social network.

Here’s why:

According to Wikipedia, micro-blogs operate just like blogs, only in smaller bursts. Twitter is included in the Wikipedia entry as a micro-blog. Someone, or a group of people, write blogs that audiences read. A blog is part of a broader, online conversation through links to other blogs or news articles and in the comments stream. Nonetheless, fundamentally, someone writes and others read.

An online social network like Facebook is a neighborhood where lots of people share news and photos, connect with one another, meet new friends, organize to do things together online or on land. No one is in charge, there is no beginning and end to conversations. Twitter is just such a neighborhood.

Here is an excerpt of a conversation on Twitter that I read the other day:

Jeff Jarvis: Wikipedia is wrong (GASP!). It is not my birthday. Thanks anyway.

Jeff Jarvis: Can somebody change my Wikipedia birthday to July 15? I don’t want to violate rules and do it myself (silly as that is).

Andy Carvin: @jeffjarvis actually it’s kosher if you do it to correct a factual error and leave a note on the discussion page for transparency sake.

I thought it was a neat, little exchange of information and knowledge, the kind one would hear in the hallway at a conference or at a water cooler in an office (although not my office, then I’d have to get dressed!) It was not a short blog post followed by a comment.

So, what’s the big deal, A. Fine, what does it matter if Twitter is misnomered? Here’s the deal, what we call a tool often dictates how people use it. That’s why it’s conventional wisdom, it is a settled discussion. Not everyone, certainly not people who are very facile with the social media toolkit will use a tool the way that Wikipedia determines, but, newcomers, people who are less certain may. If an organization, or person, is unsure of what to do on Twitter, I would rather than they think about is as a neighborhood and an ongoing conversation than a blog post.

In my experience, Twitter is best used as a mechanism for conversations among a lot of people. It’s a fantastic organizing tools for events like Twestival. Most of all, Twitter is a neighborhood where interesting ideas and exchanges are happening that we can participate in, or watch, just as we would at a neighborhood diner.

Or maybe it’s something entirely new that hasn’t been named yet. I’m open to suggestions!

What Does Sustainability Mean?

I saw this thoughtful post by Michael Bear on Change.Org entitled, Please, Stop Saying Projects are Sustainable. I found this post through the terrific Give & Take blog on the Chronicle’s website.

Michael is writing about the great myth of sustainability for international aid efforts. He writes, “What does sustainability mean when the government lacks the capacity – or the will – to assume responsibility for service delivery?”

I think it’s interesting that Michael’s assumption that sustainability could come from government funding. It’s one difference, I suppose, between an international and domestic context. We moved away from the notion of government sustaining efforts started by nonprofits here about twenty years ago when government funding for social service efforts dried up. Out of that development came the trend of  nonprofits creating for profit subsidies to make themselves to provide a revenue stream outside of individual and foundation grants.

The for profit subsidiaries were launched with mixed financial results, most failed in the first several years, and Burton Weisbrod writing in the Stanford Social Innovation Review skeptically observed, “the drive for profit exposes nonprofits to the charge of losing site of their social goals.”

So, how’s a nonprofit supposed to sustain its efforts here or overseas?

We’re not. It’s the wrong word to use. Sustaining something means that it runs on its own, without the help of anyone else on the outside. Nonprofits not only can’t accomplish that, we shouldn’t try to. That’s why it’s social change work and not for profit work. We don’t have revenue streams that can scale like iPods, and we can’t expect government funding beyond the stimulus package. What we have is you, people, individuals who give small amounts by writing a check or clicking on Causes, or larger donations either personally or through foundations. That’s why nonprofits have tax exempt status – we provide a public good — and the public has to support the work.

Social change efforts need broad-based support for a wide, network of individuals and foundations to sustain their efforts. That’s what sustainability is, not looking to some other sector to foot the bill, but relying on the generosity of growing number of caring people to generously give and work on their behalf.

Foundations often ask what the sustainability plan for a potential grantee. The real question that lies beneath that is “when and how is our foundation going to be off the hook to fund you?” Fair enough, foundations give very generously to causes and it is human nature to want to spread their largess around. But the real isn’t isn’t about becoming sustainable, it’s about building your social network to involve more people and grantmakers in your efforts over time.

Giants Fans Create a Civil Community

I love it when I find a great examples of strengthening a social culture in unexpected places.

First, I have to make a confession. I’m a huge football fan. Not a casual watcher on Sundays. Close to obsessed, really. My brother is the head coach of the Bryant University Bulldogs (and won their first game last Saturday – hooray a winning season so far!) But most of all, I’m a New York Giants fan. So when my brain is has had enough writing for the day, you can find me surfing around ESPN, SI.com and blogs for any tidbit about the Giants, my Giants (who are going to be great this year!)

One of my favorite blogs is the Big Blue View. It’s a great place for updates and information, but it also has a lively and engaged readership that comments and has conversations with one another around each post. The other day, a terrible thing happened in the comments section. Some idiot referred to a player by an unmentionable epithet.

Ed Valentine responded with a post called, “Discussing the Kind of Community We Want.” So much good stuff here!

I love the fact that Ed framed the post as a discussion with the community on what we all want it to be.  Here is Ed’s vision for the site, “Big Blue View was created as a place for intelligent, mature and friendly discussion of the New York Giants and football in general. I will do everything in my power to make sure it stays that way.” He encouraged all of his readers to do the same, to create shared expectations for how we will all behavior. We can disagree, but incivility, and particularly racism and hatred, won’t be tolerated.

There is a great lesson for nonprofit folks. Some nonprofit leaders hesitate to jump into social media for fear of opening themselves up to the profane, roiling wild west of the web. But, it isn’t the wild west, at least it doesn’t have to be. Bloggers and their hosts are allowed to set the rules for engagement in their neighborhoods, just like Ed. You don’t have to post all comments, you don’t have to allow anyone to attack anyone else and can insist on civility. If Giants fans can do it, well, then just about anybody can — well, except for Eagles fans!

One Web Day 2009

One Web Day, the annual event created by Susan Crawford (not a HUGE star in the Obama administration!) to celebrate the virtues of the web is almost here! Mark down September 22, 2009 as One Web Day on your calendar.

This year, through the efforts of a lot of really smart, talented, dedicated people like Kaarli Taaso, David Isenberg, David Weinberger, Mary Hodder, David Johnson, Renee Edelman and others I’m afraid I’m leaving out, the board (of which I am grateful to serve as a member) helped to secure a very generous grant from the Ford Foundation to support One Web Day. That grant enabled us to hire an amazingly talented Executive Director, Nathaniel James and the legendary Mitch Kapor joined us as to become the President of the organization. Nathan and Mitch have been energetically creating partnerships and spreading the word about the day around the world.

So, go to One Web Day’s website, sign up for an event near you, tell your friends about OWD. We have a lot to be grateful for from the web — we should use September 22 to show our appreciation for being able to participate in this amazing revolution.

Here’s a great video about One Web Day:

Creating a Social Culture

We’ve all seen it happen over and over again. An organization hears or sees that another group is getting traction with a new tool or gizmo and they jump into the deep end of the pool whipping out their own blog or Facebook page or widget. And nothing happens.

Nothing happens because using a social media tool is not the same thing as having a social culture. Tools that encourage sharing, openness, connectedness, and that punish silos and proprietary thinking need oxygen to work. That oxygen is a social culture that focuses on relationship building, flattens everything, listens to conversations and joins them where they are.

Last month, Beth and I had an opportunity to talk to Cecile Richards and Tom Subak of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. We talked about their work over the last three years changing the culture of the organization to be more social. Beth has a great write up on that conversation here.

Tom joined me on this month’s Social Good podcast that is up on the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s website. I hope you’ll have a chance to listen, he’s a really smart thinker about the importance of building a social culture internally for nonprofit organizations.