Off to the Beach

I will be on vacation through the end of August – yippee!!

Have a great rest of the summer, I’ll be back when the leaves start to turn.

The Red Cross Weaves Conversation to Crowdsource Crisis Data

Wendy Harmon, the American Red Cross’ (ARC) social media guru, is spearheading an open conversation today billed as the Emergency Social Data Summit.

ARC describes the goal of the summit this way:

The American Red Cross is hosting the Emergency Social Data Summit to bring together government agencies, emergency management professionals, disaster response organizations, tech companies and concerned citizens to address how to reply to these digital cries for help more effectively.

The framework for the summit lies within this document aptly titled, “The Case for Integrating Crisis Response with Social Media.” The urgency for this effort is born of survey results from the Red Cross that indicate that regular web users expect crisis response organizations like the Red Cross should be monitoring social media channels to respond to immediate needs.  The Red Cross reported that, “The survey showed that 69 percent said that emergency responders should be monitoring social media sites in order to quickly send help—and nearly half believe a response agency is probably already responding to any urgent request they might see.”

There area host of ways to stay tuned to the summit, the hashtag is #crisisdata, the real-time blog is here.

This is a remarkable social response to a social problem. Yet one more reason that Wendy Harmon is named one of the 50 most powerful people in the nonprofit sector!

Foundations and Social Media: Fad or Future?

The few well-known examples of foundations acting like Networked Nonprofits have become so oft-repeated that they’re almost cliches – the David and Lucile Packard Foundation using a wiki to generate new ideas for their nitrogen program, the Case Foundation’s use of their blogs to weave conversations, the Knight Foundation’s News Challenge to invest in next generation news businesses infused with social media. I began to wonder whether these examples were becoming the few exceptions in foundation world or harbingers for other foundations?

I asked Linda Wood of the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund and Elizabeth Miller of the Overbrook Foundation their take on the state of foundations and social media for this month’s Social Good podcast for the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

The answer according to Linda and Elizabeth was unqualified: social media is the future of philanthropy. They both emphasized the risk averse nature of foundations that are just now inching their way into the use of social media and the early state writ large of social media. Linda has been blogging about foundations and transparency and using online videos to share the experiences of the foundation’s leadership program grantees. Linda said that she has couched the use of social media internally as “pilot” projects, which eased the potential fear of senior staff and trustees that social media would turn the entire foundation upside down.

Elizabeth has also written about philanthropy and transparency and said that the Overbrook Foundation was looking for discreet opportunities to test social media. One of my favorite moments was Elizabeth talking about how it feels to her to use Twitter as a foundation staff person. This is perhaps the most oft-cited fear of foundation staff that I hear, “I don’t want to be overwhelmed with requests and criticisms by being online.” Here is what Elizabeth had to say on this topic:

I think thatTwitter has helped me build relationships with existing grantees in a
major way, I’m able to RT their work, learn more about the individuals
working at the organizations etc. If anything it also exposed me to new
organizations that might be right for the foundation, and just generally
kept me up to speed in the issue areas that we fund, what interesting
articles are out there, what other foundations are doing the kind of
work we are, how to collaborate better, who to collaborate with.

There are occasionally people who will follow me or DM asking about
Foundation guidelines, proposals, how to apply for a grant (not as much
as you may think), but for me, I feel like answering those questions is
part of working for a Foundation. And if you’re being open/transparent
(like Linda talked about) then you can be clear about what you fund, why
etc. This might be skewed because I’m a program associate tweeting and
it’s not the official Overbrook Foundation Twitter feed, but that’s my
general feeling.

I love Elizabeth’s take on this – particularly that being accessible is part of her job!  Hope others are listening.

Squeegie Man Fundraising

Bruce Trachetenberg posted a story on the Nonprofit Quarterly’s blog from the Chicago Tribune about a recent ban in Chicago of street fundraising.

What’s most interesting to me about the story is that one crucial factor is overlooked – how being stopped in the street by firefighters, boots in hand, makes donors feel. Call me curmudgeonly (and you won’t be the first!) but I have felt assaulted when approached this way. Comparing a firefighter to a squeegie many is just awful, I know, but when fundraising this way, courageous, selfless firefighters are doing significant damage to their reputations and relationships.

But the bigger issue is that it runs counter to fostering real relationships with donors that will be more valuable over the long term. It is very short-term thinking, that raising $25,000 this way is more important than the damage it does by forcing people to giving this public way.

It is similar to nonprofits continue to raise funds by telemarketing just because there is a loop hole in the Do Not Call registry that allows tax exempt groups to continue to call. The thinking by organizations raising money this way, presumably, is a simple financial one: for every dollar spent soliciting funds telephonically we’ll make back 30 cents or 20 cents or whatever it is. This is fundraising by spreadsheet. However, fundraising isn’t a financial activity, it’s a personal, human interaction and when shenanigans happen in the sector, when the Nature Conservancy is caught doing financial shenanigans, politicians and their minions set up phoney nonprofit fronts, when the scandal-of-the-month of nonprofit directors moving money around illegally (please note, I am not calling firefighters unethical!!) these are organizations that believe that fundraising is a financial not human endeavor.

I had a fascinating conversation yesterday with my friends at Echoing Green. A question was rightly and smartly posed about how we know if we’re building relationships. And that’s why measurement is so important – and changing with social media. Of course, organizations have to raise money, but building relationships is what will sustain them over time. And it can be measured, we have a whole chapter on this in The Networked Nonprofit.

An organization can follow the bouncing ball of conversations that spread across the web by people who care about their cause. Organizations can watch their networks grow online, the number of blog readers, friends on Facebook and Twitter grow. But they only grow when people feel connected to a real, authentic organization, not a fundraising machine. It is incumbent on every organization to ask themselves where and how they are building relationships, and how they can do it better. This in turn will lead to more money.

Free eBook: How to Raise a Lot More $ Now

Network for Good posted a free eBook last week called How to Raise a Lot More Money Now – 50 Great Ideas from 11 top Experts.

You have to fill out a form before you can download the book. But what you’ll get are great advice and tips from leading experts in social media for social change (full disclosure, our chapter from The Networked Nonprofit called From Friending to Funding.)

The authors include Jeff Brooks, Sarah Durham, Jocelyn Harmon, Kivi Leroux Miller, Mark Rovner, Nancy Schwartz, Chris Forbes, Alia McKee Scott and, of course, Katya Andresen.

This is a really fun and fast read packed with helpful tips. Here are some of my favorites:

• Replace at least one sentence that’s about you with one that’s about your donor.
• If you want my money, touch my heart. Learn what I struggle with and what makes me move. Walk a mile in my shoes.
• Organize a crowd-sourced appeal. Invite donors to participate in drafting the “perfect fundraising appeal.”
• Simplify your message for social media calls to action. If you can’t say it in 140 characters on Twitter, you’re not saying it well. Look to charity: water’s Twitter feed for inspiration.
• When donors give online, ask them for an optional few words on why they gave (you can do this with Network for Good’s online DonateNow service). Fill your home page with their answers.

This is all great stuff in the perfect bite size pieces.