Fighting the Public School Fortress

I have worked with a number of nonprofits and foundations over the past few years, terrific organizations like Common Cause and the Avi Chai Foundation, traditional organizations working sincerely to turn themselves into Networked Nonprofits. To break out from behind their high walls and wide moats and focus on building meaningful relationships with wide networks of folks.

I am also doing the same as president of my synagogue, Temple Beth Abraham (new website coming soon!), a lovely 112 year old institution that has fortressed itself over many years.

In the last several weeks, I’ve also taken on the role of insurgent as a parent trying to storm the barricades of our local public school district. It has been a while since I’ve been up against a formidable fortress like this. It is fascinating to see how predictable their reactions and actions are, their knee jerk inclination to discuss and decide important issues in back rooms, their desire for continuity over disruption, the motions of listening that are really just talking at parents.

In my meetings with administrators and school board members, they key characteristics that has struck me the most has been the administration’s unwillingness to examine the relationship between the school district and parents. It has ossified to the point where few parents show up for meetings communicated by e-blasts and press releases. It begins a viscious cycle; they declare a meeting, we are tired of being talked at in edu-speak so stay home, they intuit we’re not interested, we intuit they don’t care about us. And on and on….

This tired cycle is most often broken when institutions face a crisis;  sales or donations are down significantly, an organization faces a significant loss of reputation such as the American Red Cross faced after Hurricane Katrina. In these instances, it required soul searching on the part of the organizations to use a different lens, a social lens, to change their relationship between inside and outside. And then the walls can start to crumble.

Public schools are in crisis across the country. Their funding is being cut by states, local taxes are down, public pressure is on to both increase test scores and develop and inspire a generation of creative thinkers (goals at odds with one another) making school administration one of the hardest jobs around. But without engaged and enthusiastic parents, these districts are fortresses sitting on desert islands. They are turning their back on our energy, enthusiasm, talents, resources and networks, which is a terrible loss for everyone. However, unlike organizations that rely on sales or donations, public institutions have to be forced to change from the outside most often.

And that’s what we began last night. A group of parents met and there was wonderful energy, and yes, some anger, in the room. I offered to create a parent-to-parent network online to share information about what is happening since the news coming from the administration is too often sparse window dressing, make sure we have representation at key meetings and develop strategies together of how to storm the barricades.  When I asked my network on Twitter this morning the tool they recommend for starting this work both Amy Sample Ward and Shaun Dakin recommended Google Groups.

I’ll get that started and plan to post here on our progress fighting the fortress. Should be interesting, wish it wasn’t so darn important for my kids.

Landmark Online Giving Study

Network for Good and TrueSense Marketing released their long awaited study of online giving appropriately named The Online Giving Study. The study looked at data for about $400 million worth of giving across charitable websites, giving portals and social networks processed by Network for Good.

Here are a few of the key findings:

• What we know about successful fundraising stays with the same with social media. A key passage of the report is, “Raising funds online is not about technology, any more than raising funds through the mail is about paper. It’s about the relationship between the nonprofit and the donor who wants to support a cause. People who give online are no different from other donors in that they expect a relationship— not simply a transaction—with the organization they support.”
• Online relationships are often deeply affected by offline connections and cultivation.
• December (people giving for tax purposes at the end of the year, literally the last days of the year) and disasters dominate the online giving landscape.

For me, the key data from the report is this chart:

Holy cow, look at how donors come and stay on organization’s websites for giving compared to portals (like Network for Good) and social networking sites (like Facebook)! Really, it’s not even close — I’m even wondering if the other channels are worth all of the effort, hoopla and eyeball fatigue they are creating.

The report emphasizes several times that donors are giving largely through an organization’s website because of the relationship they have with that organization. And if they give through another site, like a giving portal like Change.org, they give less and are not likely to give again.

These particular data raise two questions in my mind:

1. Do these findings reinforce the skepticism that have had about the need for Jumo? (You can see some of the criticism here and here.) What is the point of yet another platform that takes away time and attention from individual organizations if we’re finding that donors are not deepening their relationships anywhere but on their own site.
2. Does this make a group like charity:water, a born and bred Networked Nonprofit, look even more prescient building their own network, my charity:water, on their site as a place for action, advocacy and fundraising?

LinkedIn: The Little Network That Could

This month’s Social Good podcast focuses on the second life of LinkedIn.

Sometimes social media tools and channels come and go so quickly I never learn how to pronounce the name of the thing! And then sometimes, not often, but just sometimes, a tool starts, levels off and then has a more dynamic second life. LinkedIn is one of those second life social media tools. I remember when it started I just kept adding friends but didn’t really have any idea of why I was adding them or what do with them. Facebook seemed a more interesting place to be and meet people and share, unless you were looking for a job and then LinkedIn was a must.

LinkedIn then began to reinvent itself. As other social network sites were flattening out in terms of the number of users, LinkedIn was soaring – passing 60 million users this year, increasing by ten million users a year over the past several years. That’s still small compared to the over 300 million users on Facebook, but it’s not nothing. Then, I saw an article that said that LinkedIn was the only social network was that was profitable – take that Facebook and MySpace! Then it added the functionality to create groups of people with a common interest or geographic area. And all of a sudden my LinkedIn friending began to soar again.

My interest was really piqued when Susan Kistler, the Executive Director of the American Evaluation Association told me that they transitioned their longstanding listserve to a LinkedIn group last year and that the conversation was richer as a result.

The LinkedIn experts on this month’s podcast are Amy Sample Ward, a pioneer in the use of social media by nonprofits and currently the Community Development Manager for TechSoup Global and Estrella Rosenberg, serial nonprofit entrepreneur,  philanthropy expert and author of Adventures In Philanthropy

I hope you enjoy listening to Amy and Estrella with their very practical advice on how best to use LinkedIN for your organization or cause.  It’s really the little social network that could!

I Have a FREE HP Laptop and Printer to Give Away!

Morning, peeps, I’ve got a special surprise today!  Beth and I have helped to plan and assess online contests such as America’s Giving Challenge sponsored by the Case Foundation over the past several years. Now, we’re part of a group of bloggers who get to help sponsor a contest and give away free HP stuff!

The giveaway is part of the HP Create Change effort. For every purchase from the Create Change site that is part of the HP direct purchase website, HP will donate 4% to one of the following seven nonprofits that you can designate. The nonprofits are: American Red Cross, CARE, DonorsChoose.org, Junior Achievement, Make-A-Wish Foundation, Susan G. Koman Race for the Cure, World Wildlife Fund.

You can download a widget for the HP Create Change effort form their site and follow their conversation on Facebook.

Back to our contest. HP has asked me and a few fantastic bloggy friends: Beth (of course!), Tom Watson, Katya Andresen’s Nonprofit Marketing Blog, Jolly Mom, and Amy Sample Ward to ask our readers a question about social change. And then each of us bloggers will pick a winner from the comments on our blog.

So, here’s my question to you: What conversations on which social media channels do you  most want to have with your community this year?

Extra points will be given to anyone who works Foursquare or Tumblr into their answer!

AF Note: The contest closes on February 26th!

Redlining Online

Ivan Boothe wrote a terrific post last week about Causes taking down its application from MySpace. Causes is an application for use on social networking sites. it enables users to highlight causes that they care about asking friends to join their cause and also to make donations.

Since its launch in 2006, there are around 250,000 Causes on Facebook. A cause does not have to be associated with a specific nonprofit, and most of these, over 200,00 aren’t. They are people who are passionate about something, say the high cost of tuition or global warming writ large, and want their friends to know about it. That leaves about 46,000 causes that are connected to a specific nonprofit organization.I have written before about the meaning of Causes on Facebook.

Last year Causes broadened its reach to MySpace. By shutting down the application on MySpace, Causes is leaving about 184,000 cause enthusiasts out in the cold.  The number of users on MySpace was tiny compared to the reported 30 million active monthly users of Causes on Facebook. And, according to the Facebook Causes blog, the application has helped raise more than $12 million for nonprofits based in the U.S. and Canada. Over $5 million has been raised in 2009 alone.

This stirred quite a bit of commentary last week with very thoughtful pieces from Ivan as mentioned above, Amy Sample Ward, and Sean Stannard-Stockton. They noted the lack of robustness of the Causes application on MySpace compared to Facebook, the lack of conversation by and from Causes about why they made the decision, what it means for MySpace users, and the risk that nonprofit organizations take when they use third party applications like Causes to help build community online.

But there was one argument in particular that really resonated with me. When I first heard the news, I immediately began to think about a terrific, provocative talk that danah boyd gave last summer at the Personal Democracy Forum. It was appropriately titled, “The Not So Hidden Politics of Class Online.” Here is the video from her talk. She talked about the emerging online divides by race and class that are appearing, particularly the differences between the college-oriented people on Facebook and the non-college population on MySpace.

danah’s talk resonated with a post by Justin Maasa entitled “Social Networking Redlining.” Redlining was the practice of banks to steer their mortgages to people of certain races and ethnicities in certain neighborhoods. In other words, a way to keep African Americans out of certain neighborhoods was for banks not to lend them mortgages. This short post really summed up something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, the tension between the natural friending that happens on social networking sites that create cliques and silos and that can’t be avoided, and the institutional boundaries that are being created between sites like Facebook and MySpace.It is the institutional boundaries that nonprofit organizations should be fighting the hardest to try to breach.

Causes made a business decision, they were not making, or foreseeing, a return on investment for the application on MySpace. That’s entirely their right. The problem from a social change point of view are the number of nonprofit organizations that are shying away from MySpace in favor of Facebook. some assume from the popular press that MySpace is dying – it isn’t. Some assume that it isn’t cool to be on MySpace now. Or worse, they are focusing their organizational efforts towards Facebook because that’s where they hang out in their off time, that’s where their friends and family are socializing.

Social change needs to happen everywhere. Nonprofit organizations are charged with making it happen, intentionally, in easy places and harder places. MySpace may be a more challenging environment for some nonprofit organizations but it doesn’t mean that they don’t need to be there. Perhaps it means that they need to be there even more, to help raise awareness of issue, listen to what people are saying, and help to organize. Only by intentionally reaching out to communities that are too often overlooked will nonprofit organizations be able to help take down the boundaries that are keeping the voices of marginalized communities from being heard.

I’m glad that this issue was raised and led to a constructive conversation about the need for nonprofits not to overlook MySpace. Thanks to everyone for participating in an interesting dialogue.

 

 

Pollyanna Principles: Power of Thinking Differently

I love when someone challenges the lens through which I look at the world, challenges my assumptions, and helps me to see things differently.

That’s what the Pollyanna Principles written by Hildy Gotlieb does — in spades!

The book is based on Hildy’s considerable experience hands-on working directly with people and communities. This isn’t a theoretical framework, but a very practical and practiced one that applies across organizations, issue areas and geography.

Here are The Pollyanna Principles:

1. We accomplish what we hold ourselves accountable for.
2. Each and everyone of us is creating the future, every day, whether we do so consciously or not.
3. Everyone and everything is interconnected and interdependent, whether we acknowledge that or not.
4. “Being the change we want to see” means walking the talk of our values.
5. Strength build upon our stengths, not our weaknesses.
6. Individuals will go where systems lead them.

Brimming with enthusiasm and optimism, Hildy challenges each one of us the future that we want. Hildy encourages us to throw off the yoke of the “culture of can’t” weighing us down of what we can’t do and what isn’t practical or doable at the moment. What if we envisioned the world as it could be? What if envisioned a world full of abundance and could envision addressing the underlying issues that are keeping people hungry, homeless, disempowered and disenfranchised not just, in social work language, as their presenting problems?  It is a freeing and empowering notion – and the essence of real social change.

I’ve been thinking lately about the meaning of social change and social change organizations. Not all nonprofit organizations fit into this category. Hospitals aren’t creating social change. What about direct service organizations that don’t have an advocacy component? How about businesses that sell things, like books, or confections, and give money to causes – are they doing social change work? I’m not sure that I know all of these answers yet – but Hildy has given me an interesting and helpful framework for thinking about them. Thanks, Hildy!

Amy Sample Ward also has a very illuminating review of the book on Beth’s Blog as also.

The Connection Between Online and On Land

Amy Sample Ward posed a question for the Net2 Think Tank for this month: How do real-world (offline) events fit into social media conversations and campaigns?

I can’t think of a single time I have spoken at a conference or event when this question didn’t come up. A Boomer will stand up and pretend to ask a question but actually make a statement that goes something like this, “Social change can’t just happen in that cyber space world of yours, it has to happen on the ground, with real bots, where real people are and where real change happens.” Sometimes they throw a profanity or two in there.

Now, what’s missed by this listener is the opener qualifier that I put into every talk I give. It goes something like, “Now before you get too concerned that I’m going to tell you that social change is only going to happen in cyberspace in the future, please hear me: social change will continue to happen where it always has, in person, on the ground. We need to create meaningful connections and intersections for people online and on land.” And yet, no matter how loudly I say that the accusing question always comes.

Why?

The easy answer is that people are afraid. The statement maker feels assaulted by all of the wizardry of the Connected Age and really hopes it will just fade away. Their anxiety comes out in this accusation that I am suggesting that every aspect of our lives moves online. I alone appear responsible to them for the death of in person relationships, newspapers, and probably General Motors, too!

The harder answer is that social media activists haven’t emphasized the on land piece enough. Remember the old advertising adage; it’s not until they scream that they heard you that they actually have. We need to yell it louder. Online and on land are inextricably linked, social change can’t happen online alone, social change can’t scale on land alone. But techtopians like me get really, really excited about a new mapping of the Iranian blogosphere (see it here, it really is sooo cool!) and are less focused on parlor meetings and coffees and Meetups – they’re not as sexy. But  the change that we want to see won’t happen without them.

So, what should we do?

We need to get much more intentional about the intersection of online and on land. We need to keep asking the question, “And how does this [effort/campaign/outreach/gadget] connect to on land efforts?” Think of it as a physics equation; every online activity and event has to have an equal on  land component. We need balance to our efforts, we need to strengthen relationships and build our social capital in ways that can only happen on land.

I “Rock” Says Fast Co. Mag

Fast Company Magazine lists “Women in Nonprofit Technology Who Rock” (reprinted from Beth’s Blog) in which I’m listed as a “Big Picture Thinker”.  Cool!

It’s an awesome list, if I do say so myself!, that includes my co-conspirator on the GiveList Marnie Webb, Amy Sample Ward, Katrin Verclas, Lucy Bernholz and the Case Foundation bloggers Kari Dunn Saratovsky, Sokunthea Sa Chhabra, and Megan Stohner.

Just a few years ago, it would have been difficult to compile such a robust list of women who are thinkers, doers, strategizers. And now look at us.  Rock on, women!