Time for a Nonprofit Natural Disaster Gameplan

The outpouring of concern and donations for the victims of the earthquake in Haiti confirmed what we already know, people are good hearted and want to help.

Geoff Livingston has done a fantastic job over at  Mashable identifying the five social media lessons learned from Haiti: the maturation of mobile giving,  the unfolding narrative of the disaster shared on channels like Twitter, the integration of social and traditional media, the glossing over of the underlying issues and story of Haiti’s history of poverty and corruption that excerbates natural disasters, the potential for short-attention spans for the long and difficult road to recovery for Haiti.

I’ve also been blown away by the reaction of the tech community, spearheaded by the inexhaustible Andy Carvin of NPR, of an event called Crisis Camp organized by a grassroots networked called Crisis Commons. The commons and the camp are geeks coming together around an urgent need to crowdsource a panoply of efforts to support, in this case Haitian, relief efforts. They include translation, basic maps of the country, mapping of NGO efforts, mobile applications for crisis response, and family reunification systems.

I am struck by a few things from all of this swirl of activity. Just how quickly people can be mobilized to do more than give money is amazing. But there is something else going on. After Katrina, there was a huge gap between the amount of money given by individuals and foundations and the amount given by governments, specifically the difference was $6b from private donors vs. $120b from the government.

That gap will be much closer this time for two reasons in particular: the economy that has strapped individuals and governments and the destitution of the Haitian government. Just a week after the earthquake, Americans had already pledged $275 million for Haiti. The US Government and the World Bank combined had pledged $200 million.

In light of this growth in the size and importance of private donations for natural disasters around the world, we should have some guidelines as a sector on how to advise people to give. This is to avoid the confusion and diffusion of giving that happens in a sector that is genetically predisposed to order of any kind. For instance, many people, including me, immediately added Jean Wyclef’s Yele Haiti to their short list of organizations to give to. My rationale was that they were established in country and could help facilitate the logistical mess of trying to disperse food and aid within the country. But now I think that was a mistake. They aren’t a large organization, they don’t have any particular expertise in disaster relief, and there have been reports of previous financial mismanagement.

I liked Rosetta Thurman’s post here on what to give — and what not to give — for Haitian relief. For instance, she said don’t donate cans or clothing, there is no transportation to get them to Haiti, and even if they were delivered there isn’t the infrastructure to distribute them.

So, here’s my proposal. We need a Nonprofit National Disaster Gameplan for the next disaster. Our efforts are too large now to be ignored, we are not just a shadow of government, or UN or World Bank support efforts. We need an agreed upon plan, similar to what the Crisis Commons is developing of the kind of aid, and the best groups to provide that assistance, in the immediate wake of a disaster.

I know this flies in the face of free choice in funding that we hold so dear as a sector, but, really, folks, don’t you think we can agree that when hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, of lives are lost or at risk, we can agree that The Red Cross has to be first responder? But there are others, like CARE and Doctors without Borders. We need to make a short list of the organizations we should endorse who have the size, expertise and expertise to provide support anywhere in the world for a disaster.  Seems to be a good job for Independent Sector.

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!

Social Good Podcast: Manging Volunteers Online

The latest edition of my Social Good podcast for the Chronicle of Philanthropy is up for listening!

Last month, Andy Carvin, the social media mavin at NPR, asked what Web 2.0 solutions folks were using fo volunteer management.  One of our listeners, Sean McKean of CCS Fundraising asked if I’d follow up   — and I did this month!

This month, Beka Economopolous, the Vice President of Fission Strategy, a firm specializing in Web 2.0 strategic counsel for online organizing, advocacy, marketing, and communications and Ben Rigby the co-founder of really terrific new group called The Extraordinaries and the author of Mobilizing Generation 2.0.

Beka rightly pointed out that there are both front end volunteer management efforts, such as providing lots of access points for volunteers and making sure their engagements are meaningful and productive, and back end, learning more about who volunteers, when and for how much time. Of course, sadly, as in all of life, there are no silver bullet solutions (a great post by Paul Hagen on the lack of silver bulletness for volunteer management sofware IdealWare.)

Beka suggests folks explore these free tools, Facebook, Ning, PBwiki.com.  I’d add CiviCRM for the back end needs as well.

The Extraordinaries is just taking flight right now. The idea is to enable smart phone users to plug in when they have a few minutes, wherever, they are to support a variety of causes. Here’s Ben’s description of how The Extraordinaries is going to work:

We’ve designed The Extraordinaries to feel very much like playing a game. It’s got points, levels, and built-in competition. These game mechanics drive adoption and usage. The key difference is that by playing this game, the player does something useful for a nonprofit organization or public purpose such as:

•    Translating a nonprofit’s Website into a foreign language
•    Identifying craters on the surface of Mars with NASA’s Clickworker program
•    Recording the GPS location of potholes and city infrastructure issues for municipalities
•    Confirming addresses for a nonprofit’s membership list
•    Identifying birds for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology
•    Tagging images for the Smithsonian
•    Transcribing ancient texts for ReCaptcha
•    Reviewing congressional bills for hidden pork
•    Fact checking for reporters
The bottom line according to Beka and Ben is that there need to be lots of access points to enable lots of people to participate with your cause easily, quickly and in meaningful ways.  A perfect description of the Connected Age, I’d say!

Are You a Person or an Org on Twitter?

There was a great post on the Chronicle’s website today about the use of Twitter by nonprofit organizations.

Great quotes from my Social Citizens blog pal Kari Dunn Saratovsky at the Case Foundation and Beth (of course!) on the various ways that foundations and nonprofits are using Twitter to share news, raise money, organize events and generally connect with their supporters.

But one of the tips at the end of the article left me pondering. It said: Be professional. While for an animal-rights group blogging about vegan recipes may make sense, posting about how disappointed you were in last night’s episode of Lost probably doesn’t.

I’m not sure I agree with this. I do like my Twitter friends to focus mainly on their work and our shared passion for the various ways that social media are enhancing social change efforts. But one of the nicest things about Twitter is how easy it is to get to know someone in such short bursts of communication. I’ve learned that my old friend Ruby is pregnant, and my new friend Qui is moving to the Northwest. I hear about job openings, job woes, what people ate at their business dinner and who is stuck on the tarmac. I am getting to know my business contacts as real people, not as suits behind a desk.

Here’s the best way to see the difference. I am friends with Andy Carvin (who I’ve only met through email and Twitter!) through his personal Twitter account, he also writes the more formal NPR tweets. Andy tweets as a person, where he’s going today, what he’s reading, who he’s seeing, and what great stories are online at NPR.org or other sites that I should read. And I often do. But when his tweets behind the formal NPRpolitics logo show up I hardly ever read them. I’m not friends with a logo and I find them cold to look at on my screen.

So, I think I disagree with the advice that one should be professional on Twitter. I think you should be yourself – which is always the best thing to be anyway, right? You should use Twitter to its best advantage, meaning use it to help you to connect in meaningful ways with large numbers of people who care about you and your cause.