Blackbaud Research on Online Giving

I had great fun last week keynoting Blackbaud’s annual North America conference in DC. Here is the video of the keynote that I did in person and Beth did virtually. Here is the video of our presentation:

I was very pleased by the response from the attendees, but it’s not what stuck with me for the day. I attended a presentation later in the day by Blackbaud. Chuck Longfield, the company’s head of research gave a presentation on the state of fundraising on land and on line that the company gathers from it’s 24,000 nonprofit users (quite a data set!) Here is a link to the findings they were reporting on. I asked Chuck if he was seeing any trends in the behavior of donors whose entry point is online. Do they give less over time? Do they give once and never again? Are the size of their donations less than the ones given by donors who begin through an in person event or through direct mail?

Chuck said it’s too early to tell the trends in this area. But he did share a very, very interesting data point.  He said that donors who come through traditional means like direct mail, who then transition to online giving, give more over time! Chuck said it’s as if giving easier online just makes people give more. This is fascinating and surely gives an incentive to organizations to try to transition their donors to online giving as soon as possible. I discussed with Chuck my interest in understanding donors who come in through social media and he agreed its a key research area in the near future.

 

Launch Day for The Networked Nonprofit!

Launch day for The Networked Nonprofit is here at last! This is the day writers think about when slogging through yet another revision of chapter 5 or 8 or 3. Just one more time through, you think, and someday far off in the future someone out there will actually read it. And today’s that day!

The Networked Nonprofit is for senior nonprofit executives struggling to understand the seismic shifts in the landscape that have occurred over the past few years. The shift has been driven in large part by the advent of social media, but not entirely. The ongoing ineffectiveness of stand alone organizations each trying to trump other organizations as the most effective problem solver, or best homeless shelter in the city, or most innovative after school program, and the scarcity thinking that drives this way of thinking has finally worn out its welcome. The bottom line is that complex social problems, and they’re all complex by definition, outpace the capacity of any single individual or organization to solve them.

Our book outlines a very different way of working, one focused on abundance and networked thinking. Nonprofit organizations need to work as networks – not at them or with them – but actually to remake themselves as social networks. The book provides a framework for understanding how to make this transition with lots of stories of other organizations like the American Red Cross, Planned Parenthood and the Humane Society of the US that have begun to turn themselves inside out.

The Networked Nonprofit is also aimed at the Millennials within those organizations who are frustrated and need help convincing senior staff and boards of the need to change the way they operate.

We are delighted with the early reviews that are coming in like this one from our colleague Lucy Bernholz who writes the Philanthropy 2173 blog:

Kanter and Fine live and act like the very types of organizations they explicate in the book. As leaders and learners they connect, share, give credit, invite, discuss, rehearse, improve and introduce. They try things out in public – the book was written collaboratively across different time zones, drafted and shared in countless speeches, slide decks, workshops and twitter feeds.

And they’ve done their homework. The Networked Nonprofit has a dozen examples for every idea it offers – from big organizations and small, digital native enterprises and transformed “old line” institutions, freelance activists and professionals of every stripe.

Please join us today for our  virtual book launch party. Join us today,  June 21st from 1-2 PM PST/4-5 PM EST for the launch of  The Networked Nonprofit published by Jossey-Bass.   Follow it on Twitter (#netnon) and/or Ustream (http://www.ustream.tv/channel/networked-nonprofit).   We have over 600 people who have signed up to join us!

Here’s the launch party schedule.  Feel free to pop in for five minutes or spend the hour with us.   We’ll be talking about different themes from the book and answer your questions.   We’ll cover:

1:00-1:10

(1)  What is it like to co-wrote a book?   We have different styles of thinking, writing, and working.  Plus we live on different coasts.  We’ll talk about how we managed our collaboration.

1:10-1:20

(2)  Why we wrote the book!  What was the initial inspiration, what we discovered in our research, and how we arrived at the framework for the Networked Nonprofit.

1:20-1:40

(3)  The Networked Nonprofit Framework.   We believe that Networked Nonprofits first have to be, before they can do. We share a 12 step framework in the book.    We’ll discuss these three important themes from the “being” side.   We’ll take your questions.

• Creating a social culture at your nonprofit
• Becoming more transparent, less of a fortress
• Simplicity, letting go, focusing on what you do best and network the rest

1:40-2:00

We’ll take your questions via email and Twitter.

One last thought about today. Writing a book is a very hard thing to do and writing one with someone else is even harder. It requires negotiation and patience, but in the end it is better than what one person could have done alone – at least that was the case with this book. My sincere thanks to my co-author Beth Kanter for working with me on this effort, putting up with my endless need to find just one more adjective. Your boundless energy and enthusiasm for this topic is infectious and I am so much smarter as a result of our collaborations.

Networked Nonprofits in Action

Beth and I had the great pleasure of joining wiht our friends at Care2 for a webinar on The Networked Nonprofit. Nearly 800 people joined in as we outlined a few of the major concepts in teh book.

What I enjoyed most about the webinar wasn’t talking but listening to Danielle Brigida of the National Wildlife Federation and Marc Sirkin of Autism Speaks tell us about how their organizations are working as Networked Nonprofits. In Danielle’s case it is about helping her organization break out of their physical and mental fortress that too often keeps organizations at a distance from their communities. She does an amazing job of listening using social media tools. Marc’s organization is newer and the walls are lower, the moat shallower. He still spends a majority of his time building relationships with and growing his network. Marc is doing an amazing job of measuring the results of his community building efforts.

What they’re learning about engaging with communities using social media and the internal politics is really important as we are all trying to better figure out what it means when organizations are stretched beyond their immediate boundaries.

Allyson Kapin of Care2 (and WomenWhoTech a group that I LOVE) has a terrific, comprehensive write up the session here.

Here is the slidedeck from yesterday’s presentation:

<div style=”width:425px” id=”__ss_4531760″><strong style=”display:block;margin:12px 0 4px”><a href=”http://www.slideshare.net/womenwhotech/networked-nonprofit-care2-webinar&#8221; title=”Networked Nonprofit: Care2 Webinar”>Networked Nonprofit: Care2 Webinar</a></strong><object id=”__sse4531760″ width=”425″ height=”355″><param name=”movie” value=”http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=car2networkfinweb-100617212727-phpapp02&stripped_title=networked-nonprofit-care2-webinar&#8221; /><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”/><param name=”allowScriptAccess” value=”always”/><embed name=”__sse4531760″ src=”http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=car2networkfinweb-100617212727-phpapp02&stripped_title=networked-nonprofit-care2-webinar&#8221; type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”425″ height=”355″></embed></object><div style=”padding:5px 0 12px”>View more <a href=”http://www.slideshare.net/”>presentations</a&gt; from <a href=”http://www.slideshare.net/womenwhotech”>womenwhotech</a&gt;.</div></div>

PS:  Monday is The Networked Nonprofit Launch Day! Please join us for our virtual book launch party! Join Allison Fine and me on June 21st at 1-2 PM PST/4-5 PM EST for the launch of The Networked Nonprofit published by Jossey-Bass/Wiley.

Discount for the Personal Democracy Forum

One of my favorite events of the year is the Personal Democracy Forum (PDF) (full disclosure: I have had myriad business ties to PDF and am now engaged as a consultant with them.)

I consider PDF to be my home base for learning about what’s new and hot in the social media, politics and civics space. This year’s conference is shaping up to be awesome and Beth and I have the honor of talking about our book, The Networked Nonprofit, on Friday morning.

This year’s agenda includes:

-An in-depth look at how the internet fosters freedom and democracy, with speakers from all sides of that debate: Jimmy Wales, Julian Assange, Daniel Ellsberg, Evgeny Morozov, Ory Okolloh, Ethan Zuckerman, Cheryl Contee, Newt Gingrich, John Perry Barlow and Clay Shirky.

-Shop talk from online innovators from both sides of the aisle, including Markos Moulitsas, Arianna Huffington, Jane Hamsher, Mindy Finn, Rob Willington, Todd Herman, Natalie Foster, Stephanie Taylor, Dan Cantor, Eli Pariser and Ryan Gravatt.

-Visions of the networked future from thinkers like Howard Rheingold, Tim O’Reilly, Aneesh Chopra, Nick Bilton, Bernard Avishai, Craig Newmark, Esther Dyson, Anil Dash, Jen Pahlka, Bryan Sivak and Susan Crawford.

And as an added incentive, Micah Sifry, co-founder of PDF, is offering readers of this blog a $100 discount on their registration!  To save $100 on registration, go here:

https://personaldemocracy.com/product/pdf_2010_early_registration and use the following code: AFINE

Let me know if you’re coming, I’ve love to say hi there!

Conversational Case Study for America’s Giving Challenge

I’m cooking up some fun with Beth and the Case Foundation again. We are engaged in the evaluation of the second America’s Giving Challenge contest that the foundation sponsored last year. We did a survey and we wanted to do some in depth case studies to better understand the experiences of some of the winners. But rather than do it behind closed doors we decided to do it networked style!

So, here’s the lowdown. Beth has posted the first of what we’re calling a Conversational Case Study on the foundation’s blog.  This first one is about Darius Goes West – they’re a small nonprofit that did a great job of using videos and personal appeals to activate their network to become a winner in the Challenge.  Read their story, it’s really fun and exciting. But their story also raises a couple of interesting questions that Beth outlines in the case study:

• Whether you’re participating in an online contest or implementing a fundraising campaign using social networks, you’ve got to engage your fans and make it easy for them to share your organization’s story with pride and joy. What techniques are you using?
• How have you used social media to personalize your interactions with potential supporters?
• If you are with a small organization, how have you used social media successfully without a big marketing budget?
• How can we put to rest the assumption that large organizations have an automatic advantage using social media?

We’d love to hear your thoughts. Please comment on that post or share your insights on a tweet using the hashtag #agc2.

We’ll be posting two more Conversational Case Studies in the next two weeks.  Thanks for participating!

Donations as a Measure of Civic Engagement

I saw a tweet this morning from Allison Jones from a presentation the amazing Kim Klein was giving in Detroit. The tweet read, “Kim Klein: more people donate $$ than vote or volunteer via @new_org”

I began to wonder whether we’ve been missing an opportunity to use donations as a measure of civic engagement. On land volunteerism and voting are traditional measures of local civic engagement. They are proxy’s for local social capital and stickiness. Here is a typical article on the connection between voting and local social capital and a blog post on volunteerism and social capital. But you won’t find articles or posts on donations and social capital.

The assumption is that writing a check is too passive to be considered engagement. In the same way that some folks think that clicking to raise awareness of an issue, such as clicking to support breast cancer, is too small, light, passive to be considered by some to be true participation.

I reject both of these arguments. I think any time someone does something for a cause, no matter how light, it is an opening and an opportunity for developing a stronger relationship with them.

Beth has illustrated this relationship in a diagram called The Ladder of Engagement:

The more interesting question than whether or not donations equal engagement is how nonprofits are being successful stepping people up this ladder of engagement. We wrestle with this a bit in our book The Networked Nonprofit. More to come on this in the weeks and months ahead!

What’s the Point of Pepsi Refresh?

The first round of the Pepsi Refresh Project has just concluded its first round of funding. The Chronicle reported on the initial grant awards to 32 groups of $1.3 million here.

Pepsi will continue to give out monthly grants until it reaches it’s proposed grant amount of $20 million. That’s all great, but when the awards were announced I began to wonder what it all means. To their credit, Pepsi created a very easy-to-use site, that worked after some initial glitches, and a fairly transparent process (although there are some grumbles of gaming by Pepsi and participants), but, in particular, I keep going back to what Beth wrote initially about the contest, “what’s the theory of change?”

When the contest was first announced it was framed in the media as Pepsi choosing philanthropy over Super Bowl ads. But as Mashable warned, if the campaign worked, “..the company can build brand awareness while also helping out communities across the world. On the flip side, if not executed properly, the company could wind up spending $20 million on philanthropic causes (which is to be commended), without getting the benefits of a buzz-generating ad campaign.”

As Geoff points out, this is quite a delicate dance. He writes, “Perhaps the greatest trend of the moment is the fusion of corporate and philanthropic interests, which in turn is producing growing pains and change. It’s likely that the requirements of online transparency will demand a new era of authenticity in corporate community investment efforts.”

One area of transparency I’d like to see Pepsi transcend is that of their intended outcomes for this effort. Which is it, Pepsi? Are you interested in the kinds of returns that an expensive ad campaign would create? For instance, are you interested in greater sales? Or are you interested in philanthropic outcomes, improved reading skills or greener classrooms or better health outcomes? Or are you betting that that this new form of philanthropy can create a hybrid of the two?  One thing I do know is that if it is philanthropic outcomes, then this model needs to be extended beyond the contest to a platform for reporting and sharing results. I need to know, Pepsi, please tell me!

Who’s Missing from this Picture?

This is Ashton Kutcher conferring with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey in Moscow on Tuesday. They are part of a delegation of techtopians sent by the State Department to Russia. According to the New York Times straight-faced report of the visit (always missing an opportunity for a delicious satire over there at the regal Times), “Among the delegation’s goals was to persuade Russia’s thriving online social networks to take up social causes like fighting corruption or human trafficking..”

Of course, nothing wrong with anyone making the case anywhere in the world of the power of people-to-people activism fueled by social media to make enormous differences in their lives and their governments. Although using my tax dollars to send Ashton Kutcher across the globe does give me pause.

The problem is that there is someone ( a lot of someones, actually) missing from this photo – missing from the whole delegation. The heads of E-Bay and Mozilla were there, as was the brilliant Esther Dyson who has spent a good part of her career focused on ways to use technology for the common good.

But why didn’t it occur to anyone in the State Department to include someone in the delegation who actually does this work – who works to build civic society using social media every day – to the event?

If the purpose of the delegation was to promote the use of social media for building small businesses it would be expected that the contingent would include mainly for profit business folks. So, why doesn’t that same axiom hold true when talking about civic society?

Because, once again and for the umpteenth time, the assumption by outside observers is that what we do is pretty easy. See, all you have to do is log onto Twitter, it’s free and so easy to use that Ashton and Demi do it all the time, and poof! civil society building just magically happens. The strategy and network weaving that are beneath all of the recent successful efforts to use social media for social change are either dismissed, or more likely, not understood and therefore not included as part of the discussion.

So, Jared Cohen or anyone over at the State Department, if you’re listening, why don’t you think about inviting folks like Robert Egger or Beth Kanter or Katya Andresen, or Katrin Verclas to speak knowledgeably about what it takes to use social media for social change.

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!

Beth’s Birthday Party

Today is Beth Kanter’s 53rd birthday. I wouldn’t have shared the number with you, but she already has here and here and here on her blog! My friends Amy Sample Ward and Stacey Monk organized an effort by bloggers, a surprise bloggy birthday!, today to wish Beth a happy birthday and help her to reach her birthday goal of sending 53 Cambodia children to school. I’ve just donated $25, I hope you’ll do the same here on Facebook.

But, Amy and Stacey also asked us bloggers to do one more thing for Beth’s birthday. They asked that we share how Beth has impacted your work. Well, that’s might sound like an easy thing to do, but for me it isn’t easy at all. The problem is that Beth has impacted how I think about social media, what I know, who I know and what I do in so many profound ways it’s hard to capture it all! I’ll just highlight a few so you get an idea of how important she is to me as a friend, teacher and partner.

• Beth was the first blogger to review my first book, Momentum. That’s how we met, and I was so struck by her humanness then- she wasn’t an aloof reviewer, she was a full person who just told you what she liked and why without any pretense, and certainly without any snarkiness (unlike yours truly, too often, I’m afraid!)
• We partnered on the assessment of the first round of the Case Foundation’s Giving Challenge last year. We had fun doing it, and I learned so much from her about how Causes and fundraising using social media. But, again, Beth doesn’t just watch from afar, she is a passionate doer and user of social media and her first hand experience as a participant in the Giving Challenge on behalf of the Sharing Foundation was invaluable to our efforts.
• And, finally, Beth is my co-author and partner for our book, The Networked Nonprofit, that Wiley & Sons will be publishing this year. Her insights, experiences, thoughtfulness, and practices are central elements to making the book what I thought it finally became: an important and useful work that perfectly captures this moment in time for nonprofits and social media.

So, my friend, happy birthday, many, many happy returns, and thanks for everything that you have done with me and for me!