“Social Good” Podcast on Text Campaigns

This month’s Social Good podcast is available today on iTunes and the Chronicle’s site. This month’s edition is on text messaging campaigns to raise awareness and funds for causes. My guests are Katrin Verclas, the Co-Founder and Editor of MobileActive.org, and Chuck Scofield, Chief Development Officer for Share Our Strength. We discuss the logistics of managing a text message campaign, Share Our Strength’s text messaging campaign, Operation No Kid Hungry, the expense of these campaigns, and the opportunity to begin to experiment with other mobile tools, like Twitter, in the future.

So, take a listen and share the word!

2nd Social Good Podcast is Posted

The second edition of the Social Good podcast that I host for the Chronicle of Philanthropy has just been posted.

The topic this month is whether and how the nonprofits and foundations can take advantage of social capital in light of our reduced financial capital.  Lucy Bernholz and Katya Andresen are my guests and they’re just terrific, smart, straightforward and helpful.

There are also some useful resources up on the Chronicles website, too.  Let me know what you think about this topic and the podcast in general. Enjoy!

The Quagmire of the Evaluation Silver Bullet

Once again, I am sucked into the discussion of the one right way to evaluate nonprofit organizations.  Every few years another bright shiny silver bullet is paraded around the fairgrounds for all to see with the promise that we will, at long last!, have the answer to the thorny issue of whether and how causes make a difference.  The Wall Street Journal, much to my surprise, has a lucid column on the limitations of financial data as used by groups like Charity Navigator to determine “good” from ‘bad” nonprofits.  The presumption of these efforts is that there is one right way to judge how much overhead is needed or how much programs should cost.  Naturally, Robert Egger, the founder and president of DC Central Kitchen and a constant voice of reason and sanity, nails the problem on the head with this quote, “The low-administrative-overhead standard is an intellectual albatross around our necks.”

Into the breach where many have come before is Social Solutions and its Social Investment Ratings Tool.  As described in the Chronicle, Social Solutions has gathered up a group of luminaries, including Egger, as well as Diana Aviv of Independent Sector, Brian Gallagher of United Way of America, and Paul Brest of the Hewlett Foundation among others to vet the tool.  The goal is to provide information and comfort to donors that their money is being well spent.  Again, according to the Chronicle article, “A majority of wealthy individuals (58 percent) said they would give more if they could determine the impact of their donations, according to a 2006 survey by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.” What we need, says this group, is a common process for measuring results.

Unfortunately the link to the actual tool from the Chronicle article isn’t working, so I don’t have all of the information I’d like to make an assessment of this effort.  However, it isn’t going to stop me from having an opinion and making the following observations:

1.  There is a fundamental difference between nonprofits learning about their efforts first and foremost to improve them and then to communicate with donors, as opposed to the other way around. This effort seems almost entirely driven by the need to satisfy donors, which is both disempowering for nonprofits and leads to disingenous efforts.

2. The answer isn’t a new set of measures; it is a new process of transparency and learning.  It is unsettling to see a national effort that includes so many groups that have been heavy handed in their approach to evaluation in the past leading this effort.  Learning doesn’t come from new requirements or forms; it comes from a natural desire to improve. Nonprofits can either numbly fill out forms to make the grade and satisfy donors.  Or they can become fully transparent (as can their foundations) make their 990s and audit report (including, dare I say, even the management letters!) available online, post their learning questions and how they will try to answer these questions for discussions using a wiki, engage their donors, clients, board, volunteers, anyone who wants to really, on a journey of discovery and learning. Foundations and donors ought to support sincere efforts to learn and improve, rather than punish nonprofits for failures to meet their learning goals.  Once burned for being honest, many nonprofits will just go back to answering the questions the way they think donors want them to.

3.  Knowing how to learn is vitally important to nonprofit effectiveness.  Nonprofit groups, both staff and boards, and their donors, would benefit enormously from intensive educational efforts to teach  how to learn about their effectiveness.

We need processes that recognize and honor the fact that there is nothing harder to do in this world than try to change people and communities.  No one, not a software company or a large national organization should presume that they know how to do that.  I have reviewed and evaluated literally thousands of nonprofit programs over the past fifteen years and never once have the intended outcomes been the same – even for programs doing what appears to be the same thing to an outside observer.  How an afterschool group or food bank or mentoring program or environmental advocacy effort goes about its work is wonderfully unique to that particular organization in that particular community, literally as unique as the people they are serving, and this should be celebrated not cookie-cuttered away.   We should embrace learning and stay away from checklists.

[Disclosure: I write this, hopefully with some insights, having founded and run a nonprofit organization, Innovation Network, for over a decade, that has the purpose of helping nonprofits and foundations measure their results.  In other words, been there, done that for more years than I'd like to admit.]

Working Differently in a Crisis

As awful as the economic crisis is (and just ask any nonprofit or foundation who lost money because of the Madoff disaster) there are stirrings in the nonprofit sector to work differently to survive.

The Nonprofit Roundtable in DC created a new social network on NING called Nonprofit 911 that has a big vision of “redefining the way the nonprofit sector operates.”  The site shares resources, ideas, organize events.  Hopefully the site will spur real conversations between funders and activists.

Maybe the crisis can help us to move away from cannibalistic fundraising habits towards collaborative fundraising as described in the Chronicle.

How to Ask This Giving Season

I’ve been so focused on the giving side of things lately that I haven’t spent as much time on the asking side.  Nonprofits are hurting.  Estimates are that giving was down 30% in October alone – I can’t imagine what November and December are going to look like.  Stories like this one about Goodwill Industries are becoming typical; basically donations are down and demand for services are up.

However, ironically, maybe even paradoxically, the Chronicle reports that while gift buying is down people still intend to give to their favorite caues this holiday season.

So, what gives — or maybe, more accurately, who gives?  I’m guessing (and really it’s just a guess) that people in their heart of hearst want to report that they will causes they feel passionately about, even when their wallots say they shouldn’t and when nonprofit spreadsheets say they aren’t. So, the real question isn’t whether donations are up or down, but how can we activate a lot of people who want to give to each donate a little this holiday season?

Part of what we have to overcome is the oversolicitation of donors who are turned of by being treated like ATM machines.  Indiana University’s Center on Philanthropy’s new report (this is only a summary, the full report is due out in early 2009) on why donors stop giving puts it more politely as, “no longer feeling connected to the organization.”

Connectedness trumps wizardy.  This is  always true but particularly relevant now when belts are being tightened.  It is the only way to make donors big and small feel welcome, appreciated and needed.  Katya Andreson reports on a presentation that the fundraising guress Kim Klein at Network for Good this week.  Kim’s suggestions for raising money in tough economic times were:

1. Encourage your donors to give the gift of charity.  It’s the holidays.  People are buying gifts.  Have them make that the gift of charity.

2. Call all your major donors.  She says, “The tendency right now is to think, “Oh, these poor people. They lost so much money.” So you don’t call them. What you actually wind up saying to them, even though you don’t mean to, you wind up saying to them, “All we cared about was your money. Now that you don’t have so much money, I can’t be bothered to call you.” And that is really,

really, really not a message you want to give.  You want to welcome them. You want to write to them and use a follow-up phone call to say something like, “We thank you for all you’ve done for us over the years. We are determined to hang in there and continue to do our work as best we can. We hope you will support us at whatever level feels acceptable to you.” Focus on the donor, not the donation!

3. Tell 70+ donors how to save on taxes!  She says, “You can transfer up to $100,000 in any given year directly from their IRA to a charitable organization and they pay no income tax on that. Normally if you withdraw money from your IRA you pay a tax, whatever tax bracket you’re in that year. And of course if you donate it, you claim that tax donation.  This is a very nice provision that allows you to avoid taxation and still claim the donation, so it’s kind of a double tax advantage.”

4. For smaller organizations especially, share a wish list!  She says, “Tell people, this is the stuff we need. We need four ergonomic chairs. We need 10 printer toner cartridges. We need 75 reams of paper. We need new filing cabinets.” And you just kind of list all the stuff, everything in your budget.”

Social Good Podcast Series is Up!

Social Good, the new podcast series I am hosting for the Chronicle of Philanthropy was just posted on the Chronicle site.

The topic this month is turning friends into supporters using social networking sites.  Jonothan Coleman of Nature Conservancy and Carie Lewis of the Humane Society are my guests.  Hope you enjoy it, I LOVED doing it!

So, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and if you have any ideas on topics and guests, just send them my way.  Thanks!

Inexpensive Fundraising Tips for Tough Times

Holly Lillis of Changing Our World provides excellent advice of inexpensive ways to enhance your fundraising efforts now.  They are summarized by the Chronicle as:

• Engage in simple Web-site maintenance, to ensure the organization shows up high on search engine searches

• Host volunteer drives to offer ways for supporters to give at time when they might not have much extra cash.

• Craft simple, brief, e-mail messages to take the place of more expensive traditional mailings

• Have a “friend raising” event to recruit new donors. Ask board members or other supporters to invite their friends and colleagues to a party to learn about the charity, for example.

The Millennials Are Coming!

Here is the text of an op-ed I penned for the Chronicle of Philanthropy this week:

The millennials are coming! The millennials are coming! In hallways, boardrooms, and conference calls across the nonprofit world, this warning cry is ringing out.

But too many in the nonprofit world forget that the millennials are already here. They are the people born from 1982 through the late 1990s dominating the world around us. They outnumber the baby boomers who are alive today.

Not preparing for and welcoming the millennials is more than a missed opportunity. It is a significant and perhaps devastating error in judgment by traditional organizations because they need millennials more than the millennials need them. If they are unhappy with their reception by nonprofit organizations, they will simply start their own efforts — overnight, online, at almost no cost.

Millennials are fascinating for how they work (collaboratively); what they believe (that they can make the world a better place); and how they are living (immersed in causes).

Their signature characteristic is their digital fluency. They are uniquely comfortable using a wide variety of social-media tools like cellphones, e-mail, Web sites, blogs, and text messaging, enabling them to spread information widely, quickly, and inexpensively. Their passion and skills combined with their digital dexterity create challenges for more traditional nonprofit organizations.

The nonprofit world that the millennials are entering has matured in its use of social media to connect large networks of supporters. Just a few years ago, only those organizations that were created with connectedness as part of their DNA, like the Genocide Intervention Network and Mobilize.org, were able to thrive in this new era. While the reaction from more traditional organizations was “Do we really have to know about this stuff?,” today the more likely question is “How do we begin?”

And that’s where millennials come in. They know how and where to start using social media for social change. Now nonprofit groups need to let them in, and the best way to do that is to understand the different roles millennials are starting to play as:

Employees. I often hear millennials complain that they are not listened to within their own organizations.

It is not uncommon to hear young people say they feel underappreciated within institutions, but these millennial complaints have more traction than those of previous generations.

Millennials have grown up intently listened to by their parents and teachers, creating a sense of confidence in their own opinions. They are also accustomed to talking online in venues that support open, free-flowing conversations and opinions.

What’s more, their digital adeptness gives them a set of skills and a sense of powerfulness that are unmatched by older colleagues.

Millennials join organizations with an expertise that is important and needed. For all of those reasons, millennial staff members need to be listened to and provided opportunities for meaningful participation in an organization’s key conversations about strategy and operations.

Volunteers. Millennials are passionate about causes and, according to the Corporation for National and Community Service, are volunteering in record numbers beginning in middle school and continuing thereafter.

Organizations accustomed to top-down hierarchical dictates of when and how volunteers will participate will lose with millennials.

Those that allow them to be creative and have a greater sense of ownership in the cause will be more successful.

The best recent example of these different styles is the difference between the Clinton (top-down) and Obama (bottom-up) campaigns.

Activists. Regardless of how traditional organizations change or act, millennials will support their causes in their own ways, and that will mean often working outside of institutions. Thousands of people can use Facebook to support ending the genocide in Darfur, without necessarily supporting a specific organization.

One can look at this landscape and see a sea of competitors for money and attention — or one can see a field of potential partners, regardless of their size or credentials, that can be knit together into a successful ecosystem of supporters.

How can nonprofit groups embrace the millennials?

The first thing they need to do is show them some respect. I often hear older people and organizations dismiss young people as flighty multitaskers. These young people are vitally important to the nation’s future, but they often feel uninvited to the nonprofit party. They have a great deal to teach organizations and older people about organizing using social media and about working in open, nonproprietary ways, but they will only do so if they are listened to and respected.

The Salvation Army has taken steps in this direction recently, including adding a board seat for a young person.

Nonprofit organizations can also assign their young interns and staff members to take responsibility for using specific social networks to generate interest in their causes; that will be a lot more beneficial to them and the organization than answering the phones and making copies.

Organizations need to teach millennials to become “network weavers,” a term coined by two experts in social-network analysis — Valdes Krebs and June Holley — that refers to the creation of social networks that have a specific purpose beyond just their social relations.

While young people already know how to connect with their peers, very few of them understand what it takes to deliberately create networks that promote social change. As a model, nonprofit groups may want to look at the progress made by Lance Bennett, a professor of communication at the University of Washington, in an effort called Engaged Youth, which is teaching young people in Seattle to use their digital skills to solve social problems.

Almost invariably, the first question posed by many nonprofit leaders is: “What is the best tool to reach young people?”

There is no one silver-bullet blog or Web site. Organizations must stop looking for the “killer app” to connect with millennials and start examining their own organizational culture. They must ask themselves:

• Why do you want to connect with them?
• What conversation do you want to have with them?
• How open are you to listening to them?
• What will you allow them to do that you don’t feel you have to control?

Answering those questions may require some real soul searching. Once that’s done, it is time to start talking with the millennials wherever they are — in person through the Meetup Web site, through blogs, on Twitter, on Facebook — and listen to what they are saying and be ready to make changes to work with them more openly and honestly.

Nonprofit groups also need to teach young people why advocacy and policy change are a vital part of creating long-term systemic change.

When schools started requiring community service in the late 1980s, they dropped civic education. Focus groups conducted by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, at Tufts University, found that students didn’t have a negative view of government and public policy like their boomer parents may have — they had no view and opinion at all.

Perhaps worse, they had no place to explore their views and learn more either on or off their campuses. Nonprofit organizations need to create ways for young people to explore issues and ideas.

However, organizations beware, millennials are very clear that they don’t want to be “sold” on issues. Advocates with set ideas on their issues, who just want to recruit younger participants to their cause without real discussion, should spend their time elsewhere.

Young people are engaged in promoting charitable causes in very large numbers as volunteers, staff members, and social entrepreneurs. But as a recent study by the research company Synovate reported, still millions more, particularly black and Hispanic girls, aren’t hooked in and networked. It is up to nonprofit groups to get more young people involved.

Millions of millennials are passionately engaged in causes, though not necessarily connected to specific nonprofit organizations. Millions more regularly practice their own form of citizenship using the tools and processes of democracy (e.g., sharing information, circulating petitions, mobilizing people) to voice their concern about or interest in items that are central to their lives, such as the cancellation of a TV show or organizing friends to attend the opening of a new restaurant.

Those aren’t trivial activities; they represent the latent power of millennials to use their own tools and voices for social-change efforts.

The challenge for nonprofit groups is to invite all of these young people, those already engaged and those who could be engaged, to learn more about their efforts, and to help shape and drive them. The needs of nonprofit groups and the people they serve are great — and they can be matched by the great capacity of the millennials.

Allison Fine is a senior fellow at Demos, a New York think tank, and author of “Social Citizens (beta),” a publication released by the Case Foundation, in Washington. This article is based on that publication; the full version is available online.

Millennials on Board(s)

There is a growing trend of having Millennials on nonprofit boards. In response to our Social Citizens paper, the Salvation Army has created a board seat specifically for a young person. The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports that business schools, like the one at Columbia University, are placing their students as nonvoting board members at nonprofits. The win/win is that students get to see how boards and decision making works (or doesn’t work!) and boards get the input and advice of young, tech savvy budding entrepreneurs.

But, at the risk of being heretical (which I freely and willingly gravitate towards!) I’ve been wondering if nonprofit boards (I won’t address corporate boards although I’m guessing this line of argument also holds true) aren’t an anachronism of 19th century bureaucratic thinking. Poke into any nonprofit scandal over the past fifteen years and you’ll find a board that wasn’t asking the right questions of the staff (or worse where the board and senior staff were one and the same thereby nullifying the whole questioning thing!) From my experience as a board member, it is very difficult to hop in and out of the operations of an organization and have a real feel for what’s going on — and what’s in organizations that are very open and transparent and well run — imagine what it would be like trying to figure out what’s going on within an organization that is trying to hide something!

I love the idea of Millennials on nonprofit boards to liven things up — but I’d much prefer that they reinvented the whole governance system instead!

Chronicle Chat Follow Up

I had a wonderful time chatting on the Chronicle of Philanthropy website yesterday. There is a transcript of the chat up on their site.

The interest was so high that I wasn’t able to answer all the questions. So, I wanted to get to a few more here so as not to leave folks out!

Q: In my blog socialcitizen.wordpress.com I write a lot about generational differences and how as a Millennial I am working on social entrepreneurship in the nonprofit sector. What can I share with my Millennial readers about connecting with other generations in the workplace? Sometimes I feel like older employees of organizations are almost scared to talk to Millennials or have so much distrust for us, they just ignore us. How, as a Millennial, can I break through that barrier? How can I prove I can do the job? (Tera Wozniak, Johnson Center on Philanthropy)

A: Hi, Tera, I’ve heard this complaint before, and frankly some of it is Millennial related and some of it is just a reflection of being a younger member of a staff. One thing that you can do to break down the distrust is perhaps run a seminar or two for the older staff members on social media tools; what they are and how they can be used in philanthropy and social change efforts. This would bring out your natural strengths, be informative for folks, and provide a common language for you all.

Q: What is your opinion of the value of YouTube, MySpace and Facebook for attracting Millennials to nonprofit causes ? (Chris Smith, American Green Cross.net)

A: There is huge value in both social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, and using video to share stories about causes. Of course, these aren’t the only sites where these activities are happening, but they are the most trafficked now. But, as I’ve said before, the venue is less important than the content of the conversation. What is it you want to talk about, with whom, and then where and how can we best have that conversation. The old axiom, “Form follows function,” still holds true!

Q: Hi Allison: We are developing a large-scale survey of low-income high school students regarding their experiences and perspectives on how to improve their schools. We want to make the survey engaging and interactive and reach youth in ways they are already comfortable interacting. Any thoughts on how to best use technology to engage this diverse group? (recognizing they may have limited technology access in schools in many cases) Appreciate your perspectives! (Valerie Threfall, nonprofit)

A: This is a tough one, Valerie, as I’ve already mention the disdain that Millennials have for forms and surveys (being overfed on both since birth!) Obviously the survey has to be up online using a tool like Survey Monkey. Then, I would announce it in lots of different places, by email, on Facebook and MySpace, on any other sites where these teens are gathering and interacting (e.g. entertainment sites). The goal is to provide as many different, easy access points as possible. Good luck, let me know how it goes!

I’d be happy to hear back from any of the folks who asked questions, I’m open to a challenge or follow up. And, thanks again for inviting me to participate in the conversation!