Which is Better: More Donors or More $$$?

The Minnesota Community Foundation has their second annual “Give to the Max Day” last week and once again it was a spectacular success.

The first giving day was last year. I had a chance to talk to the chief architect at the Minnesota Community Foundation, Jennifer Ford Reedy, a few months ago for my Social Good podcast for the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

It was a terrific example of a foundation forming partnerships with dozens of local nonprofits and a dozen other funders, creating an open source platform for giving (it was open source to enable and encourage other foundations to replicate the effort.) And at the end of the day, that first go round, the day generated 38,000 donors giving $14,000. I remember seeing those numbers on Beth’s blog and thinking that there had to be a typo. In the depths of the recession it was astounding to see that Minnesotans had given that much money to charitable causes. But, then, again, it’s Minnesotans, the most generous people in the world.

Jennifer posted a summary of this year’s event on the Council of Foundation’s blog last week. Jennifer outlined a key difference between this year’s event and last year’s. They decided this year to focus on increasing the number of donations not the size of the donations. They were successful in doing this, their bottom line this year was 42,000 donors pledging a total of $10 million.

As Jennifer writes, “we created an incentive system that rewards organizations for turnout.” The incentive were grand prizes of $20,000 and $10,000 to the nonprofits that raised the largest number of donors during the day.

This all raises a very interesting question: should nonprofits be aiming for more donors or more money?

Smart people like Kim Klein have been arguing for years that building a broad base of supporters is critical to long term sustainability for nonprofits.

But what if the needs are so great, winters in Minnesota are brutal after all, that losing $4 million hurts local people and communities in the most need right now?

I think part of the answer has to be what happens to these donors after they give on the big day? Blackbaud reports that donors who give online give more over time than their traditional counterparts. However, we reported that after the first America’s Giving Challenge sponsored by the Case Foundation that the winners didn’t know what to do with their online donors once they had them. That was three years ago, maybe we’re collectively getting better at learning how to build relationships with our online friends and turn them into long term donors now.

Maybe. At least I hope so! Katya, Kivi and Rebecca provide hopeful insights here on how to retain online donors.

This is, I suppose, the heart of our biggest challenge for the next few years; creating online friends, building stronger ties with a portion of them, asking them to give in real, authentic ways — and getting them to give again.

Social Good Podcast with Dan Savage of “It Gets Better Project”

My monthly Social Good podcast for the Chronicle of Philanthropy features Dan Savage, a Seattle-based journalist. Dan and his husband, Terry Miller, are the catalysts for a viral video phenomenon called the It Gets Better Project.

This fall has been a dismal and disheartening season for gay teens. Several bullied gay teens felt so alone and hopeless than they committed suicide; Tyler Clementi, Seth Walsh, Billy Lucas to name just a few.

Dan and Terry wished that they had had just a few minutes with each of these boys to tell them, from their own experience, that life gets better after adolescence, after high school. And then Dan realized that he had been sitting back waiting for permission from someone, somewhere to talk to these kids. But in the Connected Age no permission is required, social media allows anyone to say anything to the world. So he and Terry went to a local restaurant and created a video with their own, personal message to gay teens – it gets better, they promised. They uploaded the video to YouTube on September 22nd. Dan then announced the video in his newspaper column and on his podcast. Here is their video:

And the video took off, over 250,000 views in the first two days. And it kept climbing. But then something even more remarkable happened; other people, regular people became to upload videos of their own stories. Mormons and Muslims, big city and small town, men and women, people from every stripe and corner of the country began to respond. And then, of course, the movie stars and politicians followed, including the President and the Secretary of State.

I assumed that since this effort was called a “Project” that Dan had some infrastructure, maybe not professional staff but at least volunteers, who had been driving outreach and encouraging regular and rich and famous to upload videos. Here is President Obama’s video:

But when I interviewed Dan I learned that no one had reached out to anyone! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a free-agent effort take off in quite this way before. Free agents is the term that Beth and I use in The Networked Nonprofit for individuals who create an activism campaign on their own using social media. A free agent campaign that is often cited is Dave Carroll’s “United Breaks Guitars”, one man’s grievance against the airline which cavalierly treated his instrument and has been viewed near 10 million times.  Here it is:

But the difference is that only Dave was making videos. The It Gets Better Project is spectacular because Dan and Terry provided an opportunity for hundreds of other people to share their stories as well. Unasked, unbidden, uncontrolled. Extraordinary. I hope you’ll take a listen to Dan.

The Dragonfly Effect

A new Social Good podcast has been posted. I interviewed Jennifer Aaker, the co-author with her husband, Andy Smith, of The Dragonfly Effect.

It’s a wonderful book for corporations and nonprofits. Rather than me tell you about it, I’ll let Jennifer and Andy do it:

I was really struck during my conversation with Jennifer on the focus she put on organizations tell one, great, simple, sticky story about what they do. An example she gave was Alex’s Lemonade Stand. Here is all you have to know about Alex’s Lemonade Stand:

Full Name- Alexandra Flynn Scott

Birthday- January 18, 1996

I’m Alex, I’m 8 years old. I have Neuroblastoma and I raise money for pediatric cancer research with the help of other kids and grown ups through my lemonade stand. I give the money I raise to research to find cures for pediatric cancers.

Who do I live with?
My parents, my brother Patrick, my brother Eddie, my brother Joey, my dog Shammy, and my cute kitten Herbert.

Where do I live?
I live in Pennsylvania, right down the street from Philadelphia.

Favorite Colors – Blue and Purple

Favorite Animal – Penguin

School – 2nd Grade

Favorite part of school – Everything

Favorite Food - French Fries

Favorite Book - Junie B. Jones Series and The Little House on The Prairie Books

Favorite Movie - Scooby Doo

Favorite TV Show - Pokemon and American Idol

What I want to be when I grow up – Fashion Designer

Favorite Activity - Making stuff and designing clothes

Place I most want to visit – France

Favorite Sport - Soccer

Social media channels are amazing and powerful vehicles for personal story telling. One of the best examples that you probably have heard about recently is the Youtube channel, It Gets Better, started by Dan Savage. The channel encourages anyone, particularly gay adults, to share their personal stories and struggles from teens to gay adulthood to support gay teens that are being bullied. Here is Dan and his partner, Terry Miller’s story:

Another new project that enables people to tell their own, unfiltered stories is Mark Horvath’s, HardlyNormal on Twitter, has a new site called We Are Visible. It is a toolset to enable homeless people to connect, share resources, and make their voices heard.

Jennifer Aaker made a great point in saying that social media is important not just for the storytelling, but to enable others to retell and share the stories. For people and organizations that are afraid to let others tell their stories, who fear the loss of control over their message, she said that a truly strong story will keep its essence through the retelling, and actually be strengthened by it.  Good stuff!

Measuring Social Media

Welcome back to me!  After a lovely summertime blogging break, I’m back with a new Social Good podcast. This month’s edition features K.D. Paine, the principal of KDPaine & Partners, one of the preeminent experts on measuring the effectiveness of social media.

K.D. is soooo smart about all of this stuff.  She warns against over measurement (what I call malmeasurement), particularly the shiny object syndrome of using all of the new, free tools that display amazing graphs but don’t mean anything. Her advice for nonprofits beginning to measure their effectiveness using social media are:

1. Ask yourself “so, what” three times. For instance, an organization may want more traffic to their site. Katie is advising them to ask “so what” three times about this, what does it matter that people come to our site, what do we want them to give or get?
2. Create measurable objectives every step of the way.
3. Focus on relationships and engagement.

I could have talked to KD much longer, she’s so interesting and informative. And her website has a treasure chest of tools and advice.

I hope you enjoy the podcast. I would also love any suggestions you have for future editions of Social Good.

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.

Geolocation Services and Nonprofits

The latest version of the Social Good podcast is up on the Chronicle website. I interviewed Danielle Brigida of the National Wildlife Federation about the use of geolocation services, like Foursquare and Gowalla, by nonprofits.

I became interested in this topic a few months ago when odd messages began to show up in my Twitter stream. So and so was standing at the corner of such and such. Someone has just unlocked a badge in a certain location. Hmmm, wonder what this is all about?

It’s about geolocation services. Web-based services accessible by cell phone that enable a person to say “I am here right now!” It’s like the Who finder from Horton Hears a Who. I am here! I am here! I am here!

Of course, Beth Kanter answered the question of how these tools work for nonprofits for me on her blog a few weeks ago when she shared the story of the Brooklyn Museum using Foursquare. Beth quotes Shelley Bernstein, the very creative Chief of Technology at the museum. Shelly said, “as people explore our area, the Brooklyn Museum staff help them along in their journey pointing out the joys of pancakes at Tom’s Restaurant or the killer wine selection at Abigail’s.” In other words, the Brooklyn Museum is using FourSquare to take down the walls between the museum and its community and enable its visitors to share their experiences with one another in the museum and in the neighborhood.

If you have a chance to listen to the podcast,you’ll hear Danielle share how powerful real-time, location based experiences are when enhanced with social media. But it also got me thinking about the interesting juxtaposition of social media as a tool for virtual interactions and as a tool for real-time location-based interactions. Of course, one isn’t better or more important than the other, and what will be interting is watching groups like the Brooklyn Museum and National Wildlife Federation figure out how they can come together in new and interesting ways – all for the purpose of connecting people to information, places and one another. One last takeaway from my talk with Danielle is the importance of staff experimenting with new tools, like Twitter, Yammer and Gowalla personally in order to understand them better and think about how to integrate them into their organizational efforts.

Creating a Social Culture

We’ve all seen it happen over and over again. An organization hears or sees that another group is getting traction with a new tool or gizmo and they jump into the deep end of the pool whipping out their own blog or Facebook page or widget. And nothing happens.

Nothing happens because using a social media tool is not the same thing as having a social culture. Tools that encourage sharing, openness, connectedness, and that punish silos and proprietary thinking need oxygen to work. That oxygen is a social culture that focuses on relationship building, flattens everything, listens to conversations and joins them where they are.

Last month, Beth and I had an opportunity to talk to Cecile Richards and Tom Subak of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. We talked about their work over the last three years changing the culture of the organization to be more social. Beth has a great write up on that conversation here.

Tom joined me on this month’s Social Good podcast that is up on the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s website. I hope you’ll have a chance to listen, he’s a really smart thinker about the importance of building a social culture internally for nonprofit organizations.

New Podcast: Newspapers, Nonprofits and Social Media

The latest edition of the Social Good podcast that I host for the Chronicle of Philanthropy was just posted.

This month I had a conversation with Jessica Clark,Director: Future of Public Media Project, Center for Social Media, American University. Our discussion is on the topic on many minds lately; the demise of in-print newspapers.The recession has taken a huge toll of many paperse as advertising revenues have, on average, dropped about 30% in the first quarter of this year. Online, in print, even in Congress this week (why, not quite sure, but, I guess, it kept John Kerry out of other trouble this week) everyone is talking about whether newspapers can survive as the recession.

It’s a sad story, but there are bright spots on the horizon according to Jesica.  She points us to great new models of journalism that are hybrids of online and on land and that may be financially sustainable (still the big question) including Pro Publica and WNYCs The Takeaway.  Enjoy!