My dad, Scott Rampy, is a free agent advocate, activist, and fundraiser working to end multiple sclerosis. He’s also humble. So he doesn’t say it in his post, but in one year, with two events, no budget, and a handful of volunteers, my dad spearheaded the effort to raise over $250k for the National MS Society–and that was just in his spare time. Below, read about his latest effort in working to crush MS and where he finds his inspiration. Reading the post and typing this intro, I have tears in my eyes. Our family’s fight is real. It’s personal. And it’s persistent.

By Scott Rampy:  The word “social change” for me is intimidating.  It implies that there has to be an attempt to resolve a social injustice, shortcoming or reversal of public opinion.  For me, social change can be as simple as the inspiration that sits across from you at the dinner table.  In my case that is Jo Rampy, my wife of 26 years.  From a pure grass roots perspective, social change can be motivated by inspiration to inform others in an effort to spark a movement in a small way to solve a larger problem.

This is the case with the National MS Society.  Multiple Sclerosis (aka many scars) affects nearly 400,000 people in the country and selfishly I’m focused on the one person, Jo, who deals with it everyday.  She has been diagnosed with this disease for the past 7 years.  MS attacks the myelin that surrounds our nerve endings in the brain that control our central nervous system.  The damaged myelin forms areas of “sclerosis scars” that over time, affects ones ability to talk, see, feel, walk and concentrate.

Moving Through the Stages of Change

Before seeing the ad, I did not know about with Car Free Day, so the ad helped me become aware of the day. The ask was clear: Pledge to go car free and actually go car free on Sept. 22. Enter my dilemma. At that moment, I wanted to pledge, but I couldn’t take an immediate action except to add it to my already long to-do list. Imagine a different scenario…

What if, instead of just asking me to pledge, the ad encouraged me to pledge, on the spot, by sending a text message using shortcode as the way to officially make a pledge. And then, by pledging, what if I was also able to get a reminder on Sept. 21 that I had pledged to go car free or opt-in to receive tips, promotions and specials from participating partners? And then what if on the 22nd, I received another text in the morning letting me know of the total number of people who made the same pledge I did. To go even another step, what is on Sept. 23, I got a text letting me know of the collective impact my pledge helped create, and asking me if I wanted to opt-in for a reminder to participate in Car Free Day 2011. This would make the desired behavior: easy to accomplish, fun to do and more popular.

Activate the Trigger: Pledges and Reminders

Lately, I’ve had a soft spot for the act of committing to follow-through on a certain, suggested behavior. This is because–in order for someone to go from the preparation stage of change to the action phase–they first need to make a commitment to do so.

Now, I realize commitment can mean different things to different people (just look at reality TV). This is why it’s important to understand the audience you are wanting to reach and the desired action and behavior you want them to take. For the Car Free Day example, I wanted to commit, and I can. But I know, that fitting something like that into my daily to-dos and priorities is hard despite my good intentions. However, I know if I got a reminder the night before, I would be more apt to follow-through. In short, a reminder would trigger the action I pledged to make.

Making It stickK

At the CDC conference earlier this month, a panel discussed the role of behavior economists in public health. They touched on a variety of applicable concepts to our work–one of them being the role of triggers in behavior change. In the case of Car Free Day, reminders can serve as a trigger to the action. As another example, the CDC panel highlighted stickK.com. Users of stickK.com sign a “commitment contract” where they agree to achieve a certain goal and uses various triggers (reminders, personal support networks, and monetary incentives) to help people take and maintain action.

For the behaviors you want people to make, how can you help them go from good intentions to good follow through? Help them make a commitment and leverage triggers to make it easy, fun and popular for the behavior change to occur.

flickr credit: stevendepolo

There are lots of opinions about the word. And, I’ve discovered that the word means different things to different people. The environment folks read it one way, nonprofiteers another and you have a whole other group transforming it into social innovation, social capitalism and/or social entrepreneurship.

What is clear: Is that we’re all pretty social about it. But in all seriousness, I don’t yet have a clear, simple, 140-character answer. But, I have do have some places that I go to help me refine my own thinking around sustainable social change:

B Lab, B Corporations and Social Business

In April 2010, Maryland was the first state to sign Benefit Corporation legislation, followed shortly by Vermont. This legislation was heavily lobbied by B Lab, a non-profit group that rallies businesses to serve more than a bottom line. To improve society and address a number of our problems, my mind had been circling back to influencing and impacting systems, ecosystems and networks. In others words, my interest in creating and growing sustainable business continues to increase. Sometimes for change to happen, there needs to be a change in what’s possible and accessible.

I’m all about nonprofit efforts, volunteering, fundraising, helping others lead healthier lives and improving quality of life–but at some point, for our work to have a lasting impact and a legacy for the next generation, it must be sustainable. Liz Forkin Bohannon, my friend and sustainable business leader at Sseko Designs, asks some poignant questions in one of her latest posts–talking about the impact of free, donated secondhand clothing in Africa and its impact on the local economies. This is just one example of how doing good may be doing more harm. Why do I bring this up? Because sustainability is at the forefront of her argument.

Social Entrepreneurship

A close cousin to the social business discussion is social entrepreneurship. I learned in recent months that Georgetown University and the great Bill Novelli are working on creating Georgetown’s own Center for Social Entrepreneurship. Both Harvard and INSEAD even have their own social entrepreneurship initiatives. This isn’t about coincidence. It’s about the need for sustainability.

When talking about social entrepreneurship, the immediate go-to resource in my head is Social Edge. Social Edge is an amazing resource that isn’t afraid to dive into the nitty gritty, as well as the large scale and impact of social entrepreneurship. Written by social entrepreneurs and for social entrepreneurs, it seems that sustainability is at the heart of many of the topics discussed there. Just this week, Social Edge tackled the definition of a “social business” leaving more questions than answers. For me, that’s my kind of resource. It shows thinking, it shows engagement and it also tells me that we have our work cut out for us.

Sustainable Behavior

In the social marketing arena, renowned social marketer Doug McKenzie-Mohr recently announced the development of a new peer-reviewed resource: The Journal of Sustainable Behavior. According to the journal’s first call for papers, the “transition to sustainability requires programs to encourage a diverse array of behaviors.” The take away–we social marketers better start to understand sustainability and how it relates to our efforts and our audience.

Social Innovation

Social Edge covers a variety of topics–which together, you could say the theme is social innovation. But what does this phrase mean and how does it relate to all the other players on the field? According to the Hub, social innovation “refers to new ideas that resolve existing social, cultural, economic and environmental challenges for the benefit of people and planet. Even more simply, a social innovation is an idea that works for the public good.” Well, non-profits work for social good. So do some government agencies. So, who is responsible for social innovation and what will its outcomes look like? Even Stanford has its own Center for Social Innovation. According to its website, its purpose is to “build and strengthen the capacity of individuals and organizations to develop innovative solutions to social problems.”

To me, sustainability is seen here again. Perhaps—sustainability is what connects the dots between these movements. Perhaps, our answers lies in the spaces between the words and in the thoughts between our actions.

Social Capital Markets

Ever heard of SOCAP? Well, SOCAP stands for the social capital markets conference and SOCAP ’10 represents the third year of the conference and will be held Oct. 4-6 in San Francisco. According to the website, SOCAP ’10 is the “largest interdisciplinary gathering of individuals and institutions at the intersection of money and meaning.” SOCAP ’10 will seek to answer the question: What next? (See–there’s something about asking questions…) What’s next for the social capital markets–the social entrepreneurs, the social business wanna-bes, the social innovators, impact investors and social marketers?

Might I dare suggest that sustainability–and figuring out how to develop it, fund it, seed it, and maintain it–might be part of the answer?

flickr credit: Garry

So, as you wrap up your week, ask yourself: What am I working for? Are you working for retirement or are you working with a purpose? Clayton Christensen, over at the Harvard Business Review, offers some great insight into work, meaning and our purpose in life. In his words:

For me, having a clear purpose in my life has been essential. But it was something I had to think long and hard about before I understood it. When I was a Rhodes scholar, I was in a very demanding academic program, trying to cram an extra year’s worth of work into my time at Oxford. I decided to spend an hour every night reading, thinking, and praying about why God put me on this earth. That was a very challenging commitment to keep, because every hour I spent doing that, I wasn’t studying applied econometrics. I was conflicted about whether I could really afford to take that time away from my studies, but I stuck with it—and ultimately figured out the purpose of my life.

Had I instead spent that hour each day learning the latest techniques for mastering the problems of autocorrelation in regression analysis, I would have badly misspent my life. I apply the tools of econometrics a few times a year, but I apply my knowledge of the purpose of my life every day. It’s the single most useful thing I’ve ever learned.

Working with a purpose–no matter what that purpose is–whether it be to put dinner on the table, to provide opportunity for your family to doing what you love, matters. And we are never done. Call it an end-of-the-week rant, but what do you think–are we ever done working?

flickr credit: markbarky

PS: Christensen’s HBR article is quite possibly the best article I’ve read to date. It’s worth the read.

Part of this new land is a new CDC  Blog–and guess what–you can be the one to name it! Though, CDC isn’t the only one with a new blog on the market. Ogilvy PR recently launched their Social Marketing ExChange as well (and started an office in Atlanta–as did AED…). I know I’m not alone when I jump up and down at these new steps in bringing social marketing to bear. Maybe one day, with organizations with this type of umph and leadership behind us, social marketing will be a household name. Or, at the least, recognize-able as a profession.

So, what would you name the new CDC blog? Here are some thoughts off the top of my head:

• Push and Pull: Not only does social marketing combine a number push and pull strategies and tactics, but the blog can also serve as a forum for health communicators and social marketeers to debate, discuss, share and “push and pull” insight and information amongst one another.
• Influence Health: This is action oriented and speaks to behavior change, but also to the impact and influence social marketing and health communications can have. Influence health could be interchanged with a name like Impact Health or Improve Health as well.
• The Power of Health. This is what we believe in–if we improve health, we improve quality of life, and therein, increase happiness (in sum).
• Speaking of Health. I didn’t come up with this…someone who already commented over at CDC did, but I like it too. I feel it’s catchy, frames the conversation for health, is action-oriented and can umbrella a number of topics.

What do you think? What would you name it and why?

PS: For a listing of additional blogs, UNC’s School of Public Health has a strong listing of health blogs, and I have a long list of social marketing specific blogs as well.

David Katz, Director of Yale University’s Prevention Research Center, published a response via the Huffington Post to examine the “this vs. that” and “right vs. wrong” approach the NY Times took–and asked another question: What choice are we really making?

Now, this is an important one. The NY Times article does do a great job in bringing up the debate: What are our nation’s health priorites? Katz brings up a second good point: How do you divy resources amongst these health priorities to get the most juice from the squeeze (so to speak)?

First–> Disclaimer–In the words of Katz, I too, am not prepared to answer the NY Times’ question of this or that because I don’t fully know–but then, who does? That said, I have two additions to Katz’s suggestions:

1.  Katz first suggests “conduct modeling exercises to determine what general allocation of research and policy dollars — across an array of conditions, behaviors, and even types of research — would most improve our health over a defined period of time.

To this, I say, that we all need to get more involved and clued into the Healthy People 2020 initiative that is run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (disclaimer:  This project lies within  a client of my employer that I work on). This is a collaborative, science-based approach to setting 10-year national health objectives to promote health and prevent disease. So, when we are talking “this or that” or about our Nation’s health priorities, Healthy People 2020 is a good start. (Stay tuned, in December the Healthy People 2020 objectives will be released along with guidance for achieving the new 10-year targets).

2. Secondly, Katz suggests that we need to be more “holistic.” Going on to say, “A healthy person is healthy…Recent studies have shown that people who don’t smoke, eat well, are active and control their weight are roughly 80 percent less likely to get ANY major chronic disease than their counterparts who do the converse in each case…So, a healthy person doesn’t smoke. A healthy person eats well. A healthy person is physically active.

I couldn’t agree more and this is why–I don’t feel it needs to be an either-or type of situation. It can be all the above. Healthy living (aka living a healthy lifestyle) can be defined by a number of behaviors such as:

• Not smoking
• Eating Right
• Being active

One could argue that other behaviors could be umbrella-ed into healthy living such as getting immunizations or getting preventive screenings. Thus, the message could not just be anti-smoking or anti-obesity, but instead, be about promoting a health lifestyle which encompasses a set number of behaviors. This should be our focus. Thus, I leave you with the same question Katz asks at the conclusion of his Huffington Post article:

What interventions for individuals, families, schools, worksites, communities and more will encourage, promote and empower the adoption and maintenance not of some single preventive strategy, but of healthful living?

flickr credit: lets.book

Yes, in the title, I said the church. I debated sharing this case study because I was afraid people might not read it because it says church. But then I thought, some just might read it because it does say church.

The focus in this post, however, is not the “church.” It’s about a creative, integrated strategy that utilizes a social marketing approach to achieve to strengthen America’s concept of love in the union of marriage. This love is admittedly, from the perspective of the Church, but don’t we always have the question in social marketing of – who decides? (That dear friends is another ethical conversation that can range to anything from paternalism to essentialism and everything in between.)

Onward. Have you taken the Love Dare? Is your marriage Fireproof? In the social marketing realm, there’s been talk about providing tools that equip and empower individuals to not only make personal behavior change but to help evangelize behavior change in their communities and networks. Let me walk you through a movement started at a church in Georgia.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5lSu6GkC2k

Sherwood Baptist Church created Sherwood Pictures, a volunteer-driven moviemaking ministry in Georgia. This movie studio was created from within its congregation and uses volunteers to act, produce, film and market their movies. Sony caught on and premiered these movies across the United States in movie theaters everywhere. The movie studio’s goal is to harness the influential power of Hollywood to influence behavior change: adopting Christ as one’s God, while also working to address societal issues. Their first two movies were Flywheel, followed by Facing the Giants. Facing the Giants was a surprise hit and was the best-selling resource in Christian stores in 2007.

A Lesson from the Church on Social Marketing

Building on this momentum, their latest movie, Fireproof, went above and beyond the work that even Call+Response or Invisible Children have propelled. Not in terms of raising “awareness,” but due to the plethora of TOOLS the Fireproof movement has around it. First, Fireproof has a few interwoven objectives (according to the makers of the film):

1. Show what real love is.
2. Show how this love is integral for a successful marriage that is Fireproof against today’s high divorce rates.
3. Show how families are a foundation of today’s society that should be nurtured.

I’m not here to debate whether you agree or disagree with the message behind the movie. But look at the TOOLS! These tools help someone commit to changing, take action to change and help them maintain that behavior over time while also encouraging others. What can this teach us about how to provide tools for people to address their health? Not just relationship health, but environmental health, public safety health, civil health, etc.

• A national launch fueled through grassroots evangelists for “premiere night” with watch parties through already-built church networks.
• Fireproof DVD and movie at a low price (about $8).
• At purchase, you can opt-in: 1) their email list survey, their feedback survey, or for their ambassadors survey, where you can get involved in the MOVEMENT for healthy marriages.
• Download and/or purchase an educational curriculum. This curriculum can be utilized in churches, small groups and/or between individuals to assist in marriage preparation classes or for sermon series.
• Step-by-step DVD to assist in nurturing healthy discussion about the topics presented in the movie.
• Because the movie is centered on a concept called, “The Love Dare,” which is a 40-day challenge to love your spouse. The producers of the movie actually wrote a hard copy of the “The Love Dare,” so that any couple can walk through the same process the actors in the movie did to nurture their relationship and/or marriage.
• And, if you don’t have a way to view the movie, the movie “Fireproof” was also developed into a book for those that prefer reading to video.

As for promotion? It all started with Facing the Giants. A Christian movie produced by a church in Atlanta all by volunteers within the congregation that premiered through Sony in movie theaters across America. Congregations rallied around the movie and its purpose--here again, with Fireproof, people did the same. Couples, churches, communities, businesses, firefighters, and the Catholic community all pitched in to help promote the movement. In addition, any consumer who bought the materials online, could also opt-in to be an ambassador of the movement to arrange get togethers, watch parties and more around the central themes in the movie.

What This Means…

Let’s remember where this all started…at a church, by a group of volunteers wanting to a) show the power and love of God and 2) work to address societal issues in a big way. In other words--they started with their goals. They didn’t see barriers. They didn’t stop at possible. They saw the impossible and made it happen.

What does impossible look like to you? Make it possible.

PS: Interested in Christian churches who are creating a movie-making ministry? In McClean, Virginia, McLean Bible Church has a group of congregation members working to create a Christian movie studio, named In Jesus’ Name Productions. Their first movie, The Messiah, has a $75 million dollar budget and is due out 2012.

In the email, the inquirer specifically wanted to know how to use the concepts and social marketing framework to influence one’s staff and motivate them in their work for change? One of my favorite social marketers is Mike Newton-Ward. Thus, when someone pointed to Jay Kassirer ‘s Tools of Change website and the case study Marketing Social Marketing in North Carolina Public Health–my ears perked up.

The case study shares the journey of how social marketing was adopted by North Carolina, but my favorite part is in the notes section where the author describes the process of change in terms of a traffic light:

We’ve learned to take a ‘traffic light’ approach to introduce social marketing very gradually, rather than a ‘race car’ approach where change is presented suddenly. For example, if you’re in your city and the department of transportation is getting ready to put up a new traffic light. They don’t just put up the traffic light and turn it on and you stop one day. They start out months before putting up a sign that says, “Warning, there’s going to be a traffic light here.” Then finally they put it up and it just blinks for a while. And then finally, they put up the sign or the light, so that by the time they do that, people are used to the idea. This approach helps staff acclimate to a change in their way of doing things.

In a world of instant gratification, patience and perseverance seem like words from the stone ages. But they are important for a reason. Persevering doesn’t mean doing nothing–it means learning, absorbing, and evolving. If given a red or yellow light, we should be looking for the little signs pointing the direction along the way. Or, thinking about the little ways we can influence a behavior, belief or attitude at any turn in the process–even if it’s our own. Because, eventually, the light turns green. Persistence–this is how change happens.

The authors of the case study talk about how to make change happen within an organization, but there’s some core take-aways for anyone working to make change.  Read more lessons learned on the Tools of Change website.

flickr credit: maartmeester

Hope is not what we expect. It is a dream much bigger.

Along our journey, we met a number of people who know the greatness of hope. Meet:

• Hugo and Suannah: Two missionaries living and working with the villages in Northern Guatemala. The villages they work with often have no running water, no electricity, and little opportunity. However, the are bringing light (hope) in the hearts of those they serve.
• Pastor Saul: Runs the Church by the Dump in Guatemala City. The Dump is one of the largest landfills in Central America. Our team got to walk amongst the people who live and work, literally, in the dump. It was extreme poverty at its saddest. Residents (400 families) register for a permit to scavenge through the dump for one item (i.e. tire parts, blue plastic). As they go through the trash, the trash is moved so that more people can move into the dump and do the same work. Thus, many are left with aluminin, tarp and dirt as their “home.” Kids run through the stream of sewage barefoot and make a playground from the rolling heaps of trash that surrounds them. Pastor Saul is working to bring hope to this area by building a community city to serve the people of the Dump.
• Mother Tita: Tita founded a school in La Limonada, a slum of about 60,000 people, where five different gangs runs and owns the streets. Today, with her courageous teachers and volunteers, La Limonada now has two schools. The goal: To keep the kids off the streets and hopefully, away from gang life. Tita is literally a Mother Teresa–thus those she serves call her Mother Tita.
• Kate, April and Kerry: Each of these women are teachers at Tita’s schools in La Limonada. They all left their lives in America to tirelessly serve the La Limonada community. They are young. They are fearless, and they are hopeful.
• Evelyn: In the trip to the mountains, Everlynn basically summed up how social marketing can be applied and used within the church. Before hearing about “social marketing,” she described to me how she is working to identify benefits and barriers to holding certain values (i.e. honesty) and how she is developing a self-evaluation checklist and how she wants to plan for the short term as well as the long term in working to ignite sustainable change in her community. She is an amazing, talented and inspiring woman.
• Peggy and Dwayne: The founders of the Amistad Foundation, they are the liaisons between the missionaries and the service organizations they help in Guatemala. They give with their hearts, minds and hands.
• Janet: Is an American who came to Guatemala years ago to play volleyball–and has never left. Instead, she runs a soup kitchen in one of Guatemala City’s most dangerous areas. In fact, the night our team was there to help her and serve the people, there was a shooting right outside the soup kitchen. The man shot had just finished his meal and had just left the center.

How many of us have expectations? We make plans and stress if they don’t turn out right or question them when there’s a bump in the road. Those expectations fog the path. If we let go of what we expect, then we can prepare for something much bigger and greater…in our work, at home and in our lives.

What would have happened if Tita, Janet, Hugo and others held onto their own personal expectations? What wouldn’t have happened? This is what I learned in Guatemala—> Let go of your expectations. Something bigger is waiting…you just need hope by your side.

PS: More pictures coming soon!

In a post titled Designing for Networks, Mike Arauz captures the potential of the Web–beyond its ability to be a distribution channel, beyond its ability to influence and beyond its use in achieving awareness:

If you only use the Internet in order to raise awareness, and perhaps to influence perception, then you are missing out on what the Web was made for: to enable large networks of people to come together for effective purposes through sharing, cooperating, and organizing collective action.

It might have been okay to work towards just “awareness” in the past, but with today’s technology, we can achieve more. I believe that the Web increases our ability to measure, evaluate and influence behavior change. The thing is: Behavior change is no longer on the same playing field. Just like journalism is evolving and the media, the way we influence behavior change and achieve behavior change has evolved. We, as practitioners, must evolve with it. I recently came across another quote that embodies this belief from one of the TurningPoint Collaborative’s PDFs, The Basics of Social Marketing:

The process of heightening awareness, shifting attitudes, and strengthening knowledge is valuable if, and only if, it leads to action.

Why do we want someone to know to exercise, eat right, and get their vaccines? Because we want them to act on that knowledge to prevent disease. Why do we want teens to know that drinking impairs their ability to drive? Because we don’t want them to drink and drive and hurt themselves or others.

Your Challenge

This week, think about why the Web was won. Sure–it can house knowledge and be a database of information–but it is more and can be more for you, your organization and your cause. Think about your bottom line–What is it you want to accomplish? Solve? Create? End? Start? Because at some level it involves behavior, especially if you are working in a Web environment. Do you want people to click on a certain link, read a certain story, donate to your causes—these are all online behaviors.

PS: Do you like these challenges? Are these helpful? I want to help you in being effective. And, I know I like prompts–do you?