Tag Archives: collaboration

A Must-Read Case Study

If you’ve ever worked in fundraising, on developing partnerships, community building, or in campaign development, you want to read this case study. Which case study you ask? It’s the case study of how “Minnesota’s ‘Networked Nonprofits’ Raised Over 10M in One Day, with Only One Full-Time Employee!That case study.

For those who prefer, a highlight video is below. But, you want to head over to Beth Kanter’s blog and read the full case study about GiveMN.org and the strategy they used to achieve such a feat.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cvpj2B-KnI&feature=player_embedded

Written by Jeff Achen, GiveMN.org’s own interactive media strategist, I promise you will walk away both inspired and enlightened. Here’s a sneak peak:

Here at GiveMN, we’ve harnessed the power of our networks to raise record amounts of money online for nonprofits in Minnesota and engage record numbers of people in an annual, one-day giving event—Give to the Max Day.

On Nov. 16, 2010, we shattered our goal of 40,000 donors in 24 hours by engaging 42,596 unique donors who donated to their favorite nonprofits using the GiveMN.org platform. All told, Minnesota nonprofits collectively raised $10,041,021 in one incredible day. [continue reading]

My big take-away from reading the case study is the amazing, incredible possibility of powerful partnerships and collaboration. Secondly, I am completely awed and greatly admire the approach this effort represents and inspires. GiveMN.org not only achieved its goals–but also united a state around the causes and the people working to improve the lives of its citizens. Minnesotans may  have different challenges, interests and experiences, but no matter all of that, Minnesota is a shared commonality that GiveMN.org used to help communicate that we are all in this together–a great message that obviously resonated with donors. Bravo GiveMN.org!

Thank you Beth and Jeff for sharing!

The Difference Between Making the News and Being the News

Collaboration. It’s such a great word. It’s also one of those words that is great say and believe in, but much harder to execute and implement. However, this is not so true for some of the top research universities in the United States, the U.K and Canada. Why? Get to know Futurity.org.

According to the website, Futurity.org aggregates the best research news from a number of top universities (see image below for the list). The site, which is hosted at the University of Rochester, covers research findings in a range of topics, including the environment, health, science, and society–and it’s interesting and made relevant even for the general consumer.

But here’s the best part: Rather than try to get their research in the news, they have become the news. And this my friends, marks a huge shift. Because I’m going to go to THEM, rather than them having to try to find their way to ME. Now–what if government did something similiar?

So let’s talk about the government:

This past week, the great Susannah Fox posted the tweet shown to the right. There’s been conversations about government opening up its data–but opening up can mean more. It can also mean content-wise. What is the government followed Futurity’s model? You don’t need to look too far to know there’s a lot of content on .govs–as well as duplicative content. But there are also the hidden gems. But to find the hidden gems, you have to dig, be savvy and subscribe to a number of different RSS feeds, blogs and email lists. Also in the content equation, the government, like universities, have worked with journalists for years to communicate their work to the public–spending both time and resources. When, we don’t have to go too far to know that in-depth and technical reporting is on the decline as newspapers are slimming down.

So, I say, bravo to the universities of Futurity.org, you’ve gone from trying to make the news–to becoming the news. Quite a big bridge to build and you’ve turned your gems into online currency I can easily find, comprehend and share. Thank you.

Collaboration + Aggregation

To see another example of what happens when collaboration meets aggregation, head over to Alltop.com. How we communicate is evolving–don’t think about how you can make the news. Instead, think about how you can be the news.

Making Behavior Fun, Popular and Easy

If you know social marketing extraordinaire Nancy Lee, then you have heard this saying. Recently, on the social marketing listserv, some dialogue has been shared in response to Nancy Lee and Philip Kotler’s article in Stanford’s Innovation Review titled “Best of Breed,” which looks at corporate social marketing. This could be its own post, but alas, I want to focus on the message of being fun, popular and easy.

Why? Because whether it’s social marketing or corporate social marketing, you are still working to effectively change or influence behavior for good–and an effective way to do so is making your desired behavior fun, popular and easy–which is exactly what started bubbling through on the social marketing list serv as others started sharing some of their favorite fun, popular and easy social marketing initiatives. Enjoy–and when you find yourself running around ragged, ask yourself: Is anyone having fun? Is this easy for people? and go from there.

The Piano Staircase

To encourage passerbyers to take the stairs rather then the escalator (and thus promote physical activity), this group turned the stairs into a piano–whenever you stepped on a stair a different sound would echo–in effect, making taking stairs more exciting than an everyday escalator. I can’t find the source, but it apparently had a 60% success rate. Who’s behind it? Volkswagon. Apparently, Volkswagon has been trying out some experimental marketing based around “The Fun Theory” to see if they could create desired behaviors if the action was made fun. You can read more about the piano staircase and other initiatives such as the recycling arcade and more at TheFunTheory.com.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw

The Pink Glove Dance

You may have seen this one already, as it’s been circling the blogosphere for a while. But, it’s an example of everyday people–hospital employees–finding a way to make their job fun while communicating a message–that you aren’t alone when taking steps to prevent breast cancer, like getting a mammogram.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEdVfyt-mLw

Musical Hand Sanitizer

Aas part of Volkswagon’s initiative, they are hosting an awards program on the best “fun” applications for healthy and good behaviors. One entry was a University who had installed hand sanitizers to prevent the spread of germs during the flu season. They found few students using them. Thus, they adopted the fun theory and installed some sounds. Each time someone went for hand sanitizer, a funny noise was created. Results? With the sounds included, students were seven times more likely to use the germ-reducing resource.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9nCRJo73oI&feature=player_embedded

Pedestrian TV Traffic Light

In this example, you get some free entertainment while waiting to cross the street. Instead of staring at a red outline of a person wishing it to change with your desired mind control, this traffic light shows TV clips–vidoes from YouTube, funny clips from TV shows, etc. This way, the hope is that you’ll actually wait until it’s safe to cross the street.

Make Your Watermark

Design you own bottle at the vending machine. Granted, I know bottles and paint on bottles isn’t good for the environment. But if you can’t quite get that change initiated, then check out what this group did. To encourage people to buy water over sugary pop or juices form the vending machine, they enabled it so people can design their own water bottle from the vending machine at the point-of-purchase. Now that’s easy, and fun!

Fun, Popular and Easy…Online?

More examples are found on the FunTheory.com Web site mentioned earlier, and I have to admit–it’s fun just looking through them. But, my mind started going: How can you make your online and social media communications fun, popular and easy to help you achieve your behavior change mission? Now, that’s a weighty question. Then, I started thinking about what is it in a Web or social media behavior change initiative that makes it fun, popular and easy:

  • FUN: Community-based, drive accountability of others through accountability, collaborative in nature
  • Example: Certain online communities help training for a 5k easier by focusing on accountability or making the desired behavior fun by making it social. Other communities, such as the Sister to Sister Foundation’s online community focusing on healthy behaviors for heart health amongst women. These type of communities make healthy behaviors fun by creating accountabilty and making the behavior social.
  • POPULAR: Driven by influencers and respected peers in the community or content area the desired behavior resides.
  • Example: AIDS.gov video-storytelling. AIDS.gov encouraged state officials to create their video on why its important to get tested for HIV. Another example? HHS’ flu PSA contest. Not only was this driven and announced by the HHS Secretary herself, but it was also supported and promoted by all of HHS’ agencies. And it’s winner–come on, who’s more popular than a rapping doctor?
  • EASY: This may be the most important when it comes to the online arena. Because, for people to use the technology combined with the messages, etc., the technology must first work. It must incorporate usability best practices, be accessible and depending on your audience, address literacy issues, including technology literacy. You technology could be great, but if it’s too complicated and no one uses it, it’s just techology.
  • Example: Most recently, AIDS.gov hosted the “Face AIDS” campaign asking people to join in. The effort involved a few steps, but AIDS.gov made it easy and fun by creating a collective flickr account to display all the images. Here’s a thought: Some social media is easy to adopt. one click and your a fan, one click and you are a follower. One click, and you’ve downloaded a healthy recipe book. One click and you have a mobile app to track your physical fitness. How can your organization leverage these easy tools for behavior change?

What about you? What are some of your favorite fun, popular and easy social marketing efforts? Any of those take place online?

What Creates a Revolution?

“A revolution doesn’t happen when a society adopts new tools, it happens when a society adopts new behaviors.”

–Us Now Movie Trailer Preview

Today, I was skimming through my RSS feeds and one of my favorites had an update: Mike Kujawski’s Public Sector 2.0 blog. Mike gets social marketing (the real kind), and he is also a savvy social media professional. On his site, he posted the Us Gov movie trailer, which I had seen before on Maxine Teller’s blog, but today, the last quote (located above) really stood out to me the most.

It stood out because in it I saw a profound statement being made on behavior change. It may be due to me coming away from my talk with a class of smart Yale students, where their *good* questions focused a lot on the why of social media (measurement, literacy, behavior change, clutter vs. content, society’s relationship to technology, etc.). But, I feel like this quote gest to the heart of the relationship between social media and social marketing, and why the relationship is important.

  1. It’s not about the tools (i.e. being cool or shiny)
  2. Change (i.e. revolution, small or big) is a result of adopting/influencing new behavior (whether it be that of a society, an organization or an individual).

Currently, at an increasing rate, society is experimenting and applying social media tools, both for the good and the bad. Thus, we as practitioners need to be aware of this and how it is affecting one’s behavior. For example, I tease that in 10 years, we will be doing public health campaigns for internet addiction…but how far away is that really? We already have them for TV addiction. Take a quick look here at the Us Now documentary preview, as it’ll provide some more juices to step back and do some introspection and reflection.  

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlqU1o3NmSw

If you find this interesting and what to dig beyond the tools and really get to “what does this all mean?” Then, I also highly recommend visiting the Digital Ethnography blog and getting introduced to Professor Michael Wesch, who was named Professor of the Year for 2008. He and his students have some interesting and compelling videos on what “more than the tools” have to mean and why it’s important to know.

If you want to continue discussion on “what government may/can look like,” then I also recommend following both the Government 2.0 Club and the Government 2.0 Camp conversations (if you can’t physically attend the gathering coming up soon at the end of MArch) on Twitter too.

…because after all, what creates a revolution? and what does a revolution look like?

flickr photo credit: Wesley Fryer

Scribd Your Own Script: Social Publishing Meets Collaboration and More

At DC’s Social Media Club event this past week, I heard many mumors about Scribd, so naturally I checked it out. I have yet begun to explore the site, but already I am impressed. With the self-description of “democratizing publishing” through its document sharing community, it’s hard not to be immediately intrigued.

Launched in March 2007 by founders Trip Adler, Jared Friedman, and Tikhon Bernstam, the platform now has greated that 50 million readers every month, with over 50,000 documents uploaded every day, and is available in 90 different languages. What rock have I been stuck under? I mean, individuals like Obama and groups like the New York Times and the World Economic Forum are on here too! This looks like a great community, that I look forward to interacting with more.

Not only can you

  • Engage in collaboration,
  • Expand your social network through your profile, searching for colleagues,
  • Create and join interest-specific groups,
  • Upload and/or download documents and files,
  • Find and discover interesting documents by category, by topic group, by searching, or by browsing the library,
  • Find interesting documents by category, by topic group, by searching, or by just browsing our library,
  • Create potential ways to monetize through your documents and hard work

With Scribd having just raised $9 million, along with a new president for social publishing, I look forward to observing and experiencing how Scribd develops in the future. Granted, the term “social publishing” has meant the publication of documents from “many to many” or “one to many” through a variety of social software mixed with web content management in terms of what the technology offers, however, what would “social publishing” through a non-profit/social change lens look like?

Anxious for your thoughts, as with today’s excitement at the We Are One concert on the mall today, my mind is racing with ideas. Cheers!

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One Thing

“If I traded it all
If I gave it all away for one thing
Just for one thing
If I sorted it out
If I knew all about this one thing
Wouldn’t that be something?”

pic

***

This may not be the one thing the group Finger Eleven was singing about, but Rosetta Thurman of the blog Perspectives from the Pipeline asks about a certain one thing….

What one thing should we do to improve the state of the nonprofit sector?
At the prompt of this question, numerous ideas run through my head. But, one main idea that stands out among the rest is the following concept: collaboration.
In my opinion, increased collaboration could break down many of the barriers and challenges various causes, issues and non-profits. Collaboration increases the bank of ideas, funds, resources, talent and people. I’m not just declaring a collaboration of practitioners in our sector though, but a total collaboration: with academics, think tanks, politicians, government, the education system, as well as the NGOs.
Collaboration is often a buzzword in any organization or classroom. But what about if we revitalized what true collaboration could be?
  • What if, for a cause, the executive director called a meeting of community members or held a forum for bloggers to collaborate with them on solving issues?
  • What if management and staff switched roles for a day to better understand each other’s role and position.
  • What if journalists sat and discussed issues with lobbyists as well as politicians and each other?
  • What is NGOs partnered with research institutions to see how to better address policy issues?
  • What is research institutions talked to journalists to learn to find out more about what the stories are and what begs attentions and remains unexplored?

Now, I know the question asked specifically about the non-profit sector…but what is the nonprofit sector? What is the private sector? or the public sector? Why divisions and not more communication and more collaboration? How do the three relate? I think the non-profit sector needs to infiltrate the other sectors through the tools of collaboration…and social change for the welfare of the public may be heightened.

*I will also note that this concept of collaboration is one I continue to explore and educate myself on as it is one area of my research, so I encourage comments or suggestions.

***

“If (we) knew all about this one thing……wouldn’t that be something?!?”

Mapping Out Your Strategy: Using Maps as a Means for Marketing

Google Earth recently launched its iPhone app, so what does this mean. I think this means more non-profits and organizations taking notice on how to literally, map out their strategy.

Mapping Fun

Mapping, mainly through Google earth and Google maps, has been increasing in use. I was first introduced to mapping glorious-ness by my fiance. When we went to Rome last year, he created a Google map highlighting all the Gelato hot spots in Rome. What more can I ask for than a man who not only shares my second love of ice cream, but plans it as key stopping point while we tour Italy? Now, In terms of relevant non-profit mapping, I was moved by 1) Wild Apricot’s recent post about Google Earth outreach, and 2) a SB Reader.

As Wild Apricot shares:

Google Earth and Google Maps let anyone create a custom map — and share it by sending a link, or embed on a web page. Personalized and annotated, even enhanced with photographs and videos, online maps can help to engage your supporters in a way that bare text never can. New features now let you collaborate with others and import geographical data to customize a map.

Case Study Highlight

SocialButterfly reader, Dan, at Tutor Mentor Connections recently shared with me how he and his non-profit are utilizing mapping technolgoy. Over the past six months, Tutor Mentor Connections have developed a library of maps that are intended as tools that leaders use to support the growth of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in specific geographic areas in Illinois. I conducted an email interview with Dan which I will feature later this week, but here is a sneak preview:

Why mapping?

“Maps are one form of visual communications. Pictures are worth thousands of words in communicating ideas. Generals use maps to distribute troops in time of war. They do this to make sure they have forces everywhere they are needed. A city could have a telephone directory full of youth program listings, and still not have programs in half of the places where they are needed. Maps can help leaders understand where there are programs, and can be used to help build business/non profit collaborations. They can be used as tools in any leadership strategy.”

I look forward to sharing Dan’s work with you as I think Dan is doing a fantastic job of creating a 1, 2 Punch when it comes to tackling giant issues (i.e. poverty and education) through mapping technology. Crafting data, supported by research, and translating that creatively through meaningful, visual representation.

Others Examples of Non-Profits Mapping

  1. Google Earth’s outreach blog highlights 10 example case studies on how non-profits have used Google Earth for their efforts. These groups include: the U.N. Environment Programe, EDGE, The Jane Goodall Institute, U.S. Holocaust Museum, Sierra Club and others. Whether this means providing virtual tours, highlighting the location of endangered species, or elevating the work of researchers and scientists, mapping can provide innovative and creative ways to communicate a message visually.
  2. The New Orleans Food and Farm Network used Google Maps to show how residents in devastated areas where to find food, from grocery stores and restaurants, to farmers’ markets and emergency kitchens. Additional related outreach included the distribution of paper and PDF maps.
  3. Mobilizing Youth – Though an older post from August 2007, the blog lists over 25 examples of non-profits using maps to conserve rainforests to raising awareness for child cruelty.
  4. Factory Farm Map – Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit consumer organization concerned with clean water and safe food issues, had the goal to illustrate the growth of factory farms across the United States, mapping US Census data to show how and where animal production is becoming concentrated in different regions of the country. (Wild Apritcot) Thus, enter mapping technology to bridge the disconnect between dense data and understanding.

Where to Get Mapping

Tools

  • Google Earth, Google Earth Plus, Google Earth Pro
    • According to Wild Apricot’s summise, NP’s can use Google Earth Free, but it is not to be used to provide paid services. Compare Google earth packages to determine the one you need for your project. For the Pro version, organizations. To see what financial assistance may be available, be sure to check out Google Earth’s grant program.
  • Google Maps
  • CommunityWalk.com
  • MapBuilder
    • A mashup development tool that builds custom Google and Yahoo maps without any knowledge of the Google/Yahoo Maps API and JavaScript.
  • PlaniGlobe
    • Create interactive maps using a vector architecture base.
  • Zee Maps
    • Quickly create interactive world maps through a service that allows you to add your own search query, allow for user-admins and is multiple-user friendly.
  • Frappr
    • Frappr collects three pieces of information: an online guest book, a hit log and a map. Using Google Map technology, visitors to Frappr can enter their name, zip code and other information. Their locations are then marked on the map with a clickable flag that pops up their information. (Netsquared)
  • WayFaring
    • Create, view, share and and personalize your own custom made map. The user-interface on this tool looks very user-friendly.
  • DataPlace
  • Dabble DB
    • Helps you create online databases to manage, share and explore data and to build web applications. Some that can be represented in the form of a map to help breakdown and identify trends.
  • MapPoint
    • A product of Microsoft, this tool helps you visualize and translate your data into meaningful information.

Apps

Wrap Up

Mapping is a great visual. However, for the map to be both effective and useful, it must be fueled by great content while also being data-driven. Thought this research document is from 2002, skimming through it shows just how data can be re-constructed to be meaningful and cohesive. However, this is where I believe mashups come into play too.

What are your thoughts on mapping technology?

Photo credit: flickr, dannysullivan

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