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I’ve called these round-ups by different names, but the concept is the same–share some of the recent links, resources and info I’ve been reading about social change, social marketing and social media. Now that I’ve finally switched my RSS reader from Bloglines to Google Reader, I find myself there a lot more–even more so than Twitter (gasp). Thus, let’s get on with the show.
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Social Change
Industry Forecast: Philanthropy and Social Investing: Blueprint 2010–The great Lucy Bernholz, through her company Blueprint Research & Design and in partnership with Stanford’s Social Innovation Review, recently released “the first ever independent annual industry analysis for philanthropy and social investing.” According to readers, the forecast is full of insights and revelations regarding the business of giving.
What the World Needs Now–This is a bit of a softer piece, but Mitch Joel of Six Pixels Apart does a great job of inspiring by listing eight areas we should be focusing on and thinking about as we work to change our world for the better. Note: The first item he mentions is that the world needs a “mindshift” — and then points to the happenings in behavioral economics for added insight.
5 Ideas Worth Spreading from TED–Nathaniel Whittemore of Change.org’s Social Entrepreneurship Blog is the envy of us all as he got to attend the TED 2010 Conference. If you want to do social change, look at what some of the top thinkers of our time are doing, why they are doing it and how it may influence your own work. From this list, the one that stood out to me was the idea that we need to change our relationship with food. Another, was how Nathaniel describes the moment when Bill Gates spent 18 full minutes publicly sharing his views on climate change.
Social Marketing
Design Thinking and Behavior Change: The term “design thinking” is everywhere–is anyone else noticing this? So, it comes to no surprise that design thinking meets behavior change thanks to social marketeer Craig Lefebvre who recently put together this helpful 17-slide presentation. Skimming through it alone will get the juices flowing about how disciplines can criss-cross, leading to effective change.
Authenticity in Corporate Social Responsibility–I know, you’re thinking “CSR is not social marketing.” And you’re right–Social marketing is bigger. However, I include it here because I see CSR as a rising opportunity for social marketing, and Geoff touches on the reason why–authenticity. More companies want to be more intentional and take CSR from something to throw money at to a sustainable, organization-centric value that has impact. Yes, I know “it depends,” but we’ve been keeping the treasures of social marketing in the realms of “just health” for too long. Why couldn’t we take the framework of social marketing and the lessons we’ve learned and apply it to CSR? We can. If it helps, don’t call it CSR. Instead, think of it as more people wanting to do business better.
Buzz vs. Facebook vs. MySpace vs Twitter–Jeremiah Owyang does it again and offers a strong breakdown of these four platforms. It’s the perfect chart that you can pass along to colleagues who want quick yet extensive information on how these platforms relate.
Can E-Readers and Tablets Save the News?–Not only does this article feature a Missouri J-School Professor (woot-woot!), but the article is deeper than the title suggests. At the heart of it, it talks about online content and digital publishing. Being an e-book reader myself and seeing the expanding number of communication platforms (hello Google Buzz), this article is worth the time to take in and meditate on the value of content and the future role of content vetting and control (via consumers, publishers or media producers).
What about you? What good info have you read lately? Please provide the link in the comments so we can all check it out. Also–if you’re in love with your Google Reader like me, here’s my public profile. Let’s connect.
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.
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?
You may agree or disagree with me on this, so I encourage your thoughts as I’m transcribing some of my own observations into the online social change field. These observations boil down to four “phases” of online social change that I think reflect our maturity into using social media tools to meet our organization’s aims:
Awareness Building
Fundraising
Contests and Competitions for Change
Advocacy
In the beginning, I feel many tools were leveraged as awareness-building mechanisms. From the initial launch of Causes to recruiting fans, followers and friends, many tools were initially set out to further awareness-building of an organization.
Then, I felt like the tools and our use of them matured as we discovered ways to leverage the tools into dollars–from Twestival to Tweetsgiving to Goodsearch. Even Causes adapted and identified birthdays as a way to increase micro-donations. You could say that online fundraising in and of itself has seen a phased formation and continues to evolve. See Beth’s Kanter’s recent post: 5 Social Media Fundraising Trends for 2009.
Then, enter the behemoths–contests and competitions like “America’s Giving Challenge,” hosted by the Case Foundation entered in the next rendition. You could say this ties into a more advanced type of fundraising, but I felt like it deserved to be on its own. As, I don’t yet think this area has been “tapped out” and neither do organizations according to Andre Blackman who interviewed the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation who uses contests and competitions to further public health innovation.
However, where I feel we are still in our infancy is with online advocacy for social change. It’s starting to creep up–just look at LiveEarth’s 2009 campaign “Love, the Climate” where people were encouraged to write love letters to office holders who worked to prevent climate change or the “Be a Voice for Darfur” movement which utilized activist and blogger toolkits to further realize the campaign’s objectives. Even act.ly provided a way for people to create and spread petitions with a call to action via Twitter.
Like I said, I think advocacy is where we have the most potential to further expand. I could be biased based on my government and citizen engagement day-job type of work–but I think there’s more ways we can get involved, as citizens, in decision making and peace keeping in our local, state and Federal governments–even internationally. What about you? Where do you think we have the most room to grow and what do you predict as being phase 5? Perhaps, partnerships and collaborations might be a phase five as we see how online and social media open up new doors of opportunity across organization firewalls. Or, another phase 5 might be storytelling–as more of these functions become interwoven and organizations get better at telling their story.
It’s also for non-profits. This was the hottest topic during our first #read4change gathering–fueled by the recent revelations of Kiva and its transparency question. (Background: a NY Times article broke sharing that Kiva, a micro-lending Web site that markets “person-to-person” lending–actually works with third parties to help get loans in the hands of people who need them.) What I find most interesting–is that while this revelation has created an emotional response, most people still choose to support the cause.
An additional effect is that it has sparked a conversation around the concept of transparency in the non-profit sector. Even before the Kiva story broke, Beth Kanter got some of us thinking about transparency when it comes to a non-profit’s Web metrics. In the comments, Holly Ross added that transparency is currently on the minds of her and the folks at NTEN. And where else have we heard about the priority in transparency before? –> Government.
Since my day-job leans more into the public health and government agency arena–I couldn’t help but see the parallels between government 2.0 and non-profit 2.0 (for the sake of better terminology). We may have different goals and end objectives, but the concepts both verticals must address (transparency, policy, management, buy-in, metrics, etc.) cross both lines. I think the Path of the Blue Eye folks were onto something when they posted the other day about looking for learning opportunities outside your comfort zone. As evidence, I commend Steve Radick, who did just that when he recently posted about the crossings between government 2.0 and sports 2.0.
The sharing of the line between government 2.0 and non-profit 2.0 was further solidified when I received news today of the AwesomeGov Fund organized by GovLoop and GovDelivery. This initiative is literally–combining and furthering the collision of government people with non-profit values–think philanthropy 2.0. Either way, it has me thinking that our worlds may just be more alike than different and that perhaps–the next event/conference/meetup needs to be a variety show for all us to get out of our comfort zone and look across the playing field.
PS: This past week, I also had the opportunity to talk with Andrew Conrad about Church 2.0–and again, there was much dialogue that ran quite similiar to conversations we’ve had around the conference table or that I’ve had with non-profit leaders. It’s almost creepy.
PSS: Please forgive all the “2.0” references–it’s just the most efficient way to get the point across.
The other week, I announced a new way for us book lovers to connect in a fun and meaningful way–through an online social change book club named #read4change.
After a week of collecting votes, and a battle between Allison Fine’sMomentum and Tom Watson’s Causewired, Causewired came out on top and will be the first book we discuss.
Bonus
What’s better than friends, social media and books? Imagine getting to go to your book club–and the author shows up. That’s right. Tom Watson has agreed to join us and be available for our comments, feedback and our questions!
To Participate
Grab your copy of Causewired.
Read and reflect.
Join us November 10 at 8pm EST on Twitter
Follow @read4change and track the conversation with the hashtag #read4change.
About the Book Club
Each month, lovers of books, people and making this world a better place will gather online to discuss a social change-related book–its story, its info and how it can be applied towards our work. Ideas for featured books are always welcome. Email me at socialbutterfly4change[at]gmail.com with suggestions. Until November 10, happy reading!
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At SB, I’ve noticed a spike in new visitors this summer who might be wondering, “What is SocialButterfly all about?” Well, I’ve been evaluating that myself, and encouraged by a few colleagues of mine, I believe it’s time for an update. As we go forward, you’ll see me working to align my work, content and chatter around this working vision: MakeSocialButterfly a resource for information and dialogue on social change, social marketing and social media.
In my first post on SB, I explained that:
Defined–a social butterfly is someone who is amazing at socializing, making connections and creating conversation…appearing to ‘fly’ about the room. In the context of this Web site, it is a play on words.
‘Social‘ is taking from the term social marketing, in which marketing efforts are applied to create and influence behavior changes that are beneficial to society. In other words, depending on one’s view, it is learning to examine social issues and look for ways to ignite social change for the better.
‘Butterfly‘ is taken from the butterfly insect, which goes through a metamorphosis, and changes into a beautiful creation. Thus, this site works to promote and increase understanding surrounding the practice of social marketing by inspiring any and all to create change for the better. Then, in a ripple effect, maybe we could all become SocialButterflies in creating social change for the betterment of society.
As the header alludes, social change, social marketing and social media is a metamorphosis and we all play a role in spreading the good. It’s an evolution of an ongoing revolution. We can all be SocialButterflies. Let me elaborate:
Social Change–In the online space, and as our world becomes a smaller place, boundaries continue to become blurred. More public-private partnerships are evolving. Government agencies are reaching out to non-profits. Private sector is getting energized by government. And, this is good. Social change for social good takes a village. I was recently inspired by the discovery of Booz Allen’s “MegaComunities” concept. It mirrors a similar message that I detailed in my graduate research–emphasizing the collaboration across fields, industries and sectors. Social change umbrellas work of non-profits, journalism, activism, advocacy, health, environmentalism, social justice, human rights, public policy, lobbying, and more–for the improvement in the quality of life.
Social Marketing–Again, social marketing, on SB, does not mean social media. It means influencing behavior change for social good. Founded by marketing guru Philip Kotler and Nancy Lee, it’s the “science” behind behavior change for social good–aka social change. See the connection? Social change is the WHAT or the GOAL, social marketing is the theoretical STRATEGY or FRAMEWORK.
Social Media–Social media encompasses a variety of TACTICS and/or TOOLS. Social media marketing is best when it’s an integrated approach that complements current outreach and communication efforts, when it works to solve a problem, and is about what it enables, empowers and builds–more so than tools or information. SB looks at social media for a few reasons 1) It’s evolving itself as new tools and best practices continue to emerge on almost a daily basis; 2) Because of its fast growth and continual change, it demands savvy practitioners; 3) Because of reason #2, an active commitment to learn and engage is required, not just for me, but for all of us colleagues; and 4) It has the potential to completely change the game for social change and behavior–and in many ways, it already has–making it critical to know, understand and grasp.
But I can’t accomplish this alone. It’s going to take an active-living-breathing-charged-committed-encouraged-motivated-and-dedicated swarm of socialbutterflies to move the needle. What are your thoughts? How do you think we’re doing?
flickr credit: ~flutterby~’s
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Today, I received a tip that Monday night, CDC.gov launched it’s re-designed Web site–placing a larger emphasis on tools. I think it’s looking pretty good myself–especially the “connect” icons as I’m a large fan of communicating visually. Plus, icons are fun, right? What about you? What are your thoughts?
I think one of my all-time favorite features is the CDC.gov Tag Cloud. According to the Web site, “[the] Tag Cloud is an alphabetized list of the most popular search topics on the CDC.gov Web site. The text size of the term shows its relative popularity: bigger terms are more popular than smaller ones.” Even better, each term is click-able for information about that specific topic. Here’s a quick snap shot:
It’s simple. It’s user-generated (via consumer search queries). It offers a quick snapshot to what consumers are concerned about in regards to public health. And, thus, it’s powerful. And, it communicates all this and more, visually. For a visual learner like myself, I give it two thumbs up. I’m envisioning that one day, we might be able to update these types of queries in real-time, though from my own experience, I also know it’s going to be a challenge.
I don’t know about you, but this is a question that I make myself answer everyday. Of course, that means that you need to know your main thing. Preparing for marriage over the past year, I’ve found that my main thing has changed. And for me, that’s a good thing because it represents the type of person I want to be, it keeps me more focused, and in in the end, makes me better at everything else.
During one of those moments–you know, the times where you feel like everything is coming at you from all directions and you’re just not sure how you’re going to make it all work–I reached out to my friend Qui, who simply said: “Keep the main thing, the main thing.” Seven simple words that got my head to the ground working, only this time, I was healthier, happier and more productive.
Thus, I want to recognize some colleagues that I know have worked hard this past year to keep the main, the main thing.
Main Thing Keepers
Andre Blackman: When I first met Andre, he was living in DC as a newlywed working to balance life, marriage, work and his pursuits in public health. I’ll never forget the look on his face when I told him I was engaged, and he said: Just you wait, things will change. (How right you were friend, and I’m a better woman for it!) Fast forward to today, he’s living closer to family, moving the public health field forward and leading the charge in his role at RTI. Nice job Andre!
Geoff Livingston: I greatly respect Geoff’s approach to work and life. For one, I like how he integrates his love for social change pursuits into his work–nice balancing. Further, if you read his blog or follow him on Twitter, you often hear him give props to his wife. In fact, this past year, Geoff sold his company and joined the CRT/Tanaka crew. In his blog post announcing the big move, Geoff acknowledged his appreciation and renewed relationship with his wife! Even better–His first descriptor in his Twitter bio for the longest time was “husband.” To me, for someone who is so accomplished in our field, to wake up everyday and say he is a husband first, that deserves mad respect.
Rosetta Thurman: Admittedly, I don’t know Rosetta as well as the other two. But just read her latest post on her own personal revelations when it comes to life, love and the lure of the “career.’ Rosetta, I feel you. I use to deny kids and used to think I was destined to be single–and in fact, I was quite comfortable with that. Now, I’m in love and getting married in a couple months. Thus, I encourage you girl.
Bonus: Seth Godin. I don’t know him personally, but I feel it’s very easy for us in the social media field to get thrown off-course. In this video, Seth shares these sentiments and challenges us with the question: “Where are the real relationships?…Networking is so important when it’s real, and it’s always a useless distraction when it’s fake.”
Your turn. Who do you know that is keeping the main thing, the main thing? And better yet, how are they doing it?
Mass publishing. Did you know this is accomplishable through blogs? This type of experimentation (or application) of guest posting took place earlier this year when Max Gladwell published 10 Ways to Change the World through Social Media, and it was simultaneously published on over 80+ blogs. Today is part two. *Know of other examples of “mass” publishing (i.e. Blog Action Day, Bloggers Unite, or others)? Feel free to share in the comments.*
Social media is about connecting people and providing the tools necessary to have a conversation. That global conversation is an extremely powerful platform for spreading information and awareness about social causes and issues. That’s one of the reasons charities can benefit so greatly from being active on social media channels. But you can also do a lot to help your favorite charity or causes you are passionate about through social media.
Below is a list of 10 ways you can use social media to show your support for issues that are important to you. If you can think of any other ways to help charities via social web tools, please add them in the comments. If you’d like to retweet this post or take the conversation to Twitter or FriendFeed, please use the hashtag #10Ways.
1. Write a Blog Post
Blogging is one of the easiest ways you can help a charity or cause you feel passionate about. Almost everyone has an outlet for blogging these days — whether that means a site running WordPress, an account at LiveJournal, or a blog on MySpace or Facebook. By writing about issues you’re passionate about, you’re helping to spread awareness among your social circle. Because your friends or readers already trust you, what you say is influential.
You should also consider taking part in Blog Action Day, a once a year event in which thousands of blogs pledge to write at least one post about a specific social cause (last year it was fighting poverty). Blog Action Day will be on October 15 this year.
2. Share Stories with Friends
Another way to spread awareness among your social graph is to share links to blog posts and news articles via sites like Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Digg, and even through email. Your network of friends is likely interested in what you have to say, so you have influence wherever you’ve gathered a social network.
You’ll be doing charities you support a great service when you share links to their campaigns, or to articles about causes you care about.
3. Follow Charities on Social Networks
In addition to sharing links to articles about issues you come across, you should also follow charities you support on the social networks where they are active. By increasing the size of their social graph, you’re increasing the size of their reach. When your charities tweet or post information about a campaign or a cause, statistics or a link to a good article, consider retweeting that post on Twitter, liking it on Facebook, or blogging about it.
Following charities on social media sites is a great way to keep in the loop and get updates, and it’s a great way to help the charity increase its reach by spreading information to your friends and followers.
You can follow the Summer of Social Good Charities:
Another way you can show your support for the charities you care about is to rally around them on awareness hubs like Change.org, Care2, or the Facebook Causes application. These are social networks or applications specifically built with non-profits in mind. They offer special tools and opportunities for charities to spread awareness of issues, take action, and raise money.
It’s important to follow and support organizations on these sites because they’re another point of access for you to gather information about a charity or cause, and because by supporting your charity you’ll be increasing their overall reach. The more people they have following them and receiving their updates, the greater the chance that information they put out will spread virally.
5. Find Volunteer Opportunities
Using social media online can help connect you with volunteer opportunities offline, and according to web analytics firm Compete, traffic to volunteering sites is actually up sharply in 2009. Two of the biggest sites for locating volunteer opportunities are VolunteerMatch, which has almost 60,000 opportunities listed, and Idealist.org, which also lists paying jobs in the non-profit sector, in addition to maintaining databases of both volunteer jobs and willing volunteers.
For those who are interested in helping out when volunteers are urgently needed in crisis situations, check out HelpInDisaster.org, a site which helps register and educate those who want to help during disasters so that local resources are not tied up directing the calls of eager volunteers. Teenagers, meanwhile, should check out DoSomething.org, a site targeted at young adults seeking volunteer opportunities in their communities.
6. Embed a Widget on Your Site
Many charities offer embeddable widgets or badges that you can use on your social networking profiles or blogs to show your support. These badges generally serve one of two purposes (or both). They raise awareness of an issue and offer up a link or links to additional information. And very often they are used to raise money.
Mashable’s Summer of Social Good campaign, for example, has a widget that does both. The embeddable widget, which was custom built using Sprout (the creators of ChipIn), can both collect funds and offer information about the four charities the campaign supports.
7. Organize a Tweetup
You can use online social media tools to organize offline events, which are a great way to gather together like-minded people to raise awareness, raise money, or just discuss an issue that’s important to you. Getting people together offline to learn about an important issue can really kick start the conversation and make supporting the cause seem more real.
As mentioned, blog posts are great, but a picture really says a thousand words. The web has become a lot more visual in recent years and there are now a large number of social tools to help you express yourself using video. When you record a video plea or call to action about your issue or charity, you can make your message sound more authentic and real. You can use sites like 12seconds.tv, Vimeo, and YouTube to easily record and spread your video message.
Last week, the Summer of Social Good campaign encouraged people to use video to show support for charity. The #12forGood campaign challenged people to submit a 12 second video of themselves doing something for the Summer of Social Good. That could be anything, from singing a song to reciting a poem to just dancing around like a maniac — the idea was to use the power of video to spread awareness about the campaign and the charities it supports.
If you’re more into watching videos than recording them, Givzy.com enables you to raise funds for charities like Unicef and St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital by sharing viral videos by e-mail.
9. Sign or Start a Petition
There aren’t many more powerful ways to support a cause than to sign your name to a petition. Petitions spread awareness and, when successfully carried out, can demonstrate massive support for an issue. By making petitions viral, the social web has arguably made them even more powerful tools for social change. There are a large number of petition creation and hosting web sites out there. One of the biggest is The Petition Site, which is operated by the social awareness network Care2, or PetitionOnline.com, which has collected more than 79 million signatures over the years.
Petitions are extremely powerful, because they can strike a chord, spread virally, and serve as a visual demonstration of the support that an issue has gathered. Social media fans will want to check out a fairly new option for creating and spreading petitions: Twitition, an application that allows people to create, spread, and sign petitions via Twitter.
10. Organize an Online Event
Social media is a great way to organize offline, but you can also use online tools to organize effective online events. That can mean free form fund raising drives, like the Twitter-and-blog-powered campaign to raise money for a crisis center in Illinois last month that took in over $130,000 in just two weeks. Or it could mean an organized “tweet-a-thon” like the ones run by the 12for12k group, which aims to raise $12,000 each month for a different charity.
In March, 12for12k ran a 12-hour tweet-a-thon, in which any donation of at least $12 over a 12 hour period gained the person donating an entry into a drawing for prizes like an iPod Touch or a Nintendo Wii Fit. Last month, 12for12k took a different approach to an online event by holding a more ambitious 24-hour live video-a-thon, which included video interviews, music and sketch comedy performances, call-ins, and drawings for a large number of prizes given out to anyone who donated $12 or more.
Bonus: Think Outside the Box
Social media provides almost limitless opportunity for being creative. You can think outside the box to come up with all sorts of innovative ways to raise money or awareness for a charity or cause. When Drew Olanoff was diagnosed with cancer, for example, he created Blame Drew’s Cancer, a campaign that encourages people to blow off steam by blaming his cancer for bad things in their lives using the Twitter hashtag #BlameDrewsCancer. Over 16,000 things have been blamed on Drew’s cancer, and he intends to find sponsors to turn those tweets into donations to LIVESTRONG once he beats the disease.
Or check out Nathan Winters, who is biking across the United States and documenting the entire trip using social media tools, in order to raise money and awareness for The Nature Conservancy.
The number of innovative things you can do using social media to support a charity or spread information about an issue is nearly endless. Can you think of any others? Please share them in the comments.
About the “10 Ways” Series
The “10 Ways” Series was originated by Max Gladwell. This is the second simultaneous blog post in the series. The first ran on more than 80 blogs, including Mashable. Among other things, it is a social media experiment and the exploration of a new content distribution model. You can follow Max Gladwell on Twitter.
Follow @NameYourNonProfit and you could feed 5 villages, save 1000 Trees and create wind energy. Sounds great right? It seems that online, in the social change arena, this seems to be the new infomercial. I’m all for it–if it brings success. And even further–is it affecting real change? Therefore, let’s break it down.
From my own observations of these initiatives, here’s what I have to offer to your organization if you’re working on a “follow-and-fundraise” plan:
Wait. Join Twitter first and gain a solid, respectable following according to your organization’s side and market share of the issue at hand. This way, when you make your “call to follow,” it won’t be an empty room you are inviting people to.
Set realistic and attainable benchmarks. This will motivate potential Twitter followers to support your cause and spread the word to their own networks. 500,000 new followers, when you are only at 300, might seem a bit daunting and dis-enfranchise people early in the game.
Mirror realistic rewards. Similarly, if you want to gain 500,000 followers to merely plant one tree is a bit disheartening. Yes, planting one tree any time is a good thing. However, that’s a lot of work and a lot of people to recruit for one tree. Make the effort worth it.
Extend the initiative. So you are working to generate a following and spread the word about a particular event/issue. Don’t stop at that. Extend your overall strategy to incorporate or integrate Twitter into the overall strategy. Or, extend Twitter to off-line events by hosting live-events. Either way, make the message and the action live beyond the technology.
Keep momentum. Okay, I’m following you today. But who says I’ll keep following you tomorrow? Or even a month from now? Provide fresh, timely and relevant content that will not only speak to me, but draw me into your mission.
Make it fun. Give me a reason to encourage my friends to follow you as well. In fact, provide me with the words to say. Detail it out–It could be a Twitter meme even. For a made up example, imagine @lovewater wants to recruit followers to build X amount of wells. Here’s an idea: Share the call to action. Tell three people you love them and water, and you want them to join the pool party @lovewater. (I was going to say hot tub–but hey, this isn’t the Bachelorette!)
Follow-up. If I follow you, give a shout out. Or, keep me updated with how your progress is coming. Have you achieved your goals? What were the results? How can I help or get involved more? Think of the person hitting the “follow” button as the bite. What are you going to do to reel in the fish?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy to participate in these campaigns. After all, it’s at low cost to me, the end-consumer. My main point is that I just want these initiatives to be better and the experience to be greater–and overall, I’m wondering why, if it is a low cost, does it seem to not always work?
What other tips would you suggest, and what are your own observations for these calls to action?
If your organization has implored this strategy, what were the results, lessons learned or key take aways that we can all learn from?
flickr photo credit: crjr2003
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I’ve called these round-ups by different names, but the concept is the same–share some of the recent links, resources and info I’ve been reading about social change, social marketing and social media. Now that I’ve finally switched my RSS reader from Bloglines to Google Reader, I find myself there a lot more–even more so than Twitter (gasp). Thus, let’s get on with the show.
Social media provides almost limitless opportunity for being creative. You can think outside the box to come up with all sorts of innovative ways to raise money or awareness for a charity or cause. When Drew Olanoff was diagnosed with cancer, for example, he created 
Follow @NameYourNonProfit and you could feed 5 villages, save 1000 Trees and create wind energy. Sounds great right? It seems that online, in the social change arena, this seems to be the new infomercial. I’m all for it–if it brings success. And even further–is it affecting real change? Therefore, let’s break it down.