Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media

Entries in Social Networking (119)

Thursday

Jun172010

Social Networks to Replace Email? NOT!!!

Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 11:30AM | by

Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg fired up the death of email debate at the Nielsen’s Consumer 360 Conference Yesterday. She said only 11% of teens email daily and that they are using SMS (or Twitter) and social networks for communications. Interestingly, despite all the protests against Facebook’s privacy policy she also said that people entrust their personal info with social networks. To Sandberg these are signals that email will die.

Sandberg raises some interesting points such as the growth of social networks, however, as Frogloop reported last fall in our article Email is Dead? Long Live Email, we have not found any valid research that substantiates that email is dying out. In fact, between 2000 and 2009, email in the US alone grew 138% according to the World Internet User Statistics. In India it grew by 1250%. In the UK it grew by 203%. In Mexico it grew by 917%. In China it grew by 1500%. Furthermore, in August 2009, 276.9 million people used email in the US and abroad as compared to 229.2 million people in August of 2008 according to the Nielsen Company. This is growth not a decline.

Are a few popular social networks like Twitter and Facebook growing faster than some analysts predicted? Yes, but on social networks like Twitter, the adoption rate is actually low. Only about 10% to 20% of Twitter’s users are actively tweeting and are the ones driving 80% to 90% of all tweets. Facebook certainly offers more options to nonprofits like Fanpages and Causes but as a whole nonprofits have far more people on their email lists, generate more actions taken via email (and by action I don't mean "liking something" and giving it a thumbs up) and raise a lot more money than on Facebook Causes.

And what happened to MySpace? They have been publically struggling to compete in the social networking space and are currently in the process of a major rebranding campaign. Will they survive?

At the end of the day social networks are a space for us to be social online. The teens Sandberg referenced are doing just that. As they get older and join the working world, they will use email and a variety of other channels and gadgets to communicate. As all savvy nonprofit campaigners and marketers know, it’s not just about using one tool to communicate with people; it’s about having a tool box filled with all the key tools you need to reach your constituents across multiple channels.

More Resources:

Email is Dead? Long Live Email - Frogloop
Will Open Source Social Networks Eventually Replace Facebook? - Frogloop
Email is the Hub around which Facebook, Twitter and other Social Media Revolve - EPolitics

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Monday

Jun142010

Strategies for being a Better Networked Nonprofit

Monday, June 14, 2010 at 06:07PM | by

Allyson Kapin

Nonprofits are constantly trying to connect with passionate people who care about their issues. We want our advocates and our volunteers to not only take action on our issues, but we want them to donate money and time to our organizations, recruit their friends, family and colleagues to our causes. In other words we want them to help us build a movement.

Beth Kanter and Allison Fine, who recently published the book The Networked Nonprofit: Connecting with Social Media to Drive Change, offer nonprofits some sound advice and strategies on becoming a better "networked nonprofit" to help further engage people. They will be sharing even more insight on the Care2 webinar Networked Nonprofit on June 17th at 2PM. Sign up here. In the meantime, here's a sneak peak of what Beth, Allison and Danielle Brigida of National Wildlife Federation, and Mark Sirkin of Austim Speaks will be discussing on the webinar.

What inspired you both to write about the importance of being a networked nonprofit?

BK: The initial inspiration for me was the idea of “free agents” These are powerful social change players. A free agent, as we are defined it in the book, is a person (many times a GenY, but not always) who is a passionate about a social cause, but is working outside of a nonprofit organization to organize, mobilize, raise money, and engage with others. Two examples come to mind: Amanda Rose and Manny Hernandez.

Free agents are also fluent in social media and take advantage of the social media tool set to do everything organizations have always done, but outside of institutional walls. I started doing free agent fundraising back in 2006 when I raised money for Cambodian kids for the Sharing Foundation and I saw great potential. I thought this was a powerful concept and I thought the book was going to a manifesto to convince nonprofits to embrace them.

As we got into the research for the book, we realized there was a larger frame.

AF: We knew that almost all nonprofit organizations had dipped their toes into the social media waters over the past few years.

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Monday

Jun072010

Openness and Engagement: Key Tactics Embraced at PDF Conference

Monday, June 7, 2010 at 10:48PM | by

Allyson Kapin

The 2010 PDF (Personal Democracy Forum) was the place to be for nonprofit and political campaigners last week in NYC. With movers and shakers ranging from Clay Shirky to Arianna Huffington, campaigners heard first-hand what strategies they should be focusing on in their online advocacy, fundraising and social media engagement. Couldn’t attend the conference or all the sessions you wanted? Check out some of the key take-aways of PDF by some of our favorite nonprofit experts.

“I loved Eli Pariser's presentation and his main theme that we have to be careful about filtering too much, cutting ourselves off from uncomfortable conversations that are the only possibility that we have for breaking through the echo chambers. Being uncomfortable is not an excuse for ignoring other opinions and people. On the contrary, it is the only way to build the broad coalitions we need for significant policy and social change efforts.” – Allison Fine, Co-Author, The Networked Nonprofit

"The dominant theme weaving its way through this year's PDF conference keynotes and hallway chatter was a refreshing wake up call to political campaigns and NGO's. Campaigners were invited to abandon the numbers game -- the list building arms race, the obsessive counting of Twitter followers -- and start directing that energy into creative solutions for engaging supporters in meaningful activity that solves real-world problems.

The bar was reset for executive directors and campaigners alike: our fascination with giant email lists has finally begun to wane; we're now more interested in your ability to leverage technology and a community of interested citizens in creative ways to solve problems and make a positive social impact. The best examples of this quality-over-quantity approach come from "networked nonprofits" and "web thinking" organizations that are investing in leadership development programs, building their own technology labs, and inviting supporters to connect with one another online and offline.

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Will Open Source Social Networks Eventually Replace Facebook?

Monday, May 24, 2010 at 09:03AM | by

Allyson Kapin

When Facebook launched their Open Graph API last month they thought they had revolutionized their platform. They certainly did not expect some of its own users to organize international boycotts like Quit Facebook Day or petitions by some of the largest grassroots organizations like MoveOn and the ACLU. But Facebook crossed a privacy line again and has infuriated some of its most passionate users.

Has Facebook angered its base so much, that its user base could fizzle out in the next year as more people and nonprofits demand control of their own social data and look to other platforms? In March, Facebook had more traffic than Google in the US. Also what impact does Facebook’s new privacy policies have on nonprofits and their constituents?

“Facebook is really good at handling stuff like this-- they've gone through a privacy coup before,” said Clay Johnson, Director of Sunlight Labs for the Sunlight Foundation. “I think Facebook has been having a negotiation with the public for where the right space lies between the ability to share data and the need for people to protect their privacy. This negotiation is being done through innovation rather than dialog-- probably the only way it can happen. It'll sort itself out soon enough. But Facebook's too baked into everywhere for it to go away or for a user revolt to be practically useful.”

Jon Pincus who co-chairs the Computer, Freedom and Privacy Conference, says that that there's a need for a social graph that's not tied to a particular website or corporation. Frogloop explored this concept last fall when we discussed “Is your Nonprofit too Social Media Dependent?”

What is the Portable Social Graph?

“The "social graph" is, basically, your data about who you are, and who is connected to you - who your friends are. A portable social graph would be one that you can take with you, wherever you are - so the friends that are connected with you on one network are also connected with you on another. It's the holy grail of social network connectivity - you are connected to who you are connected to, no matter what site you are on”, said Michelle Murrain of Open Issue.

Portability's one approach; another is to put the social graph under an individual's control from the beginning which Diaspora, a new open source social network being built by a few NYU college students is attempting. In the past couple of weeks, these college students have raised over $100K, mainly in response to the revolt against Facebook’s privacy policy.

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Tuesday

May182010

Slam Dunk or Snake Oil? Everyone wants to Raise Money with Social Media. But is it Possible?

Tuesday, May 18, 2010 at 03:40PM | by

Jocelyn Harmon

Check out any nonprofit Web site these days, and in addition to an About Us page, you're likely to see icons for Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. These social-media widgets have fast become wallpaper on almost all charitable sites. But does social media really work for fundraising?

To answer this question, get a sense of how much money nonprofits are actually raising via social media and garner some advice on best practices in using these tools, I went straight to the expert. Check out my interview with Geoff Livingston, author of "Now Is Gone — A Primer on New Media for Executives and Entrepreneurs" and chief marketing officer of Zoetica (a new company he formed with social-media guru Beth Kanter).

Jocelyn Harmon (JH): It's clear that a majority of nonprofits have jumped on the bandwagon when it comes to using social media to promote their issues, friendraise and increase brand awareness, but serious questions remain about the effectiveness of these tools to raise money. Are nonprofits raising money via social media? If so, how much?

Geoff Livingston (GL): If I were in charge of development for a nonprofit, social media would not be the first place I would look to build my charity. I've heard lots of ballpark numbers, but none higher than 2 percent to 3 percent of total cause sector funds raised. Now, some organizations are great at social, while most are just terrible, so I question whether a mean average applies. But seriously, hire an experienced development director first.

Social media to me is a better awareness and community development tool. It can be used for fundraising, but without a die-hard community in place first, that's not going to happen quickly. In fact, you will spin your wheels and think that "social" doesn't work.

I would focus on building a social community. Whatever you want to do online, having real relationships with people that care about your cause and are influential in their own social networks is the essence of success. Then, after it matures, begin harnessing willing community members for online grassroots fundraising.

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