Lambda Legal’s accomplishments remind me of an overachieving first-born child. They are shrewd and relentless in arguing legal cases around the country to win full equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people–and more often than not come out on top.  Seemingly omnipresent, they have a lot on their plate. It’s not surprising, then, that their monthly newsletter is jam-packed with updates. So much so, that their news may overwhelm the reader.

I was pleasantly surprised to see a recent re-design of their e-newsletter–a perfect example of how less is more.  The new version has far less text, a cleaner two-column design, a brighter color scheme, fewer but larger professionally designed graphics, and all the navigation  links have been completely removed from the header.  The title has been changed from “e-news” to “In Brief”–a nice play on words that also tips off the reader that they are not about to be subjected to a reading of “War and Peace.” Best of all, their key news items are listed with just a single descriptive sentence followed by “read more.” Nice job.

Before:

After:

(L to R): Carol Buckheit (Nonprofit MediaWorks), Daniela Altimari (Hartford Courant), Lucy Nalpathanchil (WNPR Connecticut Public Radio), Keith Phaneuf (Connecticut Mirror)

Fear not. If you missed last week’s media panel at CT Advocacy Day on how to get your cause in the news, here are 12 golden tips from the lips of Daniela Altimari of the Hartford Courant, Lucy Nalpathanchil from WNPR CT Public Radio, and Keith Phaneuf from the Connecticut Mirror:

• Daniela and Lucy prefer a brief email (followed by one telephone call) from organizations wishing to pitch a story. A direct message through Twitter also works for Daniela. Keith prefers a phone call. Never pitch a story through Facebook.
• Telling reporters about personal, human interest stories is the single most effective way to get your cause in the news. “Talking heads” (read: Executive Directors) are unlikely to be the best storytellers. People want to hear about real people affected by an issue. Those are the  stories that get in the news.
• Don’t just pitch stores during the legislative session. Think about how the issue ties in with the news during the year, and regularly pitch stories to reporters.
• When pitching a story, the earlier the better. Pitch early in the morning (by 8:30am)  rather than later, when reporters are looking through their email and considering what to write about that day.
• Personal relationships with reporters still matter very much. All things being equal, reporters will go with a story from a known source rather than an organization/individual new to them. Take the time to pick up the phone and introduce yourself and your organization.
• When should you time your press events at the Capitol? Avoid conflicts with bigger stories (e.g. Don’t schedule a press conference at the Capitol on the day the Governor unveils a new budget). Other than that, earlier in the day tends to be better.
• When being interviewed, avoid acronyms and jargon. Don’t sound like you are reading from a script. And don’t assume everyone knows what you are talking about. Use language and terminology the general public would understand.
• A well-written, engaging, frequently updated blog can be a terrific way for journalists to view you as an expert on an issue. But–importantly–if you don’t have time to maintain your blog, take it offline.
• Most journalists are using Twitter to share news as it happens. You can do the same with a Twitter account for your org. Keys: Make your tweets interesting! Promote others, build community, and don’t automate your tweets with Facebook. If it’s boring, they won’t come. And if you can’t frequently update your Twitter feed, don’t use Twitter.
• Follow reporters on Twitter! Find Daniela Altimari at @CapitolWatch, Lucy at @LucyVn, and don’t even bother trying to find Keith on Twitter. He calls himself “the social media anti-Christ.” (Shameless self-promotion: Follow Carol at @NonprofitMediaW).
• Don’t send a press release with contact information for your Executive Director, when he/she has just left for a long vacation. (sheesh)
• Check out CT Capitol Report by Tom Dudchik. He’s got a daily dose of the scuttlebutt at the Capitol. Read it.
• In this day and age, the news cycle is 24/7. In Daniela’s words: The public “has a voracious appetite for news…and nonprofits can use this as an opportunity.” Provide lots of news tips and pitches, and your cause is more likely to find its way onto a blog, newspaper story, tweet, video story or newscast.

You can still get involved in the CT Speaks Up campaign. Sign up at the CT Association of Nonprofits website.

While watching my beloved NY Giants huddle up during their big playoff game last week, I was reminded of how few organizations take the time to set goals, strategies and tactics for their social media efforts.  The result is often a scatter-shot, see-what-sticks-to-the-wall approach to communicating. And, guess what? It’s a waste of time.

You’ve turned the page on a new year, so start by creating a social media plan that will give you a clear road map to your goals. Ideally, you want your social media activities to be planned, intentional, and targeted. I’m amazed at how few nonprofits take the time to create a plan.

Answer these questions to get started:

1. Is your website current? Do you have an email system? If not, go no further with social media. Instead, clean up your website: remove out-of-date content, update your home page to reflect your current priorities, clean up the design so it’s easy on the eye, adjust the fonts so they are consistent, and cut way, way down on text and instead add a few photos. Your website is still your hub; there’s no point in using social media to drive lots of traffic to a website that’s awful.

And don’t even think that you don’t need a broadcast email system. Email remains the single best way for you to communicate with supporters. Outlook or Hotmail won’t cut it. If you have precious little time and resources, spend it on a decent website and a nonprofit-friendly broadcast email tool such as MailChimp, iContact, or Vertical Response. Then, use it to email your list at least twice a month.

2. How much time does your staff have to allocate to social media per week? Data from Idealware shows that nonprofits who spend less than 2 hours per week per social media tool don’t tend to see results.

3. Who is your target audience? Can your target audience be reached using social media? Youth organizations, for example, should not waste their time using Twitter to engage youth.  Pew Internet reports that only 8% of online American teens ages 12-17 uses Twitter. Choose a different social media tool.

4. What action do you want  your social media audience to take? Yep, ask yourself: When someone is blown away by my blog post on ending homelessness, what do I want them to get up and do? Write a check? Attend a rally? Volunteer? E-mail a legislator? If you can answer that, you have the makings of your goals. Now make a list. Do it now.

5. How will your measure your goals? Shape your goal so you can measure it–make it SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely). Unless you can measure it, you will  never know it’s working. Beth Kanter has some super posts on her blog about measuring goals.

6. What social media tactics will you use to reach your goals? This is the tricky part, since you need to know what tools will best help you accomplish your goal. Do you want to position yourself as an opinion leader on a policy issue? Then blogging may be for you. Need to increase attendance at your annual conference? Facebook may be your starting point. Share stories? Video sharing is compelling.

7.  How will you distribute your content, and when? Here’s where you will draw up your (short-term) social media campaigns for the year. A Google Calendar will come in handy, and you’ll need to work backward from your launch date to map out your posts, emails, and website actions leading up to your target event/activity.

8. Have you had professional training on social media tools? Get some training. Alas, your wonderful teenager can’t teach you this stuff, I’m afraid.

Idealware’s Nonprofit Social Media Decision Guide walks you through a few simple exercises to create a strategic social media plan. Download the guide here and use the worksheets in the back to get rolling. The guide will also introduce you to research-based social media best practices for nonprofits.

Here’s to a new year of winning campaigns for my nonprofit friends.

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Photo by Heath Brandon,  9/13/09, Flikr Creative Commons License- Attribution Share Alike 2.0 Generic

Nonprofit organizations often enlist staff and volunteers to create videos to enliven their storytelling via websites and social media–there’s just not a more emotionally powerful way to drive fundraising and advocacy campaigns.  But can “non-media” folks really create quality videos? Yes!

This week, I have camera in hand to talk to Shana Sureck, an award-winning photojournalist for The Hartford Courant. (You can now find her creating video documentaries and photographing events for area nonprofits.)

Shana shares her tips on how one can shoot video like a pro, starting with the basics for setting up a shot, audio, and equipment.

Watch for Part 2 from Shana in the coming weeks: She’ll share pearls of wisdom on shooting photos and photo editing.

Are you ready for the end of year fundraising push? If not, you need to read Joanne Fritz’s terrific round-up of articles to get your end- of-year fundraising appeals up to snuff.  I’ll add one more item for your website to-do list: Consider updating your online donation form to include virtual gifts–symbolic gifts/merchandise that allow a donor to make a real impact through gift-giving. The happy recipient receives an acknowledgment of this intangible gift and how it will make a difference.

Some nonprofits have created extensive virtual gift catalogs, while some have simply adapted online donation pages to reflect the tangible ways that one’s donation impacts others.  I love these holiday online donation pages developed by Project Hope, and this one from Blood: WaterMission.

How about a water buffalo in that office grab bag? Heifer Project International’s gift catalog also features llamas, camels and honey bees among their virtual gifts.

MercyCorps kicked off the giving season with the email below on Cyber Monday. How about an irrigation canal for that special someone? An acre of rice? Crickets?  They’ve got them all.

The Atlanta Community Food Bank’s Holiday Gift catalog will allow donors to fill a food pantry for a week with a $200 donation:

And who wouldn’t want a coral reef from Santa? The Nature Conservancy’s Adopt an Acre gifts raise precious dollars for conservation from the Rockies to Palau.

This one from PETA’s virtual gift catalog may be perfect gift for the pet lover who has it all:

You don’t have to be a big-shot organization to make the virtual gift concept work. The key is connecting your mission with your donor in  meaningful ways.

Carol doles out the drumsticks to nonprofit stars

Last year I blogged on 5 Shining Stars Connecticut nonprofits should be thankful for, and this year the field is again crowded with some true nonprofit luminaries. So, with a generous helping of gratitude, I’m doling out the Thanksgiving turkey drumsticks to these fine Connecticut nonprofit organizations who inspire, innovate, and advocate in ways that set them apart:

1. Music Haven: By day, they run after-school music education programs for kids in New Haven’s most underserved neighborhoods. By night, they are a string quartet, bringing world-class chamber music to these same neighborhoods and beyond.  Oh and by the way, this year Music Haven was chosen as one of the best after-school arts programs in the nation by the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. Take a listen to them from this WNPR feature story. They are a gem.

2.  buildOn: Stamford-based buildOn is about to turn 20, and they are well-deserving of a tasty drumstick this Thanksgiving for their astonishingly effective youth programs with a national–and international–focus:

Students in buildOn programs, located in 101 American urban high schools, have contributed over 850,000 hours of community service. buildOn then partners these same students with developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Central America to build schools, and buildOn’s school contruction programs have completed 427 schools to date. Impressive, eh?

Check out their Flikr photo stream of Chicago students building  a school in Malawi.

Photo credit: buildOn

3.   Health Justice CT: An up and comer, Health Justice CT is a social media innovator–creating opportunities for health advocates to network and collaborate in new ways, including monthly breakfast TweetUps in Greater Hartford and New Haven, Tweet Chats (use hashtag #hcsmct), and community forums on new media and social change. They are one to watch.

4.  Wadsworth Atheneum:  The Wadsworth gets the nod for putting the “social” in social media–an excellent model of how nonprofit organizations can be using social media to build community, engage new supporters, and share ideas. They offer prizes, ask fun questions, and offer interesting posts tying in history with art– all to steadily grow interest in the arts. (It’s working: they have 5000+ Facebook fans and counting).  My personal favorite: their Facebook art contests, inviting others to “name that painting” or “name that artist.”

As Connecticut burrows it’s way out of the freakiest October snowstorm on record, I’m left with buckets of Halloween candy from the cancelled holiday, a renewed appreciation for those gaudy purple wool socks gifted to me by mom a few years back, and new insights into the value of social media in a crisis. 

At a time when over 800,000 people in the state lost power, heat, hot water, phone service, and passable roads for an extended time (6 nights in my case), some local public servants stood out for their adeptness in communicating with their constituents using social media, when news was needed in real time as the crisis unfolded.

Email just didn’t cut it, people. Nor did the 6 o’clock news. Nor did the stumbling twice-daily storm updates by the C, L & P President.

More than a few tech-savvy local officials jumped into the fray with their own blizzard of useful updates; here are three who tweeted and/or posted on Facebook with concrete, as-it-happens updates to constituents who were desperate for information, and –perhaps more importantly–desperate to be heard.  Here’s a sampling of how they messaged in the midst of the mess:

Luis Cotto (Hartford City Councilperson):

Beth Bye (State Senator–Bloomfield, Burlington, Farmington, West Hartford):

Matt Lesser (State Representative–Durham, Middlefield, Middletown)

These 3 “get” social media. They are listening, responding, and sharing useful information quickly with links and timely resources.

The bottom line: Social media is

• extremely effective for getting feedback and starting discussions.
• an excellent way to share information in real time (especially through Twitter).
• a terrific tool for sharing links and resources
• a way to listen to one’s community and respond

• a news dump (read: don’t post an endless stream of press releases).
• where a staffer should ghost-write posts for the CEO or public official.
• a reiteration of talking points, rather than conversation
• a monologue
• primarily a fundraising tool

There’s no way around it. It’s time for a rant.

I follow hundreds of nonprofit organizations on Twitter, and a precious few have a clue about what they’re doing. There’s no apparent strategy, squandering a ton of staff time (and donor dollars) on a potentially invaluable information sharing tool.

So please, please get some professional training. For starters, here’s a heads up to orgs using Twitter practices that make me want to pull my hair out:

1. Stop begging. We know you need volunteers. And money. And tickets sold for your event. But, sending out a litany of tweets begging for these things, day after day, tweet and after tweet, is turning more people off to your organization than you could ever imagine.

2. End the “tweet dump”  Yes, a best practice is to tweet 5-6 times per day, but not all within a 20-minute span. Space out those tweets, at least hourly.

3. Say thank-you (but not publicly, after every single re-tweet). Twitter  has a wonderful culture of collegiality: If someone retweets a piece of your news to their legion of Twitter follows, you are gaining valuable exposure to a new group of potential supporters, donors, businesses, etc. So, for Pete’s sake, acknowledge that gift by thanking the retweeter! But consider a group thanks on #ThankfulThursday or a direct message, and stop the endless public thank-you tweets.

4. Tweet strategically, feeding in to the goals outlined in your overall communications plan. Don’t  have a communications plan? You need one before you start tweeting.

5. If your tweets are set up to drive traffic to your website, then UPDATE your site BEFORE you tweet. Don’t drive traffic to a website with outdated content. Or one with hard-to-read text. Or one with lots of broken links. Or one with your key content buried somewhere on your site. Fix all that first.

6. It’s not all about you. Retweet others.  Frequently. It may seem counterintuitive, but the more expansive and helpful you are, while sharing with and promoting others on Twitter (and other social networking channels, for that matter), the more likely they are to reciprocate and promote (and share with) you.

7. Give credit. If you find a terrific article on Twitter, by all means share it with your followers. But, share the source of the original tweet.

8. Stop automating Foursquare with Twitter. I don’t care if you are at your dry cleaners. Ever.

9. Make your tweet “re-tweetable”–not silly, spammy, or irrelevent. A key strategic goal of Twitter is to extend your reach to other networks; hence, it’s a great thing for others to re-tweet you.  Part of the art of Twitter, then, is to construct cogent tweets that inform and spark interest, in less than 140 characters. (Importantly, for someone to easily retweet you, you’ll need to make your original tweet 140 characters minus the number of characters in your Twitter handle, less 4 extra characters for “RT,”  a space, and the @symbol.)

10.  Stop ordering me around.  A tweet that says “Watch our video” and includes a link has automation written all over it (and says nothing inviting about the content). Write something interesting about the video or photo, and then invite me to take a peek. Treat your followers like real people, not robots.

Ahhh. I feel better now.

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Photo by zen_orchid, “My Rants,” Oct 1, 2011, Flikr Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.0 Generic License 

Can you believe that iPhone apps have only been around for a little over 3 years? Since Apple launched their App Store in July, 2008, over 15 billion apps have been downloaded onto mobile devices.

As someone who spent thousands of hours toiling away as a community organizer, grassroots fundraiser, and communications director, I have to wonder…how could I have shaved off some of those hours (not to mention gotten a few more zzzzs at night) with smartphone technology?

Here are 5 apps that have great utility for organizations who are in the field, mobilizing for a cause:

1. Postagram: Available for the iPhone and Android, Postagram allows you to instantly send a postcard through the mail, from your phone. The postcard includes a high quality photo and message that you create from your phone. Each postcard costs $.99.

Imagine the possibilities of Postagram as an advocacy tool: You could ask your supporters (though email blasts, Facebook posts, direct asks at a rally, etc.) to take a few seconds with Postagram to send a personalized postcard to their policymaker/decision maker. It’s easy, it’s cheap, unique, and it would get the attention of a legislator if a few hundred (thousand?) postcards clogged their mailboxes.  It would sure beat a generic petition or e-mail. (See above for a Postagram on clean water action that I whipped up and sent to my Senator).

2. Square: Square allows you to process credit card transactions from a mobile phone.

Let’s face it, fewer and fewer people carry around a lot of cash these days, since debit cards are so ubiquitous. What if your donors had an easy way to use their credit card to donate to your “clean water” campaign, buy silent auction items, buy a piece of art at your art show, buy a campaign hat or t-shirt, you name it.

The bottom line: with Square, it’s a lot easier to collect donations in the field via credit card.

Here’s Kyle Andrei from Idealware explaining how it works:

3. QR Codes: Download a QR code reader to your smartphone, and you can scan QR codes like the one below. In this example, the code takes you to a page for registering your complaint (which ultimately gets delivered to a local decision maker through the app See Click Fix.) Try this one:

Activists can create their own QR codes through a QR code generator, and can link the QR code to a website, a donation page, a phone number, or an online petition, urging supporters to take action.  The code can be added to signage, email blasts, Facebook posts, or print materials to ensure it reaches a wide group of supporters ready to use their cell phones for activism.

4. Congress:  This Android app makes it very easy to locate and call a  Congressperson, search for new legislation introduced to Congress, view results from the latest votes on various bills, and much more. Lots of possibilities here for community activists to work with supporters in generating calls and emails to a target legislator.

5. Foursquare: Placed-based apps like Foursquare and Gowalla have interesting uses for organizing protests and rallies. Or, organizations can simply encourage their supporters to leave “tips” strategically, such as to expose discriminatory practices at a location in the community. For example, as Heather Mansfield has pointed out, Foursquare “tips” have been left on Foursquare pages for pet stores that sell puppies from large-scale, commercial breeding facilities (commonly known as puppy mills). Here’s a tip left on a pet store Foursquare profile page in Tennessee:

Many nonprofits host a blog, but few really nail storytelling  like the Connecticut Food Bank did last week.

Their blog featured a daily series of posts by Governor Malloy’s liaison to Connecticut’s nonprofit community, Deb Heinrich, on taking the “SNAP Challenge.”   SNAP is Connecticut’s dressed-up name for food stamps, and Heinrich attempted to live on a food budget of $4/day, which just happens to be the average allotment for food for an individual on food stamps in this state. Why? To experience the reality of living on food stamps, as 380,000 Connecticut citizens do every day.

Here’s how Heinrich led off her post on Day 6 of the challenge:

“I am sitting here, staring at the computer with a raging headache, trying to concentrate on what it is I might want to write in today’s journal entry. I’ve had this headache on and off for two days. I’m on the sixth day of the Challenge. I am finding that even when I eat enough so that I don’t feel hungry, I am still not feeling well….”

After reading this series of personal posts, you’ll get it:  being hungry and unable to afford decent food exacts a pretty harsh physical and emotional toll, after just a few days. (The press, by the way, picked up the story, too.)

Why blog? For starters, nonprofits can show expertise on issues (and thus shape public opinion), drive traffic to a website,  inspire potential donors to give, ensure fresh website content, draw media coverage,  enable conversations with supporters, and more.

The most effective blogs draw attention to a cause by packing an emotional punch.  It’s that simple. Stories deliver.

Need ideas? Weave these kinds of stories into your blog posts (I’ve included examples from nonprofit orgs):

• Stories from the field  (Operation Smile)
• Volunteer stories (with video!) (United Planet)
• Success story (American Diabetes Association)
• Donor story (Walk Now for Autism Speaks)
• Photo blog (The Faces of Haiti, Adventures in Missions)
• Staff reflections (The Children’s Hospital Los Angeles)
• Behind the scenes ( The Brooklyn Museum)

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Photo by Suzi Duke: “Literary Cat”, January 17, 2005, Flikr Creative Commons License Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 Generic