In a recent exam report I and two friends analyzed what value NGO´s can derive from Facebook. As a basis for our analysis we interviewed two social media officers from the Danish NGO´s IBIS and Masanga about their usage of Facebook. We combined their input with relevant theory and ended up with 5 valuable overall goals that NGO´s can use Facebook to achieve.  

Facebook is a great tool for NGO`s because of their good causes. On Facebook we share the stuff that is the most interesting, crazy, sweet, wild or have the best cause. The power of word of mouth and recommendation is extremely strong here and NGO´s have better possibilities of being recommended than companies because of their noble causes.

In our report we looked into what concrete valuable goals NGO´s can have with their Facebook appearance. We also tried to find KPI´s (Key Performance Indicators) that can be used to measure if you are doing good or bad in your struggle to achieve your goals.

Here are the 5 goals we came up with:

Goal 1: Recruitment

Maybe some of your fans likes your organization so much that they would like to volunteer for you. Why not ask out if there is anyone out there that could spare some hours of their week working for a great cause?

Goal 2: Donations

Fundraising is an important part of any NGO´s financial basis. If you have likers chances are that some of them support your cause so much that they would like to support it financially. Make it easy for the likers to donate by making a donation tab or posting links to your donation page on your website.

Goal 3: Know Your Karma

Every organization and business wants to be talked about in a positive tone. Your number of positive or negative mentions on Facebook will depend on your real life activities and you cannot change it just by writing nice status updates or posting cool messages if they are not connected to your real life activities. But you can use your likers posts and comments on your page to get an indication of your general popularity. Use a couple of hours to go through your comments and get an impression of your NGO´s user karma.

Goal 4: Engagement

Many businesses have started putting their customer service on Facebook and NGO´s can do the same. It is faster to answer your users on Facebook than on the phone. Since posts stay on your wall then other users with that come up with the same question can be lucky to find out that their question has already been answered.

Answer all the posts that users come up with no matter if they are negative or positive. Never censor and delete critical user posts unless they are sexual, profane or just extremely inappropriate.

Goal 5: Reach

Lately it has become popular among social media experts to say that your number of likers doesn’t matter and you should solely focus on your engagement rate instead. This point is pretty stupid because if no one hears about your good deeds and the difference your NGO makes then they won´t have the chance to engage at all. So don’t neglect your fan number. Post good content, make interesting campaigns and engage with both positive and negative users. Then you might see your fan number rise fast.

Any thoughts? Please let me know. 

United Nations´ program on HIV and AIDS is called UNAIDS. They are doing all they can to fight HIV and AIDS all over the planet and they are not alone; their partners and co-sponsors count major organizations like Unesco, The World Bank, WHO and UNICEF. These are powerful allies, but so is the enemy. HIV spreads with a worrying haste and every day 3.000 young people become infected. Also, a huge part of the more than 5 million young people that live with the disease have no access to treatment.

Big problems need big solutions. And one of the solutions for UNAIDS has been to launch the CrowdOutAIDS campaign. This campaign is using crowdsourcing to activate young people in the fight against HIV and Aids. On their website they explain what they want to do in 4 simple steps:

CrowdOutAIDS will:

1. Connect young people who want to help out through tools like Facebook, blogs, Orkut and Google docs.
   
2. Engage in conversations about the key issues young people face.
3. Put decision-making in the hands of young people.
4. Collectively agree on actions—and get young people to draft the strategy!

The idea with this campaign is well thought. I mean who can come up with solutions for young people better than other young people? Unfortunately the execution is not equally good because CrowdOutAids is not doing step A effectively. Their main strategy is to connect young people through Facebook pages. So they have made 8 Facebook groups which you can join after what part of the world you want to come up with solutions for. In these groups CrowdOutAIDS make open and relevant questions to the likers. Sadly the number of likers only varies between 150 and 300 for each page. These numbers are too small compared to how much interest you would assume there would be for a cause like this.

This should be done so much better. The idea of crowdsourcing solutions for HIV could be very successful on Facebook, a social media where young people normally love to share opinions on all kinds of subjects. I don’t know why CrowdOutAIDS have not managed to get more likers but I would strongly recommend that they get some professional help from a social media agency or similar. A campaign like this could easily get 50.000 or more likers. I´m not overestimating here…

Still it must be mentioned that CrowdOutAIDS is not only about Facebook. The campaign also encourages people to share the idea through sending emails to friends and blogging. I don’t know how successful they are with these other media but my guess is not too well.

Conclusion: HIV is a powerful enemy and CrowdOutAIDS is definitely an initiative in the right direction. But the execution is not even close to being as successful as it could be. My final advice to CrowdOutAIDS would be to seek professional help to get the great message out to a much larger audience. With a little help the amount of user generated input and solutions would be much larger.

A HIV prevalence map from 2009. The map is provided by UNAIDS.

Last summer I had the chance to work for and together with some skilled tailors in Masanga Tailor Shop in Sierra Leone. At that the time the future of the Tailor Shop was uncertain. Luckily another Anders – Anders Møller – soon came in from the side and created a spanking new brand based on the punk and cool bags from the shop. In this interview he talks about his Bangura Bags, why he called them so and what the idea and plans are for the brand. 

Hi Anders. What is a Bangura Bag?

- It is a bag handmade out of used bicycle tubes from the roads of Sierra Leone. The bag is made by the five tailors in Masanga Tailor Shop to make a more sustainable way to improve the local community.

How did you come up with the business idea?

- I can thank visionary people for seeing the potential in the used bicycle tubes from the local bike shop and turning them into bags. A great guy named Søren Bo Steendahl started taking the bags to Denmark and asked me to turn the import into a business on its own. That is the practical upcoming of the business, while it on a philosophical level comes from an idea of the proud Africa. All to often we pity African people and talk about how much they need the help of Europe. Instead we try throughout this project to make a more equal relation between Africa and Europe by a trade relation where both parts create value to the process. In the Bangura Bags project the tailors create value by making the bags, from which they make money to themselves and their local community.

Why are the bags called Bangura?

- The name of the project is given in honor of tailor master Alfred “Big Boss” Bangura. A great and proud man who has been a part of the project from the start and remains an important part of the creation of the bags.

Your company is related to the NGO Masanga. How do Masanga and Bangura Bags fit together?

- We share the vision of improving life in Masanga. The NGO Masanga takes care of life in Masanga, while Bangura is the business partner who turns the story and products of Masanga into a design brand.

What does the future hold for Bangura Bags? What is in the pipeline?

- Hopefully we will continue gaining support from a lot of good people and right now we are in dialogue with a big Danish brand, a variety of shops and other interesting stuff. You will be able to follow the brands development at our Facebook group.

The Bangura Bags will be sold at Cafe Mellemrummet on Ravnsborgade 11 in Copenhagen during November and December 2011. Below are pictures and prices on some of the various bags.

The Computer Bag costs 500 DK.

The Toilet Bag costs 300 DK.

The Bread Basket costs 300 DK.

(Read my first post “Something About Toms Shoes And Eyewear” here)

Well yesterday I once again paid a visit to Toms´ website. As you know it´s awfully cool to wear sunglasses in the winter and since winter looks like coming early to Copenhagen now is the right time to get shaded up.
So I checked the website to see that Toms have come up with some nice new models and also a little video from the work they do in Nepal. So let me first show you the two pair of shades I considered.

Toms - Classic 301

The one I decided for. Like most other Toms´ shades they are 135$.

On the website I also found a video with Toms´ CEO in Nepal. It shows people with all kinds of vision problems and diseases. Though it’s a bit too romantic and weepy in my view then it is worth watching for a fast overview of Toms´ business concept.

Not much else to say. Go check the website yourself if you need a pair of shades or shoes. I have to admit that I don’t like the shoes as much as the shades but make your own opinion. Also check out my first post about Toms for some more information.

Dennis Hong vividly explains the different components they´ve put in their prototype car like measurement units, GPS, cameras, sound systems, vibrating west’s, voice commanders etc. It is pretty high tech and cool so take a look yourself.

Hong states that the car is not ready yet, but he seems determined to make sure it will be in the future. And in the end he asks one of the most important questions which is if society will ever come to allow blind people to drive cars in the normal traffic. Personally I think I speak for most people when saying that I can´t imagine a situation where I´d feel safe with blind drivers in the traffic. But then again, technology develops fast and who knows what possibilities the future holds for the traffic. In 50 years we´ll probably all be flying around in body shaped airplanes only controlled by the thought anyway. Just wait and see!

Similar posts:
Something About Move About – A Car Sharing Company

Name: Aminata Thullah
What do you use your bicycle for?
“To go to work. I live in a city called Rogbache which is 4 miles from where I work. Before I got the bicycle I walked and it took me almost two hours.”
How much did you pay for your bike?
“285.000 Leones”. (That is 65 USD or almost two monthly salaries for the average Sierra Leon´ean.)

Name: Ibrahim Kamara
What do you use your bicycle for?
“I am a medicine student and the university is 6 miles from my home so I go there on my bicycle. I also have a part-time job in the evening which is too far away to walk to.”
What kind of bicycle is it?
“Well it is black and on the front it says Rocky.”

Name: Mohamed “Van Der Sar” Sesay
What do you use your bicycle for?
“This is not my bicycle. I have only borrowed it from a friend while I´m on vacation. I use it when I go to the market or to take me to the pitch to play football.”
How do you get around normally?
“I walk or take a Honda.” (In Sierra Leone a Honda means small motorcycle).

Similar posts:
Sierra Leone Stories Part 2 – Fieldtrip With An Eye Doctor
Sierra Leone Stories part 1 – Sierra Leone Jungle Run 2011

I’ve been reading and re-reading the site Own a Colour and I simply don’t understand it. Unicef and Sadolin have now started a campaign, using Sir Roger Moore, where they offer to sell digital colours. The money you buy the colour with will of course go to charity. And you will get to own a coloured triangle with your profil besides Sir Roger Moore…

First of I’m not the biggest fan of charity. I believe third world countries need more work orientated support. But when that is said I do believe in helping hunger, epidemics and big nature disasters… But on this site there is no detailed info about there work, but the pitch from Sir Roger Moore.

Did Sadolin just flash the CSR card, with a Unicef campaign –that in my eyes does nothing to inform the people what kind of support they will give, their ambitions and values? Are we again just blindly supposed to send charity to third world problems, that we have no chance of understanding fully? (please read Something About Wealth Creation in Africa)

There is no transparency in this campaign –which leaves me with big icky feeling inside, that this is a clever Sandolin advertisement working the “sustainability” trend. In my eyes this is what happens when you have got talented PR people, with not enough understanding of the delicate matters they represent.

Please let me know your thoughts on this one.

Found on Creative Review.

Good Baby is a manufacturer that produces baby goods have now started designing their products and are now stepping into the forefront by embracing the Cradle to Cradle philosophy and making it a part of their core business. This makes Good Baby the first Chinese manufacturer to implement the Cradle to Cradle concept.

When I have previously written about Cradle to Cradle, I have raised the question “Will people actually bring the products back to the manufacturer? And where and how?” It seems to me that this is the weak link in the chain. (read Something About Cradle to Cradle)

But Good Baby actually comes with a constructive plan, which will also benefit the consumer’s pockets.  It’s simple; When you return your trolley to the shop, you will be paid. Making it profitable for the consumer to interact with the biological circle and the technical circle. By this action Good Baby puts action behind the words “Waste = Food”. Thumps up!

In Manila a lot people live in simple shed´s with no electricity making them dark as the night even in the daytime. Luckily a smart invention called a “liter of light” has made it easy to light up these homes. The idea is so simple that you can´t help but wonder why it has not been done many decades ago:

You fill up a plastic bottle with water and add a bit of bleach to keep algae away. Then you make a hole in the roof and fasten the bottle with glue halfway through. Now the bottle will reflect the sunlight and light up your home.

On isanglitrongliwanag.org it is mentioned that the liter of light has been designed by students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) using appropriate technologies. Their aim of course is to spread the idea to sheds all over the world which should be no problem since the ingredients are so simple and the effect is so big.

I for one know a couple of towns in Africa where this invention would come to great usage and if you happen to be in Sierra Leone next summer you might see me climbing around rooftops while balancing plastic bottles and glue tubes.

I simple do not have much to add. But to wish you a thoughtful weekend.

Iben