My latest contribution to the Stanford Social Innovation Review opinion blog is up! 
You can read the post and join the conversation on the SSIR blog or below.

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The new book I co-authored with Allyson Kapin, Social Change Anytime Everywhere, looks at the way nonprofit organizations can use multichannel strategies for advocacy, fundraising, and community building. It’s a practitioner’s guide for planning, implementing, and evaluating strategies that engage constituents across many channels, wherever they may be, and how we as organizations need to structure our work to deliver that experience.

The conclusion of the book is titled “Disrupting the Nonprofit Sector,” and a question that came up in a recent podcast I recorded kept me thinking all week: Why do I think multichannel strategies will actually disrupt the nonprofit sector?

To successfully use multichannel strategies, we need to stop thinking about how we can operate more like businesses, and instead focus on acting more like our constituents. That may sound strange, but let me explain:

Consultants and others often advise nonprofits to focus on business objectives such as streamlining departments, minimizing overhead, and creating a results-focused organization. While those objectives have merit, they are not directly aligned with creating the best constituent experience. Ultimately, if you cannot build a community because engaging with your organization is so difficult, outdated, or cumbersome, you will not have people to support your advocacy, donate to your fundraising efforts, or champion your mission. And to ensure that you do have a strong community of supporters, you need to make supporting your mission fun, valuable, and easy.

What’s more, thinking more like your constituents isn’t difficult. Try this: Stop working for just five minutes. Imagine that you are you, enjoying some personal, non-professional time, then go online. What do you do? Which tools do you use? For example, maybe you notice that you check your email and then go to Facebook. From there, you may click on a news article that a friend posted and then tweet it out using the embedded sharing options. In as little as 30 seconds, you just visited four different platforms, engaged with potentially hundreds of people, and didn’t stop once to think about what you were doing. That’s how your supporters are interacting (or not interacting) with your organization, other nonprofits, their friends, and their family every day.

Multichannel strategies are your keys to creating campaigns, content, and calls to action that meet your supporters where they are and encourage them to support your organization. Social Change Anytime Everywhere is focused on the way constituents interact with each other and organizations, identifying the opportunities for your organization to not just broadcast a call to action, but also create meaningful ways for your activists to take action, your donors to donate, and your community members to share your message on the platforms they prefer.

Extra: Listen to this podcast with Alison Fine, Allyson Kapin and I discussing why charities should use more kinds of social media.

I’m honored to be included in a new ebook about marketing, fundraising, and social media. You can download the ebook, check out the various topics, and much more from: https://www.blackbaud.com/npexperts

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When was the last time you were approached by a stranger in the store asking for you to donate to a cause they cared about? Well, sure – it does happen. Especially around the holidays or for local events, but how often do you respond? For many people, the decision to give money is influenced by our peer networks and personal experiences. That’s why social media can be a valuable component of your online fundraising strategies. After all, it’s called “social” media for a reason!

You can think about online engagement as throwing a house party. Your website is your kitchen, where you can prepare the snacks, make the punch, and arrange all the utensils; in other words, that’s where you can create and store all your content. The social channels you set up are the various rooms in the house where guests gather, certain groups sticking together in certain rooms just as your community naturally segments across the web.

You can then offer up snacks and drinks or even start conversations or games based on who is in the room and what they might enjoy, just like you do when you share certain content on certain online profiles based on the sub-groups in your community engaging on each platform.

Social media, the place where you get to hang out with your party guests, is the social space where you not only connect with those you know, but you get to make introductions and meet new people. It’s your chance to have direct conversations with supporters, fans, and donors – conversations that happen in public so many more people can learn about and engage with you.

How does this support online fundraising? Social media is the place where you can change a donation ask from a stranger into a call to action from a friend. This is the space where you can equip your supporters with your message and help them carry your campaign to their own networks.

Here are three ways you can start using social media in your campaign today.

Find the Influencers: Social media is a great resource for identifying the champions in your community. For example, start following the common hashtags, watch for popular retweets on Twitter, and check out the commonly shared images and liked Pages on Facebook. You will start to see certain people and organizations rise to the top. Even if they don’t have big follower numbers, if they are the ones people in your community listen to and respond to, they are influencers. Invite them to participate in your campaign and share your call to donate.

Track the Flow: use social media to track how your campaign is being talked about and where the talking is taking place. Whether you’ve indicated a campaign- specific hashtag or not, use Bit.ly to check for those sharing your website or campaign uRl on Twitter and then see what the tweets say. check your website analytics to see which social platforms are sending traffic to your campaign page and follow the links to the people sharing your content.

Share the spotlight: Social media is an easy tool to use to say thank you to supporters and donors in public. By sharing recognition publicly, in real time, you can give people a feeling that you are excited for their contribution and see them standing out in the crowd. It also encourages others to participate when they see that the organization is there, interacting, and really engaging.

Those are just three ways to get started, but there are endless possibilities for building relationships, establishing trust, and truly engaging your community through social media to join your campaign.

Get the full ebook at: https://www.blackbaud.com/npexperts

I’m a monthly guest on Tony Martignetti’s Nonprofit Radio (which you already know because you’re a subscriber, right?) and on this last episode we talked about two popular tools: Slideshare and Pinterest. There’s always more to say than just what we can cover on the air so I wanted to follow up with some infographics and highlights.

Slideshare

I use Slideshare for my presentations and other workshop or training materials. It’s easy to use, and it makes archiving and sharing materials with attendees really simple. Column Five has a new infographic about Slideshare user data with some interesting highlights. First and very striking is the 3 billion slideviews/month number! Slideshare reminds me of YouTube in that many nonprofits and even individuals use YouTube as the online storage space for videos that they plan to embed on their website or blog and otherwise share across the web. You benefit by storing the videos in a public and popular place so those that aren’t already watching your website can still come across your video and get engaged. Slideshare, with that many views, is serving a similar purpose where users are uploading content to be stored on Slideshare that they intend to embed or share elsewhere but benefit from those on the platform coming across the material and learning more.

Another highlight is the organic search traffic that nonprofit should take more advantage of. Have you spent days putting together a presentation for your board or a potential funder that highlights your work and impact? Maybe outlines how a new program is going to make a specific change to your community or the world. Putting that presentation on Slideshare where the title and the slide material can be indexed for searches means the next time I’m online searching for “important programs to end homelessness in NYC” I find your slides, your ideas, and ways to get involved with your organization.

It’s also noteworthy the high percentage of business and organizational leaders using Slideshare. Even more reason to expect that those coming across your material there to be potential partners, donors, or volunteers. There is no need to highlight specific case studies here as Beth Kanter has, of course, already ccreated a great list!

Pinterest

wishpond’s new infographic on Pinterest user data has some interesting data but I also know far more organizations experimenting with Pinterest or even using it well already. The first thing that struck me about the Pinterest data is the stat 80% of pins are actually repinned from another board. It’s really similar to the high percentage of content on Tumblr that’s reblogged from another blog. Couple that stat with nearly 84% of the time pinning content and what that really tells me is users enjoy the site and they enjoy sharing and collecting content; they do not, however, probably want to leave the site just to look at your website.

According to the infographic, 57% of the content on Pinterest is also food related! Considering all these dynamics, I think City of Hope’s shared board collecting recipes for mushrooms as part of the Mushrooms for Hope campaign is right on target. It’s a great example of creating content that is mission-supporting, true to the audience and platform, and really creates great opportunities for people to have interaction with the organization that is valuable to them and not just part of an ask.

Are you using Slideshare or Pinterest?

How is your organization creating or sharing content on these platforms? Would love to hear your lessons and stories!

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to travel to Saudi Arabia to teach a course at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology as part of the Winter Enrichment Program. It was an incredible experience and I’m so glad I was able to be part of the KAUST program and meet so many different students, entrepreneurs, faculty and staff. As I reflect on the trip, the course specifically, and the conversations students and staff had with me, I am reminded in many ways of the event I helped with a few years ago in Romania. Those countries may not strike you as very similar at first, but let me explain.

Haven’t We Had This Conversation Before?

One of the biggest lessons I re-learn everywhere I go – in the city or in the world – is that for all the talk about differences, we are often very similar. Whether in my workshops in Romania or in Saudi (or in NYC), I’m often asking myself, “haven’t we had this conversation before?” As social entrepreneurs, innovators, and nonprofit leaders, many of the questions about social media that are always first to be asked have nothing to do with location but about strategy and success. Though, what is interesting to me, is that the question “how can I use this tool?” is usually embedded in the assumption that the answer is based on geographic location and even the specifics of the organization. Remember, these tools are just that: tools. A hammer isn’t fundamentally different in Saudi as it is in Wyoming. But the kind of building we’re interested in or the interests of the users may change. Social media platforms (tools!) should be considered for their functionality and options as part of your overall communications, engagement, and fundraising strategies but not as areas of investment all of their own.

Single Acces Point, to Facebook

Whenever I’m presenting to a group in another country, I spend time investigating any social media data I can find that is specific to that country, especially as it relates to mobile phones, access, and usage per capita. Saudi, again similarly to Romania, has a high percentage of citizens using mobile phones (especially as primary Internet access point) and with Facebook accounts. The power to connect to friends and family beyond our physical location is compelling enough for people to create accounts even when Internet access isn’t always readily available. This is probably not news, but after the first point above, it is a reminder to not make assumptions about who in your community uses which platforms and the kind of information or engagement they may want to have there. Looking only at data about Internet access in the home, one might think that people in your community aren’t online at all, or don’t want to receive email or updates on social media, when this very well may not be the case. It might sound silly or too simple, but I always encourage organizations – no matter their size – to actually ask their supporters which tools they use, and listen to the answers.

Limitations Often Encourage Innovation

During my time at KAUST I was able to meet with various student groups as well as university staff to learn more about their projects, initiatives, and ideas. Just as I experienced in Romania, preconceived ideas about the limitations innovators and entrepreneurs must be under in countries with far less infrastructure and the assumed lack of products and ideas that must exist are squashed immediately. When given no boundaries, it is often much harder to create something useful and new. But given limitations of any kind, people are driven to new ideas and solutions. I was also excited to see incredible openness to feedback and collaboration! Something I often see less of in the US than I think those outside this country think exists.

I’d love to hear your stories and experiences from working outside the US, especially in the Middle East!

(Photo: KAUST and The Beacon, taken by me.)

Date: January 23, 2013

Location: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology

Topic: A Beginner’s Guide to Social Media

Description: Social media presents a confusing blur of personal and professional profiles. In a tightly integrated community like ours, social media use requires special consideration. This 3-hour course showcases real-world examples to help you discover how best to protect, positively promote, and selectively manage your online personal and professional profiles, all while maintaining your connections to family, friends, colleagues and networks. The course will include a lecture providing insight into the best practices of featured tools, and a hands-on learning component to help participants explore the tools directly on their laptops or in small group facilitated discussions.

Related Links:

• KAUST
• Course listing in Acadox
• Slides 
• Blog post reflections

When budgets are small or time is running out, many people turn to Do-It-Yourself options for holiday gifts. I know I’ve done it: from homemade soap to custom spice mixes, it’s fun to create something for people you love. It makes me feel like I’m giving of myself and still giving “something”. But, one thing I’ve learned through the process is that I actually end up spending at least as much money and certainly a ton of time putting those gifts together. This year, I thought about my options, and decided to try something a bit different: giving gifts that support others.

Supporting local businesses

This is always high on my list, but I made sure that this year our gifts came from shops owned locally, featuring products made locally as well. This means that products had less transportation costs and are tied to sustaining the community’s economy. For me, my favorite part of shopping locally means that I can create relationships with the shop owners and learn more about the products and producers they work with. I’ve found some of my favorite things this way and enjoy being able to share recommendations with friends – then it is a gift and a connection!

Supporting real crafters

I know I said that I’ve taken my turn a few times with DIY projects, but I’m just a casual crafter. Etsy certainly makes it easy to find those crafters that make my homemade soap look like a class experiment! I’ve also found with Etsy that sellers are eager and open to talk with you about the products they use and how they are working to be sustainable as well. This year, I took it a step further and connected with an incredibly talented crafter locally (double whammy!) so that we could meet in person to discuss the gift idea and ensure it is going to be perfect.

Supporting real impact

The holidays are also the end of the year when many nonprofits are running fundraising campaigns and preparing for the next year. I have given DonorsChoose.org gift cards as “thank you” gifts in the past (especially for speakers or presenters!) and enjoy hearing when someone writes back to tell me which project they funded and why. Razoo also has gift cards you can purchase online and email to recipients, and instead of giving to a classroom project like DonorsChoose.org, Razoo cards can be used to donate to over 1 Million organizations!

Whether you’re a Millennial, budget-conscious, DIY-specialist, or not, I certainly recommend these three options for your last-minute holiday shopping!

Photo: Flickr gazeronly

I recently got my copy of Measuring the Networked Nonprofit by Beth Kanter and Katie Delahaye Paine. In the foreward, Beth and Katie say that “measurement is the secret sauce; we provide the recipe.” And that they do!

It doesn’t matter what event I am speaking at, or who the participants are in the room, I can’t think of a single time I’ve spoken about nonprofit technology topics and not had at least one hand raised in the audience to ask about the number of Facebook fans an organization “should” have, or the “best” time of day to tweet, or even the frequency of posting videos on YouTube. In the book, Beth and Katie identify a number of themes. One that really speaks to me is the point that “measurement helps nonprofits understand and improve their social networks.” Often, nonprofit leaders and staff think of data as something that helps us decide on something new (a new program, a new service, a new engagement opportunity); unfortunately, we don’t always remember that data also helps us make decisions about what we are already doing. Here’s a case study of my own!

To Link or Not to Link

Before I worked at NTEN, I managed the NetSquared program at TechSoup Global. As part of that role, I was in charge of our various social media channels, including Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. At that time, most of NetSquared’s content came from the community blog, where anyone working at the intersection of technology and social impact could create a profile and contribute to the blog with stories, case studies, and more. The content strategy was to reflect the same community focus on the blog onto our other channels, both highlighting community members’ content as well as creating a space where people could continue sharing on their platform of choice. All of that translated to tweeting out links to blog posts all the time.

Watching the metrics every week, though, it was clear we weren’t looking just for traffic to the blog. We were looking to build the same kind of group sharing on social platforms that we were seeing on the blog. We also saw that retweets as a total or an average really varied. So, we dug deeper. In an attempt to ensure that we connected the “why” of whether something was successful or not to the “what” of the content itself, I started splitting apart our metrics. Instead of watching the average or total retweets for the week, I was looking at the number of tweets that went out with a link and the number that went out without a link, and the corresponding rewteets.

Wow, that’s when things got interesting! I started to see that the more I posted without a link or retweeted someone else’s link, the more response and engagement I built within the channel (in this case, Twitter). But when I tried to push people off of Twitter and over to the blog posts, there was much less of a response. Having a better understanding of what was going on, I could make a decision about our current strategy (not just a new one for later). To ensure that our content stayed balanced, I made sure that our metrics tracking documents separated % of posts with a link from those without a link and set goals for the weekly post balance.

Get your copy!

I am giving away a copy of Beth and Katie’s book to be sure that I do my part to spread the knowledge and share the insights. But, I don’t just want to mail it someone, I want to use this as an opportunity to catalyze some peer sharing! Please leave a comment below about how you’ve used data to help make a decision about the social channels you were already using. Just getting started? Share what you’d like to try! I’ll select a comment at random to win the book and we can all win by learning from each other. (I’ll pick someone on Friday, December 7th – so hurry!)

Why the dog photo? Well, that’s my dog and he’s pretty cute, but Beth and Katie are also running a dog vs cat photo contest.

Date: November 27, 2012

Location: online with Blackbaud Australia

Topic: Social Change Anytime Everywhere: Best Practices to Build a Multichannel Campaign Plan

Description: From your website to social media, email to mobile messages, online to offline, multichannel strategies require coordination and creative thinking across teams and departments and a focus on the core of your work beyond any one specific call to action. Please join us as Allyson Kapin, Founding Partner of Rad Campaign, and Amy Sample Ward show you how to craft an online multichannel campaign plan to meet your mission and campaign goals, and how other organisations are successfully integrating multichannel efforts into their work

Related Links: Get the recording

I come across so many great conversations, ideas, and resources all over the web every day. Here are some of the most interesting things I’ve found recently (as of November 11th). You can join the conversations in the comments, or click through to the original posts to find what others are saying.

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• The Rise Of Women In Tech | MBA Online – “It’s time for the old adage that women neither like nor do well in math and science be put to rest …The benefits for women who enter tech are hard to deny. They experience smaller wage gaps due to gender than women in other industries. But the relationship between women and tech companies isn’t one-sided – the companies get some nice perks, too. Companies whose boards of directors contain 3 or more female members had higher returns on sales, returns on investments and returns on equity. The infographic below delves deeper into how the phenomenon of women in tech is on the rise.”
• Social Media for Social Good [Infographic] – “In our new Social Media for Social Good infographic, we profile several successful grassroots and nonprofit campaigns, explain tactics that increase the impact of a message, and explore emerging trends in charitable giving and volunteering.”
• A new study asks: Should the nonprofit and charitable sectors engage in political activity? : Bright+3 – “Should nonprofits engage in political activity on issues that broadly impact the nonprofit sector? That’s one question posed by a new study, Beyond The Cause: The Art and Science of Advocacy, and the conclusion is, well, inconclusive. It turns out that there just isn’t much consensus across the sector on this very basic – if difficult – question.”
• It’s official: News consumption is all about social and mobile — Tech News and Analysis – “New research from the Pew Center into news consumption habits shows that the impact of mobile and social continues to grow. Almost twice as many users got news from a mobile device compared with 2010, and almost three times as many got news from a social network.” Where do you get your news?
• ROI: How Infographics Can Help Your Business [Infographic] | Social Media Today – “With the infographic craze in full-swing, you might ask: Are infographics just a pretty way of displaying data, or will they actually benefit my business? Earlier this summer we published a Sensible Social Media Checklist for Business. The first version of the infographic was published on June 15th and included Facebook, Linked-In, and Twitter. The popularity of the graphic prompted us to publish a second version of the checklist to include even more social media channels – specifically Pinterest, YouTube, and Google+. The second version of our infographic went online on July 19th, and was even more successful! Hundreds of bloggers posted our checklist on their own blogs, and over 2000 people downloaded the checklist as a reference to use in their own social media strategy. To showcase our results, we decided to create an infographic to demonstrate the ROI (Return on Infographics) and results we experienced.”