As part of our ongoing research project into the future of membership-based advocacy organizations, we’ve been talking to folks from “new” as well as “older” groups focused on issue-organizing. We’re hoping to find out how the nature of civic engagement and mobilization is changing – along with the business models needed to support this kind of work. Our hypothesis is that new technologies such as Web 2.0 are accelerating change in the sector, and that the nature of how we support causes will shift – from writing checks to being more actively engaged, or ultimately doing both. (For more thoughts on this topic, see Cynthia Gibson’s earlier post.)

All of which brings me to MomsRising.org – perhaps one of the most compelling “new” models for issue-organizing. The mission of MomsRising is to mobilize mothers, and as they say, anyone who has a mother, on issues that pertain to their economic security and well-being, along with that of their families – things like health care, paid family leave policy, flexible work options, affordable early learning/childcare, environmental toxins, and ending wage and hiring discrimination against mothers. Launched in 2006, MomsRising is a trans-partisan organization that started on a shoestring budget (supported in part by the Packard Foundation), and with a very small staff. It has grown quickly – now counting more than a million members on its list. In fact, MomsRising grew its list substantially last spring, when it launched a viral video campaign called the “MomsRising Mother of the Year Award” which lets you insert your favorite mom’s name and email a customized video to her. This hilarious video, which has been viewed by over viewed by over 12 million people, subtly weaves in information about economic discrimination against working mothers. The campaign has been blogged about extensively, and is often held up as a model for creative ways to build a membership list.

We recently had a chance to talk to Mary Olivella, MomsRising’s Vice President, who is involved in setting strategy for the organization, about what they are learning about engagement and mobilization–both online and off. Here’s a quick summary of the highlights I took away from our conversation:

• MomsRising is focused on “movement-building” and large scale systems change, not just building an organization. They ultimately want to change policy and business practice; change the popular culture; and, improve democracy by engaging more women in the political process.
• They explicitly take a partnership/ network approach and work with and through other organizations focused on issues their constituents care about. E.g. they work with policy groups, environmental groups, social justice and poverty prevention groups, etc. and collaborate to move issues forward. MomsRising can quickly mobilize tens of thousands of people on an issue, but they recognize that their partners bring deep issue-expertise.
• Since MomsRising is much less interested in building an “organization” per se, they have very low overhead and no central office. They operate with a very light staffing model: roughly 8 FTEs made up of 12 total staff, some of whom work part-time, many of whom live in different states – supporting over a million members!. Most of the work is coordinated online.
• MomsRising focuses on their membership’s needs—and elevating those voices into the political process. They are member-centric, not organization-centric. The organization is there to support the members, not the other way around.
• Consequently, listening and responding to their membership is critical to their success – they say “we have multiple ways to listen and engage in a dialogue with a diverse range of mothers across the country”. Members help determine which issues the group focuses on – not the other way around. They are not a single-issue organization, rather, they focus on multiple issues of concern to women from varying economic and ethnic backgrounds because they believe that to build a truly family-friendly America we need to address the overall pattern of how policies and business practices are developed.
• Data analysis is also critical to their success: they constantly evaluate response rates (to campaigns/ emails, etc), to understand what is working, and make adjustments as they go – it’s a process of continual iteration. Running MomsRising is as much a science as it is an art.
• They are working to combine online and offline organizing and see that as critical to their success. They encourage members to “meet up” in their own neighborhoods and run online campaigns designed to get people to show up in person at a rally.
• There are multiple technologies in their tool-kit and they combine them in any variety of ways depending on the campaign: website, blogs, ties to external bloggers, online media sites, Facebook, Twitter, online ads. Increasingly they are looking at ways to use mobile technology (cell phones) for engagement.
• They don’t silo their skills: Their team consists of a multicultural group of campaign organizers (all women) who do both strategy and tech implementation – that is, they need to be skilled in issue organizing as well as be proficient in various tech tools. MomsRising believes it is critical for staff to understand the online tools well enough to “push the limit” on campaigns. There is not a divide between “organizers” and “techies” as in many nonprofits.

To sum it up, MomsRising’s critical competencies are speed, flexibility, decentralization, integration, holistic thinking, listening, dialogue, engagement, mobilization, constant learning, iteration, and rigorous analysis.

Their biggest challenges: 1) educating funders about this form of ‘new organizing’ that takes a multi-issue and multi-strategy approach; 2) convincing funders to invest in an organization that is willing to test multiple approaches knowing full well that some will fail but that this experimentation is critical to being able to find ‘break-through’ strategies – it’s challenging because it’s a “non-linear” model; and 3) evaluating and documenting their success: they can do this well at tactical level (e.g. response to email campaign, etc) as well as when their work has played a key roll in passing a particular piece of legislation or influenced company policy, but they are also working to obtain resources to be able to measure traction over longer term periods against larger goals of cultural and wide-scale policy change.

Does MomsRising remind of you of other novel approaches you’ve seen? Can you think of a way to apply it to your work?

This article was originally posted on Working Wikily at http://workingwikily.net/?p=1046 by Heather McLeod Grant:

Heather McLeod Grant, senior consultant at the Monitor Institute and a principal contributor to Working Wikily A published author, speaker, and advisor to high-impact organizations, Heather is the co-author of Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits, which was named a Top Ten Book of 2007 by the Economist.

Be sure to read Cheryl Contee's guest post about a highly successful video campaign implemented by Mom's Rising.

Today, Pete Cashmore had a piece on CNN "Next Year's Twitter? Foursquare" predicting that FourSquare will be the darling of 2010.

Early adopters have been all over FourSquare and downright bullish about location based social networks using mobile phones in general, despite some privacy concerns.

As I was reading this I wondered when someone was going to launch a fundraiswer with FourSquare.  Kismet, stumbled upon this today: 

FourSquare announced today it was partnering with TechiesGiveBack.org  to raise money for CampInteractive, a local not-for-profit which empowers inner city youth through the inspiration of the outdoors and the creative power of technology.
 
FourSquare - the innovative mobile social networking game - agreed to team up with TechiesGiveBack in order to make it easy and entertaining to raise funds for charity. By allowing a third-party to sponsor the FourSquare Leader Board during the NY Tech Gives Back event, users can benefit the cause simply by “checking in” at venues they would regularly attend. In addition to the regular system of points and rewards, a ratio will be created between points earned and dollars, with the funds raised donated to CampInteractive.
  
Dennis Crowley, FourSquare’s founder and CEO said today: “This has been something we’ve wanted to do with FourSquare for a long time. We’re really excited about working with TechiesGiveBack and are looking forward to hearing from potential sponsors. This is a great way to give.”
 
TechiesGiveBack.org is dedicated to unifying the New York tech industry for the purpose of improving the local community through volunteering and fundraising.  Co-founder Adam Gillman said today, "We believe that there are a lot of talented individuals in the tech community who are willing and able to give back, but just need an outlet. We decided to create an organization to facilitate those activities." Simon Kirk, Co-Founder continued, “We’d like to get as many people as we can to participate. One way to do that is to be innovative. There’s no reason why giving back shouldn’t be fun.”
 
In addition to fundraising, TechiesGiveBack.org has planned to bring 50 children from CampInteractive’s program to Manhattan for an afternoon of ice skating and activities.

I think I want to change Garrison Keillor's well known descriptor of Lake Wobegone.  It goes "Minnesota from"where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average." Let's add  "and where the charitable donors are extraordinarily generous."

Earlier this week, I wrote about giveMN.org as an example of local and regional online giving initiatives.  GiveMN a new online resource that hopes to encourage more Minnesotans to give and help create a stronger nonprofit community for Minnesota.   On Tuesday, November 17, they held their first "Give to the Max Day" competition where all donations during the 24 hour period were matched, plus there were incentives for organizations that received the largest number of unique donations.

The unofficial results:  $14 million raised for more than 3400 nonprofits

I knew it was potentially possible based on a research study funded by the The San Francisco Foundation and The Saint Paul Foundation demonstrated that high dollar donors — especially 30-49 year-olds — use the social web, but have yet to be engaged by strong, trustworthy philanthropic organizations. This was among the key findings of the  “Community Philanthropy 2.0,” conducted by Geoff Livingston (he is a Society for New Communications Research Fellow), Qui Diaz and myself. 

According to a project staff person, "The factoid that blows me away is that more than 45,000 Minnesotans donated!  More than 350 orgs received $10,000 or more.  We're having lots of fun today hearing anecdotes from happy nonprofits all over the state.  What we are most excited about is the number of organizations who are reporting they got new donors.  The most heartwarming thank yous are from small ones who have never had online fundraising capacity before and are just thrilled."   The campaigns were multi-channel using a variety of fundraising and marketing techniques, including social media.

Match Days have been used by community foundations to stimulate local charitable giving.  They are done in a condensed time period - 24-48 hours and local nonprofit rally for donations.   Last November, The Columbus Foundation's Power Philanthropy Day was highly successful, raising over $1 million dollar.  However, Minnesota has set the bar pretty high!

They are estimating that more than 20,000 donors set up accounts on the giving site.  Now that the recruitment phase has done a fantastic job, the next challenge is to build an active base for an ongoing community.  The key will be the staff hired to make GIVEMN engaging to donors.   Plans may include campaigns that are focused on particular types of charities around the state.  The goal is to grow the giving pie.

The GiveMN site is designed for both individuals and organizations.   Individuals can browse the site and find local nonprofits and make a donation online.  Or, if they want, they can launch their own fundraiser for an organization.    For nonprofits, GiveMN offers simple, secure tools to achieve their goals.  The site is powered by Razoo, a giving platform.

TweetsGiving 2009

If the dollar amounts from fundraising campaigns using social networks are disappointing, one response is to say this doesn't work and stop doing it.  An alternative approach is to experiment and find ways to improve results.   

Twitter for fundraising has been around for two years (read Shel Israel's Twitterville), as of 2009, there seems to be three different tactical models for Twitter fundraising approaches emerging:

1)   Sponsored Tweets/HashTags: Donors do not have to open their own check books, but instead retweet or use a hashtag to leverage a donation from a corporate sponsor to a charity.  

2)   Spreading Person to Person Asks:   This approach uses twitter and encourages people to ask their friends through Twitter to donate to a charity and spread the ask to their friends.  Successful versions of this approach tie a human emotion to the click action - blame, thankfulness, etc.

3)   Tweet Meet Give:   This approach weaves together online and offline activities and leverages "Tweet Ups."  Amanda Rose and Twestival pioneered a networked version of this approach to benefit charity:water, but it has also been used by single nonprofits.

Sponsored Tweets/Hashtags

Sponsored Tweets or Hashtags is a form of click philanthropy and has been used by nonprofits on their web sites before it was common Facebook and Twitter.   

Take for example,  The Free Rice Game, an interactive online game that donated rice to the United Nations World Food Program based on clicking.   All you had to do was click and play a word game, and that leveraged a food donation to fight hunger.  The game was very engaging for adults and children alike.  

For each click, 10 grains of rice is donated.  That may seem like a small amount, it is important to remember that millions of people have played the game since its inception in 2007.   It is everyone together that makes the difference.  The Free Rice Game has generated enough rice to feed millions of people since it started in October 2007 or a total of 70,991,387,110 grains of rice as of October 2009.

In 2008, we started to see click action philanthropy on Facebook with Lil Green Patch raising over $100,000 for the Nature Conservancy.  In 2009,  it has evolved to incorporate a networked approach and there are even platforms or communities of people dedicated to click action philanthropy, including Every Wun.   And it comes as no surprise to see click action philanthropy become more common on Twitter, with the platform Twitcause.  

More and more we are seeing fundraisers incorporate Retweet This Message or Use This HashTag to leverage donations from a corporate sponsor or to simply spread the fundraising message from friend to friend.  This transition began a year ago as Twitter came into its own as a charitable gift spreader. (See my Twitter Fundraising Timeline.)   We've also seen some versions of Twitter fundraisers not do too well - take for example this follow me Twitter and I'll donate a dollar to a charity or applications that integrated donation engines in Tweets.

TwitCause, a service not unlike the popular fundraising application Causes on Facebook, only built on top of Twitter has been implementing some new interesting twists on click fundraising on Twitter.  As a basic service, TwitCause will find a cause to support (partially based on community feedback) and use Twitter to drive awareness for it. They also ask that you donate some money.   

Here's an example of a campaign to raise money on TwitCause for honeybee research. 

The fundraising campaign added some extra buzz, a sponsor, Ice cream maker Häagen-Dazs,  willing to pay for any Twitter user who tweets out the support for the cause.  The sponsorship worked liked this: Häagen-Dazs was offering to donate $1 per tweet for the first 500 people that tweet everyday with the hashtag #HelpHoneyBees. The money was donated to UC Davis research project to further look into Colony Collapse Disorder, as well as help fund the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, which aims to teach people about how to create their own honeybee farms.  

I got some of the back story form Julio Vasconcellos, VP for Business Development, for the Experience Project which operates TwitCause.  "I think the #HelpHoneyBees hashtag campaign was very effective and helped
raise $7k for the honey bee research as well as get Häagen-Dazs some great exposure around the contributions they've been making to the cause (and of course, to their brand)."

For those that want the numbers:

• 6,818 tweets sent out during the official week (several more before) by 3,294 unique Twitterers
• Total followers reached was slightly over 5MM (these are non-unique followers, basically a sum of all the followers of each of those 3kTwitterers)
• Total Twitter impressions generated 12.4MM (here an "Twitter impression" is anytime a follower is presented with a tweet - if I have 100 followers and tweet twice, that's 200 "Twitter impressions")
• Häagen-Dazs donated $7,000 to UC Davis for research into colony collapse disorder which is afflicting honey bee populations
• Participation from some celebrities and notables

Vasconcellos predicts that we'll be seeing more and more sponsored tweet programs of all shapes and sizes. There are already a number of active causes on TwitCause.  And some are building their own Twitter Fundraising Drive pages for sponsored Tweet Campaigns.   Here's one to benefit Make A Wish Foundation, each tweet will drive a 5 cent donation from LeapFish to raise $10,000 to send a sick child to Disneyland.  That's 200,000 tweets which compared to these other efforts seems like an ambitious goal.  I hope they make it for Jacob's sake or if not I hope they just donate the money anyway.

Spreading Person to Person Asks

Scott Henderson  called it "creative philanthropy" but it is really the Twitter version of person to person fundraising asks for small amounts, taking advantage of Twitter's ability to easily spread person-to-person fundraising solicitations.  He describes last Thanksgiving's Tweetsgiving campaign and Blame Drew's Cancer campaign.  

This year Stacey and her flock (I'm one of the honorary turkeys) will launch this year's Tweetsgiving, another 48-hour celebration.  They have integrated the Twestival strategy - tweet, meet, and give by organizing meetups  from different cities to help promote the drive.

I think one of the important qualities that make these and other retweet or hashtag fundraisers successful is to tap into human emotion.  Good fundraisers (and marketers) know that tugging at the heart strings can open the wallet.  Stacey is doing this with gratitude, Drew is doing it by blame (blaming his cancer).

So, the click to donate action needs an emotional lever as well as a money lever.  

Tweet, Meet, Give

Twestival has had the most success at scaling this model.  Plans for 2010 Twestival are already in the works.

Conclusion

We are all curious to see these approaches fundraising on Twitter become a standard practice both for nonprofits and  for corporate sponsors.   Some questions:

• How to set a realistic goal (total dollars = $ per retweet or hashtag) that helps the nonprofit actually implement the project or solve the need?
• What is too ambitious or too low a goal?
• How does the ongoing affinity/relationship building online and offline impact amounts raised?
• How do amounts raised compare - sponsored tweets or person-to-person asks or tweet-meet-give approaches?
• How to make a click philanthropy action on Twitter engaging and fun?
• How to best incorporate human emotion in the Twitter?
• Will this approach become so popular and so many nonprofits and corporations using it that it will create "Cause Retweet Fatigue"
• Is there value in the impressions metric?
• What's next for Twitter fundraising?

When we kicked off the WeAreMedia, A Social Media Starter Kit for Nonprofits 18 months ago, we included two areas about content creation.  There was a strategy module that shared best practices in storytelling and a tactical module called "Tell Your Story Social Media Style."   The later focused on how nonprofit could become social content creators, that is how to effectively communicate the organization's story through social media channels like blogs, video, podcasts, and photos.  We also touched on user-generated content, inspiring others to tell your organization's story in their own words.

(1) Web Site Content:  This is your homebase.  Your organization has a degree control over the creation of this content, most obviously what you publish on your organization's web site.    It's branded, it is edited, and scheduled and part of a formal web content strategy.  

Let's back up a second and think about what the heck a web site content strategy is.  Kristina Halvorson has a good definition: Content strategy plans for the creation, publication, and governance of useful, usable content.   She goes on to describe it's components:

• Editorial strategy
• Web writing
• Metadata
• Search engine optimization
• Content management strategy
• Content channel distribution strategy

Now, we know or at least we hope, that more and more organization's web site content is becoming more social.   That their web site may be or incorporate a blog as well as integrate, videos, podcasts, and photos.   Many web sites are also integrating social features or social networks.

(2) Social Outposts:    This is your organization's presence on social networking or social media outposts like Twitter, Facebook, or other places.   It is a combination of content you create or that has been re-purposed from your organization's web site, but should also include what people remix or share.  This content is a organic, always growing and changing. It is mostly community created.

(3) Engagement:  I'm calling this "co-created content" because I don't have any better way to describe it.    We know that ongoing deep engagement and building relationships is the heart and soul of social media success.  Having a conversation with your supporters is part of the work. It is also content created by your supporters that they share through social outposts and that you re-purpose and remix back through other channels including your web site.  

I've been thinking about this intersection of content that the organization creates and content that is created by the audience.  There is a balancing act of how you facilitate that without controlling it.    It's how you use the conversation to generate, aggregate, and facilitate social content.

• How do you plan your engagement and content strategy so they work together in perfect harmony?
• What are the specific content co-creation tasks that you need to do? Have a checklist?  List of tasks?
  
• Do you need a specific campaign or is this an ongoing activity?
• Is your organization thinking about a social content strategy?

Share your ideas on the WeAreMedia Wiki.

Resources:

Content Creation Strategy for Nonprofits by Kivi Leroux Miller
Content Creates Engagement by Duct Tape Marketing
Social Media Engagement by John Cass
A Simple Presence Framework by Chris Brogan
Taking Content Strategy Personally by Web Worker Daily
The Discipline of Content Strategy by Kristina Halvorson

Give to the Max in Minnesota Day

I've been noticing a social media spin on making charitable donations in your community, regional, or state.   Here's three recent examples.

1)  GiveMN

GiveMN a new online resource that hopes to encourage more Minnesotans to give and help create a stronger nonprofit community for Minnesota.  It is designed for both individuals and organizations.   Individuals can browse the site and find local nonprofits and make a donation online.  Or, if they want, they can launch their own fundraiser for an organization.    For nonprofits, GiveMN offers simple, secure tools to achieve their goals.  The site is powered by Razoo, a giving platform.

Today, is Give To the Max Day
where any donation to a nonprofit will be matched. This might even inspire a few out of state donors to give to nonprofits in the land of 10,000 lakes where the men are strong, women are good lucking and children above average.

2.)  I Live Here, I Give Here

This site, "I Live Here, I Give Here" is to draw attention to giving to local nonprofits in Austin, TX.  According to the site:

Austin is no doubt a caring community. But we don't act on our values by giving more to charitable organizations. National studies consistently find that Austinites give far less to charitable causes than people in other cities. In fact, Austin is ranked 48th out of the 50 largest cities in the nation in per capita giving.

 

The mission of the I Live Here, I Give Here campaign is to change that.

The partners are a mix of local foundations and corporations.  The site lists local nonprofits and links to a donation page.

3.) Chase's Your Communities Your Vote

Facebook users will be able to choose from more than 500,000 small and local charities to decide which community organizations they want to receive donations totaling millions of dollars from Chase  corporate philanthropy fund.  The Facebook application encourages Facebook users to vote for which small and local non profits will receive donations totaling $5 million.  The eligible charity receiving the most votes will be awarded $1 million, the top five runners-up will receive $100,000 each and the 100 finalists, including the top winners, will be awarded $25,000 each. 

You type in your zip code or name of a local charity and then vote.  You get 20 votes.   They'll be using a tiered voting system.  I tried to find some of my favorites, but upon reading the fine print noticed that only particular types of charities were listed.

This is similar in contest design and implementation as the Target Challenge that focused on ten large nonprofit organizations six months ago.   What I like this about this approach is that they are targeting smaller nonprofits and local charities.

Have you seen other examples of local or regional giving hubs?    Do you think regional/local giving campaigns will make a difference in a difficult economy or just add to the noise? 

Last week I wrote about a pair of surveys that looked at social media and nonprofits.  One came to the conclusion that social media was a waste of time; the other talked about strategic implications on how to be successful.

If you want to be successful using social media in your fundraising strategy, remember:

• Build your network before you need it.  Don't have your first interaction be a request for money
• Focus on engagement and relationship building all the time.  You don't have to be doing it at hyper level at the time, but remember relationship building doesn't have an on and off switch.
• Story telling is important - as much as can creatively tell a compelling story, the more success you will have.
• Should be part of a multi-channel effort -- they all work together.   What's important is figuring out the right amount of time to invest in particular channels.
• Focus on the outcomes and keep reporting on the work you are doing.

Last year, I made a prediction about social media as part of the fundraising mix and I still feel strongly about it:

I believe social media will become as ubiquitous to development offices as is the phone, direct mail,  and email.  In the next decades, we’ll see rapid adoption of social media for many nonprofit purposes, including fundraising and as gen y's come into their own as donors.   Some of the new tools now being launched  to create a single profile that can be used across social networks will as analysts predict make social networks like air.   We're still in the early stages of social media as in the early days of the web and online fundraising, so, we are in the "it's hype, and not going to last" phase.  We're still in transition and the transition will take many years, but I believe fundraising with social media tools will not just be a niche source of income or novelty.

Peter Dietz, founder of Social Actions, pulled out his crystal ball last year, and said “individuals will come to your organization with the expectation of being full partners in your work, not just dollar wells to be tapped when cash is needed. Donations will be a consequence of meaningful engagement, not a measurement of it.”

So, when nonprofits use the best practices around meaningful engagement they see results.  Last month at PopTech, I heard Paula Kahumbu, a PopTech Fellow,  talk about her organization's work and use of social media. 

A compelling example good social media fundraising practice comes from WildlifeDirect, a nonprofit based in Nairobi, Kenya founded by Dr. Richard Leakey.    According to Paula Kahumbu, Executive Director,  their approach to fundraising was to build a worldwide online conservancy community.  Says Paula, “In 2004, a group of committed conservationists, led by Dr Richard Leakey, became convinced that social networks provided the best opportunity for securing a future for wildlife: an approach that could harness the collective energy of countless good conservationists and combine it with millions of individuals around the world who have a genuine concern for the future of the planets wildlife and unique habitats.”   

In 2007, WildlifeDirect had  7 blogs in the Democratic Republic of Congo written by conservationists in the field. These blogs raised $350,000 to pay rangers salaries and help save mountain gorillas in the Virunga National Park.  Says Paula, “Two years later,  have over 70 blogs, donations have risen 4 fold, as has website visitation.  We treat our donors as partners in our programs.”

Through blogs written about a specific animal by a conservation professional, WildlifeDirect  enables individual donors around the world to communicate directly with the people that they are funding.  They’ve created a global movement powerful that can respond to any conservation emergency anywhere more swiftly and efficiently than large bureaucratic agencies to  reverse the catastrophic loss of habitats and species and secure the future of wildlife in Africa, Asia and around the world.  

Update: Honored to be linked to from the Lion's Page!

On November 19th 2009, at The Paley Center for Media’s International Council Event, ThinkSocial will be recognizing three outstanding examples of innovation, featuring – an individual, an initiative and a collaboration between institutions, which together represent powerful models for how social media can be used to address global problems.

The final selection process includes three elements:

• the votes and comments of our panel of expert jurors;
• feedback from the staff of the Paley Center for Media;
• votes and comments from the public through the ThinkSocial site.

You can view the full list of 33 nominations here:  http://think-social.org/awards/final-nominees

I was honored to be included on the panel of expert jurors with corporate co-chairs Facebook, PepsiCo, Meebo and Loreen Arbus Foundation.  The judges include:

• Randi Zuckerberg – Facebook
• William Paley, Paley Center Board Member
• Uzodinma Iweala, Author Beasts of No Nation; Columbia Medical School
• Beth Kanter – Beth’s Blog
• Kenny Miller – EVP Creative, MTV
• Rob Kramer – Founder and CEO of PopRule
• Tom Watson – CEO of Causewired
• Catherine Genaracous, General Manager, Live Earth
• Mahyad Tousi, Co-Founder at BoomGen Studios
• Scott Kurnit – Paley Center Board Member; Founder About.com
• Ami Dar – Founder and CEO, Idealist
• Ian Schafer – CEO, Deep Focus
• Reza Aslan, Professor, Author No God But God, How to Win a Cosmic War
• Stephanie Agresta – Executive Vice President, Global Director of Digital Strategy and Social Media, Porter Novelli
• Colin Nagy – Partner, Attention
• Jamie Kantrowitz, former MySpace & MySpace Music executive
• Paul Meyer, Co-founder Voxiva
• Raquel Recuero, associate professor and researcher at Universidade Católica de Pelotas (UCPel)

Good luck to everyone who has nominated!

My friend, Manny Hernandez, founder of Tuiabetes Community and author of Ning for Dummies, let me know that today, November 14 is World Diabetes Day.  Today, at 14:00 hours (local time), thousands of people with diabetes will test their blood sugar, do 14 minutes of exercise, test again and share their results on TuDiabetes or on Twitter. 

He is using a tool called "Twibbon" that makes it easy for people to change their avatar to incorporate a visual for a particular cause.

Exactly two years ago, the idea of changing the visual of your Twitter avatar to support a cause spontaneously happened as part of the Pea Fund Fridays, a Twitter fundraising campaign created by Connie Reece to support breast cancer research to honor Susan Reynolds.  If I remember correctly, it was Robert Scoble who did it first and others took his cue.   See the range of creative expression in the flickr group. 

Two years later, changing your Twitter icon in support of a cause (even though some call this "slacktivism"),  is a techniques being used.   Remember the sea of green avatars last summer in support of the Iran?   There are tools now to make it easy for supporters to change their avatars, although you don't get the range of self-expression.

What do you think?  Is changing your Twitter profile in support of a cause a silly click action or the first rung on ladder of engagement to get people to do something offline?

Steve over at Polar Limited like me, loves book.  Also like me, he's doing a networked social media book giveaway.

Steve has convinced these seven authors Mitch Joel, Tamar Weinberg, Tara Hunt, Chris Brogan + Julien Smith, Gary Vaynerchuk, Avinash Kaushik and John Jantsch to offer up free copies of their books.

You can win a this set of books, signed and personalized by the authors that will teach you how to be human through your computer, generate tons of social capital, and be a social media virtuoso - plus have some great books to curl up with during the holidays.  

Here’s how you win:

1.  Leave a comment below telling me your social media plans for 2010, and why you think these 7 books will help you achieve what you want to accomplish.  Best comment in within the next week wins the set.

2. Visit one of the following blogs who have the same set of books to give away.  If you really want to increase your chances of winning, you’ll probably want to visit each of them and leave a comment there as well.  Here’s where to go (if the blog post is not up yet, check back later in the day):

www.kaushik.net/avinash:  this is the amazing blog of Web 2.0 Analytics author Avinash Kaushik.  He’s simply the smartest guy in the world when it comes to analytics and what it means for your business.

Tara Hunt

Steve's Blog

I think there is one important book missing from the library, so if you leave a comment here - you'll get a copy of Shel Israel's Twitterville.

Yesterday,  NTEN;s Holly Ross hosted an online conversation with Seth Godin and me, along with Roxy Allen and 100 plus NTEN members.   These "Ask the Expert" chats take place on the phone with a online chat back channel.

This conversation came about after Seth's provoking post "The Problem with Non" took a swing at nonprofits for lack of adoption of social media, saying it was all due to fear.  This caused an angry uproar on nonprofit blogs and Twitter from nonprofits saying there were plenty examples of nonprofits using social media effectively!

Seth quickly reached out to me via Roxy Allen suggested that I do an interview. In turn, I suggested that we have a conversation with the nonprofit technology community with Holly Ross at NTEN as host.   This conversation took place yesterday.

Holly started with a great question, "What's in the DNA of each of these orgs that allows them to embrace this change and experiment?"

Seth told a story about men's shavers that illustrated his key point about innovation:

• Innovation isn't always about the product, it's about the marketing and communications around the product.
• Some organizations looks at landscape changes as opportunities, and others look at them as threats 
• Our patience with the lack of innovation that is the problem

Participants in the chat shared their impatience with the pace of organizational change, acknowledging that "All NPO's grow from experimenting, they just get freaked out by the tools."

It made think of one of his recent posts about "Asking Why," but while he was talking about shavers, it made me think of hair, and naturally that made me think of hair shirts and quote from Rob Stein about transparency as a hair shirt. 

My answer to Holly's question was that organization's that are innovative have leadership that is open to public learning and models that in the organization.  There's no better example than the public dashboards of the Indiana Art Museum - Innovation is about opening up and letting the outside in.

Roxy Allen mentioned in the chat that one of the biggest changes will be branding "from the inside out" - employees have a mouth piece - which is hard to control and a culture change.  She recommended a book from the HR perspective called Brand Inside Essentials. Rekha, shared this essay about the generational differences in public media organizations when it comes to innovation.

The back-channel had a poll feature and one of the questions about change agents inside of nonprofits.   One point that Seth made that really stuck with me was about leadership.  That it doesn't matter what role the change agent has - but they put on a good show, model passion, and inspire people to change.

We covered a lot of topics - for culture change within nonprofits, nonprofit innovation, transparency, leadership, and the importance of storytelling.   We discussed the findings of some recent studies about nonprofits and social media adoption.

Holly Ross has a blog post about some of her key takeaways and Darren from the Groupery also shared his notes here.

If you participated and wrote up a post or have some takeaways, leave them in the comments.