Photo by Aussiegal

As a trainer,  I’m intensely interested in creating learning experiences that integrate or about how to use the technology for nonprofits that engage and inspire people to put the ideas into practice.    I’ve been obsessed with peer learning and self-directed learning models in my own learning and the trainings I design and facilitate.

The term Peeragogy came fluttering through my network, like a butterfly, and it caught my interest.  It resonated.  When an idea or concept makes me want to scuplt it out of mash potatoes,   I pay attention.

Peeragogy comes from Howard Rheingold via his Social Media Classroom and he explains it here:

When I participated in the Change: Education, Learning, and Technology MOOC, I grew even more interested in the intersection of digital media/networks with self-directed learners and collaborative learning methods. I knew that I wasn’t the first person to explore this space, and I was fortunate that Charley Danoff was in my second cohort of online co-learners. Danoff, it turned out, had written a paper on “Paragogy” with Joe Corneli (who coined the term). When I started talking to people about this exciting idea, some of them inevitably mishear it as “peeragogy.” Although “paragogy” is a more rationally derived word that extends “pedagogy” (teaching children) and “androgogy” (teaching adults), I’ve started calling it peeragogy because many people get the point as soon as I use the word.

UC Berkeley Regents’ Lecture: Howard Rheingold (Presented by Berkeley Center for New Media) from Berkeley Center for New Media on Vimeo.

On Monday,  Rheingold delivered the UC’s Regents Lecture, “Social Media and Peer Learning: From Mediated Pedagogy to Peeragogy” prior to working with a group of students in a seminar and launching a process to  co-construct a peeragogy handbook/sourcebook.

Rheingold published this post as a backdrop to his Monday evening talk.   He talks about the powerful combination of social media and peer learning.    His post reflects on his years of “learning in action” on his instructional practice of  peer-to-peer, global learning via social web.   What struck me was his authentic co-learning process with his students.   He explains it better here:

In retrospect, I can see the coevolution of my learning journey: my first step was to shift from conventional lecture-discussion-test classroom techniques to lessons that incorporated social media, my second step gave students co-teaching power and responsibility, my third step was to elevate students to the status of co-learner. It began to dawn on me that the next step was to explore ways of instigating completely self-organized, peer-to-peer online learning.

The ultimate test of peer learning is to organize a course without the direction of an instructor. Although subject-matter experts and skilled learning facilitators are always a bonus, it is becoming clear that with today’s tools and some understanding of how to go about it, groups of self-directed learners can organize their own courses online.

Howard’s goal is to ignite a a peer-created guide to pure peer-to-peer learning. In preparation for this project,  one of his students has prepared  a peeragogy literature review, based on his links about paragogy.

My questions:

• How can this idea be best adapted for learners in developing countries that may not enjoy the same level of internet access?
• How can this idea be best adapted for professional development activities for nonprofit folks?

This should be a fascinating learning  journey.

Remember last September when Facebook announced all those changes to individual profiles, including the timeline?    One of the changes  was that your friends and fans can do more than “Like” or “Comment”  on Facebook. Three new actions were announced at the time, including:  Read, Watch, Listen to  help people better understand what their friends are doing online.     Facebook called it the “Open Graph” and the pr people called “A revolution to the whole meaning of listening to music together or family T.V.”   You can read more about how it works from the Facebook developer notes.

You can install an app on your Facebook profile that shares an action and it goes out on your newsfeed and is shared with your friends.   In the example above, the cooking app lets a Facebook user share what they “cooked” with their friends.

Recently, some apps have been using the OpenGraph in innovate ways.   The one that caught my eye was the approach used by Ticketmaster.  They are mashing up apps,  figuring out what music you listen to on Spotify and offering up tickets that might be of interest. This is both interesting but a little scary to me.    I asked folks on my Facebook brand page what they thought.  My colleague, Devon Smith, pointed to a cool application called “Art Finder” that helps people discover their friends’ interests in fine arts.

The Open Graph and apps are becoming more and more critical for marketers given the Facebook changes.   Here’s a description from Social Media Examiner:

Last year, Facebook rolled out Open Graph, allowing brands to connect to a user’s Facebook social graph. This year, it rolled out significant changes, allowing app developers to create custom actions using any verb and object related to the activity taking place on the app.

These so-called “lightweight” activities can be defined by the app creator and pushed throughout the Facebook experience.

Here are the highlights, and how the actions affect Timeline:

• The Open Graph integrates with the News Feed, Ticker and Timeline, making the app a key part of users’ and their friends’ Facebook experiences.
• As users engage, the custom action appears on Facebook News Feed, and remains on the user’s Timeline; e.g., Jane cooked a recipe from Best Recipes app.

Changes to the structure of permissions allow a user to give permission one timefor an app to post about that user’s activity on the app thereafter.

This is how you’re seeing so many more postings about what your friends are listening to, for example, if they’re using a social sharing music app like Spotify. It even gets its own designated spot in the Timeline and displays a running list of what the user is listening to.

Debra Askanase has a post about Facebook Timeline Apps and profiles three fundraising vendors that have developed timeline apps.   Debra says the benefits to nonprofits are:

Timeline apps afford an opportunity for nonprofits to promote causes, activities and mission. I can envision apps that promote online campaigns, encourage people to interact with the organization in a certain way, encourage specific actions, track activity, and/or to raise brand awareness. A few ideas:

• Support the nonprofit: “Jerry supports the Canadian Red Cross”
• Activism: “Debra signed a petition to stop fracking” or “Eliana contacted a brand to ask about its slavery footprint via Slavery Footprint”
• Play a game: “Adam has donated 2,173 grains of rice to the UN to date via Free Rice”
• Donate: “Kylie has started a virtual food drive with Feeding America”
• Support a campaign: “David is growing a mustache for Movember”

In my opinion, I think the greatest Timeline app benefit is in the information the nonprofit will gain about app users, and how committed a supporter is to the cause. Installing an app is a deeper commitment than passively Liking a Page, or joining conversation on a Facebook Page. App users should be the organization’s most committed online supporters.

When an app is installed, the developer knows a supporters’ email address, other Likes, and how the user is engaging with the application. Ultimately, the app both gathers supporter information that isn’t available from people who Like a Page, and spreads awareness about the organization/campaign/cause through the ticker.

I caught up with Matt Mahan from Causes for a quick interview about Causes use of the new timeline apps based on the Facebook Open Graph:

1.     Can you explain “Open Graph” for non-geeks and why it isimportant?  How would someone at a nonprofit explain to their seniormanagement or board?

Open Graph is a way of connecting any website to Facebook so that people using that website can opt-in to automatically share what they are doing in real time—listening to music, reading articles, shopping, supporting nonprofits, etc.—with their Facebook friends. If this tool becomes standard across the Internet, which I think it will, it will dramatically increase peer-to-peer sharing of social information, making it easier for people to discover what their friends are doing. Nonprofits, especially smaller ones, stand to benefit from these changes because they will reap the equivalent of free advertising as people engage with them online. Because most nonprofits cannot afford significant marketing budgets, their online “mindshare” is low relative to the degree to which people care about them (vis-à-vis companies and other organizations with greater marketing heft). All in all, Open Graph should help nonprofits become a larger part of the mass scale conversation taking place on Facebook every day.

2.    How has Causes integrated the Open Graph on Facebook?

Causes.com has hooked into Facebook’s Open Graph with a number of action types that will allow people to publish their social good accomplishments to Timeline and their friends’ news feed. These action types include: join, pledge, answer, sign, give and a range of other actions people can take to help their favorite nonprofits. As people take these actions they will be translated into Timeline stories that expose their friends to great organizations and timely action campaigns.

3.    What is the value or benefit to nonprofit users of Causes?

Open Graph is particularly exciting for those of us in the social good space because awareness-raising and advocacy are often core to the work we do. You can listen to a song and enjoy it all by yourself, but social change always requires collective action. Nonprofits and their supporters now have a much more powerful tool for spreading a message, via what is essentially digital-word-of-mouth, quickly and cheaply.

4.    What does this look like to potential users?

For potential users the change is minimal. We’ll ask our users to opt in to share the action they are taking on Causes.com with their Facebook friends. We believe that altruism is social and social change requires collective action, but we also respect that not everyone wants to share their cause with others.

5.    What do nonprofits need to do in terms of strategy and tactics to make it work for them?

The short answer is, invest in your grassroots organizing capacity. Over the next couple of weeks Causes.com is releasing a number of new “action campaigns”, including pledges, polls, quizzes, petitions and so forth, that will make it easy and free for even the smallest nonprofits and independent activists to publish great action campaigns, track action-taking, and translate loose online support into coordinated action. I think this is a particularly exciting opportunity for organizations that see awareness-raising and advocacy as core objectives in the coming year. We’re one of the only websites in the world to have fully integrated with Open Graph, so we recommend using Causes.com as a campaign hub for engaging various online audiences (Facebook, Twitter, website, email list, Causes) in deeper action-taking.

6.    How should they think about measurement of successful strategy?

Overall, the measure of success is how many people you can move to take action and how valuable that action ultimately ends up being for your organization or the population you serve. On Causes.com, our top-level metric of success is the amount of action we help our nonprofit partners generate from their supporters. We trust that those nonprofits are in the best position to determine how to best direct action-taking for real-world impact, whether it’s fundraising, awareness-raising, or advocacy action they are generating. Our goal is to build the world’s best platform for collection action-taking, so we measure (and will soon be able to share with our partners right on their causes) conversion rates from top-down promotion of campaigns via email and Facebook, on-site action-taking, and post-action peer-to-peer sharing, or what is often called “virality”. In a few months, nonprofits will be able to do this kind of measurement right on Causes.com at no cost, and those with larger tech teams will be able to do similar tracking on their own websites. Eventually we plan to power this kind of measurement and data analysis no matter where you run your campaigns.

7.    What are the best how-tos, resources for nonprofits to get started on this?

Definitive best practices are still emerging. We put together a quick overview on the Causes blog for our users, focused on what Open Graph means for their Facebook experience: . Our support team here at Causes is happy to answer questions related to our integration with Open Graph

Is your nonprofit or have you seen a nonprofit using the Facebook’s Open Graph in a creative and effective way?     What are your questions about leveraging Facebook’s Open Graph?

Flickr Photo by Carissa Marie

This is definitely not a chicken and egg question!   A debate in content marketing circles is whether or not you should simply focus on creating original content and forget content curation.   Let’s be clear as my fellow content curator, Jan Gordon, says:  There is no curation without original content.

I might qualify this a bit by saying, there is no curation with awesomely addictive social content!  And that means creating content – blog posts, tweets, Facebook updates, YouTube Videos – that is valuable and high quality.   Not sure if you have awesomely addictive content?   Noland Hoshino recently pointed to this excellent checklist from the Content Marketing Institute.

But, remember don’t think content creation vs curation or as  is an either/or.  It is a both/and.

I might also add:  There is not social content creation with content curation.     Content curation, the process of seeking and making sense of the best content on your topic or issue from other content creators,  can be the foundation of a content strategy.   It can not only help you create original content, but also helps you builds your audience or network.

There are many other benefits to content curation – it can help build your staff expertise in a topic area, build thought leadership,  reduce mindless information consumption, and inspire  high quality original content.     While content creation and content curation are two different activities, requiring different skill sets,  there are a couple of places where they overlap.

Curated Content Formats

We know that content curation is much more than slapping together links or engaging in “push button” sharing with your circle of friends.   Professional content curation is making sense of the topic by researching what’s out there.  I like to think of content curation is going the library to research sources for your term paper!

This post from Social Examiner called:  26 Tips for Writing Great Blog Content is an excellent example of a blog post that is curated from many resources.     I’m being a little ironic pointing out an example that includes lots of excellent resources and links to how to create awesomely addictive content for your blog.    If your organization is writing a blog,  this post is worth 30 minutes of your time to sit down and to explore with your team.  You’ll come away with some very useful tips for taking your blog content to the next level, from the technical stuff like SEO to getting into the writing zone.    (There’s a very simple and useful blog editorial template)

Newsjacking

A big hat tip to Nancy Schwartz for curating on Pinterest this blog post from Kivi Leroux Miller summarizing David Meerman Scott’s e-book on Newsjacking which is well worth the $6.99.      Newsjacking is piggy-backing on timely news or Meerman points out “the second paragraph of a news story.”    It is done by creating original content that takes advantage of timely events that are getting mainstream media attention and providing your organization’s view or take on the topic and sharing it with your audience, including journalists.

Now, this is exactly what one does with curation on a day-to-day basis.   Once you discover related content, you describe giving it your point of view or relating it back to your organization’s programs.   A good curator will do with content that is not, at first glance, related to their subject (This skill is called “Transdisciplinarity,” or  ability to understand and translate concepts across multiple disciplines)

Kivi suggests making Newsjacking part of your staff meetings – because you have to be agile to be able to pounce on the news.  Leveraging current events as part of your content strategy – either by curating or creating original content – can also help your get more attention, but provide useful content for your network.

How are you creating awesomely addictive content for your organization’s strategy?   Is content curation or newsjacking part of your strategy?

I’ve been curating resources and teaching workshops on the topic of information coping skills for a couple of years.   I first became interested in the topic after reading  David Shenk’s “Data Smog” in 1998 using the metaphor of environmental problems to talk about the dangers of having too much online information, primarily email.  This was in the era before Facebook and there was far less information available compared today.  (My favorite practical principle from Shenk was “Give A Hoot, Don’t Email Pollute” when talking about the need for developing will power in consuming and sharing digital information.)

Click Through to Amazon and Get This Book!

So when I heard about Clay Johnson’s  The Information Diet:  The Case for Conscious Consumption that uses the metaphor of the obesity epidemic and sustainable food production to frame and discuss how the problem impacts us today, 14 years later,  I immediately put the book on my plate!      As the author explains in the introduction,   what we know about food has a lot of teach us about how to have a healthy relationship with information.        He gives the history and context of the obesity problem and points out the similarities to information consumption problem.

The problem of “information overload” is nothing new and has been around for centuries.   All you have to do read Ann M. Blair’s  ” Too Much To Know:  Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age” and you’ll get a historical perspective of the problem.   Johnson reframes the problem in a modern age as “information consumption” suggesting the problem isn’t the amount of information we have at our disposal, but our mindless consumption of it.

In the six well-researched chapters in part 1, he takes through the economics of information and the biological consequences of our information consumption.    He references the leading thinkers,writers, and researchers in this area – from Linda Stone (email apenea), Roy Bautmeister/John Tierney (Will Power), and Nicolas Carr, (Internet Shallows).   Given he his background as founder of Blue State Digital and working with the Dean Campaign and Sunlight Foundation, he tells the story through the lens of political campaigns and movement building on the social web as well as a personal narrative. I love the chapter on “The Symptoms of Information Obesity” where he shares a persona based on his wife, Rosalyn Lemieux, that illustrates how too much information can warp our sense of time and other ways it can be toxic to our lives.

The second part of the book takes us from theory into practice where he offers his recommendations for the Information Diet.  Rather than take the philosophy of information overload community and productivity books that are aimed at helping  you get “everything done” and in the process help you continue to consume too much information, he provides some principles for taming our information gluttony.   If you’ve been through weight watchers, you’ll immediately make a connection to some of the techniques he suggests. For example,  keeping a journal of what you consume and taking incremental steps towards reducing it so it becomes a lifestyle change.  Here, he draws from the work of Howard Rheingold when talking about data literacy and attention fitness as well as others and lays out an information diet that is intended to help us change in our daily habits.     He doesn’t recommend quick fixes like “unplugging” which is the metaphorical equivalent to a crash diet because it doesn’t work.

His chapter on “Data Literacy” describes what  sounds a lot of good content curation skills minus the social sharing part.  The steps of intelligent seeking of information by having good filters and knowing your sources and making sense of the information or synthesis.  This is good, basic digital literacy principles that have been taught by educators and librarians taught in the early 2000′s and continue today.  I think the social sharing part is important because that is part of consumption habits and it takes having restraint – not mindlessly clicking a button.

His specific tips are geared for folks (like me) who because of their occupation, have a lot of screen time and are geeks.   His methods make use of some of the online software that helps you keep track of time.   Personally, I also believe in adding in other methods such as time for reflection and slowing down like those recommended by Bregman’s 18 Minutes Book.     His chapter on what to consume, gives us a suggested information intake that reduces the 11 hours a day we spend consuming information to 6 hours per day.    It might look something like this:

7-8 am:  Information consumption time (newspaper, social media feeds, etc)
11-12: Email
4-5: Email
8-10pm: Entertainment time – television, social media
10-11 pm:  Book Reading

He suggests filling in the reclaimed hours producing, rather than consuming.    This is what Harold Jarche has called “sense-making” as part of an elegant framework of seek-sense-share that has helped me curb my over consumption habits.    Johnson also engaging in other activities that sharpen the mind – like paper journal, writing, photography, or other synthesis activities that get you away from that stream.  I know for myself that a return to keeping visual journals on paper and drawing with magic markers has been incredibly useful in this area.

The most provocative ideas of the book are in the third part – a call to action.    As Johnson points, our information consumption patterns have a social consequence – it isn’t just about our individual habits.   There is also a social change role.   We have to break the insidious cycle that we create with bad information consumption habits – we have to consider the suppliers – and especially in light of another election coming around.   The author not only wants to change our habits, but start local campaigns to encourage our social connections to change as well.   He suggests these goals:

1.   To increase digital literacy of our communities with good digital literacy skills
2.  To encourage consumption of local information
3.  To reward good information provides and to provide economic consequence for those who provide affirmation over information

He is encouraging us to self-organize around this idea through his site, Information Diet to improve digital literacy in your community by organizing meet ups.   And, above all, to act.    In order to improve digital literacy in your community, you need to start with kids.   He suggests finding and funding nonprofits that teach children digital literacy skills in school or after school programs.   He also suggests sharing what we’ve learned in terms of taming our information overdoing it.

The ultimate goal of this book is for us to improve our collective information literacy and consumption skills so we have the greatest ability to understand the truth and make our communities and society a more just world.

Now, that’s inspiring!

See also this review in the Atlantic

The Cute Dog Theory or more precisely the Cute Animal Theory states that including cute animals in your social media content inspires more people to share the content.    If don’t believe that is true,  check out this YouTube video from VW of dogs barking the theme from Star Wars as a Superbowl Teaser.   In less than a day, it has over 1 million views.   The cute animal theory has not gone unnoticed by nonprofits, even those that are not animal welfare organizations,  zoos or aquariums are sharing content featuring cute animals on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

And now, mobile.

Best Friends has just launched a fun mobile app.   The app lets you take photos of yourself, and uses  facial recognition magic to find your dog match.   As Noland Hoshino pointed out, it works in a similar way to this app.  I showed the app to my kids and it was a huge hit!   Not only did they take repeated photos to see what breed of dog would match their photo,   they also started to ask if we could adopt a dog.

This app will also allow you to save & share your photo matches with your friends across Twitter, Facebook or on Best Friend’s User Generated Content Dog Wall – that is part of its Invisible Dogs Campaign, a multi-channel social media campaign to spark the  Invisible Dogs grassroots movement with the ultimate goal of no more homeless pets.  The App also provides:  adoptable dog search by zip code,  simple giving to help homeless pets, and their  grassroots pledge to start seeing invisible dogs.  The dual purpose of the app is to raise awareness of the thousands of dogs waiting in shelters to be seen and adopted – and to have a little fun at the same time – perhaps a party or drinking game.

I asked Best Friends Marketing Coordinator Claudia Perrone how they were measuring success.    The ultimate KPI, of course, is dog adoptions.   But they are looking at associated metrics such as:  downloads, user comments, sharing, and google analytics to show dog searches… then data collection (emails and mobile optins), microdonations, and buzz via earned media.   Says Perrone, “We will also look at  app users who came into the BFAS fold over time (email database, do they keep giving, etc).  The bottom line is that it is a fun addition to our Invisible Dogs campaign and our first test into the mobile app world.”

The Android version is coming soon!

Update:  Ted Fickes wrote this terrific post about how cute animals also help fundraising appeals!

Even Cute Fictional Animal Characters Work

That’s what Michelle Berg, New Media and Events Manager, at the Second Harvest Food Bank in Silicon Valley discovered.  Michelle, was a participant in the Measuring Networked Nonprofit peer learning groups supported through my work as Visiting Scholar at the Packard Foundation.  Each participant organization designed and launched a measurement action learning project that used measurement to improve results for networked approaches and social media.

Michelle’s project was focused on measuring engagement through multiple channels, but especially Facebook.

Goal: Increase Facebook engagement to create a more educated online community that is ready for more tangible calls to action.

Specific measurable objectives  included:

Increase page likes to 12,000 by 12/31/2011 (achieved on 12/1/11)

Increase post feedback by 300% in September and by 200% in following months

Increase post sharability

Strategy:  Create more fun and sharable content and build atmosphere conducive to supporter-initiated posts.

Tactics:  Measure what content works, especially during Online Action Challenge, and implement throughout 2011 holiday season.  Use visuals to tell our story and reach friends of fans.

Primary measurement tool: Facebook Insights

In September, they ran their 3rd social media challenge, in this case, the Oracle Online Action Challenge.  Oracle made donations for all online actions (likes, comments, RTs, photos, etc) during Hunger Action Month, reaching a maximum donation of $25,000.  Creation of content and user interactions were considerably higher than in other time periods.  They used measurement data  from this month to guide efforts throughout the critical holiday season.

Michelle mentioned that this was their largest online donation action from a sponsor, but they had tested the idea with several smaller sponsors.   Says Michelle, “The key to your results so you can include this information for a larger sponsorship.”

Michelle set up an editorial calendar for all campaigns for all channels over the next several months and focused on testing and measuring different content formats and topics on their Facebook brand page to see what generated the most engagement.    Michelle knows her audience very well because she is also responsible for giving tours of the facility.     The Food Bank uses its donations to acquire fresh fruits and vegetables, and Michelle notes that people are often surprised when they these food donations.   “The perception,” says Michelle, is that Food Banks only give canned tuna or Mac and Cheese. ”    So, Michelle started a regular feature called “What’s in the Warehouse Wednesdays” that was effective generating conversations online.

One of the campaigns for the Oracle effort during Hunger Awareness Month was “Hunger: Put a Fork in It.”    At the Food Bank, they encouraged visitors to pose with the giant forks and upload their photos to their Facebook pages.   In addition, they began to notice fans posting their own versions of the photos and some included photographs of their pets with forks.    Those particular photos received higher interaction scores.    This gave Michelle and her team an idea:  What if they had a cute animal mascot for their holiday turkey donation drive?

They came up with “Perky the Turkey,” who was the mascot for their Thanksgiving Turkey Donation Drive.     They used Perky across channels to invite people to donate a Turkey for a Thanksgiving meal for Second Harvest to distribute.   On Facebook, Perky the Turkey asked their fans to tag themselves on Perky’s photo and let their friends know they donated a Thanksgiving meal.     While the ultimate metric was the number of turkeys donated, the Perky content was a hit with their fans.    And, Second Harvest made their goal of 12,000 donated turkeys one month a head of schedule.

Throughout the month of November and leading up to Thanksgiving, they used Perky the Turkey to promote food donation efforts.  They put sneakers on him to encourage fans and supporters to sign up for the annual fundraiser, a “Turkey Trot” – a run to raise awareness and dollars for the Food Bank.

Perky the Turkey’s popularity continued into December.  So he made an encore in the month of December, promoting Christmas food donations.

Now that the holiday season has ended, they will continue to consistently  measure online activities to create content that shares their story in an engaging way and inspires food donations.  Perky may become a year-round fixture or lead to another sharable ambassador for the Food Bank. As they reflected on the results of campaigns and the measurement data, some areas of  improvement will include formalization of cause marketing guidelines and continued testing of content that engages.

What have you learned from your measurement data that helped you plan and implement successful multi-channel campaigns?

On January 30th, I’m speaking at the Social Media for Nonprofits in New York City. (You can get a discount of $20 off the registration by entering the code “Beth” when you sign up although the discount only works on the more expensive tickets).    This year, since content curation, is a social media competency that I’m focusing  in my own learning and teaching , I’ll be doing a conversational presentation on the topic.   Robin Good, one of the best content curators on the planet, will join me via skype  from Italy.   In preparation,  I’m doing a pre-recorded skype interview with Robin as a back up for a live interview.   As is my presenting style, this will be an interactive session.

Here’s why I think content curation, especially the practice, is very important for us to embrace in the nonprofit sector:

On an individual practice level, with more and more information being shared and published on the web,  the act of content curation can actually reduce our information overload.       I believe that sense-making both individually and in collaborative contexts at work or networked projects will be the key to navigating the digital information landscape and finding relevant content efficiently in the future.

I also think that 2012 will be the year of content curation.   It is becoming an essential component of your social and communications strategy, and we’ve already see  content curation deliver results on a number of levels as Shel Holtz points out and master curator Jan Gordon summarizes.   Content curation can provide visibility, but before you can reap results you have identify the opportunity — a campaign, announcement of a new program, or release of policy information –  to curate news and information around your topic.   Also, you need, as Jan Gordon points out in the skype video interview, to know the audience’s content consumption patterns and interests.

Once you have a strategy plan in place, the next step is to select your curator.    This may or may not be your social media manager or staff person.  They should know the topic area, but also understand practice of curation.   The secret to good curation is the selection of the best and most relevant material.  A curator needs to have superb social media monitoring and listening skills — that means knowing the right keywords on the topic and sources, agility with “aggregator” tools, and the daily discipline of foraging for the best content and evaluating your finds before sharing.   A content curator should never share something they have not actually read and thought about.   The practice of curation is being able to sift through daily whirlwind of tweets, blog posts, and other content streams quickly in order to pick the right pieces that create an accurate view of the subject matter.

Moreover, adding context is another curation skill.  Now that you have shifted through all this material, and selected the best.  What’s the context that you an share to help your audience understand it better. Content curation also includes engaging with your audience around the content shared, but adding value.    For example, commenting is about adding context or furthering the understanding of the topic or asking audience to contribute their knowledge to the conversation.

In an age of push-button sharing with tools like Pinterest, content curation is more than pushing a button!   It isn’t quickly slapping links together.  This issue has been a hot topic amongst master curators like Jan Gordon,  Robin Good, and Howard Rheingold.

Robin Good recently curated this excellent piece about the difference between content curation and aggregation with this  post by Ryan Skinner.  The two big takeaways for nonprofits who want to incorporate content curation into their strategy:

• More than a link: This is the era of frictionless sharing, goddammit. Friction is a demonstration of care. Anyone can send a link. If you’re going to curate and share, add something. Some insight. Commentary. But no more than necessary.
• Slap asses: If you’re going to curate someone’s content, you owe it to yourself and to them to be open about it. Preferably, it’s someone you follow and share comments with. And be sure to give them credit.

Jan Gordon points out why content curators need to be highly selective in what they share with the audiences.     She points us to this curated post from Stanford about using more care with the Twitter Retweet Button (the best example of what we mean by “push button sharing”).   Curation is more than sharing a link or putting together a link list.  It requires attention to detail and delivering value.

Now that curation tools, like Pinterest, are becoming more popular for nonprofits, good curation practice is more important than ever.    As I watch nonprofits embrace these tools enthusiastically, I feel it is important for us all to grasp what good curation is and use best practices – if we want get results.

The best way to learn these skills is study how the experts work.  So, with a little help from my colleagues on making video skype interviews,  I reached out master curator Jan Gordon.

Jan Gordon curates Content Curation, Social Business, and Beyond at Scoop.It.   I have been following her fpr six months. She curates several topics at Scoop.It, including her newly added “Pinterest Watch.” I have learned a lot of about the techniques of good curation just from observing her practice. If you browse through her collection, you’ll notice that she does just not aggregate links, but reads each one, adds commentary, and changes the headlines so it provides relevance for her audience.  She also acknowledges the original source as well as the work of other curators.

Jan practices what she preaches about engaging with your audience about the content your curate.  Here’s a great example of the dialogue that accompanies great curation on this article by master curator, Robin Good, “What Makes A Content Curator Great?”

Q: If you are just starting out, what is your recommendation for beginners?

Tell the right the story with content you are collecting so that you audience finds it relevant or places of connection. You need a deep understanding of what content meets their needs.

Understand your audiences content consumption habits – where they look for information, what format they want, and when. Know how to share in those areas.

Q: What is your best time saving tip?

Best time saving tip is to find the best aggregation tool (a tool that searches the web based on keywords and pulls in the content that you’re looking for). Bundlepost is my perferred aggregation tool. It is very important because you could spend your entire day searching for content in the wrong places. You want to find the good stuff quickly and aggregation tools help. You want to spend your time sharing your content when your audience is in the process of consuming it. It is also important to spend time engaging with your audience arond the content so they better understand the context. Curation tools like Scoop.It and others help you do that.

Is your nonprofit embracing content curation as part of its content strategy?    Are you using best practices or are just slapping links together?

United States lawmakers are considering two bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA), that post a  threat to the openness of the web around the Globe.  In response, many web sites are going on strike.   Sites includes  Wikipedia, Reddit,  BoingBoing, and Global Voices are “going dark” and will black out the Global Voices Advocacy site for 12 hours on January 18 beginning at 8 am.  Other sites will provides more information about the proposed bills and a link to a send an email to lawmakers.

Global Voices has issued a statement explaining why they are supporting this Internet strike.

We are an international volunteer community dedicated to amplifying citizen media from around the world. In the last six years, we’ve produced more than 75,000 posts that link to blogs and other citizen content for readers in over 20 languages. Our content is free to use, and free to share. We rely on the open Internet to carry out our mission, and on social media and citizen media websites that allow for simple publication and sharing of content. Platforms like WordPress, Wikipedia, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Reddit, Tumblr, and many other online media production communities host content on which we base much of our work.

The passage of SOPA and PIPA by the United States Congress and Senate would force social media platforms and other web sites that host user-generated content to pro-actively monitor and censor users to prevent them from posting words or images that may violate copyrights. It would raise the cost of participation on these sites for all users worldwide, and could force many social media projects to shut down, especially smaller websites and businesses.

We are concerned this law would will inflict broad damage on the work of digital activists living under repressive regimes, as well as restrict basic speech freedoms around the world. Current copyright laws are occasionally misused in the U.S, and can result in de facto speech restrictions. In countries with less independent judicial systems, abuse of copyright law to repress activism is both simple and frequent.

According to Global Voices, even though the current version of SOPA was put indefinitely on hold this week, PIPA, the Senate version of the bill, is still alive. And the issues and forces that are driving the passage of a law are still at play.   Global Voices, co-founder, Ethan Zuckerman co-authored this post with Joi Ito to explain why it is important to call attention to this bill on January 18th with the planned Internet strike.

Last month, Jim Fruchterman, of Benetech, shared this guest post, “Why I’m Scared of the SOPA Bill,” that explains  how the bill could major problems for nonprofits as well.

I put together this pinterest board that includes additional information about the bills and the various protests and actions that are taking place tomorrow and this  infographic explains the issues with the bill.

How the Strike Works

Sites are striking in all different ways, but they are united by sending site visitors to this site to send a message about the bill.     Some web sites are going dark for the 12 hours my inserting this  HTML.   You can find lots of other tools to help do a strike:   Zachary Johnson’s blackout page,  ProtestSOPA.org,  CloudFlare’s Stop Censorship app, and SOPA Strike WordPress Plugin.    Like other Internet protests, they are asking people who want to participate by tweeting about the strike using the hashtag #sopastrike.    They are asking supporters to go to Blackout SOPA to add ‘STOP SOPA’ to your Twitter image and post this SOPA Strike page to your Facebook account by clicking here.    They also want you to them to tell everyone about the strike and direct them to this site to send an email.

Over the past couple of years as I’ve guided nonprofits in preparing their social media policies or when I speak,  I get asked questions that are more legal issues than about using social media.   Here’s a sampling:

• Our organization does advocacy around some policy issues.  How do the rules on lobbying play into our social media strategy?    What if we’re asking people to take action on Facebook, does that constitute lobbying?  What do we need to be do to protect our 501-c3 status?
• We run a social service agency that provides counselling to people.   What if people ask for referrals or help on our Facebook page?   How do we respond without creating any -potential liability for our organization?
• One of my employees has asked me to write a recommendation on LinkedIn,  if they were fired – could our organization be sued?
• What do we need to understand about copyrighted material and our content strategy?
• Our organization runs a youth programs kids under 18,  what if the kids want to friend the teachers on Facebook? Can we post their photos on Facebook or our Web Site?   What are the legal issues?
• When should our organization consult a lawyer when we have concerns about our organization’s social media usage?

First, let me clear.  I’m not a lawyer nor do I play on television.   When I get asked this question,  I point people to resources with this disclaimer:  “CYA – Consult Your Attorney!”

Now, I have another great resource to share,   Good Counsel:  Meeting the Legal Needs of Nonprofits by Lesley Rosenthal, the astute General Counsel of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.   It is an thorough guide for the most common legal, governance, and fundraising compliance issues facing nonprofits.     Her writing style is less lawyerly, and well, human.   The book is filled with stories, practical resources, and tools.      The book is written for staff and board members.      While the advice in the book does not replace an attorney,  having this on your reference desk can help you be more efficient your attorney’s time because you’ll come to meetings educated.

The chapter about communications meets legal covers trademark review, third-party rights clearance, consumer regulatory compliance , and general review of communications strategies.     The points related to online tactics include such items as a web site privacy policy, sweepstakes, other privacy considerations such as HIPPA, and social media sites.       Rosenthal educates about these laws and the implications for nonprofits in pretty clear langauage and points out that these laws apply to social media sites.  She also covers the role of counsel if the organization finds itself thrown into a crisis communications situation where there is unflattering media attention or a “twitter storm.”

There is an entire chapter devoted to the limits on nonprofit organizations’ political activities as we know that 501c3 organizations are strictly prohibited from intervening or participating in political campaigns.  However,  what is or what isn’t permissible isn’t always clear.   The chapter shares some examples what is permissible and what isn’t permissible political activities.   It also describes what lobbying is and summarizes what record keeping, registrations, and disclosures are needed.

Each chapter of the book ends with some focus questions and checklist for a work plan.   The questions for this chapter are useful to help you identify specific activities or examples from your organization that you are not sure about and to share them with your legal counsel.

• What kinds of political activity must a 501c3 organization avoid altogether?
• What might happen if a 501c3 organization endorses or opposes a political candidate?  Cite a case example.
• What are some politically related activities are permitted to undertake?
• What steps can a nonprofit staff take to ensure that their personal political activities are not ascribed to the organization?
• What is lobbying?
• How do lobbying rules differ from rules of political campaigns?
• How much lobbying may a 501c3 do?
• What disclosure are required?
• What are our state’s registration requirements for nonprofits lobbying activities?

A check list to work through with your legal counsel:

1.)  Review policies and practices for compliance with the absolute ban on intervening in political campaigns
2.)  Review lobbying activities to ensure it complies with laws (Public policy issues and limited part of organization’s activity)
3.)  Check bylaws for provisions regarding lobbying activity
4.)  Determine compliance with record keeping and registration requirements
5.)  Determine compliance with federal, state, and local reporting requirements and Form 990 disclosures
6.)  Find out whether organization has any significant history of regulatory action
7.)  Find out whether the organization has made a 501 h election
8.) Assess whether planned or desired political activities suggest a change in corporate form, spinoff, or establishment of sub-section 501c4 entity.

While not every activity that bears on politics or government counts as lobbying, the chapter notes that there is a lot of uncertainty in this area and many shades of gray.   Also, the penalties can be severe for 501 (c) (3) organizations that cross the line.     The book emphasizes this point:   If your organization has questions or is unsure,  consult with qualified legal counsel!

The book covers much more than legal issues related to your organization’s communications strategy.  It covers:  contracts, intellectual property, fundraising, financial disclosure, human resources, operations, facilities management, and political activities.   All in all, a useful reference to help you prepare working with your organization’s counsel.

What resources has your organization used to become educated about legal matters, social media, and your nonprofit?

Additional Resources:

Influencing Public Policy in the Digital Age by the Alliance of Justice
Friends, Tweets, and Links:  IRS Treatment of Social Media Activities by 501c3 Organizations
Social Media Policy Resources (includes links to legal issues)

The newest social media darling is Pinterest, a platform that nonprofits can use to curate compelling visual content.    Pinterest, with its ease of use and the pleasing beautiful sea of visuals, is the perfect place to curate inspiration for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

Like Whitney Friedlander, I decided to mark MLK Day holiday by searching and curating  some inspiring images that link to great content about one of this country’s greatest leaders.   Here’s my complete  MLK pinboard and selected ways to mark to the day in Dr. King’s honor:

1.   Listen to his “I Have A Dream Speech”

You can listen to it on YouTube or read the full text here.  Or read and listen to a reflection by his speech writer on NPR or this visual analysis of the speech by Nancy Duarte.   Or like Simon Mainwaring, you can think about what his words mean for us today.

2.  Tweet or Text his Quotes

Dr. King has many inspiring quotes.    For a collection of quotes, see MLK Online.   What’s your favorite?   Mine is here:

“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”

And a reminder from Nancy White that small gestures or small steps can lead to big ideas.

3. Google Doodle

Like commemorative postage stamps, Google has been honoring MLK Day with a Doodle since 2003.

4.   MLK Day of Service

While some may be protesting today, others are giving service to their community as part of the MLK Day of Service Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: ‘What are you doing for others?’”   Each year, Americans across the country answer that question by coming together on the King Holiday to serve their neighbors and communities.   The MLK Day of Service is a part of United We Serve, the President’s national call to service initiative. It calls for Americans from all walks of life to work together to provide solutions to our most pressing national problems.   (Unfortunately, you can add Facebook content to Pinterest directly, but the work around is to make a screen capture and add the link manually.)

5.  Occupy the Dream

Some people may be spending this day off doing service to their community, but others may be protesting.  Occupy the Dream is a Occupy protest on federal reserves in different cities.  More here from the Huffington Post

6.  MLK Day Infographic

A celebration of MLK Day on Pinterest would not be complete without an infographic. With a little bit of searching, I found a fabulous one on the Hands On Blog.

How are you celebrating the life and work of Dr. King?

Wisconsin Rising trailer and Kickstarter Campaign from samayfield on Vimeo.

Note from Beth: Over five years ago, I connected with Sam Mayfield, an independent media maker,  through my blog.  In 2008,  she asked for advice about raising money to go to Africa to help support the first community access television station opening in Ghana.   At that time she made and raised $2,000 using Chipin, using the case study I had documented where I raised money to send a young Cambodian women to college.  This was the very beginning of what we’re calling crowd funding or social fundraising.      Will a networked approach to making and funding documentaries, particularly those that are about social change issues become the norm in our connected world?    Vince Stehle thinks so as he explained in this guest post about Gasland.   And, this month, Sam is raising money to support a new documentary called Wisconsin Rising on the kickstarter platform.   I invited her to share her experience in crowd funding.

A Guest Post by Sam Mayfield

When I think of story telling, I think of books. The Little Golden books from my childhood, non-fiction books that revolutionized my perspective of the world and novels that I rarely take the luxury of reading. The art of storytelling though, and documenting an event or a slice of time is, of course, not restricted to bound pages. Stories surround us on the radio, in newspapers, in our music boxes, in short web videos and on large screens in movie theatres. I am a documentary filmmaker and video journalist, and I think of my work as a form of story telling and documenting.  Some of the tools needed to do this work are obvious: a camera, microphone, headphones, tripod, laptop, and maybe a light. As an independent producer, I can tell you that these are merely a fraction of the tools that one needs in order to properly document and later tell a story. Social media has become an important tool for me in storytelling and, in particular, helping to finance my work. I am currently raising funds for a story that I believe needs to be told about the 2011 people’s uprising in Madison, Wisconsin.

In the months of February and March, 2011, in Madison, Wisconsin, we saw thousands upon thousands of people occupying the Wisconsin State Capitol building. The people’s response to Governor Scott Walker’s announcement of his controversial Budget Repair Bill was historic: a prime space for a storyteller, and documentarian.

As a freelance video journalist, I was asked to go to Madison on assignment for the progressive media outlet The Uptake. When I got on the ground in Madison, I checked in to my hotel and headed straight for the capital. I saw for myself that history was unfolding in front of me.  Thousands of people were in the streets; people carrying political signs surrounded the statehouse, and inside the capital building itself, thunderous sounds of chanting and singing filled the halls and bounced off the marble. This was a little slice of heaven for someone who appreciates the value of people acting collectively and standing up to the bully of injustice.

My background is in community media. Before branching off to work as an independent producer, I worked for five years full time at CCTV government access television in Burlington, Vermont, and before that I worked with community radio and community television in college. Rooting myself in community media taught me the value of covering a story thoroughly. We do not swoop in to get the hot sexy moments at an event and then swoop out to our next story. We cover an issue from beginning to end. Some call it boring. I call it thorough. Admittedly, I am a sucker for municipal government and find municipal meetings interesting. I’m ok with that.
Telling stories independently and without the backing of major media outlets or a major film company is what separates independent freelancers / filmmakers from the rest of the storytellers. We scrape it together. Our stories come from our heart. Why else would we put ourselves out there to live on the dimes we make per story?
Social media has provided a unique platform for independent producers to get their stories out and to raise money for their work.  In 2008, I raised money to go to Africa to help support the first community access television station opening in Ghana. At that time I made a blog and raised $2,000 using Chipin. (Thanks Beth for helping shepherd me through that learning curve). Now, fast forward to 2012. I have a blog, a website, a twitter account, a facebook page, a reddit account and we recently launched a Kickstarter campaign.
We are currently trying to raise $40,000 of our $200,000 budget through Kickstarter, the online fundraising platform that facilitates grassroots investment. We set a target goal and must raise that amount or lose all pledged funds by the set deadline of 12 p.m., January 21.  If we are successful, we’ll join over 15,000 artists, filmmakers, activists, and entrepreneurs who have collectively raised over $125 million using this innovative “crowd-funding” model.

Times have changed and so have the tools, but the need is the same. Dollars help make independent projects possible.

Note from Beth: One of the themes I’ve been exploring over the last few years related to networks is transparency.   We devoted a whole chapter to the topic in the Networked Nonprofit. In my next book, “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit”  my co-author KD Paine and I take a look at how you measure it.   First it requires understanding the definition.  Transparency is more than disclosure.  It includes participation in acquiring, distributing, and creating knowledge or what my colleagues at the OE Program at Packard have dubbed “Public Learning.”       Linda Wood, Senior Director of Leadership and Grantmaking, Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, calls it “Learning Out Loud,” and has shared this reflection on one of the foundation’s programs.

“When you don’t know what you don’t know, you’re going to fall over yourself and make mistakes, and that’s what we were doing.” That’s the candid assessment of Kate Kendell, Executive Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, in a new video from the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund.

We at the Haas, Jr. Fund asked Kate to share her experiences with our Flexible Leadership Award in this video because we knew it could benefit others to hear her story. To hear how starting in 2004, this well-respected but relatively small organization suddenly found itself at the forefront of the movement for marriage equality. How Kate and another leader at NCLR, Shannon Minter—two of the best legal and political minds around—struggled to address all the challenges and opportunities presented by the organization’s explosive growth. How through taking a deep breath and admitting what they didn’t know—and being willing to learn—NCLR has emerged stronger than ever.

The Fund established the Flexible Leadership Award program in 2005 to help our social change grantees cope with the twin challenges of organizational growth and movement leadership. Since that time, the program has served more than 50 nonprofits, helping them to strengthen everything from fundraising capacity to communications to staffing and board development.

Let’s be blunt here: investing in leadership can be a tough sell. For one thing, when you’re scrambling to address pressing needs every day, it can be hard to see how taking the time to broaden your leadership base, assess strengths and weaknesses, and develop a plan for change is anything but a luxury. As Kate says in the video, “The last thing I wanted to deal with was leadership. We were just doing the work.”

There’s another reason organizations may be hesitant to invest in leadership: it means having to actually admit you are facing challenges. Too often we mistake a steely resolve for leadership. Leaders are supposed to just get things done, whatever the personal or organizational cost. And certainly, in today’s tough funding climate, it can seem foolish to admit to anyone—least of all funders—what you don’t know or what you do need help with.

NCLR took that risk. And in so doing, Kate and Shannon strengthened the organization by cultivating leadership in existing staff and bringing in new staff. They learned how to share responsibility and developed processes for decision-making. They developed a senior leadership team with increased capacity for fundraising and communications. Now, Kate says, she knows she doesn’t have to make tough decisions on her own, and she doesn’t even try. Says Shannon in the video, “we are exponentially more productive than before we learned these lessons.”
As foundations, we wield a lot of power. We can use that power to intimidate our grantees into thinking they need to have all the right answers – or we can encourage our grantees to tell us when they are struggling.
I hope our new video – and the detailed information accompanying it – will help other foundations take steps towards greater transparency and learning out loud.
Because in the end, by welcoming the kind of candor that Kate and Shannon exhibit, we can all learn right along with them.

– Linda Wood is senior director of Leadership and Grantmaking at the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, a family foundation based in San Francisco that is dedicated to providing fundamental rights and opportunities for all people.

Measure Networked Nonprofit

As part of my work this year as Visiting Scholar at the Packard Foundation,  I’ve facilitated many peer learning groups on effective social media, networked nonprofits, and measurement.    Several of groups serves as testers of the various ideas in my forthcoming book, Measuring the Networked Nonprofit, with co-author KD Paine.    While it was a little like changing a flat tire on a moving car to test frameworks while writing the book,  it was a rich learning experience.

For two of the peer learning groups, we explored best practices for using Facebook strategically as part of an integrated communications plan based on this content (http://bit.ly/networked-nonprofits-facebook).   We worked together for over six months, with a monthly conference call and “homework” assignments.    Each session called shared a best practice, debriefed on the results of applying the best practice shared the month before, and we collectively generated insights.     As one participant noted, “The consistent monthly time to reflect about learning was invaluable.”

For one of the sessions,  we focused on a methodology of how to make sense of data from Facebook Insights to improve the relevance of content and engagement activities.   It was a rich learning experience to have everyone doing this type of tracking and then debriefing together, even sharing a couple of screen shots of insights data.    Here are some patterns of success:

• To expand reach, new, recycled, and interesting content is key, but posting too frequently can cause people to hide or unlike you.
• Post a variety of different media types, photographs and visuals get attention, shorter status updates, and curated links.
• The art of writing good teaser headlines is critical to getting more interaction
• If the audience is local, it is important to framing content and issues for local geographic area
• Editorial calendar provides the structure so you don’t have to randomly find content, but keep it flexible so you can post breaking or timely news related to your organization or the issues it tracks which gets more attention and interaction
• Human interest stories and good news from the organizations generated more interaction than others
• Commenting on the posts in other aligned partner’s Facebook pages
• Engaging photos, especially of local places and animals work well
• Optimal posting frequency is about 2 posts per day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon or evening, and posted by hand.

While there are some generic principles for getting your Facebook into people’s newsfeeds, making sense of Facebook Insights to hone your content strategy will get you the best results.  Also, it allows you to test your own pre-conceived notions about what think YOUR audience wants.  For example, one participant shared that they were concerned to post controversial content that their audience would not like, and to their surprise it resonated.

Building Your Subscribers for Your Facebook Individual Profile

Once you have the discipline in place of setting up an editorial calendar, measuring it, and generating insights about what resonates with your audience,  you might wonder – what’s next?

Back in September when Facebook made its changes to individual profiles, one of the features they added was the ability to for people to “subscribe” to your individual profile public updates.    What this meant is that you could use your personal profile in a public way but also keep certain updates and content just for friends.    My initial reaction to this was, why would I want to do that?  I had some privacy concerns and also it felt like it would require feeding another channel – why bother when I already had a brand page.    I’ve changed my mind.

Here’s my public personal profile and here’s my brand page.  It has required that do the following:

• Understand my privacy settings on my profile and figure out what content is for friends only and what is “public”
• Decide what type of “public” content I want to share on my personal profile vs my brand page.   My brand page for my blog has specific objectives and I mostly post practical and useful material about how to use social media effectively.   That’s not all that I focus on or write about on my blog.   I share the other content through my personal profile as public posts.
• Post content on my brand page as the page administrator, but comment through my personal profile.  That way, my brand page content gets into newsfeeds
• Determine a “friending” policy.     Now that people can subscribe, you don’t have to friend everybody.

A few days ago, Mari Smith posted this update:

The News Feed is *clearly* favoring posts and activity from friends and subscriptions (vs. fan pages) — it’s becoming increasingly difficult to get fan page content seen in the News Feed. So, do businesses then need to turn to ads/sponsored stories?

I’ve also been hearing from some nonprofits:

“If brand pages won’t get into news feeds as easily because they can’t be subscribed to, then is Facebook going to become a less useful tool for us? Is it worth looking into creating a profile page for our Executive Director and having people subscribe to her updates to spread our message?”

The answer, of course, it depends.   For one, I think we have to wait and see how this plays out.  First, it isn’t clear when or if Brand Facebook pages will get the timeline and other features.   Second,  the individual profiles don’t have metrics yet, so if you haven’t tracked and honed your content strategy and understand what engages your audience, you won’t be able to do that easily on individual profile.   Third, as to the question of whether the ED or senior management staff should have a public profile and encourage subscriptions.   I think the same advice applies to the question of whether or not Executive Directors should use social media.   They have to be comfortable having a personal, authentic voice and using the technology.  A few examples:

Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, Momsrising
Billy Shore, Share Our Strength
Mary Wittenberg, New York Roadrunners
Bruce Lesley, First Focus
Kevin Donnellan, AARP

(If you’re in the NYC area, Big Duck is doing a social media session for CEOs)

In this post, Five Reasons Why Facebook Is Changing and What To do About It (hat tip to Kerri Karvetski) offers some additional advice on how to build up your subscribers.   I think it is too soon to throw out your organization’s branded Facebook page, but looking at how to enhance your networking by having staff create a subscribe presence and support the organization’s page is probably worth some investment of time.

Cultivating Champions

Before the holidays, I wrote a post about creating branded cover images for your supporters to incorporate into their individual profiles.  It wasn’t clear exactly whether it was a violation of FB policy as Mari Smith noted.   As you can see many nonprofits are going ahead and using them.  For specific advice on sizing images, see this post by John Haydon.    Of course, you get people to use them, you’ll need a strategy as part of  working with champions or brand ambassadors.

And now to end with a shaggy dog story.   My colleague, Jon Dunn, who works for Best Friends, let me know that they had created a set of cover images and were tracking whether cats or dogs were more popular.   Last week, I had used a cover image from Surfrider because I truly love the ocean.  But I also love animals.   Then, I found the wonderful cover image with the dog and the ocean!  Now, if it was only a black lab, carrying a Surfrider bag picking up trash on the beach!  And, next week, I can’t wait to pick out a timeline cover image from NWF or maybe these from NRDC.

Questions:

• Do you know what content resonates and how to engage your audience on your Facebook brand page based on thorough understanding of your metrics? (If not, do that first.  Read 4 Ways FB Insights Can Get You Fans)
• Do you have people on staff who are comfortable with personal branding and juggling a personal and public individual profile on behalf of your organization?  Can they train others?  How can you leverage their participation on behalf of your organization?
• Are you thinking of using lightly branded cover images to get your message out? Do you have a strategy to go with it?

See my Facebook Best Practices curriculum for more advice.

My Pinboards on Pinterest

Pinterest is a virtual pinboard where you can organize and share images and videos you discover on the web.  Think of it as social network of visuals – where you can find images from other people with the same interest or use it to curate your own visual “interest space.”

The clean interface and simplicity of  its features make it easy to use and gives you a calm feeling which perhaps accounts for its popularity.  At first glance, the site attracts people interested in using it for non-work interests, such as wedding planning, decorating, scrapbooking, and family photos, but brands and nonprofit professionals are also using it to curate information related to professional and organizational topics in a visually pleasing way.   But if you want to be successful, you must curate and share relevant content.

I am visual learner and I’ve been a content curator for years. I was drawn to Pinterest because the functionality is exactly how I’ve been using my flickr account for years, but makes it easier to share images you’ve found from other web sites and people.     I created several pins based on professional interests and a few personal topics.     My most popular pin is a collection of nonprofit infographics, but the second best one is a personal one, “I Love Magic Markers.”   Here’s the number of followers for each pin:

Nonprofit Infographics (287)
Social Media and Nonprofit Book Recommendations (250)
I Love Magic Markers (237)
Social Media Best Practices (215)
African Fabrics (115)

Nonprofit Infographics Pin Board

I Love Magic Markers

My strategy for content curation will be highly selective and focus more on quality than quantity.    And to have these images linked to more contextual information beyond the image source.    For example, to my blog posts on the topic.     Who knows maybe Rafe Needleman’stongue in check “prediction” that Google + will acquire Pinterest and that might actually make it more useful.

Source: Elad Blog

The Big Picture

Pinterest is a small example of  how the social web is evolving.   There is so much content being created and shared, that making sense of it is getting harder and harder unless you have context.  This is what content curation does – it joins your social graph with interest graphics.   It’s explained in more detail in this TechCrunch post, The Age of Relevance.   Several of the newest social platforms create “interest graphs” a map for navigating to subjects and people of interest. The Interest graph is a superset of the social graph, a people map.  The interest graph includes people, things, and their linkages and it helps users navigate the information thicket.  Content Curators are doing this and more platforms will facilitate curation.  Pinterest is one of them.

The difference between content shared through social graphs is that sharing is a stream.  That can feel overwhelming and hard to organize when lots of categorical pieces of content fly by you .   The tools that create interest graphs, the curation tools,  allow you to put some structure and that’s what provides the context.   It is also part of what makes pinterest and other curation tools so addictive.

But remember, as Nancy Schwartz points,  Relevance Rules! in her advice about campaigns,  you need to be strategic about what content you’re curating and WHO you’re sharing with.  Content curation should link to your integrated strategy objectives and identified audience.  Otherwise, you’re wasting your time playing with a pretty shiny object.

Nonprofit Uses Pinterest

Joe Waters wrote an interesting piece in the Huffington Post about Pinterest and nonprofits.  He points out that it is an audience he wants to reach with his cause marketing information:

It’s easy to use, powerfully visual, populated with cause marketing-loving women and growing like crazy. 4,000 percent in six months!

The heavy presence of women 25-44 on Pinterest is what distinguishes it from other new social media platforms, which are generally populated by men 18-24. Here’s a site that already has the audience everyone wants: women and moms who make most of the household buying decisions.

Joe also asks a few good starter questions if your nonprofit is considering setting up a presence:

• Do you have an interesting or compelling story to tell with images?
• Is your cause considered hip, trendy, or do you just want to be?
• Are you engaged on other social media platforms?
• Are you looking to reap the rewards of local SEO?

I’d add to this some questions about measurable objectives and who is the target audience.

AARP People Making A Difference Pin

Several Nonprofits are experimenting with Pinterest.   AARP has several boards related to it content, including “Over 50 Making a Difference. ”  Amnesty International  has set up a list of book recommendations, “Human Rights Reading.”  National Wildlife Federation is curating wildlife photos and other visually related content.

Help Attack has created this demo video about how to use for fundraising.

Joe offers some guidelines for using the site:

• Be useful
• Pinterest users are looking for ideas and inspiration.
• Create categories that reflect what users are looking for.
• Give the job to someone who has an eye for aesthetics.
• Learn from these 15 Pinterest superusers.
• Don’t just pin, repin.
• Let your supporters pin for you.
• Add “pin it” buttons to your blog or web site so your visitors and supporters can create their own pin boards that highlight your cause.

If you decide to set up a board, here’s some useful tips from Mashable and this analysis of the top brands on Pinterest and some more ideas about how to use for your organization.  Or just wait until the Pinterest for Dummies book publishes.    While the user base is predominantly female, there are guys there too.

I’ve set up a resource sheet with more examples, tips, and links here.

Special thanks to:  Nancy Schwartz, Zan Mccolloch-Lussier, Maddie Grant, Stephanie Scwab, Amy Sample Ward, Alejandra Owns, Jen Martin, Tammy Gordon, Melanie Mathos, Chad Norman, Michael DeLong, Debra Asknase, Janet Fouts, Kyra Stoddart, Marc Sirkin and Sue Anne Reed for sharing their insights about Pinterest.

Is your organization curating content as part of a strategy to be relevant to your audience?  What you think of Pinterest?  Jumping in or watching from the sidelines?

What are your nonprofit’s strategies for incorporating content curation?   Do you think pinterest might be useful to your organization?  How will you use it strategically?

Investing in movements or networks for social change is a strategy that some funders are using.  But, how do you measure the results?

Marino Morino, who wrote “Leap of Reason: Managing to Outcomes in an Era of Scarcity” pointed me to this recent report, “Transactions, Transformations, Translations:  Metrics That Matter for Building, Scaling and Funding Social Movements” by Manual Paster, Jennifer Ito, and Rachel Rosner with the USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity and funded by the Ford Foundation.   The report addresses metrics for success for investing in broad field social movements or networked approaches to social change.  The report is written for funders and those on the ground doing the work in the context of networks, although it doesn’t go deep into practice.

The report captures a conundrum in measuring social change movements or networked approaches.    Outcomes for “wicked problems” can be easily counted – policies passed, housing the homeless, educating children.  But there are less tangible results such as “we changed the frame” or “we shifted members’ consciousness” which for grassroots organizers on the ground view as the vibrancy of the network .   The report lays out some new metrics for movement building – that are paths to the more easily counted tangible results and where the unit of analysis is the movement or network, not an organization.

As the report points out,  movement organizers are grappling with big questions.  It is less about how to raise funds for their organizations (although that’s important) but focused on the big picture:   What is the long-term change that we want to see?  What is needed to achieve it?  What roles do different organizations play?    The report identifies metrics to measure progress around this these questions – it asks and answers – “What exactly are the right metrics for today?

“Amazing large numbers of members, staging marches, and winning campaigns – all these remain important measures of a successfully growing movement.  There are, however, other equally important aspects that are often missed in the numbers alone, including the fundamental changes that a leader, organization, or community experiences through their involvement in organizing and advocacy.”

The report suggests that one needs metrics that represent two sides:

Transactions: These are markers, both internal (number of members) and external  (voter turnout).    While the data is not always to collect, such measures tend to be easier to track because they are more tangible.    But they only tell part of the story and skip over the richness of experience and momentum that can be a prelude to social change.

Transformations: These are important, but often “invisible” work.   They should how people, organizations, and movements have been altered through the collective efforts.   They can also show how societal or political views have been shifted.   These metrics are more qualitative in nature which makes them more difficult to define, capture, and track.

The report argues for using a combination of metrics to tell the fuller story of a movement’s success.  It goes on to define both transaction and transformation metrics in different categories for movement or network building which serves as the meat of the report.

• Community organizing
• Civic engagement
• Leadership development
• Alliance building
• Campaigns
• Research and policy analysis
• Communications and framing
• Media
• Organizational Development
• Movement Building

One of the most useful parts of the report is a two-page spread that illustrates sample metrics for transformations and transactions for each of these categories or a “metrics tool kit.”   The metrics are not intended to be prescriptive, but the reports recommends that movements need to co-create their metrics so the metrics transcend the organization.   For this to happen, organizations need to the space to begin to work together to build the common language and frameworks for these metrics to hold up against different approaches and models.

There is a category for traditional and social media and a couple of paragraphs in the report.    That’s exactly what the book, “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,” that I wrote with KD Paine and will publish later this year is about it.

The report included a section on recommendations, including building the metrics tool box and building movement capacity to use metrics.   One of the resources that is mentioned in the book is a Progressive Technology Project’s database technology set up to track this work.   Here’s what the report said about capacity building:

Of course, metrics tools only work if you have skilled craftspeople who can use them effectively.   The presence of such metrics mavens varies across the landscape of movement organizations.    Metrics and measurements need to exist at every level of organization, but it makes a different when someone is in charge and helps organizations stay on track.   While community organizers often find themselves pressed to take the time to assess in light of daily crises and immediate problems, movement builders have learned the power of reflection and refreshing.  Metrics can help, and building them into organizational culture can be facilitated by having someone with responsibilities to make it happen – and to steep others in the new practices.

We spent a chapter or two talking about exactly how to put this into practice because is this a very important point.

The point that the report makes and I agree is that measurement needs to value both transformations and transactions – and that requires new attitudes and approaches.

Anyone out there using metrics to measure movements?

Update:  Special thanks to Victoria Vrana who shared the report with Mario who shared it with me … a networked approach to sharing of networked metrics!

Infographics, if done well, can be a useful way to boil down key principles, ideas, or themes.   They’re gaining popularity everywhere, including the nonprofit sector.   More and more nonprofits are starting to use them and it isn’t difficult to find lots of examples and curate them.

KD Paine, my co-author of the Measuring the Networked Nonprofit (due out in later in 2012), pointed me to this gem of a measurement checklist in an infographic format.   I like the positive frame they put on measurement malaise and the hat tip to Kobler-Ross.

1.  Denial:  You can’t measure it

2.  Fear:  What if we find out our social media didn’t perform well

3.  Confusion:   I don’t know how to measure

4.  Promotion:  Check out these charts and graphs!

5.  Accountability:  Connecting measurement to decision-making and getting better results

Where do you sit along the spectrum?

Photo by Beth Kanter, Net Funders Conference, October, 2011

A few days ago I opened the door on a new learning journey.   I am very excited about upcoming peer learning projects that I’m working on in 2012, including several for Packard grantees in India, Pakistan, and Africa as well as the e-Mediat project in the Middle East.   It is a great opportunity to ponder the question:  How to design and deliver learning experiences for nonprofits that connect, inspire, and engage?     What are the best practices?

Content Delivery Is Not Learning

On New Year’s Day, I heard a story on NPR about some research on instructional techniques used by many college professors – the lecture and how it is less effective in an age information abundance.   Content delivery  is less important then the skill to making sense of it and that needs to be what “classroom time” is about.  The instructor’s role should be to facilitate this understanding  for their students, not dump content on them.

Illustration by Beth Kanter

I’ve known this for years, ever since I read Richard Mayer‘s educational research  in his book, The Handbook of Multi-Media Learning.    The study was of medical school lectures. They gave the students tests based on content and scored them. The questions were keyed to when the content was explained. And the resulting graph is the analysis of 1200 students.  It shows that attention is the sharpest during the first 10 minutes of the lectures, then plummets, and then gradually goes back up but not to the same level.    That means talking non-stop for more than 10 minutes, people start to tune out.  If your true goal is inspire people to learn, then  you need to incorporate techniques so people can process the information every ten minutes.   This is important for both online and offline instructional delivery.

The NPR story was part of a series called “Don’t Lecture Me“.  It follows a Professor Mazur, who teaches physics at Harvard and rather than telling his students, he teaches by questioning.    His technique is similar to what I’ve being doing for years, but I haven’t used real-time learning analytics:

Before he class, he assigns a pre-reading from the textbook.   He expects students to read the assignment before they come to class so that instructional time can be spent helping them make sense of it and apply to their work. Mazur uses technology,a web-based monitoring system where students submit answers to questions about the reading prior to coming to class.  The last question asks students to tell Mazur what confused them. He uses their answers to prepare a set of multiple-choice questions he uses during class.    Mazur starts the class with a brief explanation of a concept he wants students to understand. Then he asks one of the multiple-choice questions. Students get a minute to think about the question on their own and then answer it using a mobile device that sends their answers to Mazur’s laptop.   Next, he asks the students to turn to the person sitting next to them and talk about the question. The class typically erupts in a cacophony of voices, as it did that first time he told students to talk to each other because he couldn’t figure out what else to do.   Once the students have discussed the question for a few minutes, Mazur instructs them to answer the question

It is far less work to slap together a powerpoint presentation and prepare the content.  But doing that extra work to figure out how to engage your students improves learning outcomes or your results.

• Participants will retain what they learned, it sticks
• They will be more likely to apply what they learned or what we call the “challenge of transfer” because they’re inspired
• You, as the instructor, will learn along with them because you are not the one talking the whole time
• In a peer learning situation, people may make stronger connections with others and develop working relationships that may go beyond the learning experience
• It’s more fun to teach this way and more fun to learn this

That’s the theory at least.   I’ve been tasked with designing and facilitating a session for trainers during our two-day e-Mediat networked nonprofit and social media bootcamps in Jordan and Morocco.    The training for the NGOs that have completed the 5 workshops from the different countries over the past year.   The two-days will offer great content, but will also showcase techniques for engaging, connecting, and inspiring participants.    I’m doing a session with trainers in Jordan and Morocco in the evening, so I will debrief on the process of the techniques and have them design their own.

We don’t have a lot of time and it will come after a long day, so have been thinking of ways to do a train the trainers in an efficient way.   This gave me an excuse to look at different types of peer learning exercises and facilitation techniques.

Luckily, there is no shortage of techniques and resources and books.  Some long time favorites:   Nancy White is my go to guru on all things facilitation and has been for more than 10 years!     Michelle Martin who writes the Bamboo blog was one of the first bloggers I connected with that was interested in peer learning, reflecting, and training design.  She recently took a deep dive into reflective practice and techniques.   Allan Gunn from Aspiration and his legendary facilitation skills and knowledge.  Joitske Hulsebosch who writes the Lasgna and Chips blog and writes about peer learning in ICD context and use of social media and technology.    So, what from this delicious buffet should I put on the plate?

Techniques

This is far too much to cover in the session.   I will most likely create a brief handout that provides step-by-steps – a sort of recipe pamphlet.   We will use the time to debrief and experiment with a few of these techniques — some of which would have been modeled during  the conference.

1.   Begin Connections

During a training session, psychological safety is important and it takes a little more than having participants introduce themselves.    So, the minute participants enter the room, they should be engaged in meaningful, topic related activities that help create a learning community bond.    So, it is always important to think about how participants will enter the training, room layout,  and what they can do while getting settled.    Having devices that allow participants who don’t know each other to get acquainted informally before the session begins are important.

A few ideas:

• Assigned seating or “social engineering”
• Solo reflective activity related to the content.  I love using “walls with sticky notes” and ask folks to jot down their questions or what they’d like to share
• Facilitator greets everyone individually and makes them feel welcome and does real-time network weaving by introducing them to others
• If appropriate, an networking activity  that encourages people to interact with people they don’t know.    NTEN has used this at its conference, trading stickers with other attendees and once you get a complete set, you can enter your card in a raffle.

When the session formally begins, it usually kicks off with an icebreaker or two.   These are brief, introductory exercises that help participants to get know each other, get connected to the topic, and their own learning outcomes.   If one of the goals of the peer session is “networking,” the icebreakers can help facilitate that.  Also, if participants don’t know each other yet, it gives them a chance to informally introduce one another.   Icebreakers can be done as pairs, small groups, and full group – and you can use a combination.    The most important thing is that it has to relate to the content in some way.     The KSTool Kit has a list of icebreakers and I’ve used many of them, but in this session I will model one or two.

Share Pairs: Share pairs are when you ask folks to find someone in the room and discuss a question.     I use this for peer groups to get them to reflect their successes and challenges and to begin to offer peer advice.     Some facilitators start with easy questions like “What was it like to get here today.”    I created a variation on the shair pair squared.   It starts with 2 or three rotations of share pairs, asking folks to connect around their success stories related to the topic and challenges related to the topic.  Then ask the pairs to find another pair and share.

Spectra Gram: This is a full group exercise that you can use to bring out ideas or different views on the topic.  You can also use it get a better understanding of people’s experience in the room.   I learned this one from “Gunner” from Aspiration.   You get people to line up in the room as to whether they agree or disagree on a provocative statement related to the content – and then interview people.  This is useful if you anticipate some skepticism about your topic or want people to feel safe expressing their point of view.

Network Maps: When I’ve done trainings that are on the topic of networked nonprofit or networks, are longer-term projects, and the intent is to develop a network, I use this exercise.   It takes time and good to do with a smaller group.   There is the person to person networking and the exercise I created as “From Me To We Network” which is described here.  -Each participant introduces themselves with 3 keywords on a sticky note that explain what knowledge they can share and what they’re looking to learn about.   Then the group draws the connections.   I’ve also done this with groups of organizations who have collectively created their network maps on the wall.

2.     Balancing Content Delivery and Sense Making

This is the meat of your training and it is important to balance content delivery with opportunities to process and apply what is being taught.       A few techinques:

Interactive Lecture: I’ve been using this technique for years. The best practical resources is Thiagi’s Interactive Lectures.    You need to think about your content in 10 minute chunks and take pauses for participants to reflect on the content.    The task is about designing the right questions or reflective conversation starters.  Michele Martin has this terrific slide in her reflective practice deck:

These questions can be done as share pairs and table shares.    I like to mix it up and also include solo activities like “Think and Write,” a timed “60 seconds of silence” to reflect on the content without talking, or a self-assessment activity.    I’ve also experimented with giving people other ways to process content,  using sticky notes and drawings.

Living Case Study: The living case study is when you make participants part of the content.   A  “Living Case Study”  is less formal that your traditional case study because it covers a work in progress and shares lessons learned as well as successes.   Often, they’re messy, but vibrant and all about real time learning.     While the traditional case study is tidy, packaged, and finished – the living case study is open to input, questions, reflections and most of all empowerment of peers.       You can work with participants a head of time on a brief, ignite style presentation about a work in progress and have be a longer section.   I’ve also use this for keynotes, but it requires doing a survey before to gather up the stories.   Here’s an example from nonprofit tech day at Microsoft in Seattle last year.

3.  Working in Cohorts

Another way to get people to make sense of the content and apply to their situation is to have them work on it in a small group.   It is a good idea to break up a training day into small group and full group work – small groups give people more time go into more depth.   Small groups can be conversations,  peer assists or shares, or an exercise that can be done collaboratively or working alone together.

• Conversations: Sometimes just giving people the time to have a conversation around a specific topic related to the content helps them get a deeper understanding of how to apply.   One of my favorites is World Cafe, although you need a couple of hours to follow the specific methodology.  It is an effective technique to use to help participants process what they’ve learned and to harvest insights.I first met Juanita Brown who created the method through my blog in 2006.   I later became a member of the GIGI group (girl geeks of the World Cafe).
• Exercises: These can be collaborative exercises, having a group brainstorm ideas together, can be effective.  The “Gift Garden” is particularly useful method.    Or if the training is focused on a capacity building technique – for example – how to develop an integrated social media strategy – the exercise could be a checklist for participants to work individually but in a small group.       Finally, the exercise could be a simulation or game like the Social Media Game that used cards and helped organizations think through a strategy.
• Peer Assists/Shares: A peer assist when you put people into small groups and participants help each other by problem solving.   You can focus one participant or go round robin and each person gets a turn.    A Peer Share is where the participants become the presenters in small groups.  My favorite is Speed Geek that I learned from Gunner.   It generates rich insights if you combine it with other methods that help participants to process.    I’ve incorporated a  ”Gallery Walk” where presenters created a post and participants had an opportunity to give feedback via sticky notes.   Visual facilitation techniques can help with processing as well.

3.    Social Media Integration

I have been integrating social media into instruction for years and it feels weird to me not to have it.     Intentionally integrating the use of social media for knowledge capture and to extend the conversation to people outside the room can enhance the learning.     I prefer to be very intentional about social media integration, assigning roles and tasks at particular periods.   Since I’m often teaching social media,  I like to have participants using these skills during the training as much as possible – as long as it doesn’t become a distraction to their learning.  Some people actually learn this way, but others don’t.

4.  Great Endings

If you have designed your training well, you’ve created a community by the end.     So, you need to have a ceremonial closing of the learning experience that will inspire people to continue the connections to the other people and to applying the skills.    It’s about questions like this:

• What is clear?
• What is unclear?
• What resources do you need to move forward?
• What is one thing you can put into practice?

I have lots of different closers — gratitude circles,  Just Three Words,   3×5 cards to write down what they put into practice, etc.    I’ve just learned about a new one called River of Life from my colleague Nancy White and can’t wait to experiment.

If you design or deliver trainings, what are some of your favorite techniques and resources?   Did you ever participate in a peer learning group or training that engaged, connected, and inspired you?  Why did that happen?

Flickr Photo by Sebr

Over the holiday break,  I read  18 Minutes:  Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done by Peter Bregman who blogs at at the HBR.  This book is a gem.  Each chapter starts with a personal story that illustrates a concept related to managing unproductive distractions.   What’s refreshing and different about this book is that it isn’t about trying to get everything done efficiently.  Instead he guides you on how to focus on what matters and ignore the rest.     He offers both daily techniques that help you reach longer-term goals.

He suggests setting year-long goals.   His strategy for that is how to survive a buffet.    There are so many good choices with a buffet that you end up stuffing yourself and over-eating.  The way to avoid that discomfort is to limit yourself to putting five items on your plate.   That forces you to be strategic about what you pick.   The same discipline applies to setting an annual goals.   He identify 5 things to focus on for the year.

Bregman also suggests picking an overall theme for year.  I love Bregman’s idea.    The theme he selected for the year really resonated with me:  Slow Down.   Bregman talks about benefits of this theme:

My thought was that if I focused only on slowing down, everything else would improve. And, so far, it has. And what I thought would be a downside has actually been a positive: Slowing down has meant that I can’t get as much done. Which has forced me to make strategic choices about what to spend my time on and what to ignore. I’m more thoughtful, less scattered, and enjoying my work more fully. Counter-intuitively, I’m more productive.

That’s what I need.    So, I’m going to make that my theme, too.  This past year of writing the book “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit” with KD Paine and editor Bill Paarlberg,  I got a taste of slowing down.   Writing a book required  a much deeper level of focus and paying attention.  I want to sustain that focus throughout the year and apply to what I do — from content curation to blogging to facilitating trainings and developing curriculum.    Be more of a focusing lens versus a fire hydrant.

Here’s some areas that I want go slow with:

• Teaching and Learning: These terms are really one – you need both to be a good instructor or trainer.     My goal is to learn how to design the best learning opportunities for nonprofits to embrace networked ways of working, measurement, or strategic social media.    This will be a big focus of work at Packard in the coming year and what I want to blog more about.    Learning is also important – both what the learners are learning and also my own learning.  I’m not a happy camper unless I’m learning something and for me learning is about reflection – which includes blogging and establishing rituals like the 18 minute process that Bregman shares in his book (see below.)  To be successful in either teaching or learning, you have to slow down.
• Measurement and Content Curation:   These are two focus areas that I want incorporate into my social media training.   They are content areas but also skills.  I’ve been immersed in writing about measurement and testing instructional frameworks this year.  Now, I want to refine those in more workshops and peer group learning opportunities.  I’m also interested in content curation and have been practicing it and teaching it, but want to take that to the next level.
• Networked NGO:  I’ll be combing the two above in all my training work during 2012.  I will be designing and facilitating capacity building programs in the Middle East, Africa, and India.  I want to learn as much about how networked ways of working are used outside the US context.

Having a focus helps you say no to activities that fall into “all the rest” bucket.   Saying no is a muscle that needs to be exercised daily.    This year I’m incorporating a couple of techniques.   First, I’m going to create an ignore list in addition to my to do list.    Second,   I’ve always kept gratitude journals, but now I’m also to keep a “no thanks” journal  or record what I’ve said no to.

But keeping your focus day in and day out for an entire year can be a real challenge.   Bregman has a method for that.  It is the 18 minutes in the title of his book.  The 18 minutes refers to the importance of creating a daily habit of reflection and focus on what you want to accomplish, knowing that you won’t get everything done.   Here how it works:

Step 1:    Morning Minutes (5 minutes)
Before your turn on your computer, plan ahead for the day.   Decide what will make the day successful and that will further your focus for the year.  Put that on your calendar and don’t take more than three days to do it.

Step 2: One of Reflection for Each Hour (8 minutes)
He suggests setting a watch or timer to remind you each hour.  When you hear the beep, reflect and ask yourself if you’ve been productive in the last hour.  This is similar to the pomodoro technique

Step 3:  Evening Minutes (5 minutes)
Shut off the computer and review how your day went.  What did you accomplish?  What could be improved? What I have learned?

It’s a simple, powerful technique to help you select your daily focus deliberately and wisely and remind yourself of this focus throughout the day.  But  your daily ritual needs to support an annual or yearly theme.    This is the time of year to ask and answer:  What is the year about?   It is the time of year to create good daily habits so you achieve it.

What’s your year about?  What new habits will you create so you have the focus to reach your goals?

Last Sunset of 2011

I spent a very quiet holiday with family at Half Moon Bay and taking a New Year’s hike on Ano Nuevo to see the elephant seals.     Nature hikes and down time with family are nourishing and replenishing.

As I watched the last sunset of 2011 fade over the Pacific Ocean,   I wanted to formally say farewell to Zoetica, the company I co-founded with Geoff Livingston and Kami Huyse that we announced in January, 2010 one day after my birthday, and one day before the Haiti Earthquake.     Geoff has moved on to working on exciting projects, including a book and Kami will continue the brand Zoetica working on strategy projects such as this important effort to keep .NGO domain in the hands of nonprofits.

Starting Zoetica came on the heels of  one of the most dramatic changes I made in my life in recent years.   In 2009,  I moved with my my family across country to California to become Visiting Scholar at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and wrote my first book, The Networked Project with Alison Fine.    In 2010,  I launched the Networked Nonprofit with a flurry of speaking and training gigs literally around the world, while also designing and facilitating many workshops, peer learning groups,  and coaching grantees as Visiting Scholar.

Here’s what is in store for me for 2012:

As Visiting Scholar to the David and Lucile Packard Foundation this past year (my 3rd),  one project I worked on was facilitating peer learning groups to test and develop case studies and frameworks for my next book,  Measuring the Networked Nonprofit” that I co-authored with KD Paine and editor, Bill Paarlberg.   The book will publish in the second half of 2012.    The book is a how-to guide for using measurement and learning to improve networked nonprofit practices.      Writing a book while testing frameworks in a peer group setting was a little like trying to change a tire on a moving car, but it is far more fun to create – and this participatory process – makes the material more customized for the readers.   I now look forward to further refining curriculum and workshops over the coming months.

I will also continue to follow my passion and calling as a trainer and capacity builder through my work as Visiting Scholar at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation working with grantees designing and facilitating capacity building programs that incorporate social media and networked approaches.   This year, 2012, will have a focus on designing and delivering capacity building projects with NGOs outside the US.  I will be working with a cluster of Packard grantees in Pakistan and India in collaboration with IIE.   I will also have the opportunity to be an instructor as part of a Women’s Leadership Program in Africa, in partnership with IIE.    And, will  complete my work on E-mediat project, a capacity building project in the Middle East.    Maybe my next book will be about something about Networked NGOs and capacity building methods …..

What are your plans for 2012?

Global Voices: Who We Are from Global Voices on Vimeo.

I’ve been a member of the Global Voices Community since 2004 where I first connected with Cambodian bloggers like John Weeks, Tharum, and others.  While I’m not active in the community, I continue to support this community – as a donor and a board member of  ”Friends of Global Voices” for the past few years.

Global Voices has been there as revolutions happened, dictatorships fell, and network effects rippled through the cities and neighborhoods of our contributors reporting from around the world.    It is an important organization – so if you’re looking for a worthwhile organization to donate to as the year ends,  support Global Voices by making a donation.    (A donation of $25 will get you a cool poster created by  Morningside Analytics – that is a social network analysis map of bloggers who link to Global Voices and cite similar online content)

Plus, you’ll get the undying love and loyalty of the Global Voices mascot, the GV Ferret.

Donate today!

I’ve been participating in the #12DaysofGiving , a 12-day bonanza of giving, sharing, and promoting social good from 12/13 to 12/24.  Each day a different blogger champions a cause.  Today is the last day and it is finally my turn!    I’m fundraising for the Sharing Foundation, that supports children and young people in Cambodia.

HELP ME SEND SOME CAMBODIAN KIDS TO COLLEGE!  DONATE HERE!

Why this charity?   Because my children were adopted from Cambodia and it is a way to give back.

Education is the path out of poverty in Cambodia.    The Sharing Foundation has a full range of educational programs for children, from pre-school to college sponsorship.  Our family is sponsoring Keo Savon who grew up in the Kampong Speu Orphanage where my daughter spent the first year of her life.   Keo Savon graduated from the local high school, steadily holding #3 and #5 in her class of 65 students.    She is studying chemistry, math, physics, biology, and Khmer literature at the University where she hopes to major in architecture.

Won’t you consider a holiday donation to the Sharing Foundation to help support Keo Savon and others like her?  You can donate here.

Long time readers of this blog will remember Leng Sopharath who I sponsored for college with early experiments in fundraising on Twitter and creating case studies of social fundraising.    Through the Sharing Foundation’s college sponsorship program and our support, Leng was able to go the University to study accounting.  Her education was interrupted by a serious medical problem, but she recovered.  She graduated in 2010.   Sponsoring her education was more than the money, sponsors and students also write letters to one another for support.   I was lucky enough to meet Leng Sopharath when I traveled to Cambodia in 2007.

As of this morning,  we’ve raised $1,677.    If I can raise another $323 before Santa Claus arrives, then we can send two kids to college!     Donate here!

To all my generous colleagues who donated, a big thank to:

Kami Huyse, Zoetica
Zan McColloch-Lussier
Joe Baker
Peggy Duvette
Amy Neumann
Crowdrise
Barbara Masters
Chanti and Lori
Marie Jo Dauphin
Gina Stark
“Someone”
“CW”
and all the anonymous donors …

Happy Holidays!