A new report commissioned by See3, Edelman, and YouTube’s Nonprofit Program entitled “Into Focus” is the first survey to look at the how nonprofit organizations are using video, the barriers to use, and the ROI of a video strategy. The report offers value to nonprofit organizations on both a practical level (for example, offering an illustrated decision path on how to make a popular and effective video) and as a benchmark report for how organizations are leveraging video and allocating resources to its production and distribution. The big findings are not about how organizations are using video, but what they are not doing.

Nonprofits Have Defined Goals, but Do Not Measure Video Impact

The nonprofit organizations surveyed created videos to achieve one of four stated broad goals. In order of popularity, those goals are: marketing and awareness (87%), fundraising (46%), membership development and relations (32%), Advocacy (30%).  The obvious correlation is to map goals to strategy and measure effectiveness, however 79% of nonprofits either don’t know how to analyze the impact of their videos or they only track it anecdotally.

The report authors emphasize that two the most important things an organization can do to improve its video’s return on investment (ROI) are to define a clear, attainable goal…and measure how and if it reaches that goal.  The most powerful anecdotal story in the report is a story from a data scientist at DoSomething.org who admitted that the organization was initially concerned most with video views (1.5 million) as the critical metric; the right metric was those who move from viewing to donating. Within the report, you will find a wide range of tips and strategies to develop and define the goals of a video, measure effectiveness, and overcome barriers to using video. Beth Kanter also offers a framework for thinking about measuring video.

How Videos are Shared

Not surprisingly, about 91% of nonprofits surveyed felt that YouTube and Facebook are critical video distribution channels. The survey revealed that these are the top two social media distribution for video, followed by Twitter and Vimeo. Aside from where they are shared online, I agree with the report’s emphasis that it is most important to share first to your core audience, and to leverage their loyalty for distribution and views. In addition, it is important to place video prominently on the website, using email for distribution, and making sure that the videos highly shareable through links to use for sharing and social network sharing.

YouTube’s Nonprofit Program is Highly Underutilized

Only 42% of the organizations surveyed replied that they participate in YouTube’s Nonprofit program. 18% of respondents were not sure if their organization belonged to the Nonprofit Program. This was a real surprise, given that they are all surveyed about nonprofit use and over 91% feel that YouTube is a critical distribution source.

The Future of Nonprofit Video is More

“More media overall and exponentially more video,” the report authors predict. By 2016, the sum of all forms of video will be approx 86% of global consumer traffic, cited from the Cisco Visual Networking Index. At the beginning of the report, the authors state that “80% of respondents said that video is important to their organization today, and 91% foresee that its role will increase over the next three years. Nearly everyone (92%) values the investment they have made in video production, and 87% want to produce more videos.”

Nonprofits get that the role of video will continue to grow, and the report offers readers a benchmark of where the nonprofit video industry is today, and what’s holding it back. The future of nonprofit video appears to be summarized in one word: more.

Note: the report compiled and analyzed the responses of 446 respondents in US and Canada. Respondents represent organizations of all size: 30% are small organizations, 25% are medium-sized, and 45% have large budgets. For more information, download the report here.

image by h.koppdelaney Creative Commons use license

It’s conference submission season, and I’m ready to be dazzled. I’m tired of the same old workshops on how to raise more money online, tell stories, and be a better cross-channel communicator. (Full disclosure: a colleague and I offered a digital storytelling tools meetup at the 2013 Nonprofit Technology Conference.) Maybe it’s because I’m writing this late at night, or I’m just back from a regional conference that served up the same list of workshops that every conference serves…but I’m waiting for the blow-me-away sessions and ideas that change the way I think and approach nonprofit tech.

Certainly some plenary sessions “wow.” When Dan Pallotta spoke about why the “thinking out of the box” isn’t really thinking out of the box at this year’s NTC, my mind began to whir with possibilities. I remember being “wowed” by the founder of Code for America at SXSW a few years ago. And I don’t want to discount some of the wonderful workshops that I have attended. By and large, though, nonprofit-oriented conferences aren’t offering up conversations about what digital media could become or will do 10 years from now. Their audiences are still experimenting with the popular social media platforms of the day.

I get that social media, as a system of communication and organizational expression, is maturing, while concurrently nonprofit organizations get into the game. My boredom stems from the fact that the field of nonprofit technology is changing faster than I can say my ABCs, while conferences stick with stasis rather than future-thinking. We are now presenting to “born digital” organizations, digital natives, and nonprofits that have been using social media for many years. More of them attend our sessions each year. There is a new online fundraising company every month opening its doors, and umpteen ways to approach social data and measure social media success. And around the corner: post-millennial (the teens and tweens) digital natives who view the mobile web as the web and don’t know why we’re not just trying and failing because they see no boundaries.  That is a whole lot of potential for a wide array of new workshops and sessions, so let’s get our thinking caps on.

Of course conferences should offer the “how-to” sessions for those who want to learn and solidify the basics, as well as more advanced-level sessions for those who want to build on their understanding. I don’t dispute that, just that it’s not all there is.

Let’s stop catching up so much that we’re not looking ahead: what’s next for social media? For nonprofits? What does the next generation of online fans want from nonprofits and how does that make us uncomfortable? I’d love to attend more TED-type talks that offer crazy theories and stories that push the way I think. Or even “idea mashups” – such as what happens when storytelling meets social data? Or when online donation campaigns meet design thinking?

And let’s not be afraid to offer many sessions on failure: those are the lessons that push us to the next great idea.

Let’s make 2014 the year conferences disrupt the industry with new ideas. Let’s make it the year that we leave conferences saying “wow – everything has changed for me.”

Nonprofit Technology Conference session submissions are due June 15th, the SXSW Interactive Panel Picker opens on July 1st, and New Media Expo (formerly Blogworld) speaker submissions have been open since late April.

Idealware has just released its latest report, “Exploring Cutting Edge Social Media” in an attempt to answer the questions “when should an organization use new social media tools and channels, why, and for what use?” That’s quite a tall order to fill, really. I applaud Idealware’s attempt to respond to the question that every digital media consultant is repeatedly asked:

“Which new social media channels and tools are really worth investing our time in?”

The best parts of the report deal with why an organization should use “cutting edge” social media, determining the best time in the life cycle of a social media channel to adopt new tools and channels, and descriptions of some of the newest sites. One note: I’m not a fan of the term “cutting edge,” and from now on I’ll use “new and developing” in its place.

When and why? Idealware suggests that organizations consider new and developing social media if they want to reach a narrow or specialized segment, to share specific types of content (articles only, slide shows only, etc.), and if it is mission-related. Adoption, however, depends on organizational culture. Even the most appropriate new tools and media can be sidelined if the organization culture is slow to adopt new technology.

At what point in the life cycle of a social media channel should an organization adopt it? Great question, and Idealware offers a stellar explanation, based on Gartner’s “hype cycle” of technology (see diagram below). Idealware suggests trying it out either during the early adoption period (ed note: possibly offering early adoption advantage when/if a channel gains a large user base) or after the tool has shown its usefulness. I couldn’t agree more. There is always a lot of hype around a new tool or social media channel, and organizations are understandably wary of investing energy into one, only to see it die (RIP Posterous). Near the beginning of this report, Idealware strongly urges organizations considering adopting new and developing tools to consider both what the audience is likely to use and organizational SMART communication goals.

The tools! The shiny new tools! Oh yes, there’s a lot of space devoted to the tools. There is also a case study or two in each section highlighting an organization that has used one of these tools successfully. Idealware reviews them by category:

• Social media that engages youth: Pheed, Tumblr, Snapchat, and Instagram
• Geolocation and mobile apps: FourSquare, Moveable Feast, Google’s Field Trip
• Tools that curate content streams: Reddit, StumbleUpon, Pinterest

I personally love that the report also includes a section on that curate content streams, such as Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Pinterest, because finding content “through the noise,” so to speak is a constant challenge for time-strapped social media staffers. A personal favorite of mine for doing just that is Scoop.it. I also often use Twitter to listen for great content based on hashtags.

• Connecting locally: DeHood (for neighborhoods) and blasterous (send local update blasts)
• Connecting internationally: Qzone (China), NetLog (Europe, young audiences), Orkut (India and Brazil). While some of these are not new and developing tools, they are important for connecting internationally.

At the beginning of the report, Idealware states that these tools are best used for specific uses, like sharing multimedia. To support this, the report devotes a lot of time to photo, video, and audio sharing tools.

The discussion about when to adopt these tools is never-ending, and this report begins to offer a framework for the “why, when, and what” of new and developing social media. You may download the report from Idealware here.

Image courtesy of kaniths

The imitable Sarah Robinson recently spoke about the irony that daily deal sites such as Living Social offer incentive deals for new customers, yet it is even more important to reward your most loyal customers with your best pricing. That really stuck in my head. Mission-driven organizations have not really thought much rewarding loyalty by offering their very best deals to their most loyal online fans. And frankly, it’s an oversight, because it’s a game-changing idea for the nonprofit sector.

Mission-driven organizations generally consider offering the best deals to their most generous donors. However, the most loyal online stakeholders do so much of the work of the organization, from bringing others into the organization, to friendraising dollars, to taking tangible action. Both types of stakeholders are critical to mission fulfillment, yet one is more openly and frequently rewarded than the other.

How should we define “most loyal customers” in terms of online stakeholders and fans?

This really depends on the organization, of course, but generally speaking these are the online fans who you know you can count on to support your messages, and will always share your news, activism, and actions. You could easily expand that definition to include those who comment a lot on your blog or social network channel, because they have “some skin in the game.” I might even suggest several categories of “most loyal customers” with rewards commensurate to loyalty and activity.

What do your most loyal customers want?

If you are MomsRising, you’ve vetted your very loyal customers and brought them into the strategy core of the organization. Washington State’s MomsRising local chapter gathered supporters to form the Capital Moms, a selected group that helps the organization develop political action strategy and advise the organization on the inside track to advocacy. For those MomsRising stakeholders, their greatest reward was being inside the planning and strategy of a campaign.

For the USA for UNHCR, anyone who wanted to really support the organization’s Blue Key online campaign was invited to sign up to be part of its campaign Facebook group, and actively develop the campaign’s online campaigns with other online supporters.

The Jamaica Plain NDC named a new apartment building after longtime community activist and JPNDC volunteer Nate Smith, calling it the Nate Smith House. That’s one way to reward community activism offline.

A first step is to find out what your most loyal online stakeholders want. Survey them. Ask them why they are involved and what they most would love from you in return.

What is the “best pricing” equivalent you can offer that also deeply satisfies the interests of your most loyal fans?

What is it that you have to reward online stakeholders with? Could your organization offered a free “meet the folks at the organization” invitation-only online event for the most loyal fans? Or send them an organizational membership? Or name something after them?

They key to what you offer, though, isn’t only what they want, but the best deal that you can give them. You have to have skin in the game too.

In other words, as Sarah said, offer the equivalent of your best pricing. It may “cost” you something in the short-term, but the longer term payoff for the organization is a deepened loyalty.

It’s time that we began thinking about how to reward our most loyal online fans in a systematic way. How do you reward yours?

(For an inspiring 40 seconds, watch Sarah’s video about reserving your very best pricing for your most loyal customers.)

Image courtesy of James Wheeler, Creative Commons

A colleague asked me for my thoughts on trends in social media today. I can sum it up in one word: Convergence.

Social media blasted into the world around 1997 with the birth of blogging, AOL IM’ing, and early social networks. In the 16 years since then, practitioners and the industry itself has defined and redefined “social media,” and almost every form of communication has become social. At the same time, practitioners, communicators, sales, customer service, project administrators, and everyone in the C-suite has grappled with how to use it, measure it, work alongside it, master it, and conduct business (nonprofit and for-profit companies alike). So it’s not surprising that the social media sector has expanded, splintered, redivided, and finally…converged.

When I responded to my colleague, I did so with four specific examples in mind: the convergence of social media policy, the communications sector, measurement, and job responsibilities. They are all converging in beautiful ways so that social media is no longer siloed, farmed out, or disconnected from the organization. At work, our social media use is no longer “just personal” or “just professional.” At long last, both the industry tools and the communications industry integrates social media metrics with organizational and communication metrics. Convergence.

Shonali Burke just published a moving blog post about how marketing communications and public relations are both about relationship building and should not be siloed. She advocates for an “integrated communication strategy” combining communications/pr/social media.  Shonali is the prototypical communications professional of 2020, with an integrated outlook and expertise. Most Communications Director positions should require social media competency and understanding in order to support an integrated communication strategy. Five years from now, social media positions will no longer exist; they will all just be communications jobs.

A year ago, I presented at South By Southwest Interactive with a stellar group of co-panelists (Amy Sample Ward, Jess Main, Vanessa Rhinesmith) on Personal/Personnel Social Media Boundaries. In 2012, the audience asked us a ton of questions about how to keep the personal and professional separate. In 2013, I was honored to be part of another rock star panel at the Nonprofit Technology Conference about the same subject with Jess, Vanessa, Maddie Grant and Megan Keane. This year, the conversation was entirely different; it wasn’t about how to separate our online selves, it was about how to bring the personal and professional selves together to be most effective as community managers and professionals. Convergence. (More about the panel here and my podcast interview on the topic with colleague Allison Fine here).

Two years ago, when I spoke about social media metrics, it was all about social media metrics. Today, the goal is to develop organization-wide metrics dashboards linking communications and social media with organizational KPIs and goals. Dashboard convergence.

In 2011, I was on a panel at the Nonprofit Technology Conference with Steve Backman, Laura Quinn and Judi Sohn entitled “Social Media and Contact Relationship Management: The New Mix.” Ahead of the session, we panelists acknowledged that our panel was just enough ahead of the field such that there were very few examples of social CRM, and no software other than Salesforce’s Chatter available at the time. Judi demonstrated a Salesforce “hack” that worked as social CRM for her organization Fight Colorectal Cancer (where she was the Executive Director), and we kept telling the audience “this is around the corner.” This year at NTC, “social CRM” was a huge buzzword phrase. I attended a fabulous session on how nonprofits are using social data, and felt like the future was finally here. Talk about convergence; social CRM is the data nerd’s fantasy convergence!

What convergence is next I cannot say. But I trust that it will facilitate efficiency, user experience, and relationship-building. Here’s to convergence!

Two weeks ago, I attended an enthralling session entitled “Real World Engagement” at the Nonprofit Technology Conference in Minneapolis. The session, moderated by Chris McCullough of Percolator Consulting, discussed what it takes for an organization to successfully engage real world supporters offline and online. Sarah Francis of MomsRising.org and Loren Drummond of the Washington Trails Association shared their experiences and practices moving fans to action. The session was a mesmerizing, fascinating peek into how two brilliant organizers recruit, motivate, inspire, and engage online fans to drive change.

MomsRising is a one-million strong organization that works to further family economic security, working on key issues that matter to families. As Sarah mentioned early on, “we work to turn members from online to offline.” Sarah Francis is the Chief Technology Officer and director of several of their campaigns. The Washington Trails Association (WTA) advocates for protecting and maintaining all of Washington’s trails. They also run the largest trail maintenance volunteer program in the country. Much of their work involves collaborating with cities, parks, municipalities and other organizations. Loren Drummond, Digital Content Manager, believes “that it is our job to get people out on trails exploring.”

The first step to real world supporter engagement: Define your audience

MomsRising’s audiences are everyone who has a mom or is a mom, political leaders, and the media. Sarah noted that moms are a hard group to organize because they are extremely busy, children are extremely expensive, moms are faced with childcare issues, and stressed for time. It is very hard to get them to turn out to a political event or meeting, especially due to the cost of babysitter.

The Washington Trails Association’s target audience is hikers, defined as “anyone who enjoys or likes to spend time in wildness.” The WTA is a voice for trails, but they are not defined by the type of trail or type of hiker or climber. Other audiences include birders, geocachers, environmentalists, parents, and hunters.

Offer value: WTA’s hiking reports and crowdsourced trip reports

The WTA wants to protect public lands and get people out using them, and members want to go hiking. Based on the intersection of these needs, the WTA created a database of all the trails in Washington, and overlaid it with member-sourced trip reports. The result is a robust, interactive, crowdsourced hiking resource. Anyone who has hiked a trail may file a trip report and post photos to the trail description. The descriptions are also entirely community-built and maintained. To date, there are about 6,000 trip reports on trails.

Offer value: MomsRising listens and offers moms what they want

MomsRising takes on critical issues facing women, mothers, and families, by mobilizing massive grassroots actions. To be successful, the organization had to discover what moms wanted in Washington State, and listen to them.

Sarah went to Department of Early Learning’s website, where she found a parent poll revealing that a priority is finding something free and fun to do with their preschool-aged kids. Sarah thought “what can we do that is free and fun to turn out kids??” She convinced someone in charge of operations at Washington State Capital to allow MomsRising to hold a free concert at the capital, dubbed the Olympia Dance Party. The event packed the rotunda between Senate and House, and made legislators aware of the need for affordable preschool care. This is one example of how MomsRising decides on how it can best offer value to its members, while also pursuing its own interest. Ultimately, in Washington State, MomsRising has increased fiscal budgets for issues that moms care about, including affordable child care.

Offline to Online: Creating a team of engaged fans

During the Olympia Dance Party, MomsRising staff walked around asking people in the crowd to sign up. Afterward, Sarah Francis from MomsRising invited everyone who came to the Olympia Dance Party to sit in a room, where she listened to what the Moms wanted from government. This group became known as their “Capital Moms.” Most of the Capital Moms had worked for government agencies or were a lobbyist, and are happy to be the “proxy moms” for women across the state. The result: a team of superheros who are really excited about lobbying and working on legislative issues. This came about from knowing what moms wanted (free, kid-friendly, fun events), and listening closely to their interests.

Moving online fans up the ladder of engagement

MomsRising brings fans into the organization by giving “happy claps” back to engaged users, asking them to share their stories to the Story bank, and inviting them into campaign planning. Stories from the Story bank are vetted and then shared with legislators. In addition, Facebook fans vote on the yearly MomsRising bumper sticker.

MomsRising also hosts conference calls and webinars to offer resources and then brainstorm campaign ideas together. Because supporters conceive of an idea together, then more likely to come out and see the idea happen in real life.

The WTA invites online fans to come to events, write for them (their 60-page bi-monthly magazine is volunteer-written), and post a trip report. Online fans also participate in some decisions. For example, during the month of Aug, WTA hosts a hike-a-thon and asks their hike-a-thon (private) group  for suggestions and ideas related to the hike-a-thon.

Bring fans into the organization to deepen their engagement

The WTA brings fans into the organization in a number of ways: through self-published trip reports, an “in my backpack” app (for storing trip reports, hikes they want to take, etc.), interviewing those who file trip reports, and the Facebook  Question of the Week. Loren leverages the Question of the Week to create a feature for the newsletter.

Loren also uses social media to capture small testimonials. When the WTA asks “who first took you hiking?” on its Facebook page, people cannot wait to share. From a simple question, the WTA gathers a list of its engaged supporters even before they are members/fans, and can continue to track their engagement.

MomsRising brings fans in through its Story bank. One of the key things for their campaign is to put faces to stories, and those who share their stories are then coached and prepped for sharing them publicly.

They have learned several lessons about asking for stories: when MomsRising asked “please share your childcare story,” no one shared. But, when they asked “what is your experience finding affordable childcare…?” people will respond. MomsRising specifically asks about experiences and feelings, which encourages more participation. Sarah also asks for stories in a PS within the newsletter or an email, because a direct ask for stories does not generally get a lot of response. Usually, the people who will give you a story are on a higher level of engagement with the organization, so this also builds up their list of more engaged online fans.

Be a Superhero for Kids: Real world campaign success

MomsRising executes its campaigns through a multi-layered online/offline strategy. They open an issue on their website, then push it to Facebook, then newsletters, then deliver items to offices from real moms to real legislators.

The “Be a Superhero” campaign was conceived of on a campaign call with core supporters. MomsRising made superhero capes and put together an online petition encouraging legislators to be superheroes by supporting preschool education. One target was Legislator Joseph Zarelli, who was not known for being supportive to this issue.  MomsRising moms showed up at Zarelli’s door with petition and cape, “because we knew he could be a superhero for kids,” as Sarah Francis explained. They took photos with him as a superhero for kids with the cape and kids, and he loved it. Sarah made sure his local paper knew about it, and printed the press release about how Joseph Zarelli was a superhero for kids. When Headstart budget was debated, Senator Zarelli stood on the Senate floor and spoke about the importance of funding preschool. He also voted for a huge fiscal note. They have used their “be a superhero for kids” cape approach with others, and it always works. Ultimately, the legislature voted to expand funding for Headstart by 2015 on a sliding scale for all families on Washington state. (Below is a photo of Rep. Ross Hunter wearing his superhero cape.)

Earlier this week, I posted my review of Amy Sample Ward and Allyson Kapin’s new book, Social Change Anytime Everywhere. After reading the book, I sent Amy and Allyson six questions about the book, following up on some of the concepts and examples presented in the book. In the following Q&A, Amy and Allyson share their thoughts on what inspired them to write the book, how real-time web and mobile has changed how we do business internally and externally, which nonprofits are successful at building online community, what assets an organization should have in place before launching a multichannel campaign, and the investment needed to raise money online.

1. What inspired you to write Social Change Anytime Everywhere?

ASW: So many organizations that I talked to were looking for which tool they could focus on to get the most impact, and the most bang for the buck. The answer isn’t just one tool but is instead how you’re integrating the tools and content to create the best constituent experience. I was interested in writing this book so I could help show how organizers can use a multichannel approach in their work, and do it for many organizations at once.

AK: I wanted to show organizations how they could build a ladder of engagement with their constituents across multiple online channels ranging from their websites to social media. Most nonprofits are really good at utilizing one or two channels well, but very few are using several channels effectively to support campaign goals in order to reach people wherever they are. This concept is what inspired the name of the book Social Change Anytime Everywhere.

2. If you were to say that there is one overarching theme in the book, what is it?

AK: The real-time web and mobile has changed the way we do business both internally and externally. You need to reach your supporters and target audiences wherever they are and how they prefer to communicate with you – whether that be through your blog, email, direct mail, social media, texting, etc. This is why it’s so important that nonprofits focus on having integrated teams and not silo departments who aren’t coordinating multichannel campaign efforts.

ASW: That multichannel strategies aren’t difficult and organizations of all sizes are using this way of operating to be more effective in their work – you can, too!

3. What type of online assets should an organization have in place before planning a multichannel campaign?

ASW: We discuss this in the book, of course! As far as the technology goes, if say organizations need ways to communicate, this could mean websites, email marketing, social media, and mobile text messaging. Organizations then need a way to store their constituent data in a system that will track and segment the list. When those pieces are in place, it’s time to talk about the process or people-focused systems. These are things like standing meetings that bring people from across the organization together to review data and communications, planning processes that involve staff from all related departments, etc.

AK: In addition to having systems and processes in place to make multichannel campaigns successful, you also need good stories to tell to humanize the issues you are working on and to demonstrate impact. For example, how did one person’s donation make a difference in your campaign? How did their advocacy action have an impact on the campaign goal you identified in your campaign plan (which we outline in the book). If you can’t demonstrate this you need to go back and re-examine your campaign goals and objectives.

4. You identify five principles integral to a structurally sound campaign or movement. If you were to pick one of the five, which would be the most important, and why?

ASW: I would say the first, because this is something I see happen all the time and will fundamentally impress your organization’s success: Knowing Your Community. A terrific campaign that has great content but is using language that doesn’t connect with the community and is focused on a call to action by those not on your community will ultimately stay as a very beautiful but unsuccessful campaign. It’s crucial to invest time first in understanding who is already in your database, who already comes to your events, who retweets your posts before you can engage them in advocacy, community building, poor fundraising.

AK: One of the ways to really get to know your community and learn how to connect with them is to understand their pain points around the issues you organize on or even within your organization.  If you take the time to listen to their frustrations, you can adapt your strategies, messaging, and sometimes even your advocacy targets to make your multichannel campaigns better resonate with your community.

5. When you write about raising money online through social media, you note that it is “not an overnight process, and it will take a big investment.” Can you elaborate on what you mean by that?

AK: First, I think it’s important to recognize that right now social media is not the best channel to use to raise money. However, it’s a great space to build relationships with people who can later become donors if you focus on a ladder of engagement, which we discuss in the book.

The majority of money raised by nonprofits still comes in offline. Social media is first and foremost a channel for people and organizations to use to socialize with each other. It’s a channel that should be used to foster community with your current constituents and new people you want to bring into your community. Unless you are in the middle of a massive and urgent campaign like raising money for victims of an earthquake or some other natural disaster or tragedy, social media should not be viewed as a channel to raise a lot of money on in the short term. In fact, according to a couple of the largest nonprofit benchmark studies  by NTEN and Blackbaud, most organizations aren’t raising a dime on this channel.

ASW: Raising money through social media requires an established relationship and trust. That doesn’t happen overnight.

6. The book emphasizes community-building throughout, particularly in Chapter five. What organizations have been consistently successful at building community online, and why?

ASW: One that we profile in the book is Iraq and Afghanistan veterans of America. I think they do a great job of building community online especially because of their multichannel approach, using multiple tools the same way their community does, pushing Instagram photos to Facebook and focusing on a streamlined online putrescence through their website. And, they always make it clear how you can join their work, which is crucial.

AK: One of my favorite case studies in this chapter is the rapid response multichannel campaign that the National Wildlife Federation did after the oil spill. As Senior Manager for Online Integration, Kristin Johnson has said, there was no handbook written for how to launch a multichannel campaign when an oil rig explodes in the Gulf.  But they organized quickly and got key people from different departments collaborating on a rapid response. They used several channels such as their website, social media, and their blog to post facts and resources on the oil spill and its impact on wildlife. They also used all of these channels plus text-to-give via mobile to raise money for wildlife rescues. In addition, they used video and Flickr to visually document the impact that the oil spill was immediately having on wildlife. And it wasn’t just NWF staff contributing content, it was volunteers on the ground. NWF did a great job vetting and repurposing content to keep the information flowing across all of these channels and to give their community the information and resources they were looking to NWF for.

Allyson Kapin has been named one of the Most Influential Women in Tech by Fast Company, is a Founding Partner of Rad Campaign, founder of Women Who Tech, and Blogger-in-Chief for Care2′s blog Frogloop. She tweets @womenwhotech.

Amy Sample Ward is an author, facilitator, and trainer focused on leveraging social technologies for social change. She is the Membership Director of the Nonprofit Technology Network, co-author and facilitator of Social by Social, and former community organizer of NetSquared groups through Tech Soup. She is also a regular contributor to the Stanford Social Innovation Review. She tweets @amyrsward.

If you work for, volunteer your time for, or consult to a mission-based organization, promoting your organization or campaign online is critical. In a new book, co-authors Amy Sample Ward and Allyson Kapin offer a step-by-step guide to raising money, promoting organizations, and create killer advocacy campaigns using a multichannel online approach. Social Change Anytime Everywhere is a comprehensive look at how mission-based organizations should use digital and social communication, develop internal communication structures for success, and plan multichannel campaigns. The book is full of digestible information, appropriate for anyone working in communications, fundraising, programming, volunteer management, and leadership at an organization.

This isn’t a book simply about communication channels, or tactics, or content, but rather an integrated approach to communication, firmly based in the principles of community-building. This book fills a needed information void: how to plan and execute strategic and tactical multichannel digital communication for fundraising and advocacy. Amy Sample Ward is a former community organizer and community manager, now membership director at NTEN, and Allyson Kapin is the founder and lead campaign strategist for Rad Campaign. Both women thoroughly understand that the success of any campaign, and any social media strategy, is based on developing strong community, community conversations, and community leaders. Working from these principles, Amy and Allyson offer a step-by-step guide, supported with multitude of examples, on how to build advocacy, fundraising, and multichannel campaigns.

If there is a killer, must-read chapter, it’s Chapter Two: Guiding Principles for Anytime Everywhere. Amy and Allyson have identified five “make it or break it” principles integral to any structurally sound campaign or movement. These principles are foundational pieces for any organization communicating digitally (likely 80% of all organizations nowadays). Organizations struggling with creating a movement or gaining traction online would do well to consider these five principles:

1. Identify your community from the crowd. Determine who is part of your immediate Community, your Network (people you don’t know but your community does), and your Crowd (those who receive your messages but do not know you and need consistent messaging).
2. Focus on shared goals. This is “the conversation” that I often write about (link). This is where does what you want to talk about meets up with what your community/crowd/network wants to talk about and do.
3. Choose tools for discovery and distribution. Align tools with your audience’s preferred tools and match your tools with their preferences.
4. Highlight personal stories. People relate to people, not logos or organizations. The book offers the perfect example of Planned Parenthood’s Storybank, which “banks” stories from supporters about how PPFA impacts them. PPFA utilized these stories during a recent time of crisis to communicate PPFA’s needs and motivate supporters to action.
5. Build a movement. The authors explain that movements are larger than partnerships and coalitions, deeper than engagement, and longer than campaigns. A movement encourages co-creation between individuals and organizations, and remains focused on the larger goal of lasting, real impact.

In chapters three through six, co-authors Sample Ward and Kapin walk the reader through the building blocks (with ample examples) of creating advocacy, fundraising, community-building, and multichannel campaigns. Chapter seven emphasizes the need to equip your organization internally with an appropriate staffing model, culture, and leadership style that supports multichannel communication.

Here are some of the highlights I bookmarked as I read through the book:

Chapter Three: Advocacy Anytime Everywhere:

• Three core principles for organizing effective campaigns.
• How Epic Change mobilized its supporters to realize smaller, achievable goals.
• How 350.org utilizes volunteers to create and distribute content.
• Using metrics to measure impact across channels.

Chapter Four: Fundraising Anytime Everywhere

• A step-by-step guide to developing a multichannel fundraising campaign.
• Tips for using email for fundraising.
• Utilizing homepage hijacks and other practices for website-based fundraising.
• Principles of social media fundraising, and four metrics to watch.

Chapter Five: Community Building Anytime Everywhere

• The four essential elements of a strategy for building community: build trust, use a common language, connect community conversations across channels, and practice is important.
• Co-creation is critical for community-building.
• Marry trust with community-building by building trust into the community.
• Empower your community by creating and supporting sub-groups.

Have you read the book? What were the highlights and takeaways for you?

In the a follow-up blog post, to be published Wednesday, April 10, Amy Sample Ward and Allyson Kapin answer six follow-up questions about the book, including “what inspired you to write the book,” “what assets should an organization have in place before planning a multichannel campaign,” and “what does it take to raise money online using social media.” Stay tuned!

What if everyone who works at an organization, or cares deeply about an organization acted as a network weaver? How would that change the way that organizations communicate? How would that change how and the extent to which organizations raise funds online? That was just the conversation that I had in mind when my colleague Scott Remington and I presented a working session at the Jewish Federation Young Leadership Conference. We had one primary goal: to empower every person in the room to become a network weaver.

The presentation/workshop that Scott and I created for the conference presumed that half of the attendees did not work for a Federation, but volunteered their time, and that half would consist of paid staff. We knew that they wanted to be able to do more for the organization online, and thought about how we could empower any individual, regardless of whether or not he/she works at the organization, to support it. The presentation (embedded below) was intended as a conversation point for every attendees. It was our hope that this would inspire new thinking and acting…and connections on behalf of their local organizations. Within the workshop, we discussed five ideas:

1. Redefining Leadership. What is leadership nowadays? What does it mean to be an online leader, and is there a connection between being a network weaver and being an online leader? Does the network weaver also wield influence, and if so, how much? This segment highlights a few Jewish professional network weavers, including Miriam Brosseau, Yonah Bookstein, and Deborah Fishman, a definition of network weaving, a statement on online influence, and the Ten Commandments of (network) Relevance.

2. Developing Your Own Brand. Part of being a network weaver is to be clear about who you are, and are not. Why would someone want to connect with you and converse with you? What is your area or areas of interest? What is it that you care deeply about? We emphasize that you want to know why you are online, what you want to be conversing about, and with whom, as you begin your journey towards becoming a network weaver.

3. Mapping Your Own Network. Volunteers rely heavily on their personal networks. During this segment, we spent time in small groups thinking about groups of people within one’s personal networks, how to connect them to each other, and if there are obvious connections between these groups and the cause/organization.

4. The Network Weaver and Online Fundraising. Scott spoke about online fundraising and the connection between personal fundraising and network weaving. In this section, he highlighted trends in online fundraising, and he offered his Five Pillars of Online Fundraising.

5. Case Studies: How Network Weavers Succeed with Online Fundraising. The last part of our presentation focused on two individual case studies that illustrated the potential for the network weaver to impact fundraising. In the first, Scott spoke about how a tweet that he sent Henry Timms of the 92nd Street Y about Giving Tuesday inspired a Detroit-focused Giving Tuesday. In the second case study, I spoke about how Carter Gibson leveraged his tremendous network on Google Plus to raise money for the Horn of Africa relief fund.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project recently published The Demographics of Social Media Users, detailing the demographics of social media users by age, ethnicity, household income, gender, urbanity, and education and platform. While report hones in on the demographics of who is using Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram, Linkedin, Google Plus, and Flickr are not included. A few data points stand out:

• Both Twitter and Instagram are used most heavily by the same demographic: African-American, urban, 18 – 29 year-olds. While the study does not include Americans under age 18, anecdotally, I believe many high school students use both heavily.
• Tumblr is a young person’s medium; most users are between ages 18 and 29.
• Hispanics are relatively heavy users of every social media channel. They are more likely to use social networking sites than whites or African-Americans.
• Urbanity plays a role: slightly more social network users overall live in urban environments than suburban and rural. Significantly more Twitter and Instagram users live in urban areas than other types of environments, and more Facebook users are urban-dwelling than suburban or rural.

It’s no longer enough to broadly assume that “everyone is on Facebook, professionals are on Linkedin, and women are on Pinterest.” Our thinking about our online audiences, and potential fans, must be more sophisticated. If an organization works with urban youth, then look to Instagram, Tumblr and Twitter. If you want to engage young adults, think beyond Facebook to Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. If you want to specifically attract African-American stakeholders, do not leave Twitter and Instagram out of the mix. A quick glance through nonprofit Tumblr blogs illustrates how Tumblr blogs engaging with youth can be extremely successful.

Moreover, 40% of all cell phone users in the US are accessing social networks from their mobile phones. African-American and Hispanic young adults ages 18 – 29 are far more likely to access social networks from their phones than older, white, social network users. How does this information inform your next online or mobile campaign? How could you create easy one-click actions from an organizational Facebook Page just for this audience?

Interestingly, in a related data set, the Pew Internet and American Life Project evaluated internet usage over time by age group. The data reveals that the percentage of social networking users in every age groups has decreased since August 2012 except ages 30-49. The sharpest decrease in percentage of users is in the 18-29 age bracket, dropping 9% during the second half of 2012. It is not longer acceptable to assume that adoption will continue to rise amongst every age group. No longer are those 55+ the fastest-growing social media adoption age group; in fact, the conceit of “the fastest-growing social media adoption age bracket” no longer holds true.

For a quick glance at the social networking demographic data, check out this interactive infographic compiled from the Demographics of Social Media Users study. For highlights of the Pew study related to social networking, Pew offers this summary of its data set.